The Wealth Cap Is The Answer Overpopulation and extreme wealth/power concentration will negate band-aid cures from environmentalists. Not to mention proposed cures by religious fanatics, republicrats, lawyers, economists and every other eloquent "expert" on the subject. It becomes kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. The law of the jungle rules. Sustainability is stability, but how can we achieve a sustainable society without purification by fire and lots of pain and suffering? Perhaps we can't, but should we at least try? Any possible solution that does not address overpopulation and extreme wealth/power concentration qualifies as a band-aid. Why? Because most of what is wrong with the world today is derived from these two incongruencies. In fact, extreme wealth/power concentration is the major cause of overpopulation, as the superich procure ever more, ever cheaper slave labor, and the poor increase their family numbers so as to have more providers of less and less cash. We therefore have two choices: To continue on our ecocidal path, with the certainty that nature will eventually bring a balance (an enduring balance?) at great cost to us, to species diversity and to our planet which may be rendered uninhabitable to our own species, Or to: Find simple, easy to achieve solutions that are global in scope, harm no one and lift everyone from poverty, the major cause of overpopulation. One such solution has been discussed online recently. It is The Wealth Cap. the Wealth Cap requires one rule only. In fact, it will make most other laws and rules such as those of the IRS, FBI, CIA, Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches obsolete. How? By largely eliminating crime and war as well as pollution, disease and other ills caused by poverty. The Wealth Cap is an upwardly adjustable global cap on personal net worth of ten to twenty million US dollars, supervised by direct online democracy and tied to negative population growth. It is closely analogous to natural systems where no single member of any other species is able to hoard more resources than what that singel individual can defend. With the recent (infinitesimal in anthropologic time) invention of paper money, our species has been able to circumvent natural hoarding controls. The consequences are all too obvious. Must we have paper money? Government IOU's printed out at the convenience of the Fed, that buy less and less every day? Paper money is fast disappearing in favor of electronic credits due to great advances in color photocopier technology. It would be a simple matter to delete or 'bot out a person's credits once they reach 10 or 20 million US dollars. How do a person's assets figure into this? Simply, the 10 or 20 million dollar wealth cap includes personal assets. What happens to the value of the dollar/credit if a trillion or two is deleted and disappears? In one word-- Deflation. The dollar/credit would rise in value. It would buy twice as much or more. $20,000/year would become $40,000, or more. People would be lifted from poverty. What about those poor billionaires and centimillionaires? What would happen to their mansions, yachts, airplanes, etc.? With 10 or 20 million, they could continue to live in style. They would merely rent what they can't buy and enjoy their much increased leisure time with the gigantic bonus of getting rid of all the maintenance costs, salaries for squadrons of lawyers, accountants, etc., bribes to politicians, foundations, other countries, etc. They would no longer have to hide in fear of the public and could join the family of humanity. Unlimited money is unlimited power, and power corrupts. Former superich would no longer have the unlimited power to corrupt. Not that they would necessarily want to, but corruption is a built in flaw of any system where most of the wealth/power lies in a few hands. What about communism or socialism? These are at least as corrupt as capitalism and just as hierarchical if not more so. But whether one thinks some hierarchy may be desirable in a society or not, the Wealth Cap lets the system adjust to whatever the people want without allowing things to run amok. It is the release valve that lets the steam escape before the boiler explodes. Extreme wealth/power concentration is the monkey wrench that eventually subverts even the most benevolent system. Are you fed up with government by special interests? Are you incensed by rising medical, education, housing, legal, insurance and transportation costs? Do you live in fear of crime? Does your dollar buy less and less? Do you think justice has become a commodity? Do you blame immorality, drugs, race, welfare, and lack of patriotism for the state we're in? Do you want to be rich but don't seem to have the money it takes to make more money? It's easy to blame one another. The most difficult thing is to recognize the basic flaw in systems of government that produce "man's inhumanity to man". Communists thought that by tweeking the system with a bloated burocracy and by trying to make everyone perfectly equal, all our problems would be solved. The result of that well meaning effort is amply evident today in the devastation that was the former communist state. Capitalists believe that the market can solve every problem, while a handful has accumulated the wealth and the power to control the market itself, to their advantage, and to the detriment of the vast majority. Once we accept that the root cause of most of our ills is extreme wealth/power concentration, the solution can be as simple as The Wealth Cap.