The role of business in our capitalistic society is to produce products and non-governmental services, the consumption of which supports the needs of the population as a whole and generates profit for the business. Unlike governments, businesses do not have and should not have the privilege to force their production on the population. They exist according to their ability to attract customers to purchase their products or services. Because they risk individual capital in that endeavor with tangible cost, and because they are expected to be self-responsible in market viability, then they rightfully deserve reward for winning against that risk in the form of profit. Some profit is normally reinvested in a business to support growth. Another portion is returned to the investors in the form of dividends and, in some indirect cases, increased share value. A third portion is provided to various local, state and federal governments as taxes of one type or another.

Businesses vary in size, from one person up to hundreds of thousands of people. So in a large population there is a great opportunity to have numerous, closely related businesses compete, and in so doing periodically produce better products. Most important, businesses are the economic engines to generate income for the population. They are the kinetic, as opposed to potential, form of energy represented by money. They transform technological advancement into human advancement.

The method of partitioning the chapter on Responsibilities of Governments will be used here to assist the reader, for the variety of topics related to business is large indeed. Fasten your seat belt and keep your antacids and motion sickness remedies handy.

Part I - The Business Environment

Businesses are our economic life-blood. They must not be hampered by socialistic distortions of the consumer/contributor model, for to weaken businesses with uncontrolled, tangential social problems is simply stupid and ultimately destructive to the society. Due to increasing global commerce, the role of business is significantly more complex than it was even thirty years ago. Specifically, the objectives of maximizing profit while supporting the economic wellbeing of the citizens of the nation of origin, while also supporting global economic/peace initiatives, can be and are increasingly in conflict. This is seen at the individual level in the USA as shifting or declining job opportunities and disconnection in cost of living vs. wages paid for a given type of employment.

The primary contribution of business occurs in a conflict environment, because the success of the best is mandatory to identify, develop and implement newer and better ways of doing things. Individuals, who do not happen to have the good fortune to be employed by a winning business, or to shift their career area easily through application of inherited aptitudes or education, have their lives disrupted by periodic, and sometimes chronic, unemployment. Our individual "career" life spans are very short and tenuous relative to the economic fortunes of a country, a region within a country or a type of business. So we tend to approach raw capitalism cautiously, and entertain income protection in the name of fairness, i.e. unemployment compensation and training programs.

The Soviet experience in income protection was not successful because the essential component of individual motivation to prosper by one's own efforts was lacking. In a business sense, that was the undoing of the Soviet Union. Note also that big business from 1830 to 1920 in the USA demonstrated that unrestrained capitalism, specifically the behavior of early capitalists, was grossly and typically unfair to the labor force in income and job security areas. Therefore, we saw the development of unions, anti-trust, and labor relations laws to try to achieve fairness and balance for society as a whole. The experience with unions during the mid 20th century demonstrated a third example of the problem in trying to achieve fairness and competitiveness, for strikes became selfishly motivated, disruptive and inflationary.

The common problem of the above historical description of capitalism in action within a democracy is that power without appropriate and applied checks and balances leads to failure, in that society is disrupted or oppressed in conducting the activity of personal economic survival. Polarized views about which historical environment is best do not help solve that problem. Ultimately, power must be used to enable the overall population, such that capable, motivated individuals have equal and real opportunity to succeed. The resultant implications for business are profound and troublesome, particularly in the relatively new global trade/production environment.

Reduced to it's simplest form, the goal of a businessperson is to make a good living with considerable personal control on how that living is made. How the businessperson accomplishes that goal has broad and deep effects on the population in terms of employment. Consider again that our present business environment in the USA has the following three conflicting objectives:

1) Loyalty to stockholders means that profit is the highest goal and more is better.

2) Loyalty to country means keeping the population well employed/compensated, i.e. able to enjoy life and provide tax revenue.

3) Loyalty to international initiatives for world peace through global trade means global competition and foreign investment in facilities and labor resources, at the expense of local investment and local citizens.

Now, add in an additional requirement of Destiny's thesis: it is everyone's responsibility to help achieve Destiny, but not by intentionally or structurally undermining each other's ability to work and earn money, which is essential to our individual survival and growth. Is it not clear that something is wrong in a major way? Is it not obvious that no business can honestly and effectively address all of the above requirements because they are in obvious and serious conflict with each other? Is it not obvious that businesses will do whatever is necessary to survive, and that the implications for the general population of any developed country are ominous?

You might become uneasy with the realization that we are, at the moment, foolishly setting the stage for global economic war, and internal civil unrest. Now governments must decide how to make their countries economically dominant, or at least not vulnerable to internally destructive foreign competition, and how to influence businesses to keep the population within the country of origin gainfully employed.

Part II - Where are we going?

If you recall the nationalization of the Middle East oil fields in the 1970's, you can envision future behaviors of countries that believe, rightly or not, that their economic destiny is unfairly dominated by other countries or businesses. To theorize and then see the formation of trading blocks is sound and obvious. It has a clear historical military analogue. It has already happened. It will continue to happen. Orwell's (1984) East Asia, Eurasia and Oceana, conceived as political divisions of the world, are most apt descriptions for the likely future economic trading blocks of the world.

The superset of large, global corporations and banking institutions working above and within those trading block/political boundaries, and operating them through political contributions, yields a most frightening scenario. It is naïve to assume a disconnect between business and government. Might global business leaders dominate legislative processes through promoting and/or selecting political candidates most everywhere? Will the further aggregation of financial power help us realize Destiny? No, because businesses are not our guardians. However, periodic United Nations licensing of businesses for global commerce can help, if we move in that direction. We dare not ignore societal checks and balances. They must always be one level higher in authority than businesses. This is not negotiable.

Some of our economic theorists in the USA preach the infantile notion that the nations of the world will respond to business competition like the various states within the USA, in a non-violent, free trade, income re-distribution environment. They have failed to consider national, regional, cultural and racial self-preservation; all of which rise to immediate attention when any group believes they are not "winning." Consider the potential level of civil disobedience in any developed country that fails to reasonably educate and employ its citizens. Consider also the sorry economic state of post-NAFTA Mexico.

If your economic future moves from bright to dismal and you see no hope for recovery and growth in a relatively short timeframe, what do you do? Do you chase all over the globe looking for opportunity? Does a business have a fundamental right to create upheaval in the lives of its employees to add another 5% to earnings?

One responsibility of businesses is to survive the fallout effects of brutal international or regional competition, which greatly increases the risk to any business, for no longer is one's competitor simply another company that sells a product for less money or with better quality. Consortiums and governments will resort to aggression and to survival tactics at the expense of foreign competition. That is not an acceptable environment to support or stimulate foreign investment. If your company can be undermined by foreign governments and business collusion on price fixing, sometimes called "structural supports" in export markets, sometimes called "targeting" in domestic markets, will it invest? The only way the model works at all is if global monopolies are formed at the expense of society, and in particular, the individuals in the society, i.e. you. If you doubt that this is happening, review the past ten years of accelerated mergers and acquisitions.

Businesses that survive become much more powerful than the governments of the countries they occupy, for any business can choose to move operations elsewhere if they don't happen to like the influence of a particular government on their activities. Whatever your understanding of right or wrong happens to be, you can be certain that business cannot and should not be relied upon to be a moral guardian or defender of individual rights. National legal dominion vanishes as a threat to unethical business practices in a global business environment, so the essential checks and balances cease to exist. That is very bad, and it could lead to a modified form of protectionism, in which a nation denies its market to offending businesses, either external or internal. The latter possibility is certainly self-defeating. Thus, we do need global government control of businesses as an essential part of checks and balances, i.e. a democratic, empowered United Nations.

Part III - Cannibalism

Another area of consideration for business responsibility is the cannibalistic behavior that businesses exhibit in which total success results in the literal elimination or substantial weakening of competitors. One look at Microsoft® (Microsoft, Inc., Redmond, Washington, USA) will suffice. Microsoft is not violating the spirit of capitalism nor is it necessarily currently engaging in clearly illegal practices. Yet, how many companies have failed or become absorbed because they could not bring resources to bear to stay in competition with Microsoft? The mere mention of a forced "level playing field" in business makes me shudder with fear of socialist stupidity, yet it is obvious that Microsoft's behavior is disrupting the lives of too many capable people who do not happen to work for Microsoft. The solution, however, is not to have everyone in the software business work for Microsoft.

One can further see the negative behavior of Microsoft in the de facto absorption of other companies by using their present marketing and technical resources to dominate wherever they choose; and they do so choose. For example, around 1990, Stack Industries, Inc.™, created a new and viable product (Stacker™) to compress data on personal computer hard drives, thus increasing the net usefulness of a hard drive. Their early and large financial success was quickly diminished when Microsoft effectively stole (reverse engineered) their algorithm for data compression and included that facility in, for that time, the most recent release of Microsoft's DOS operating system.

Eventually, Microsoft was forced to develop it's own algorithm, and it was less effective than Stacker™. But the real point is that Microsoft violated even the most fundamental laws regarding business property. Technological theft is not respectable. Thus, the world of computing and, potentially telecommunications and the Internet, evolve according to the limits of Bill Gates' thought processes, which are now on a sliding ethical scale, either directly or through his subordinates.

The USA federal government response to other companies crying, "foul" re forced bundling of Windows™ Internet Explorer™ with Windows™ 95 during the year 1997 was, unfortunately, necessary and overdue. It is that blatant behavior on the part of Microsoft that demonstrates the danger of accruing very large financial power into the hands of one company or individual. It is free enterprise evolved regressively, and the necessary consequence at this time in history of not having limits on wealth or power. Some users of Internet Explorer™ have discovered that certain web sites accessible through other products, like Netscape® (Netscape Communications Corporation, Inc., recently acquired by AOL), are somehow not available via Internet Explorer™. What message does that send to us?

Part IV - Oink, Belch, Oh Expletive!

Ingrown thinking is a reliable result from organizations that become too powerful. For example, consider the upheaval at IBM® (International Business Machines, Inc., New York, NY USA) as their market base for mainframe computers was eroded by mid-size and microcomputers in the 1970's and 1980's. It is typically human, and especially so in big business, that individuals too easily believe in the permanence of their dominant position and fail to remain creative. Even our best big businesses insist on shaping and framing reality, and then they refuse to consider fundamental technology and market changes until they are impossible to ignore. Do you remember a company named United States Steel Company, Inc. (USS®, Pittsburgh, PA USA)? It was once the largest steel company in the world. Today it is USX, and yes, somehow it permanently lost its place in the steel business.

I use the pig as a perfect example of our historical experience with business management losing perspective. A lean pig is the most intelligent, active, four-legged animal known. If there is any food at all to be found, the lean pig will find it. A fat pig is the laziest, dumbest, least responsive four-legged animal known. Both are pigs. Both see life from vastly different perspectives. Both will cycle between intelligent and dumb behaviors, with uncomfortable transition periods. Businesses, like pigs, tend not to pay attention to technology changes or market forces when their bellies are full. They do actually impede progress, if allowed, to sustain or increase their income at whatever the cost to other people, either employees, competitors or customers. Microsoft® has put on fat by aggressively eating its competitors, and it will evolve to impede progress unless we break it up into different companies.

It is a sad fact that aptitudes and motivations that lead individuals and teams to achieve outstanding success for a company are also frequently missing in the management that inherits that success. Our best and our brightest move on to new challenges, sometimes in the form of promotions, and the maintenance management that inherits a successful business unit is, sooner or later, second string. Lawrence Peter's and Raymond Hull's classic book, The Peter Principle, describes the extent of this problem far better than I can. What was not discussed to my satisfaction, however, is the class of individual who appears to have all the credentials to perform admirably in a leadership position, but who will systematically, and mostly unintentionally, bring a successful business unit to its knees.

I call these folks barnacles. Barnacles attach themselves to a speedy vessel and gradually diminish its speed and maneuverability, never realizing that they are the source of failure. Their excuse for reduced performance is usually that "people just don't understand" my policies and "you people are disloyal or lazy." You must work harder. Put in longer hours! Sometimes they blame "market factors" over which they had "no control." Alas, barnacles attract each other. They tend to promote within their organizations those individuals who represent no challenge to their knowledge or authority. It is essential to understand that barnacles are simply people with inadequate aptitudes, improper motivations, or especially, successful, substantive, broad and relevant personal experience. Advanced degrees from Universities, successful military careers and superficially smooth demeanor are not sufficient measures of ability or the basis to expect good business judgment.

Barnacles attain their positions because their successful predecessors are starting to become the lazy pigs of the earlier paragraph, whose executive judgment is clouded by success. So they unwittingly hire or promote the barnacles. The barnacles will make your life hell, unless you draw attention to them by notifying your top management directly, succinctly and candidly in large numbers. You will realize long before top management that your business unit has been "barnacle-ized." The correct way to act for your own survival is to petition your top management as a large group, in writing, with signatures, for barnacle removal. Having been so notified, top management has the choice of correcting their mistake within a reasonable timeframe of a year or two, or, of systematically losing the talent you represent as a group, as you individually seek and find other employment.

Most management would have you believe that the hierarchical structure within business is and must be more like the military than any other personnel model. If you allow yourself to follow that model, you really do not have any right to influence the direction or help determine the future of your company. I suggest that you rethink the entire idea of the business contract between your employer and yourself, for you are truly in business for yourself, and so is your employer in business for personal gain. I do not approve of unions, but there are times when groups of valued employees can redirect marginal tactical management decisions, to the benefit of all concerned. You have the right to enhance your future security and the responsibility to do so on behalf of your employer as well as yourself. Most of the time you will know if your individual ideas are sound, and the barnacle status of your coworkers, by the ease or difficulty with which your fellow employees embrace new, useful, provable ideas. Do take the time to assess the quality of management decisions and do not hesitate to act on behalf of personal and company success.

I will now provide a personal experience example for you to grasp the error of the hierarchical model. In the 1960's I was a college graduate employed as a chemist, I was married and a parent, and I applied for a credit card at a local W. T. Grant® store. I had no debt other than a loan on a modest car, and Sears® and Amoco® credit cards with zero balances. I was rejected. The clerk who had immediately processed my application through Grant's "computer" told me that nothing could be done to grant my request, for I had not established a sufficient credit history. I replied that W.T. Grant could not afford to reject applicants like me, for we were the successful present and future customers. Alas, the poor clerk could do nothing but apologize. He was not empowered to intervene even with his own line management. I shrugged, left, took my business to a different retailer, and never again shopped at a W. T. Grant store. About ten years later, they were bankrupt, and it is easy to understand why that happened. They had no effective feedback loop to determine that they were losing important business as a direct result of inferior management control decisions.

Part V - Oink II! The Sequel

Beyond blatantly bad behaviors, businesses are often weakened by myopic but new practices, that are implemented in the name of profits but which have very high deferred costs indeed. For example, large businesses today commonly engage in a practice called outsourcing. It is viewed as a means to reduce capital expenditures, labor infrastructure and benefits costs. It can be used to eliminate the internal functions of a company in raw material supply, manufacturing, sales, distribution, and in various internal services, like engineering or information systems. In practice, it lowers wages of workers by shifting the responsibilities to smaller, specialized companies with lower wage rates and reduced benefits, at the later expense of product and service quality or delivery, which is seldom believed, acknowledged, or understood when it is first invoked.

Compare outsourcing to childcare, as we know it today. When you entrust your child to those who are not committed to its development and nurturing, you are creating future problems much larger than the one being solved. Such is the case with outsourcing in business. Consider the cost to E. I. DuPont® for Benlate™ fungicide contamination by a third party formulator and packager. Contrast that cost in sales revenue (customer goodwill) and lawsuits to the reduced labor charges achieved by giving a medium skill task to a low skill worker. Recognize that failure to invest internally in people and equipment can be penny-wise and pound-foolish. Even if it appears to work for the present or is initially approached as a strategic or tactical product decision.

Our businesses are hyper-reactive to short term earnings and are not operated by geniuses. As market forces change, because of outsourcing, the cost for outsourced services will rise, because the companies who shed employees will become dependent on the suppliers they have created. Wage rates, benefits, etc., will rise above previous levels as soon as the management of the outsource enterprises recognize the power of their marketing position. They will first consolidate with each other and then the costs of their services will increase significantly. All to support the overhead of the outsource management and the investors. Simply look at the "Big Six" (now Big Five) accounting firms today. They are absurdly expensive and not correspondingly productive. This is representative of capitalism in practice today, and sidestepping today's cost problems via outsourcing is little more than a myopic, reactionary response to profit pressures. The subsequent cure will be more than painful, for it involves rebuilding internal strength where the necessary investment had already been made and squandered. However, do not worry, for myopia is followed by "vision" for the future and amnesia.

Do note, however, that there are times when outsourcing is legitimately believed to be sensible, based on a company's plan to go out of business for a given product line in carefully designed stages. Another example is found where outsourcing is used as a precursor to the introduction of radically new methods of manufacture that will eliminate the need for most of the current employees. This sequence of events is actually a form of downsizing that includes a period of outsourcing, and it is a necessary consequence of replacing old methods and procedures with those that are actually more cost effective. That reconfiguration of the business environment is progress, and we must support business efforts in that regard; else, we would still be driving Model T Fords.

We must, however, do a more credible job in helping employees retrain and find replacement employment without rapid, significant loss of income. That task is indeed difficult for all concerned, for there is no guarantee that any type of employment will be available at the wage rates paid within a given industry or geographic region. What businesses can do is dial in a longer-term redeployment of excess employees as part of the cost of change. Employees must face the reality also that their income is ultimately based on their value to their employer, and it is incumbent on the employee to seek a new career in cooperation with the current employer, and work with great diligence to retrain. If you consider the overall problem of remaining relevant to your existence, you will embrace personal responsibility for your own growth. You will recognize that progress inevitably "raises the bar" of required competence in order to be successful, i.e. to continue to be a contributor. You may, of course, decide not to retrain and then you should expect your income to markedly decrease.

Part VI - Big Daddy Comes to the Rescue

Historically, the USA federal government intervened when businesses became too powerful or interlocked. For example, the DuPont® (E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., Inc., Wilmington, Delaware USA) divestiture of General Motors® (General Motors, Inc., Hamtramck, Michigan USA) stock in the 1960's and the breakup of AT&T® in the 1980's. These forced changes were intended to stimulate competition in material supply and technological development in telecommunications, respectively. Both of those examples demonstrated that government can operate on behalf of the population, and in both instances the actions momentarily kept dominant businesses from exerting permanent total control over their markets and product development.

Similarly, tangential governmental actions that allowed the Japanese to export automobiles to the USA finally broke the hold of the profit-obsessed big three auto makers and the irrational United Auto Workers union. Both the manufacturers and the union were responsible for the American public receiving expensive, inferior, high maintenance, planned obsolescence products. They had a three-way monopoly or cartel in the automotive industry in the USA until the federal government and the Japanese unseated them.

The essential factor in forming monopolies appears to be one of economic or financial momentum. There is a point at which no one can compete effectively due to the raw economic power of a dominant company or cartel. Loss leaders, price fixing and lack of applied creativity are a reliable result. So we see that the business environment is rather like the government; excessive use of power is damaging to the population, first in livelihood, second in personal freedom, and third in realizing Destiny by applied creativity. Fundamental infrastructure and developmental improvements within the business fail to happen when there is a monopoly, for there is no driving motive to change or improve.

Part VII - Time for Enlightenment

So how does one fly in the face of our capitalistic domination behaviors and expect companies to share the market and provide security for employees without destroying the motivational aspects of capitalism? That is the key question. How do we expect companies to promote Destiny? How do we expect smaller companies to survive potential, global economic wars? What supports or limits should be in place for stockholders?

The primary solution is to be seen in altering the checks and balances for businesses. Limits of some form apply to all of us currently, whether we are talking about life span, physical strength or freedom to do as we choose with our personal time. However, in business or in personal economics, wealth can accrue without limits, and it invariably leads to distortions in the fabric of society when it does accrue in very large amounts to either companies or individuals. This is fundamentally no different from our experience with excessive accumulation and use of power in government.

Very large financial power in the hands of one company or individual will be applied, and it will be applied according to the limit of ethics and imagination on the part of the holder. Do you recall the silver fiasco of the late 1970's when the Hunt brothers decided to corner the futures market? The ethics issue is on a sliding scale over time, for most humans up to this time in history do in fact experience personal corruption when provided significant power over others through business or governmental means. Powerful people do like to play God. That is the lure of power in our societies. These people truly believe in themselves and in their right to control our lives, based on their earlier successes with developing their own lives. Does or does not great wealth or position usually produce condescending attitudes?

Whether we are talking about stockholders, executives or employees, there is a fundamental need for a profit motive in order to drive investment and labor to generate products or services in exchange for money. However, how much is enough? I pondered this question thirty years ago and concluded that, for individuals, wealth beyond their ability to consume and personally enjoy the products of a very high standard of living within their lifetime was the definition of "too much." At that time, a net worth of one million dollars provided the investment and purchasing power for a nuclear family to "live like a king" in perpetuity; that is, within the lifetimes of the adults.

In 1998, in the USA, that amount is roughly five million dollars. Any wealth beyond that amount cannot wind up anywhere except in power-oriented investments or huge estates to descendants, the latter of which is unconscionable given a Destiny view of self-responsibility. In addition, when investment capital is directed exclusively for highest profit, the question of where society will best benefit from investment is not considered.

Raw capitalism considers only the opportunity to make money. Simply consider investment and stock in gambling casinos and you will quickly grasp the point. Whether you consider state lotteries or ordinary gambling casinos, both yield immense profit from individuals too uneducated to grasp that they really do not stand a reasonable chance of making a profit. Both our state governments and private industry have demonstrated in the examples that they are very far indeed from an enlightened view of Destiny and individual empowerment.

When profit is the sole motive for investment, the society suffers. The fundamental tenet of capitalism, which is the market determination of success, does not acknowledge that citizens can be deceived to demand products, like gambling or drugs, that definitely hurt them as individuals and the society as a whole by wasting the individual's opportunity capital in non-productive enterprise. Past and current business behaviors suggest that profit limits will help by stimulating investment in areas more useful to the society.

Part VIII - The Unwanted Solution

Note that the pursuit of power is intrinsic to Destiny, and that pursuit is not in conflict with the above points regarding demonstrated behaviors on the part of businesses, individuals and governments. Our experience to-date simply reflects the legacy of hanging on to outdated survival concepts from our ancient history, and they are what need to be identified and eliminated from our fundamental life directives in order to mature towards Destiny. Distributed power is the answer.

Therefore, companies need limits on profits. A fair rate of return for stockholders should certainly not exceed 10% per year in total, whether we consider dividends or the sale of stock. Excess profits will be taken from individuals and companies and used directly in education, jobs programs and research on behalf of realizing Destiny, outside the company that generated the profit. Market share may grow according to the brilliance of the people in a company, but profit, as a percent of investment cannot expand beyond firm limits. That necessitates, and thus forces the company to stay lean and strong and adaptable, for as you will see below, income taxes will be graduated and based first on company sales revenue, and then profit as a percent of investment. Taxes will not be assessed on employee salary or wages and not on the historical practice of taxing company earnings.

Individual salaries and wages must be tied to limits that reflect the current profitability of the joint efforts of people within a company, with the understanding that personal worth, in 1998 dollars, will not be allowed to exceed five million dollars for any USA citizen. Bonuses will cease to exist, for Destiny demands that motivation is valid only in what an individual has chosen to do with his/her life, not in how much money or power can be rapidly accrued. The impact of this type of change will be to stabilize our individual job security by giving our business leaders better long-term goals. Fears about brain drain are readily resolved by requiring all employees to be USA resident citizens for salary and tax purposes, regardless of their actual global residence location. Product import tax laws that penalize greed resolve fears about brain drain in forming companies outside the USA. You will read more detail about that later.

If your CEO is compensated today primarily with stock options, then it is reasonable to assume that the CEO's decisions on business operations will be aimed at improving the share value of the stock. At face value, this appears to be good. It seems reasonable that effective product development, marketing and cost controls, yielding increased earnings, are the sign of a good CEO. However, there are side effects in the real life scenarios that are not at all good for employees. All you have to do is see the impact of Wall St. analysts on stock values, and you can see how our hypothetical CEO will likely behave. In short, if sales revenue cannot be readily increased in order to excite the market analysts, then the only means to increase profit is to reduce costs. That is a powerful incentive to downsize and outsource wherever possible, including changing locations for operations to lower cost geographic areas. Thus, the profit motive is extended beyond what we might classically expect, and the effect is to create upheaval in the lives of the employees, because the compensation basis for the CEO and other members of management demands ever higher stock values. Moreover, in a climate of profit maximization driving stock market behavior, there is no magical point in time when the CEO will declare a state of stability. The process of upheaval feeds on itself, across ever more companies and to the detriment of ever more employees, and in short timeframes. You will see these events justified as "continuous improvement," but for whom and at whose cost? Do you enjoy an unstable life?

Part IX - Taxes for Businesses and Individuals

Note the interrelationship of income and wealth limits and taxes. A flat national tax of 15% combined with flat state taxes of 10% and no local, excise, other sales or property taxes will definitely cover all the downsized needs of national and state government. And with no exclusions, each person will be contributing indirectly (see below) to the present and the future in a well defined, fair, easily understood way without loopholes.

There is no need for any local governments in any counties, parishes or cities. All important infrastructure or protective service tasks can readily be managed from the state or national level. Simplification saves money by eliminating redundant management jobs in a sector that does not create income. This approach is tax efficiency.

Further simplification can be accomplished by collecting taxes directly from all businesses based on sales and royalty revenue, i.e. income taxes are not paid by individuals at all unless they are a one person business or have exceeded the five million dollar wealth limit. This practice is already in place in both the sales taxes some of us pay directly, and in the hidden sales taxes in states like Delaware, which disguises its sales tax by applying the term "gross receipts" to the sales tax paid by retailers (and thus by customers).

Taxing point of origin revenue instead of earnings is a sure way to stimulate businesses to be fundamentally efficient in their cost structures. The tax rate can be graduated to absorb profits in excess of 10% return on investment, on a scale of rapidly increasing penalty. This will enhance the flow of investment capital to develop businesses that help the progression of society, but which have historically average return on investment of around 10% or less. It will also reduce the negative impacts of rampant stock market speculation. Limited investment tax credits can be used by government to stimulate essential business sectors, rather than being available to all types of businesses, regardless of societal contribution.

It does not take a genius to figure out that the most successful businesses will be providing incremental tax revenues to the federal government for use in retraining and special educational and national interest (NASA) programs. Successful businesses will also provide employment for limited contributors by means of limited back-flow of taxes to profitable businesses that elect to employ those people. That is true social security, for it empowers individuals, protects them and stimulates them to learn and contribute. It stimulates businesses to be successful, both for their own advantage and for the community.

Taxation of global competitors can be accomplished in the same way. The flat percentages above can be assessed on revenue within the country in which the product(s) are sold, which supports both the economy of the purchasing country while providing jobs to the producing country, in a uniform way. Read below about ensuring fair labor rates in the producing countries and you will see one self-correction mechanism that will avoid price cannibalizing by external competition.

An essential part of the above plan is the categorization of all jobs and allowed income ranges for each job. The ranges can be broad, global, overlapping, and indexed to the cost of living (Consumer Price Index) through time, but there must be income floors and ceilings for all jobs. And the categorization is what will allow control of trade practices by ensuring that workers are paid equitably for their locality to enable them to enjoy a standard of living commensurate with the international standard for that occupation.

Part X - Inflation Explored

One must also look at the impact of inflation on businesses and on individuals. Inflation as a subject is both a government and business topic treated within this chapter instead of the earlier Responsibilities of Government chapter. Inflation results from one of three basic sources; irrational expansion of the money supply, limited product supplies and wage spirals created by tight labor markets or union pressure. The only unaddressed sources of inflation at this point in Destiny are money supply and product supply, for the world labor market is available to most large manufacturing businesses. Union pressures for higher wages collapsed most places in developed countries because of the world labor market and global trade markets. One exception to that general condition exists where the labor force must remain in place within a country, e.g., trucking, and powerful unions can also be found in businesses within socialist countries, like Air France.

Money supply, controlled by national governments through organizations like the Federal Reserve Board in the USA, either does or does not rationally reflect the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a country. When it does, minor expansions in population can be accommodated by measured expansions in the money supply for new businesses and home mortgages, etc., without causing significant inflation, for new consumers later become new producers, at least in theory. When the money supply is increased to support large, growing populations of non-contributors or to develop new business ventures without accompanying real increases in GDP, or to support growing infrastructure costs without corresponding financial returns, inflation gets out of control, which is the experience of Brazil and other countries.

One cannot simply print currency to fund investment, support burgeoning populations, or retire debt without causing serious diminishment of living standards through inflation. It is assault on the current and previous (retired, fixed income) productive citizenry of the highest order, and on international lenders and other holders of a currency. Recent events with the near collapse of the Russian stock market/devaluation of the ruble are a perfect example of that problem. Russian loan defaults are very negatively affecting the global financial institutions that provided loans. Who do you think will pay for the losses to those financial institutions?

The Destiny view of monetary expansion is to limit it severely by stopping population growth and entitlement programs, except for education. Social welfare is not consistent with capitalism or Destiny because it invariably causes nations to diminish the productive citizenry through oppressive taxes and eventually to amass massive debt without hope of return on investment. Massive debt ultimately leads to massive inflation, for no one wants to be responsible for borrowed monies already spent for purposes they did not originally approve or through processes they could not control. In short, irresponsible monetary behaviors by governments underwrite long-term inflation at best, and in second world countries, and in the Russian example above, cause international loan defaults.

Part XI - You Too Can Have a Dose of This Medicine

It is essential to look at debt as a form of inflation, for when you must devote large portions of your income to debt repayment, you suffer a lowering of your standard of living, because you can no longer afford to buy what you are used to enjoying. Those goods and services are effectively out of your reach, which is precisely what happens in classical inflation. You cease to invest in your future, because you no longer can. Neither can the USA federal government today. Debt is monetary expansion, which is, functionally, inflation, although it does not show up in the ways that are conveniently and deceptively used to measure the cost of goods and services, e.g., the consumer price index. Inflation is not dead. It is a disguised monster today in the USA.

Another economic reality that feels like inflation is seen in our economy today. We have very low unemployment, which is classically considered good, but we have it only with the shifting of jobs, job types, downsizing, etc., that usually yield lower wages. If you earn less, it does not matter if the official price of something you want to buy has not risen. Your income has been deflated, and the result is the same as if the prices had been inflated. In terms of the financial success of the citizens as a whole, the USA economy is certainly not in good shape at all. Such measures as we use to proclaim economic success reflect only the positive side of the bimodal distribution of major class differences in wealth.

For example, consider participation in the stock markets. How many of your friends or family members routinely do profit taking in the stock market to fund the purchase of a new vehicle or a major vacation? Some people do, but they are less than 10% of our population. The participation of most people who do invest in the stock market is found in the IRAs and 401K plans that do not yield short term funds for enhancing our lives, except with tax penalties. They are retirement funds, and as such, they are unavailable in a true sense for us to use as we choose. These investors are simply along for the ride. They control almost nothing in the ups and downs of the stock market, for their capital is not under their control, except for bouncing from one mutual fund to another within a limited subset of all available funds.

Most of us do not earn enough to get past basic life needs, so we do not participate in any current sense in the published success of the USA economy, except as measured by the unemployment rate and the current values of the stock exchanges. Is that success? Does low unemployment mean we are successful? Did slaves in the 18th and 19th century have a problem with unemployment? Will downsizing, lower wages and shifting of jobs geographically improve your life? Will global business initiatives improve that situation?

What do you currently owe on your credit cards? Have you become an indentured servant through your debt? What part of our published success in the USA economy is a direct result of our personal borrowing against our future? Is that sustainable? What will you do as you face retirement with inadequate net assets or the combination of low income and high personal debt? You already know the answer to those questions. Your creditors will attempt to force legislation to attach your pension and your social security income, for you are responsible for your debt.

Part XII - When No One is at Fault

Now we get back to inflation that results from product supply shortages.

Product supply shortages exist in two forms. Either the product or something similar to it is unavailable, or the consumer who wants to purchase a high value product does not deem the available products valuable. Both instances lead to black market prices that inflate the cost of good products to consumers willing to pay the price. There is nothing wrong with that practice as long as the volume of product brought to market by any single competitor is not allowed to result in retained excess profits for the producing company. Thus, the products valued most highly by consumers will command the highest prices and the producing company will show a healthy but contained profit, which is a powerful stimulus to competitors to improve product quality and a clear way of containing the power of successful companies.

Consider the historical examples of the actual sales prices for the Datsun™ 240Z (circa 1970) and the more recent Mazda Miata™ when they were first introduced. The manufacturers did not obtain or receive excess profits when these vehicles were introduced, but the dealerships made lots of extra profit (10% to 20% charges above list price) based on consumer willingness to pay higher than list prices to compensate for product availability limits. Both the manufacturers of those vehicles and other vehicle manufacturers were quick to note market behavior, and in a relatively short time consumers were provided a much broader and less expensive set of alternatives. Excess distributor/dealership profit for those models was a short-term phenomenon, and not one that needed special profit limits taxation.

Part XIII - New Technology and Patent Protection

The discussion of business responsibilities also addresses part of the patent protection issue, for patent time reduction should begin only with the first sale of product and end ten years later. Failure to bring the product to market within five years of the patent grant, however, would automatically put the technology into the public domain. Licensing and royalties could continue as they are now. No one has the right to continuously own developed technology or to deny the free use of it by others if the discoverer decides not to commercialize a newly discovered process or product, or to delay that commercialization beyond five years. Companies will still be stimulated to do research, for there is nothing to stop a discovering company from selling patent rights to another company.

Internationally, patent protection and current infringements are a nightmare. The only trade protection we have is within our own countries, e.g., laws and enforcement to expel illegal copies of designer jeans or computer software or music CD's. There is presently no effective way to keep another country from copying technology for internal use. Nor can we control sales to other countries, unless they happen to be locked in as our trading partners and enforce illegal copy laws. Our need for global attention to the patent protection problem is evident, and no straightforward solution is apparent unless we use a newly formed United Nations to help manage this problem. We do not need or want global economic war.

Part XIV - Global Policy and Standards

The final, unanswered conflict question from the four posed earlier addresses the global competition for business. Put simply, businesses and their employees, communities, et al., need to be protected from destruction by foreign companies and governments that do not respect profit motive limits. Cannibalistic pricing becomes illegal in that the true cost to produce a product can be proven and directly related to the minimum required selling price for the product. Establishment of a standard of living scale can readily accommodate disparities in labor rates, from country to country. This would reflect what a product would cost if the producing labor were paid sufficiently well to maintain a standard of living equivalent to our own workers in a given industry.

The tax on products sold here would reflect any discontinuity in labor rates paid to foreign workers. Thus, imports can be welcomed and better processes for production and product quality recognized, up to predefined limits of profit as a percent of investment and production cost. One simultaneously welcomes and meters the impact of external competition. The motive of internal companies to compete effectively is maintained at a very high level, for there is no limit to the number of unique, foreign companies that may seek to compete for a market.

Note that a number of current problems inherent in international competition are eliminated. It is no longer sensible to shift production to countries where artificially low labor rates demean the laborers there and here. The emphasis on market development is on product quality and substantive improvements in production processes that drive down real cost in terms of labor time, materials and utilities. Note also that demand for a given foreign manufacturer's product may not be met due to profitability limits and the manufacturer's decision to avoid punitive taxes on excess profits.

Do you believe that individuals will purchase second rate products if they know about but cannot immediately purchase a better version of a product? If consumers are willing to compete with each other to pay black market prices for the best products, is that not a stimulus to competitors to provide better products? Consider the pressure on companies within your country to produce products of equivalent or better quality and competitive price. Recall what happened to the automobile industry in the USA in the 1980's. Think about how superior your USA made vehicle is today compared to twenty years ago. Remember that available technology was not the driving issue.

Part XV - Tying It All Together

Communism did not work for business in the Soviet Union. Nor will it work for any other nation, including China, for there is no profit motive to drive individual effort. Profit to extreme does not work either, for it creates nasty discontinuities in the lives of too many people, and it reliably leads to misuse of power. Destiny demands a more secure environment in which actual contribution is rewarded within limits. Businesses must have the right stimulus to become better, for profit and their contribution to society as a whole. Business leaders are responsible for promoting Destiny by actual contribution through investment in the society, defined as stable jobs and helping the educational system, and research, and by cooperative efforts (joint ventures) with other businesses and/or individuals, when necessary, to generate capital for very large, new endeavors.

Business leaders do not have the right, assisted or unassisted by government, to undermine the lives of millions of people by threats regarding employment or wage reductions by overseas investment in manufacturing facilities. That leadership consideration includes elimination of usury rates by banking institutions via credit cards. Is it sensible that those who are least able to compete financially are charged the highest interest rates? Where is the morality in further oppressing the already weak? Is it proper to tempt them with easy credit and then make slaves of them? Survival of the fittest capitalism must be limited in its effect on the population. Counter arguments related to investment risk are invalid, for it is obvious that the amount of credit granted should reflect the risk, not the interest rate.

Amount of granted personal credit should be a direct function of demonstrated repayment responsibility in conjunction with the borrower's income or total debt ratio. This aspect of quality of life vs. debt must become a legal issue that constrains lending institutions. Banking greed, which is so obvious in the slippery introductory rate marketing games, is as foolish as the long distance carrier wars on commercial television and telemarketing stunts. Easy credit i.e. very low required repayment schedules, irrationally stimulates the economy at the price of turning tens of millions of us into slaves. Note, finally, that poor people do not bother declaring bankruptcy. They simply default. Study the increase in credit card payment defaults closely. It is a certain sign that we are in trouble, for there is no unemployment statistic to provide justification for growing default rates.

Lest I forget our less enlightened businesses, it is important to identify unethical usury practices there as well as at banks. Sears, Roebuck & Co. is, to my knowledge, the worst type of offender. Note that people with moderately low incomes are Sears primary customer base. Note also that Sears charges about 24% interest (2% per month +/-) on unpaid Sears charge card balances. One might think that Sears customers would use a lower interest rate credit card for their purchases. If they could and did, Sears would make no profit from that credit card portion of their business. Yet, they do. Major profit at the expense of the poor and unwary. I abandoned Sears many years ago, as a matter of principle, because I could. Many other people are not that fortunate. What will you do to help our federal government control and gradually eliminate usury in banks and retail businesses?

Let me end the discussion of poor banking and retail business lending practices with a bit of humor. I once needed a loan to purchase a used car. My bank loan officer quoted the current used car loan rate at 12.66%, with a minimum 33.33% down payment, and he indicated that I would have to send them the vehicle title as collateral. I questioned that rate on the basis that I could simply take a cash advance against their credit card in the amount I needed for only 11.25%, and, I could keep the vehicle title. I also did not have to put any money down. Alas, they were determined to stand on policy. I bought the car using only a cash advance and paid it off quickly, not according to the lousy basis of their interest rates and amortization schedules, or the typical dealership financing trick known as the rule of 7/8's, but in the manner that I chose. You too can employ unused low interest credit as a weapon in business to your advantage.

Thus, we see that to tie together all the aspects of business responsibility we must guarantee that businesses operate to the general benefit of individuals capable of working, and willing to work, and not as non-value added leeches or discriminatory providers of services.

We must assure also that business leaders are protected from the other side of the coin. Unions must simply be outlawed. Equal opportunity and affirmative action impositions must be eliminated. Talent and motivation must be the only personnel considerations for hiring individuals for a particular job. Business leaders have a right to expect and contractually demand employee loyalty if they provide employee opportunity and security. Yes, if you expect businesses to be sensitive to your personal needs, then you must provide them an attractive business reason to provide for those needs. That means loyalty and rational income expectations. It also means being flexible when businesses need to change their current operations. Seek balance and candor, and most of all, mutual respect.

Forced trade parity with other nations is the final piece of the international or global business environment needed for ongoing success. It will result in the stabilization of our present problems with trade imbalances, without harming our global efforts to develop second and third world countries through loans. It will demand that no nation will operate to the detriment of another. And the interplay between trade parity and profit limits will underpin the elimination of currency devaluations that occur from excess consumption or currency generation, and foreign producers will have no financial incentive to flood a market. In that scenario, local companies within a nation have opportunity to develop and expand their market share. Local investment will be stimulated.

Businesses must be able to succeed and to generate profit, in a fair and competitive environment. It is evident how the change towards profit limits will encourage competition, lessen the sense of unfair foreign competition, provide employee security and thus promote Destiny. Economic war can be avoided as can abuse of power.