Featured

Home

With love of country and a will to make our home better, this website is an attempt to reconcile the disparities between “liberty” and “justice.” In other words, between “freedom” and “responsibility” within our constitutional framework. I examine disparities between: 1) who benefits and who pays the costs of any economic exchange; 2) between a growth economy and the impediments of property rights; and 3) between the promise of freedom and the realities of racism, classism, poverty, and inordinate incarceration.

To avoid authoritarian responses to “seemingly intractable problems,” I am proposing “peer accountability” to reign in the excesses of “unfettered capitalism” by means of tax responsibility. I am suggesting we can maintain choice and freedom, all the while addressing injustices, our environment, and economy – all necessary to make our country great again. As one example, “taxation with representative responsibility” raises money from pollution, according to science-assessed health and environmental costs. The revenues raised would be cycled back into the economy, creating jobs and supporting industry’s transition to sustainability, offering both industry and citizens opportunities and options for tax relief.

This peer-accountability framework can be applied to many present-day crises, like reconciling public and police safety, possibly more effective than command-and-control over-incarceration. Or to social media and AI, holding big tech and their users collectively responsible for increases in teen suicides or unintended consequences. In each of the following essays, there is a repeating theme of a kinder, gentler, proactive approach that might contribute to criminal justice reform, healthcare reform, and environmental repair – with perhaps better outcomes than reactionary regulations.

Representative taxation takes “taxation without representation” one logical step forward where responsible taxation couples commensurate cause-and-effect links to the source of a problem. A “tax shift off our backs and on our side” can raise revenues from fees on science-assessed “externalities” (second-hand costs), revenues that can be applied to our most pressing problems, where financial incentives and deterrents support “both liberty and justice.”

In our post-COVID-economy, we can create equal opportunity jobs, AND save human, environmental and economic health. Let’s start with a back-to-work program long overdue:

Essay 1: Saving forests and jobs with Tax Shifts

Without a carbon tax, climate change will torch crops and forests – this is happening at twice the historic rate. Without property tax incentives to motivate land stewardship (prescribed burns, thinning, reforestation, and noxious weed control), we will lose our forests to megafires or epidemics of invasive plant infestations. Fire-safe forest treatments plus noxious weed control create livable-wage jobs. Make a deal with taxpayers: Exchange carbon tax hikes for property tax breaks – a tax shift – both are optional based on citizen choices. Responsible taxation with tax-break incentives create jobs and mitigate climate change.

Essay 2: “Donate your diet to Science” is an example of responsible taxation: cause-and-effect taxes that link unhealthy junk foods to the funding of healthcare.

Essay 3: The “Policing Reform” page offers a “purse-string” proposal that could save lives of both the public and the police. Beyond political sloganeering and physical retaliation, here’s a win-win proposal to address both police and public concerns.

Essay 4: The “Jury of Peers” essay is a conservative response to our lock-em-up mentality. The essay is an exact copy of a handbill that has been handed out at the entrance of a county courthouse effectively monkey-wrenching jury pools. Jury disobedience is a suggestion to prosecutors that “jury nullification” is a constitutional check and balance on hypocritical laws and overzealous prosecutions that have resulted in tragic numbers of citizens behind bars.

Essay 5: “Fare Enforcement and Riders’ Rights” is my pet peeve to a local issue with constitutional implications. I hope our political leaders can rethink Sound Transit 3, with its flawed taxation and policies that disrespect citizens, lock us into future obsolescence, and don’t do enough to keep our economy flowing.

Essay 6: “Eminent Domain” examines the conflict between property rights and the demand for land necessary in a growth economy.

——————————————–

These writings are a response to reactionary populism and our slide toward authoritarianism, whether from the left or the right. The proposals share fundamental concepts: free will, personal and peer accountability, societal responsibilities to address dysfunctional conditions, respect for science-based statistics, and a conviction that Responsible Market Economics (full-cost accounting) can have better social and environmental outcomes than caps-mandates-goals-standards-targets and regulations… all political compromises that will be too little, too late.

At its core, the root challenge of liberty is its conflict with social injustice and environmental degradation, and its failure to accommodate the freedom of future generations. It goes back to our country’s original sins: the “plunder of not just the bodies of humans but the body of the Earth itself (author Ta-Nehisi Coates).”

Liberty conflicts with justice when we have an unwillingness to accept responsibility, an unwillingness to pull our weight and pay as we go, and an unwillingness to compensate for damages done to others.

A way out of our mess

I’ve submitted commentaries to national and international publications on how to navigate the transition to a sustainable economy. Without credentials, good ideas go unheeded, but I’ve said my peace intentionally misspelled. Here’s the latest of my submissions.

A Grand Reconciliation

President Trump certainly has shaken things up. This presents real opportunities for reform of fundamentally inadequate institutions. If we can adjust policies and hold true to American values of liberty and justice, we might reconcile divisions and reverse the decline of our country. Plus stabilize the larger world that affects us all. My proposals are not know-it-all solutions, rather a starting point that contributes democratic discussion to policy expertise.

First, if we are to avoid chaos, the left and the right must compromise and concede some truths to both sides’ key concerns. If we can yield to the current landscape of President Trump’s leadership, perhaps we can broach a “grand deal,” maintaining both liberty and justice.

Let’s start with President Trump’s truth that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” To say the least, January 6 was deeply unfortunate. But Trump is right that creeping socialism will fundamentally change our country, essentially an “existential” threat to the land of opportunity and foundational prosperity. At the same time, President Biden was right that the “climate crisis is an existential threat to our nation and the world.”  How do we hear both perspectives and dovetail entrenched positions?

To begin, President Trump was right to have introduced tariffs as adjustable financial mechanisms to hold countries accountable, what I call the “Trump Doctrine of Collective Accountability.” It’s also right to “drill, baby drill” and supply the world with U.S. and Venezuelan oil provided we swap 15% tariffs with a worldwide 15% tax on all fossil fuels so businesses have more stable expectations, not unpredictable tariff-taxes. With citizen support, President Trump could indeed “stop the war on Ukraine in one day” if carbon taxes reduced global demand for oil, cutting off Russia’s war economy and hastening a peace agreement. Sanction-tariffs should be a backup to penalize oil-producing countries that don’t cooperate with carbon “source taxes” to unite against foreign aggressions. Carbon taxes can be recycled back into economies, favoring home-grown goods, reducing trade deficits, helping solve debt crises plus finance the transition to a sustainable economy.

Next, DOGE was right to gut USAID as a forerunner to structural changes, if international carbon revenues were distributed fairly through the U.N. There’s a subtle sense to financing disaster relief with carbon taxes… which at the same time reduces the source of climate disasters. This same logic should link financing oil wars with carbon taxes, and taxes on weapons to compensate civilian collateral damage. With such funding, we could direct overfunded U.S. military capabilities to sanely distribute humanitarian aid, winning the hearts and minds of nations prone to blaming the U.S. for wars and climate disasters.

However, DOGE can be improved. Everyone has a story about government waste. Rather than cutting budgets with chainsaws, hold government accountable with “performance metrics.” Let government agencies cut their own waste from within, awarding bonuses equal to 5% of the waste that employees cut – if they still provide the same service. Taxpayers would benefit from 95% of government savings simply by introducing incentives into government services. Government agencies would maintain oversight, not by bedrock layers of regulations, but by applying financial mechanisms to hold industries accountable to mitigate downstream effects.

Responsible taxation can replace and have better outcomes than regulations. “Deregulation” works when we practice “full-cost accounting” that attaches second-hand costs (pollution taxes) to the price of products. This raises critical funds to support industry’s green retooling. With a leaner government, citizens might support responsible taxation linking the root of the problem to the funding of solutions. Essentially, bridge the disparity between who benefits and who pays the costs of any economic exchange. In other words, second-hand costs that are currently “externalized” are privatized along with the benefits, effectively doubling “initiative” touted by capitalist boosters. Accommodate the liberty of human nature, and bridge justice so we conduct our economy with nature’s limits.

The difference between conservative incentives and liberal micromanagement is that liberals think regulations will actually solve environmental problems – as if banning plastic straws is going to make a difference. On the other hand, source taxes can only be gamed by working in the public interest. Outcomes surpass the liberal “target,” a compromise that might be reached but still won’t be enough. On the other hand, regulations suppress business, particularly small business – the backbone of the U.S. economy. We need a healthy full-employment economy to fix budget crises while reforming our over-consumer economy.

Know that Americans spend seven billion hours per year on stressful tax paperwork – confusing rules manipulated by the fat cats. For the rest of us, it’s wasted time and productivity in the real economy. In contrast, shifting taxes toward carbon offers citizens “green loopholes” as easy as riding a bike, investing in energy upgrades, or working close to home.

Consider that roads are the lifeblood of our economy. With a combination of carbon taxes and electronic tolls (including commensurate-with-risk speeding fees, not 3-figure tickets), taxes could be paid as a matter of mobility without life-sucking paperwork. If free transit were financed with road-user fees, imagine traffic flowing again, and with it, commerce. That’s not socialism, that’s responsible capitalism linking problems to financed solutions. Drivers pay for their pollution, congestion and speeding, and transit-riders pay with their time enabling time-saving roads. Demand for mobility is a constant that can be harnessed to maximize flow of people and goods while raising money for road repair and construction. That’s not subsidies, that’s linked responsibility commensurate with use. High tariffs and car tabs make a car more expensive, but once you’ve bought in, cheap gas does little to curb traffic. When a $500 bicycle beats you to work, a $50,000 car and a $500 billion freeway system become worthless. Shift this around: no tariffs or car tabs, but rather carbon taxes and “congestion pricing” so drivers make better trip choices. We can choose to opt in for traffic management, or suffer with biased traffic enforcement. No one wins with gridlock: not people, not the economy, and not the environment.

Similarly, the internet is the lifeblood of e-commerce. Internet traffic can also get bogged down with spam, hackers, and bad actors trolling for public vulnerabilities. Expect “AI” to fall in the wrong hands with more sophisticated exploitation of weaknesses and financial systems. There is a real risk that trust in e-commerce and financial institutions will collapse, changing work ethics and cashless economies. One way to reign in e-abuse is to attach a price for data traffic on the internet. An extra penny for every email, text, or phone call would make mass-spamming and robocalling unaffordable. Spam would dry up overnight, and we could enjoy the amazing inventions like the phone and computer. Also, screen time and social media addictions would be better managed. With responsible e-accounts where data taxes pay for basic e-access, over-users could be held accountable for malfeasance.

Big Tech and investors also need to be held accountable – collectively – for the unintended consequences of foisting risky technology onto society. Cheney’s “1% Doctrine” needs to be applied to AI – if there’s a 1% chance of severe irreversible consequences, then government needs to take pre-emptive measures to avert threats and obstruct those who aid and abet the spectrum of mass markets, including terrorists. Cybercrime already tops $10 trillion worldwide, so we need financial leverage, both carrots and sticks, to hold hackers collectively accountable so financial pressure is reinforced by country-wide peer pressure. Beware tech-colored rationales blinded by a modern gold rush where AI promises to “cure disease.” This is inseparable with creating disease to cure overpopulation by means of bioweapons, a necessary evil in the minds of eco-terrorists and rogue AI. The AI “race with China” is also unsound when the AI manifesto states “100% of the knowledge of EVERY AI… belongs to all of humankind.” Next-generation AI will have no loyalty to any nation, but hopefully to the continuity of human/life on this planet.

AI may make us more efficient consumers, but mass-marketeering will hasten “overshoot and collapse” of the earth’s carrying capacity. Data centers only add surveillance of citizen-consumers and more energy consumption. We may need government regulation of AI, but we also need a responsible economic system that attaches a price to unintended consequences of any risky technology, an incentive system that manages over-consumption, subsidizes basic consumption, and civilly draws down over-population.

What about the sticker the shock of responsible pricing? A penny per email is 2% of snail mail, a small price to pay to “sandblast” scammers. What about gas prices and pain at the pump? I’ll get to that. But first, where does the left need to bend?

Unions have their place in history with respect to eight-hour workdays, workers’ voices, safety, and wages that foster economic activity. But the left should reconsider blind support of unions that abuse labor laws and hamstring small businesses, even those with only one employee. When organized labor exploits majority rule to hijack a company’s investment, when workers demand more than the market will bear or more than an owner earns, why would an entrepreneur start a business and create jobs? The number of small business owners who once had employees and then choose to work alone is not officially measured in labor statistics, but it is beyond significant. Worker-entitlement reduces employment and mentorship in the trades.

There’s nothing wrong with workers wanting higher wages. It’s great for the 10 percent of the workforce that is unionized, but some of the six-figure incomes are extreme. We need to figure out fair wages, healthcare and benefits for the other 90 percent.

Wages should be based on merit and productivity, not strongarming company budgets. Like it or not, we compete in a global economy. If workers disagree with wages, quit and find another job or start your own company and compete. If government job programs (paid by carbon taxes) guaranteed the right to have a job with benefits, then workers could at anytime fire an unfair employer, striking unilaterally over worth and benefits. Employers would be forced to compete for good workers – without the minimum-wage mandates that limit employment and always evaporate after inflation adjustments.

Unemployment should be a thing of the past. Any technology that puts people out of work should be tasked and taxed with maintaining jobs. There is plenty of opportunity in clean energy and environmental restoration for anyone willing to work, particularly students who might donate a year of service in exchange for a year of education or student debt. They should be working in lockstep with National Guard troops who should be protecting more than just cities. Bloated military budgets can address the biodiversity crisis in our country, fulfilling Presidents Trump and Obama’s Executive Orders to thin forests, reduce wildfire fuel, and control invasive plants. Whatever politics decides is a fair wage, restoration jobs link the value of wages to sweat productivity, maintaining the value of the dollar. The right to have a job is not socialist equality that suppresses initiative, it’s equal opportunity for those who try. Much better than a military economy or enforcement jobs in a police state – a fact proven by the Soviet Union. You can’t even open a food truck in Russia without getting strongarmed or firebombed by organized crime, the “moral vacuum” left after socialism’s collapse.

When a country succumbs to populist demands for excessive wages and bureaucratic “bullshit jobs,” when “the electorate realizes they can vote themselves largess,” when wages are not linked to productivity, we get inflation and the value of a currency drops. This is repeatable, empirical evidence proved every time the IMF steps in with austerity measures to save economies. The dollar has been downgraded by 11% already this year, an alarming reflection on the direction of America’s economy.

Cash flow is also the lifeblood of the economy. “Blood steal” is a medical term when an injury diverts blood flow, reducing critical circulation to other parts of the body. In the same vein, the economic body doesn’t work when some hoard money and others can’t live. Investors and job creators need capital, but it’s a balance where everybody’s basic needs are met. Bottom-up injections of currency into environmental job programs where livable wages are earned has a better “multiplier effect” of stimulating economic growth, not to mention protecting the environment that underscores the economy and everyone’s quality of life. Much better than tax cuts that the wealthy can’t always spend fast enough to maintain employment. “Without stress, there is no growth,” so if anyone wants more than reasonable-wage jobs, a degree of stress fuels innovation and effort. Carbon taxation is exactly that, motivating innovation and green technologies. American work ethic and ingenuity will rise to compete in this growth sector.

Next, conservatives are right about our national debt. When federal tax revenues (about $5 trillion) don’t match federal spending (about $7 trillion), when government must borrow to make up this $2 trillion “deficit,” every year’s deficit adds to our federal “debt.” We are at a point where “half of our (annual) deficit, $1 trillion, is interest,” according to Ray Dalio, renowned global investor and author of How Countries go Broke (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-countries-go-broke-big-cycle-tiny-nutshell-ray-dalio-flnce/).  Cumulative deficits amount to a $40 trillion federal debt, about $297,000 per household, about $7,800 in annual interest payments.  When the U.S. must borrow just to pay the interest on the debt, when $9 trillion principal plus interest is fast coming due, to avoid default we soon need about $10 trillion – twice our annual tax revenues. More borrowing, if bond markets allow it, is a vicious spiral that could combine fiscal crises with environmental disasters. Americans don’t need to believe in the climate crisis; they just need to trust that carbon taxes will be a revenue workhorse to save our economy.

Ray Dalio details a three-part solution to our debt crisis, assuming we do it while our economy is still strong: 1) Increase tax revenue (“everyone should contribute something”), 2) Cut spending 4%, and 3) Keep interest rates low (as President Trump desires). We need policy experts to micromanage this solution, but the default crisis and climate crisis give us no choice but to shift “ticky” taxes toward carbon taxes that raise real money. “Ticky,” as in too much life-sucking tax paperwork and no link between cause and effect.

What we need is a “grand deal,” a reconciliation that addresses economic, social, and environmental security.

Part of this deal is the often-proposed “UBI” Universal Basic Income in a time when “AI” and robotics are projected to vastly increase unemployment. When UBI is paid by carbon and wealth taxes, we avoid inflation that happens when we just print money (as happened with COVID). UBI basic income cushions “pain at the pump” and guarantees that no one starves or is homeless – without welfare bureaucracies. A starting point might be Trump’s COVID stimulus amount of $1,400 to all citizens, except monthly like earned social security, whichever is more. Again, if anyone wants more than the security of basic income, a degree of stress fuels innovation and effort. The working economy will proceed as normal where citizens can use the stimulus to pay carbon taxes or avoid them with a little ingenuity. Non-citizens will not receive UBI, so they will self-deport unless they’re valuable enough to our economy to afford gas taxes that pay for the roads they use. This will civilly manage immigration that exploits America’s “milk-and-honey” subsidies.

Another part of a grand deal is to broaden President Trump’s directive to make big businesses share 10 percent of their ownership if they have received public subsidies, as happened when President Biden subsidized Intel with the CHIPS and Science Act. Businesses may need subsidies to transition to clean technologies, but the benefits of public investments and infrastructure are not a one-way street. This limited government ownership is “tithing” that further spends down our debt while still retaining the efficiency of private enterprise.

There are many measures state governments can take to cushion tax shifts: No-fault-pay-at-the-pump car insurance, making insurance “pay-as-we-go” commensurate with miles on the road. Also, eliminate regressive sales taxes (“regressive” means the poor pay more), replacing state sales taxes with gas taxes. And reduce property taxes in exchange for stewardship of collective problems such as stormwater, fire risks, septic health, and invasive species. Property tax breaks could be awarded for other public benefits like housing density, helping solve the homeless crisis.

My last grand suggestion: Eliminate federal income taxes for anyone making less than $200,000 per year, $400,000 per household. This will shrink the rich-poor gap (reducing resentment and crime) as many business owners will gladly share profits with workers just to avoid the tax paperwork. For those powerful interests earning more than $400,000, my patriotic plea is this: Choose the path our founding fathers chose when they signed the Declaration of Independence. Not only did signatories face the real risk of hanging for treason, but many willingly spent down their fortunes to support the Revolutionary War. In our time of neglect forcing revolutionary changes, supporting wealth and pollution taxes will help reform a responsible market economy. We can’t just scapegoat the 1%. Americans are 5% of the wealthiest in the world who are most responsible for carbon pollution. If we are to survive, everyone must pull their weight commensurate with the pollution they create. Rest assured the jet-set class will pay more. A combination of pollution taxes, electronic tolls and taxes on excessive-incomes will employ people, support the green transition and make our country a more perfect union. Still, tax reform must maintain responsible investment-capital and not shock the economy. High-income taxes will go down easier if taxpayers can earmark a portion of taxes for programs they support: like career training, education, medical research, the military, or just paying down the debt.

A stable climate is the foundation of civilization. And carbon pollution is an incremental consequence of mass destruction, elevating natural security to national security importance. Securing a stable future can be done through tax shifts that reduce greenhouse gases and pay down the national debt. Anyone who disagrees should move to Florida and study sea-surface temperatures 10 degrees higher in the Gulf. When melting ice caps swamp port cities critical to global trade, when crops dry up and fish stocks collapse, when forests burn and wildfire insurance won’t back new home construction, when the only growth in GDP is healthcare and disaster reconstruction, then the collective costs of commerce will be greater than the benefits. At that point, Ray Dalio’s prophesy rings true, “No system of government, no economic system, no currency, and no empire lasts forever, yet almost everyone is surprised and ruined when they fail.” There is time to avoid a declined empire, but if we fail to meet this closing window of opportunity, the consequences will be economic frailty and disasters increasingly evident.

There’s a lot to negotiate confronting the greatest challenges our world has ever faced. This requires a new era of international cooperation to navigate global warming and out-of-control AI, not to mention nuclear threats and ozone depletion foisted upon the world by techno-cults. Responsible economic policies can check the money motivations of unwise technologies, and yes, sometimes regulations are necessary. But we must avoid the road of socialism that has polluted homelands and ruined many an economy. A degree of public-social security can preserve incentives in a hybrid market economy, avoiding populist mistakes by proactively addressing valid concerns like jobs, housing, healthcare and the environment. We can do this with smart tax shifts that offer freedom of responsible choices that reduce problems and fund solutions. Or we can let authoritarian reactionaries, whether on the left or right, try to command-and-control our way out of compounding crises.  

President Trump can create a legacy with reforms that strengthen America, that help the world with our proven example. When we choose to save our environment, economy and the American dream, we will indeed make America great again.

Steve Richmond, author of bothlibertyandjustice.us, a website that explains the philosophy of Responsible Market Economics.  October 15, 2026