The Contracted State

THE CONTRACTED STATE

The Essay On

The Political Economics Of Unanimous Consent

Perpetual Spring

Σ Π

Second edition 2011

First published 1998 in the UK by

Perpetual Spring

126 Rosebery Road, Epsom Surrey KT18 6AA

Copyright © 1998 Philip Arthur Stibbe Permission is granted to copy The Essay subject to the following conditions: that any copy made is of the whole essay except as prescribed in The Essay, that no alteration is made to the copy except as prescribed in The Essay, and that no payment, fee or other reward is solicited or accepted for supplying the copy to a third party. Permission is granted to translate The Essay into another language subject to the conditions that the Translation is of the whole Essay and the permissions granted on this page are represented faithfully in the Translation.

ISBN 978-0-9533188-0-3

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Preface to the Second Edition Since the publication of the first edition in 1998 it has become possible to distribute the text of books to a wide audience without the costs associated with traditional methods of publication and delivery. This, the second edition, is published to enable free electronic downloads of the text via the internet. There are changes of layout and presentation from the first edition, and the authors have taken advantage of the opportunity to add four diagrams to illuminate and simplify the text.

Foreword It may be helpful to know in advance that the 'Essay' of the subtitle is not the exposition of a theory, but literally an adventure into the political and economic realities of unanimous consent. The theory is well-established and taken for granted, that the most successful strategy for individual freedom and prosperity is that of securing universal freedom and prosperity. The proof of the theory lies in executing the strategy, which is the subject of the Essay and the object of the adventure.

Contents

1 The Common Manifesto Page 1.1 Preamble .............................................................. 1 1.2 The Private Interest .............................................. 1 1.3 The Corporate Interest ........................................ 2 1.4 The Common Interest .......................................... 3 1.5 Ownership ............................................................. 5 1.6 Private Consent ..................................................... 6 1.7 Private Consent in the Corporate Domain ........... 6 1.8 The Act Of Concession ........................................ 8 1.9 Common Consent ................................................. 9 1.10 Private License ..................................................... 11 1.11 The Act Of Consent ............................................. 11 1.12 Public Consent ...................................................... 15 1.13 The Public Interest ............................................... 16 1.14 Corporate License ................................................ 19 1.15 The Common Purse .............................................. 22 1.16 The Common Share ............................................. 23 1.17 The Private Tithe .................................................. 25 1.18 The Common Currency ........................................ 27 1.19 Corporate License In The Public Domain ........... 32 1.20 The State .............................................................. 34 2 The Essay Page 2.1 Introduction ......................................................... 37 2.2 The Adventure .................................................... 38 2.3 The Text Of The Last Covenant ......................... 39 2.4 Standards .............................................................. 44 2.5 Policing The Transaction Process ....................... 50 ...................................................................................................

The Common Manifesto

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1.1 Preamble

We recognise that while there are such things as natural privileges there is no such thing as a natural right. We may have the good fortune to be born with sound minds and bodies and into privileged conditions of prosperity, but we are all subject to the laws of nature, and in nature there is no machinery to guarantee their continuity. Such rights as we may seek to enjoy, the only possible human rights, are those which we explicitly and unanimously concede to each other within a continuous framework of enforceable law. We believe that being possessed of natural intelligence and given freedom of choice, no living individual of any species will both knowingly and willingly act against its own better interests. We believe further that the adult individual is not only the best, but is the only possible judge of what constitutes its own interests, and therefore hold the highest function of human law to be the institution and defence of the freedom of the individual to act in the pursuit of self-interest. Given that 'the State' is the extant sovereign legal entity, the conditions in which the freedom of the individual can be promoted most effectively are those in which the private interests of the individual and the corporate interests vested in the State are made legally inseparable. 1.2 The Private Interest

We identify the interests of the individual in the following order of their priority:

(1) Life, on the grounds that all material interests of the individual cease upon death. (2) Absence of pain, because pain subjugates all other interests to that of the relief pain, and by subjugating eliminates them.

(3) Health because, apart from concomitant pain and threat to life,

illness and injury surrender private volition to dependency upon others. (4) Knowledge, because the extent to which natural intelligence can serve self-interest is limited by the individual's understanding of the consequences of the choices it makes. (5) Prosperity, because the scope and range of alternatives


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available to the individual expand and contract with the degree of its prosperity. (6) Aspirations, which are entirely subjective, but need no explanation because we all possess them.

1.3 The Corporate Interest The ability to find successful solutions to unforeseen problems in a world of rapid social and economic change, which we have characterised as natural intelligence, is invariably the property of individuals. The implementation of solutions, however, relies upon corporate endeavour. We define a corporate entity as any legally-constituted group of two or more individuals operating by the rules of corporate consent in pursuit of their corporate interest. It is a mere truism that individual success in realising private aspirations depends upon the success of corporate endeavour. But the priority of corporate interests runs directly counter to that of private interests in all but one respect. We can observe this opposition by identifying and prioritizing corporate interests, and comparing the list with that of the Private Interest: (1) Corporate aspiration. A corporate entity has one primary

aspiration: to maximise its own prosperity. The products and services it provides to individuals are only the means of realising the corporate aspiration, created, changed and discontinued at the demands of the market in which it is incorporated.

(2) Prosperity. The prosperity of a corporate entity is an absolute property, quantified and measured in financial terms. The

remuneration of employees and investors, that is to say private prosperity, is always secondary to the corporate aspiration. (3) Knowledge. Considered per se a corporate entity has no knowledge. It buys the services of individual owners of appropriate knowledge. The individual's knowledge is pressed exclusively to serve the corporate aspiration, and when it is exhausted or ceases to be appropriate, its owner is dispensable. (4) Health. The health of a corporate entity is measured by the degree to which its assets exceed its liabilities. Corporate


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decisions made to maintain or restore corporate health are necessarily reckless of the health of its dispensable members. (5) Pain. In relation to a corporate entity the only definition of pain is financial loss. In a case of chronic corporate pain, the amputation of any of its constituent parts may be deemed remedial, and no part is indispensable to the whole. (6) Life. A corporate entity has no maximum age. It continues for as long as it has access to the means of its continuation, the ability to pay for the conditions which extend its freedom of action in the labour market. When it no longer has the means to continue, it is terminated without corporate prejudice.

1.4 The Common Interest To argue that the aims of a corporate entity should or even could include the welfare of its constituent members beyond the immediate purpose of securing their effectiveness as its agents, is to confuse the distinctions between private and corporate activity. Where corporate activity is the multi-minded pursuit of a single and quantifiable objective, private activity is the single-minded pursuit of multiple objectives none of which can be quantified. To a corporate entity, its own prosperity is the cause, the means and the end of every intelligent action it executes; to the individual, prosperity is only the means of satisfying a multiplicity of needs and aspirations. Convergence of private with corporate interest occurs only where the individual pursues corporate rewards by investing private resources of labour or finance (or both) in a corporate enterprise. To both private person and corporate entity, the possession of money represents the power to act. Given sufficient access to money, a single person or a single corporate entity can influence the fates of nations, while without it neither can secure even their own survival. The common denominator, private and corporate, is ultimately that of monetary means. But it is upon the very divergence of private and corporate priorities that the value of money depends. Money per se has no intrinsic value to the individual; it cannot be eaten, cannot be worn or lived in, it teaches no lessons and cures no illnesses. In the private domain, money is usable only as the means to render property or services transferable. Private money either represents property or service in a state of transition or it is worthless. Whereas to a corporate entity, which flourishes or dies with its balance sheet, money is of intrinsic value. In the corporate


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domain, property and skills are usable only as the means to render money transferable; corporate property either represents money in a state of transition, or it is worthless. Maintaining the value of money, therefore, relies upon maintaining a market within which there is a systematic differentiation of two economic sectors, the corporate and the non-corporate, to each of which the utility of money represents one side of the same exchangeable coin. The domain of a market is defined by those currencies declared to be legal tender within it. And because goods and services are of intrinsic value only to individuals, it is the non-corporate sector of the market which provides the engine of the interest, common to both sectors, in the legal tender of the market. Figuratively:

labour/finance

non-corporate corporate

goods/services

The engine of a market The role of the State in any market having been reduced to that of one of many corporate entities within it, rational economic discourse requires an expanded terminology. To distinguish the priorities of the non-corporate sector from those of the corporate sector, we call the former the 'commonwealth', and define the commonwealth as the distribution at any given moment of all usable property that is in private ownership.

We believe the only rational purpose for corporate activity to be that of serving private interests: that ultimately, corporate entities exist to the benefit of individuals, or else they are either worthless or positively harmful to the commonwealth. We would, therefore, have the success of the corporate sector of all markets be measured by the success of the commonwealth, and not vice versa.

To make well-informed political decisions, we require a quantified, dynamic index of the success of the commonwealth, by which to measure the success of corporate activity within the State: a systematic measure of the Common Interest represented by the value of the money with which we meet our private needs and aspirations through corporate activity.


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1.5 Ownership For the concept of ownership to have legal significance it must be founded in criteria which are understood by 'owners' and which are accessible to courts of law when ownership is disputed. We take the criteria of ownership to be based upon lawful consent. In an economic model of a market based systematically upon lawful consent we identify three types of ownership: (1) Private ownership, of property the lawful disposal of which requires the prior consent of an individual.

(2) Corporate ownership, of property the lawful disposal of which requires the majority consent its multiple owners.

(3) Common ownership, of property which is owned neither

privately nor corporately, but which is legally destined for either private or corporate ownership by the Constitution of the State.

Private property is, in any market economy, that to which an individual can prove legal entitlement. But where corporate interests can override private title, through compulsory acquisition or through the imposition of variable types and rates of taxation, private ownership is merely a tenuous, privileged case of corporate ownership and cannot be counted in the commonwealth. The State that makes the law can change the law.

Corporate property, being disposable only in the financial corporate interest, cannot be counted in the commonwealth because it is wealth in a state of unpredictable transition. Where its disposal is subject to the decisions of a government it may be despoiled, wasted or lost through global speculation, accident, inefficiency, incompetence, ill-informed political ideology, or corruption. And where it is at the disposal of Companies then, foregoing waste or loss, the ultimate destination of profit depends upon the status of the shareholders, who may or may not be individual citizens of the State.

Common property, too, is wealth in a state of transition, but unlike corporate property its ultimate destination is predicated by the constitutional definition of to whom legal title may be conferred. Where corporate entities can claim freehold title to common property, common property is merely a transitory condition of corporate property and cannot be counted in the commonwealth.

Only that property the lawful disposal of which is irretrievably subject to the private consent of a named individual, can be counted in the


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commonwealth. With the contracting role of the State in global markets, the status of all property depends entirely upon how private, corporate and common consent are constituted and construed in law. 1.6 Private Consent Consent, of any kind, entails by definition the voluntary agreement of the consenting parties. Voluntary agreement, however, entails the absence of coercion, which is not a simple proposition. For a person to consent to anything requires a motive of some kind, and the line between motivation and coercion can be a difficult one to draw. We begin drawing this line by recognising as an invariable principle that consent must be explicit and may never be assumed: from the absence of prior and explicit consent, only the denial of consent may be construed. The actions required to elicit consent we characterise as 'persuasion', and at the focus of the process of persuasion we identify the individual as the agent of private consent. The conditions under which private consent can be obtained lawfully are:

(1) Consent must be willing. Persuasion which threatens or is perceived to threaten loss of life, or pain, or loss of health, or poverty, or loss of freedom to pursue self-interest, constitutes coercion.

(2) Consent must be knowing. Persuasion in which relevant

information is deliberately withheld, confused, or distorted, constitutes coercion. We hold the only legitimate cause of private consent to be the well-informed intelligence of the individual. Explicit agreement, therefore, obtained by persuasion without coercion, constitutes lawful private consent. 1.7 Private Consent in the Corporate Domain The corporate domain of a market includes every transaction to which a corporate entity is one or more of the parties. It has, therefore, no extrinsic limits: including as it does the agencies of the domestic government, foreign governments, multi-national companies and international institutions, the corporate domain of the State interfaces directly with the global domain.


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Setting aside, for later consideration, both the threat of coercion which underwrites high diplomacy and the conditions of war which ensue upon the failure of diplomacy, all corporate decisions are decided by majority consent, whether or not the majority interest is controlled by a minority, and whether or not such a minority is a political faction, the executives of a trades union, a board of directors, the cabinet of a democratically-elected government, or the cronies of a dictator.

In the corporate domain of a market, competition is order. Corporate entities compete against each other for possession of the means of corporate survival in a struggle to the metaphorical corporate death. It is the realm of wealth creation and destruction, the appropriate realm of natural selection in which the survival of only the fittest of corporate entities ensures success for the domain as a whole in achieving its only rational purpose: that of serving the Private Interest.

The bottom line for a corporate entity is that its incorporation, growth and survival in a market economy are subject to the consent of the market. It is entirely dependent upon the degree of acceptance it meets for its products and services, and can countenance no decisions which place its corporate identity at risk.

But at the same time, individual investors and employees have a common interest in the success of the corporate entity. During the term of investment or employment it would be perverse in the individual to prefer private interests to the corporate aspiration. Therefore, in order to underwrite private consent to contracts of investment and employment, three conditions must pertain:

(1) The individual must enjoy a primary freedom of choice. This

means more than having access to alternative investments or employment. It means having an alternative to investment and employment for maintaining life and limb. Without such an alternative, the necessity to participate in corporate activity is coercive.

(2) The individual, when contracted to corporate activity, must be

enabled to consent to corporate decisions which are reckless of private welfare. It is essential to both private and corporate freedom of action that the contracted individual be buffered, legally and practically, from any adverse consequences of intelligent corporate activity.

(3) The basic prosperity of the contracted individual must be

protected from the consequences of corporate failure, including any general failure of the corporate domain to provide opportunities for profitable investment or employment.


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These independent guarantees of private access to the means of survival, required to underwrite the economics of consent between the private and corporate domains of the Common Interest, cannot be delivered by corporate agency, Governmental or otherwise. The sheer size and complexity of the corporate domain and the rate of change within it, place its day-to-day management irretrievably beyond the wisdom and power of any individual or group of individuals. It requires the concession of economic regulation within the State to a system which operates independently of both private and corporate aspirations, but which licenses both. 1.8 The Act Of Concession We intend to forge a continuous link between private and corporate aspirations through the automatic regulation of the flow between them of the common means of their realisation. In order to bond the private interests of the commonwealth with the corporate interests vested in the State, we intend the signing of a Common Contract to be made a pre-condition of accession to citizenship of the State. The State cannot be a party to the Common Contract. The Common Contract is private, by which we mean an explicit agreement between consenting agencies in which all parties are individuals acting on their own behalf in pursuit of their own private interests. In the Common Contract the individual concedes to all citizens of the State those sovereign rights it would, given freedom of choice, reserve to itself; and because the same concessions are made by every citizen, the signatory becomes the recipient of those rights by unanimous reciprocation. The individual, then, becomes a major citizen of the State by signing the Common Contract. We refer to the signing as 'the act of concession'. The act of concession is the last and only legal action an individual can ever take as a true expression of unrestrained free will, for two reasons: (1) By signing the Common Contract the free agent knowingly and willingly accepts the liabilities of citizenship, which subsequently constrain the signatory's freedom of action. (2) Establishing the right to citizenship is the prerogative of Parliament, and providing access to the Common Contract is the first and only recognition given by the State that an individual qualifies as an agent of free will.


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The Common Contract bears in the frozen form of a signature the only evidence of the single moment at which the individual exists as a legally untrammelled agent of its own free will. That signature, however, constitutes the legal identity of the Signatory as a free agent within the jurisdiction of the State. It records that in the order of events in an individual life, the free agent preceded the citizen: that maintaining the rights and privileges reserved to the Citizen in the Common Contract is conceded to the jurisdiction of a common law. 1.9 Common Consent The Common Contract, being the first into which the Citizen can legally enter, takes precedence in law over all subsequent agreements a citizen may contract. The legitimacy of the State becomes founded in the unanimous private consent of all major citizens to the terms and conditions under which they agree to be subject to statutory law. Statutes are necessarily written instruments of law and enacted by majority consent. It is characteristic of language that every static formulation is open to variable interpretation. Even were it not so, and a completely unambiguous statute could be written, in a world of unpredictable change such a rigid frame could not possibly meet every contingency with the intention behind its formulation. We rely upon courts of law to fit legal generalities to individual cases. The act of concession adds a legal dimension to the constitutional State: the domain of Common Law in which specified responsibilities are assumed by the Citizen independently of the State. There is in this constitutional arrangement the vital distinction between statutory legality and common lawfulness: wherever statutory law is so interpreted to require a citizen to break the Common Contract, the interpretation can be challenged in a court of common law.

We need to be particular clear about this point. Where private consent constitutes sovereign authority, every citizen carries full responsibility for everything within its power to affect: power and responsibility are indivisible. To this principle, that we each own the material consequences of our own actions, all rights of private ownership are due; the rights of artists to their own creative output, of writers to their copyright, of inventors to their patents, of employees to their wages, and of criminals to their crimes.

The act of concession diminishes neither self-responsibility nor the rights of private ownership associated with it. The citizen remains answerable to its own conscience for realising its own personal aspirations. What is changed by the Common Contract is that the


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individual covenants to prioritize five basic aspirations in the same order as every other citizen: to live, without pain, in good health and with access to knowledge and prosperity, in order to sustain the ability to realise aspirations beyond those five.

And the individual further covenants to place a higher priority upon the five basic aspirations of all other citizens than it does upon its own, so that subsequently, in any serious opposition of private interests between two citizens, each has already agreed the right of way, and in any tie of equal rights of way, neither citizen can assert priority.

In order to resolve a deadlock of equal rights, the intervention of a disinterested third party is required. But if a third party champions the rights of one against another, then the third party ceases to be disinterested and becomes a member of a faction, excepting only the condition in which every third party joins the same side; in which condition there remain only two parties to the match: in the red corner common consent to a resolution, and in the blue corner?

In the blue corner an individual who has given prior private consent to the principle that in such circumstances it will bow to the ruling of the agency of common consent, the Court of Common Law. The flip-side of that prior consent, for every major citizen, is the liability to present any such conflict to the Court for resolution and to abide by the Court's decision.

As the agency of common consent, the Court has the flip-side responsibility of ensuring that the prior rights of neither party are compromised by its verdict. By the act of concession, the limits of unanimous consent are founded in five common rights to be held unconditionally by the citizen: to life, to the absence of pain, to health, of access to knowledge, and of access to prosperity. The citizen can be lawfully alienated from these rights by neither statutory nor common law.

By contrast, a privilege is granted conditionally, and where the conditions of a privilege are breached, the privilege may legitimately be withdrawn. Freedom of action is necessarily a privilege because it might otherwise contradict and withstand the unconditional rights in which it is predicated. In the Common Contract, freedom of action in the pursuit of self-interest is conceded as a privilege, and not a right. By the act of concession the citizen licenses the Common Court to withdraw that privilege to any extent required to enforce its verdict, including coercion.

The lawfulness of any coercion required to enforce a verdict of the Common Court is subject only to the resistance it meets from the constrained party. The Citizen has surrendered to the Common Court the right to judge which of two contradicting aspirations best serves the Citizen's own private interests.


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1.10 Private License If we accept that in the absence of coercion the individual cannot abrogate responsibility for the consequences of its own actions, then we come close to asserting that private responsibility is unlimited. This proposition is untenable. In a world in which the capabilities of States to meet the needs of citizens contract in the face of explosively-increasing populations, it would transform personal responsibility into a coercive pressure insupportable by the fragile agents of private consent. The tenable purpose of the Common Contract is to constitute the individual a self-determining agent within the State by specifying, precisely, the private liabilities of a citizen, and enabling the Citizen to discharge those liabilities without having to possess clairvoyant powers and a hyperactive conscience. The Common Contract distinguishes between the consequences of action and the consequences of inaction. In relation to the consequences of action, the Citizen is free to pursue self-interest to the fullest extent of its power to do so, in the knowledge that any action it chooses which does not inflict or threaten death, pain or injury, is legitimate unless or until it is challenged by another citizen; legitimate because all unwitting and unintended consequences are those of inaction. Inaction is not to be confused with 'acts of omission'. In an act of omission the subject is presupposed to have knowledge of the circumstances to which the omitted action is relevant, which is to say the subject is presented with alternatives and answerable for its choice. By contrast, inaction relates to prior rights conceded by a signatory to strangers of whose circumstances the Signatory knows nothing. In respect to those rights, the liabilities of inaction are limited by the Common Contract, and discharged in full by the systematic regulation of the flow between the commonwealth and the corporate sector of the market, of the proceeds of their common interest. This independent guarantee of personal liberty within the State, required to underwrite the politics of majority consent amongst free citizens of the State, requires for its institution a public Parliamentary Act Of Consent. 1.11 The Act Of Consent

The Act Of Consent is the means by which the State confers specific sovereign rights upon its citizens. To be effective it must both enable and empower the instrument of accession to those sovereign rights, to wit The Common Contract.


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1.11.1 Enabling The Act Of Concession Enabling the act of concession is achieved by three measures:

(1) Amending the Constitution of the State to route access to major citizenship through signing the Common Contract. (2) Making Major Citizenship a precondition for electing public officers and for holding public office. (3) Maintaining, from the public purse, courts of common law and upholding access to those courts as a statutory right of citizenship.

Through these measures the State cedes to the jurisdiction of

Common Law those prior rights and privileges reserved to the Citizen in the Common Contract. The domains of common consent and public consent are unified in the private persons of electors, law makers and law enforcers: by admitting only Major Citizens to public activities, all legislation is endorsed by common consent, because those individuals who make and enforce laws are themselves bonded to the common cause by the Common Contract.

Through these measures Common Consent is defined as the explicit and unanimous private consent of the Citizens of the State to the terms and conditions of lawful action, conceded by signing the Common Contract when assuming the legal mantle of Citizenship. 1.11.2 Empowering The Common Contract We identify here four further definitive measures required of the Parliamentary Act Of Consent to empower private consent as the sole agency for the legal disposal of private and common property: (1) The first measure is to retain the territorial integrity of the State by reserving the rights of freehold ownership of land within its jurisdiction to individual citizens of the State. Incorporating this principle in the Act Of Consent denies freehold ownership to the corporate sector of the market and to non-citizens, and so ensuring that any disputes over the disposition of land, fall with the jurisdiction of a single body of statutory law. Subsequent to the Act Of Consent, all free holdings of land are constitutionally predestined to the private ownership of major citizens of the State. Corporate entities, including government agencies, must


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manage with leasehold, and so condition their usages of land and waterways to meet the private consent of all current freeholders of adjacent land, or risk having their leases challenged in a common court. In its effect, the measure places all land which is not privately owned, into Common Ownership. This is neither an easy nor a convenient way to manage corporate requirements for land, and it will be vigorously opposed by all those who believe the Citizen exists for the easement and convenience of the corporate sector.

(2) The second measure is to secure permanent immunity for the Citizen of the State against taxation of all and any kind, and whether called by 'duty' or 'insurance' or by any other noun. The Act Of Consent is to transfer all financial liability for common welfare from political management to an automatic regulatory system, from the public purse to a common purse, from statutory law to the Common Law.

The conditions of private consent require that when an individual contracts to subordinate private interests to those of common concern, it is done knowingly. Therefore the proportion of private income to be expended upon common welfare must be known, precisely and in advance, by the Signatories of the Common Contract; and they must be satisfied that no other mechanisms can be deployed retrospectively to change that proportion. The Signatory has the right to know that electing a government is not tantamount to signing a blank cheque.

The taxation of corporate entities, however, needs no such right. They are incorporated in law by majority consent, with the duty to pay such taxes as the majority government may from time to time demand. The measure is to establish the principle that the public purse is funded exclusively from corporate taxation, and a common purse is funded exclusively from private earnings within the corporate sector, effecting a systematic differentiation of public and private earnings within the state. The private earnings of citizens become thereby an integral component of the commonwealth. Figuratively:

common corporate

private public

Cycle of earnings within the Contracted State


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This measure will be vigorously opposed by all those who believe the Citizen should work for the financial benefit of the State, and not the reverse. (3) The third measure is to secure the private property of the Citizen against forcible seizure by corporate entities, including Governmental agencies. As well as bolstering the first measure, this has profound implications for the practise of corporate lending to private individuals against the securities of property. It transfers the greater financial risk from the borrower to the lender who, being unable to recover defaulted debt by seizing property, will be obliged to calculate the risks of lending very finely in relation to the ability of the borrower to repay from earnings, and to adopt measures for recovery which conform with the rights of citizenship.

This measure will be vigorously opposed by all those who believe the individual customer of credit exists for the benefit of the corporate supplier of credit, instead of the reverse.

(4) The fourth measure is to outlaw the barter of products and

services across the systematic boundary drawn between the Commonwealth and the Corporate Sector. To enable effective regulation of the flow of wealth between the sectors, that flow must be both identifiable and quantifiable. Consequently, in any exchange of property between a corporate entity and a citizen, one side of the transaction must be in monetary form, and we place the burden upon the corporate entity to account publicly for every transaction in which it has engaged. It is to be emphasised that Act is not to regulate transactions internal to the Commonwealth, but to effect the systematic differentiation of corporate and private wealth.

In principle, the Act of Consent is to transform the status of private

property within the State from that of a privileged instance of corporate property into a common privilege of citizenship, and so enable the definition of the Commonwealth as the land and waterways, and that share of the gainful usages made of the land and waterways, which falls to private, common and public ownership.

The Constitutional role of the Act of Consent is not to second-guess the public interest; that is the prerogative of Parliament. Its role is to disengage private interests as determined by common consent, from corporate interests determined by public consent.


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1.12 Public Consent We define as Public any corporate entity licensed by the Constitution to enact or enforce laws and regulations in the name of the State or to formulate and execute policies in the name of the State. We require of all public entities within the State that the interests they pursue be determined by public consent. We define public consent as the private consent of a legally constituted majority of voting individuals. It is distinguished from common consent because it may be held to prevail against the will of a minority of more than one, breaking the link of unanimity which underwrites common consent. We require four conditions of public consent: (1) That each person qualified to vote be a major citizen of the State, and therefore a Signatory of the Common Contract. (2) That the vote of each person qualified to vote be counted equally in any single ballot. Where a choice is to be made of one amongst more than two alternatives, a series of ballots and counts which eliminates all but two alternatives before a final and decisive ballot, must be used to ensure the outcome is a true reflection of the private preferences of a majority of the voters. (3) That the measure of a majority be more than half of the total number of qualified voters, and not merely more than half the number of votes actually cast. This condition embodies the principle already stated, that consent may never be assumed and therefore anything less than an absolute majority constitutes denial. A public decision which cannot muster the consent of more than half of the electorate, or in an assembly of their elected representatives, cannot be said to have public consent: it is otherwise too easy to engineer circumstances in which a minority may masquerade as a majority. (4) That the ballot be secret; that is, a vote cast cannot be traced to the voter, and therefore no coercion can be brought to bear upon the outcome. This condition includes Parliamentary divisions.

It will be argued by those who mistrust democracy that meeting these conditions leads to ineffectual government by weakening the hand of the ruling political faction. We would argue that, excepting only under the conditions of war, weakening the hand of the ruling party strengthens democratic decision-making and leads to more-effective government.


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1.13 The Public Interest

Except in times of war, the public domain is that part of the global economy which falls within the jurisdiction of the State. Of the global economy we can observe that it is of a complexity which defies the efforts of governments to control, and that its effects bear directly upon the lives of every person and upon the common biosphere generally; and of a government, that it embodies the corporate aspirations of the citizens of the State. 1.13.1 Rationale Of The Act Of Consent

In relation to the global economy, the influence of a government is deployed in maximizing, by every available means, that share of global wealth to which it can lay claim. Governments are corporate players in a game of chance in which there are few rules, and those few honoured mainly in the breach.

Within the jurisdiction of the State, however, the Government is uniquely advantaged as a corporate player. It not only plays the corporate game, it sets the rules of the game without having to comply with them. The Government is not restricted, as are all other corporate entities, by the regulations governing, for example, how capital and revenues may be raised. It has the authority to print money and issue sovereign bonds, to establish tax-free savings and investment schemes, manage non-funded pension schemes, and to borrow extensively from international funds denied to non-governmental entities; and it has the authority to use its tax revenues, borrowings and capital to subsidise its own, politically-selected goals.

Furthermore, the Government has the power to manipulate the mechanisms which affect the indicators of national economic health: the exchange rate of the currency, interest rates, tax rates, tariff barriers, the supply of money and the cost of credit. And whenever necessary it exercises its unique advantages in direct competition with the corporate sector of the market, recklessly of the Common Interest.

The source of this economic power is rooted in the ability of the Government to command the private purses of citizens, by taxing private income and private expenditure. The security a government offers to its lenders and investors is manifested in the projected balancing of its budget, and it relies upon the general presumption that any future shortfalls in projected revenues from corporate sources, can and will be made good by taxing the private purse.


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Governmental budgets, however, do not have to be balanced. The only limitations currently placed upon an otherwise infinitely-expandable sovereign debt are those of confidence, the confidence of money markets in the medium-to-long term viability of the national economy. The exercise of corporate economic power by a government finds its external limitations in the consent of corporate players beyond its domestic domain, and so beyond its power to control.

In the pursuit of corporate success, then, the public sector borrowing requirement is an instrument of credit exercised by the Government on behalf of the Citizens of the State, a mortgage intended to be redeemed through corporate success, but ultimately guaranteed by the private wealth of its Citizens. This unlimited guarantee, pledged without private consent, exposes the individual directly to the vagaries of a global economy that is reckless of the interests of any state, corporate entity, or citizen. Where losses are incurred in such an uncontrollable scramble of divergent interests, it is always patently clear who becomes the ultimate loser. 1.13.2 Corporate License Within The State The Act of Consent is, in the global arena, the equivalent of the Common Contract to the citizen, the voluntary acceptance by a sovereign State of constraints upon the freedom of action of its corporate Government. The constraints are real. They do not depend upon abstract concepts of ethics and justice, nor upon the wisdom and goodwill of tyrants, nor upon the self-restraint of committed idealists. The Government is constrained to operate without access to the private purse. In the face of the uncontrolled expansion of populations, the system of public borrowing and private taxation is self-evidently unsustainable. The costs of collecting taxes and administering social benefits, involving as they do bureaucratic armies in huge expenditures of time, energy and resources, are incalculable. All that can safely be said of them is that they are vast, that they are non-productive, that they increase under the pressure of their own dynamics, and that there is a threshold beyond which they become unsupportable by the economics of the system they represent. The Act of Consent is to institute the measureable differentiation of the Common Purse and the Public Purse, the latter to be funded exclusively by the corporate sector of the market, which includes the monetary policy of the Government. By foregoing corporate authority over the private purses of its citizens, the State forfeits the major part of the security it offers to its lenders and investors. The limits of the


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economic power the Government are transferred from the consent of corporate entities which are beyond its control, to the compliance of those corporate entities within the jurisdiction of the State. Their freedom of action in pursuit of the Common Interest becomes the focus of corporate government, and their mutual health the principle end toward which Governmental regulation is directed. The freedom of the corporate sector within the State is not sought as an end in itself. It is a component of an integrated system of economic management, and the system requires that the Public Purse should index the productivity of the corporate sector, and do so in a transparent manner. To this end, the Act of Consent is to provide that the Public Purse derive its funds from a single tax on corporate profit, and that the Government balance its budget annually against forecasts of the single corporation tax. The system also requires that it should not itself be affected by the way in which it is administered, because it would not otherwise be manageable. The Government is to be further constrained by the Act of Consent to maintain a singular direction to the cycle of investment in the Commonwealth and the corporate sector. The rule is that with one exception, no money may pass directly from the Public Purse, to either of the Common Purse or to the private purse. The singular exception applies to the earnings of those individuals to whom agencies of the State are direct and exclusive employers. Figuratively:

common corporate

private public

Cycle of investment within the Contracted State Furthermore, no corporate agency of the Government may own all or any part of those entities it licenses to operate within the corporate sector of the State. To corporate interests, the Public Purse is to be what the Common Purse is to private interests, the mechanism of license. We do not believe it is the prerogative of majority consent to determine private interests. We do believe it is the prerogative of the corporate sector to respond to the demands expressed by the electoral votes and the buying decisions of empowered individuals.

The Public Interest lies in regulating the probity and effectiveness of the corporate sector when providing products and services. The


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Corporate Interest is served by ensuring, through the Common Purse, that in the democratic process of voting with money for products and services, no citizen is disenfranchised. Freed from liability for private welfare, the Government is delivered the opportunity for close management of public expenditure on maintaining and improving the material infrastructure of the State; to deliver optimised taxation of corporate profit in proportion to its fiscal policy, and the complete absence tariff and excise barriers to trade: in short, to provide the maximum degree of corporate license consistent with the prior rights of citizens. 1.14 Corporate License The purpose of corporate license is to constitute both public and non-public corporate entities self-determining agencies within a systematic market internal to the State. It is arguable that corporate license is the hallmark of civilisation, to the extent that it transfers the pressures of evolution from a species vulnerable to nature, to legal entities impervious to natural shock; to organisations which can command the natural intelligence of many minds and bodies within a monolithic, authoritarian structure in which power and responsibility are delegated according to the corporate need. By such organisations civilisations are built, but they are civilised only to the extent that the interests of their vulnerable human components, and the fragile ecology which supports them, are not compromised by their activities. Effective governance of corporate enterprise demands that where authority is constituted in corporate consent, it is the corporation which must answer for the conduct of its members and not the members for the conduct of the corporation. Because no employee is indispensable, a corporation can disown any ignominy or penalty imposed upon a member simply by disowning the member. Corporate power, once granted, can be reined only by establishing in Common Law the link between corporate consent and corporate liability. To illustrate this point, consider the near-impossibility of prosecuting a war criminal. Even when the facts of a crime have been established beyond doubt, the plea 'I was following orders' cannot be peremptorily dismissed. Where it can be corroborated that such orders were indeed received from an authorised agency of the State, the plea cannot be distinguished from 'I was doing my duty as a citizen'. And because we cannot punish the citizen without punishing the individual, we are faced with the absurdity of trying to prove that the accused was a consenting partner in a crime for which the State was otherwise solely


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responsible; and no State can be punished without punishing all of its citizenry. 1.14.1 Corporate Consent We define Corporate Consent as the private consent of a legally constituted majority of voting individuals. It is distinguished from Public Consent for two reasons. Firstly, the count of a ballot is of voting shares, and a single person may own multiple shares. Secondly, a majority count commands the obedience of corporate officers and employees who may or may not own voting shares. We require five conditions of corporate consent: (1) That each person qualified to vote has, prior to casting a vote, expressed private consent to the special constitution under which the agreement of the majority is binding upon dissenting voters.

(2) That the agreement of the majority is not binding upon any person who has not given prior consent to the said special constitution.

(3) That in every ballot the measure of a majority be made against

the total number of voting shares issued by the corporation, and not merely against the number of voting shares actually cast in the ballot.

(4) That a record be made naming the owners of the shares

counted in the ballot and the record be retained and held accessible to public inspection.

(5) That a dissenting voter who divests himself or herself of all

voting shares in the corporation immediately after and because of the result of a ballot, incurs no liability for the consequences of the majority decision. 1.14.2 Corporate Liability

The link between corporate consent and corporate liability is established by including in the Act of Consent the provision that any entity incorporated legally within the jurisdiction of the State, may employ only persons who are in possession of a valid Corporate Licence issued by the Government of the State.


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The link between corporate and common consent is established by granting a specific Corporate Licence to every major citizen or non-citizen who chooses to invest in or be employed in corporate activity within the State.

The Corporate Licence is to grant explicit immunity to the individual from prosecution for the consequences of actions taken (or proposed to be taken) in the course of furthering the corporate aspiration. Since every decision taken by a corporation is executed by an individual, indemnifying the employee licenses the corporation to operate within the State.

The indemnity, however, being the property of the employee, the indemnity of a corporation is limited to the single issue of prosperity, which we have identified as the only interest shared by the Commonwealth and the corporate sector. The indemnity does not extend to the prior issues of life, pain, health and access to information. Limiting the employee's indemnity in this way likewise constrains corporate actions, because any employee whose actions or proposed actions are perceived to stray beyond the limit, can be challenged in Common Law.

Under these arrangements, the power of a corporation is no greater than that of a single employee, who may be arraigned by any major citizen of the State. To claim corporate indemnity for accidentally or deliberately violating the prior rights of a citizen, the employee requires corroboration from the corporation that the challenged action or proposed action is in fact taken on behalf of the corporation: the corporation must either own or disown the actions of the employee.

In the case where it is demonstrated to the satisfaction of the Court that an employee has wilfully and knowingly compromised the probity of its employer, the individual can be deemed to have been acting on its own behalf, and therefore lose the indemnity associated with the corporate interest. The sanction against the individual is the suspension of his or her Corporate Licence, with the consequential loss of employment for the term of the suspension; and in severe or aggravated cases the suspension may be made permanent. The Citizen's right of access to prosperity being safeguarded by the Common Contract, the guilty individual can be punished without punishing the citizen. The case of a guilty non-citizen is referred to a court of statutory law.

In the case where the corporation acknowledges the actions of the employee, the question of the consenting partnership is settled. By owning the challenged action, the corporation owns the policy of which the action is an expression; the individual is indemnified and the corporation admits liability. In which case, the corporation bears the full weight of any penalty imposed for misconduct.

Because a non-public corporation prospers according to its balance


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sheet, effective sanction is limited to financial penalty, but because those employees who are citizens are safeguarded from poverty by the Common Contract, there is no limit to the financial penalty the Court may impose. The corporation can be punished without punishing the citizen. The very existence of a corporation is linked to its probity.

And at the very least, the corporation cannot disown the guilty employee without also abandoning the policy of which the actions of the employee are consequences. Corporate power is rendered indivisible from corporate responsibility. To this principle, that a corporation owns the material consequences of the directed actions of its employees, all rights of corporate ownership are due.

Within the constraints of corporate responsibility, non-public corporations are free to find the limits of their power in the consent of the internal market in which the Citizen is king. One the one hand the corporation prospers or dies by its ability to attract the best talents into its employment, in which matter the freedom of choice is with the Citizen who can survive without employment. On the other hand, the corporation prospers or dies by the buying decisions of the consumer. On both hands, the limits of non-public corporate power are ultimately drawn by common consent.

In relation to the Common Purse, the individual's Corporate Licence is to include the provision that if the licensee is a citizen of the State, then one half of all moneys earned by the citizen be paid by its corporate employer (not excluding the Government) directly into the Common Purse on behalf of the Licensee. Taxing the income of non-citizens employed within the State, however, remains the prerogative of the Government. 1.15 The Common Purse Technological developments in the corporate sector have permanently altered the relationship between human effort and the production of usable property, to the point at which it is no longer necessary for more than a minority of the population to be engaged in production. Of this we approve, to the extent that it promises liberation from the toils of survival. The trend, however, toward engaging fewer people in greater feats of productivity, is one which cannot be sustained without an evolutionary shift in economic management. The corporate sector rewards only the employed and the investor, which is an ever-diminishing parish in an expanding population, but to operate effectively it requires an expanding market for its products and services. In the internal market of a single


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state, an expanding market cannot be squared with the proportional decrease in earners without regulating the circulation of the currency. The Common Purse is designed to secure the active circulation of currency within the Commonwealth. Its action, like that of a pump, gathers money during the course of each month, and then forces a share of that money to every citizen, ensuring that within the internal market of the State there are always customers with money to spend. It takes little natural intelligence to observe that technology brings with it the means of its own management. What was impossible to manage yesterday is a trivial matter of organisation today; stable governments already perform bureaucratic feats which make the Common Purse seem simplistic. Now that it is possible, the creation of a systematic market in which earnings are partly re-invested in consumers is not an option, it is a practical necessity. The principle is not new. It has always been recognised that a proportion of corporate profit has to be re-invested in corporate production. 1.16 The Common Share

Statistically, at the point of its distribution the Common Purse automatically holds one half of the total of one month's private earnings of every major citizen of the State. In the corporate sector, the real costs of production cannot be finally determined until products are delivered, and profits cannot be measured until after sales have been completed. Earnings and dividends are necessarily paid in arrears, and so the Common Purse is funded in arrears.

In the Commonwealth, however, the chronological order in which costs and benefits are established is reversed. Salaries, wages and dividends are costs to the corporate sector, to the citizen they are benefits. But they are benefits which cannot be realised until they are converted into the goods and services required to sustain private interests forwards from the point of their receipt. The real cost to the Commonwealth of on-going production is measurable in advance.

We can define the financial cost of production to the Commonwealth precisely, as the total cost of maintaining the line between poverty and prosperity during the forthcoming period of one month. In this context the citizen has no power over, and so no direct interest in, the financial costs to be incurred by the corporate sector over the same period. We quantify the collective cost on the pragmatic basis that we cannot, without loss, spend what we have not earned.

We have collected, during the previous production period of one month, one half of the earnings of each citizen into the Common Purse.


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The stricture that the Common Purse should receive funding from no other source ensures that it indexes the productivity of the Commonwealth in arrears, and productivity alone; so at the start of the current production period of a calendar month, the Common Purse contains the maximum amount it is possible to invest collectively in sustaining private interests during the forthcoming production period.

The Common Purse, then, represents the financial cost to the Commonwealth of future production, and we invest the Common Purse in the Commonwealth at the outset of each production period. At this point we have to decide, amongst a host of potential contributors to the process of wealth creation, who contributes what, so that they may be rewarded fairly. But we do not know in advance who may make what contribution.

Without the Common Purse, the only indices of national prosperity are provided retrospectively by the corporate sector. In support of political claims of success for its economic policy, a government can point to various indicators of economic activity: to growth, to promising export volumes, to low inflation, to low costs of credit. But what it cannot do without the Common Purse is to answer the question most on the minds of the electorate, that of 'how will I personally benefit?' Because where the Corporations achieving growth, despatching exports and benefiting from low wages and low inflation happen to be principally in foreign ownership, only a proportion of the benefits implied by the economic indicators falls to the Commonwealth, and that proportion may not necessarily outweigh the environmental and social blight associated with production.

So with one edge of what is a double-edged sword, the Common Purse equips the Government with a retrospective and independent benchmark for testing the effects of policy changes. The Government is spared, to some extent at least, the need to measure its economic policies to fit a fallible perception of what is politically expedient, and empowered to deploy well-informed intelligence in devising economic policy. The other edge of the sword lies in knowing that success or failure is the quantified subject of common knowledge and will, inevitably, be reflected in the ballot box at the next general election.

If that were the only effect of the Common Purse it might be thought enough, but the corporate success upon which it depends demands more than public coercion for its achievement. It requires the nurture of an atmosphere of cooperation, in which individual creativity and inventiveness can be converted into technology, private ideas into mass-produced goods, private research into universally-available information.

But the question which bedevils cooperation is the proportion of reward. Each contributor to a joint enterprise wishes to be rewarded in


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proportion to its contribution, but the corporate sector rewards individuals at the behest of corporate decisions: decisions at best taken on the basis of supply and demand in relation to talent, at worst by the arbitrary exercise of corporate authority, normally somewhere between the best and the worst, and always with an eye on the retrospective balance sheet.

That is how the labour market operates, and the only way of allowing a Corporation self-determination is to maintain the greatest possible degree of flexibility within the labour market. It is impossible to measure the personal contribution of any single employee to the productivity of a corporation except retrospectively, and then only by criteria selected by the Corporation.

In the absence of any possible method of measuring the past and future contributions of individuals to the productivity of the Commonwealth, we employ the neutrality of equality by investing the Common Purse in the Commonwealth through the Common Share. In its distribution the Common Share asserts no priorities amongst claimants of the right of access to prosperity conceded in the Common Contract: every major citizen automatically receives an equal share. The question of fair reward, therefore, devolves upon those who contribute to the Common Purse. 1.17 The Private Tithe

The value of a common share cannot be predicted in advance, but being fully funded in arrears it speaks for itself. As a statistic it informs all citizens in an accurate and timely mode of the changing state of the Commonwealth, and over time of the upward and downward trends in that respect. It satisfies a basic condition of consent by informing the success or failure of public economic policies. It is paid for by the automatic contribution to the common purse, of half of the private earnings of all those citizens engaged in corporate activity.

The private contribution of earnings to the Common Purse is not a tax. It is an investment covenanted privately in the Common Contract, to which the State is not a signatory and has no power to alter. We refer to this contribution as the Private Tithe.

The central point of the Private Tithe is that because it applies to all corporate earnings within the Commonwealth, it does not eliminate the differentials governing the relative earnings of citizens, and the incentive power of earnings remains intact. The gap between higher and lower salaries and wages widens over time between individuals of successive generations, and succeeding generations eventually benefit in the normal way by inheritance. The only immediate effect of the private tithe is to


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move the base line of relative income within the Commonwealth from zero to a dynamically indexed norm. On the differential scale the Private Tithe is manifestly no less fair than the bewildering array of social-engineering taxes so beloved of political factions, and it can be argued that because it defeats the politics of envy it is fairer: who in the Commonwealth will complain when a Company Director who is a citizen is awarded a disproportionately high package of salary, bonuses and retirement benefits? On the absolute monetary scale, however, every contribution to the Common Purse is significant. The vagaries of the corporate sector tend to create many low earners for every high earner: the overall contributions of lower earners greatly outweigh the overall contributions of higher earners. The Private Tithe asserts, against the vagaries of the corporate sector, that in the corporate war which creates usable property a battle may be lost for the want of a nail, that every employee of a corporation contributes critically to productivity regardless of their differentiated rewards. The Private Tithe, while not eliminating differentials between higher and lower earners, does have a direct effect upon their buying power. All else being equal it would reduce the buying power of earners, but all else is not equal. The Common Share guarantees that every citizen of the State retains more than half of their earned income. That guarantee is its own reward to anyone who can do simple arithmetic, because the base-line for comparison is taxation by the Government; and not only the array of direct and indirect taxes available to governments, but the inexorable upward pressure to which taxation is exposed by expanding populations. By contrast, the Private Tithe is an investment in the Commonwealth which yields direct personal, social and economic dividends: (1) Personal dividends: investment in the Common Purse provides perpetual insurance for times when the Citizen cannot or chooses not to work in the corporate sector, and it provides an indexed pension for whenever the individual chooses or is obliged to retire. (2) Social dividends: the investment plays a direct role in buttressing the limits of corporate coercion. Precisely because the Common Purse operates uniformly and mechanically, it removes an extensive area of patronage from the political arena. Decisions about who should pay for and who should receive the benefits of citizenship and in what quantity and form, cannot be used coercively by political factions to their own advantage. Such decisions, removed from the domain of the


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Public Interest, fall within the province of the individual who best knows his or her own interests and is delivered the power to serve them. In a stabilised economy, room for the expansion of the market of any single Company can be achieved only through competition, by supplying new or better products, or lower prices. The practical delivery of private economic freedom encourages the development of personal learning, artistry, skills, crafts, invention, which may sow the seeds of corporate enterprises directed toward social aspirations and rewards as yet undreamt of. (3) Economic dividends: the health of a free market requires above all else a stable society in which property rights are respected. But where poverty is not actively proscribed by law, the poverty-stricken are criminalized by default, because a person who has no legal means of support is ultimately forced to choose between breaking the law or surrendering life; and where criminality is not restricted to wilfully-criminal behaviour and so to a very small minority, the cost of detecting, catching, prosecuting and housing criminals eventually reaches self-defeating proportions. The Common Share simultaneously defines and mitigates poverty, engaging every citizen in an active and free market economy, as a producer or a potential producer, as a domestic supporter of a producer or a potential producer, and always as a consumer. Each and every citizen has a personal stake in preserving the conditions of law and order which underwrite the success corporate activity within the State. The special pleading that the Common Purse might provide a civilized solution to a perpetual human problem has nothing to do with the rationale of the Act of Consent. There is no charity in the Private Tithe. It is simply the most effective way of harvesting the long-term dividends of commercial war and civil peace, instead of the short-term products of commercial peace and civil war. 1.18 The Common Currency

The value of a banknote in a State depends upon the commodities it can purchase, but to the individual the value of a commodity tends to be subjective. It is difficult, for example, to put a price on the amenity of living within the catchment area of an excellent school; or on the sentiments vested in a long-standing family home, or on the part played in people's lives by trees and fields and wildlife, or clean beaches, breathable air, safe sunshine, comfortable and efficient transport, fast cars


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and good roads. The list of such commodities is as long and varied as there are citizens with private aspirations. But they are all 'commodities' because they all come with a price-tag.

As populations increase and the financial resources of the State contract, we are faced with a choice. We must either forego our aspirations for the amenities of civilization, or take action to preserve them to the greatest possible extent. The Act of Consent is intended to freeze the depletion of amenity within the State at the level at which the Commonwealth is constituted by the Act of Consent, and subject the rate of subsequent depletion to its management by common consent. 1.18.1 The Privilege Of Parenthood Having nullified many of the natural limitations to population growth, human ingenuity creates for itself the burden of solving the single most intractable problem confronting the institution and perpetuation of human rights. The specific privilege of parenthood is inseparable from the general privilege of freedom of action in the pursuit of self-interest, but unlimited procreation undermines the individual rights upon which the general privilege depends. The problem reflects a familiar principle, that the utility to the individual of a shared and limited resource tends to be inversely proportional to the number of individuals requiring its use. Private transport affords a clear example on those occasions when the highly desirable freedom of the open road translates, through unlimited access, into the counter-productive anathema of interminable traffic. Any further extension of such analogies to the case in point, however, breaks down. The purposes of transport are finite and determinable, capable of analysis and corporate management. But to proceed from the supposition that the composition of human populations can be managed by political intervention is to presume the wisdom to determine a corporate purpose for human life. It is an unfortunate characteristic of human nature that there is no shortage of claimants to that wisdom. Fortunately, for the future of our species at least, the holders of such prematurely-acquired certainties carry them to their graves. Mortality and the regiments of time secure, if nothing else, an invincible wedge against slamming the door on the eventual flowering of human ingenuity. But mortality is an undiscriminating manager of social change, and in the context of rapidly-expanding populations, as likely to effect social regression as social progress. To the individual child the State is a pre-established system, its normalising engines and machineries already


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firing on all cylinders. The most brutal conditions of repression and slavery attending the absence of children's rights seem normal to those born into them, and any statutory rights won for children by one generation may be revoked by the next, or simply wither on the vine through hardship, ignorance or indifference. Wherever children fail to acquire the means to challenge the orthodoxies of their parents, the societies to which they belong will fail their aspirations. We know this as the subject of the certain knowledge that in all of history, the private aspirations of all but a few have been systematically defeated. If, then, the expansion of the population of the State is to be managed, and managed it must be if procreation is to continue to meet any meaningful private aspirations, it can only be through the agency of self-interest. The Contracted State continues from the premise whence We came, that the privilege of consenting adults to conceive children by natural means is categorically beyond the giving or the taking of corporate decision makers; and the continued existence of freely consenting adults depends upon there being children who reach the statutory age of majority as the well-informed agents of their own free wills. In the Contracted State, the age of majority is established by Parliament. Since, by the Act of Consent, a Corporate Licence can be granted only to major citizens, children are excluded from earning, and corporate employers are prohibited from bartering goods and services in exchange for their labour. Furthermore, the agencies of Government are prohibited from preferring the private aspirations of any but the generality of all major citizens, and so from providing financial aid to those who choose to have children.

The public purse may be used to address the needs of parents and children through the material infrastructure of state, by commissioning the building of schools and clinics for example, but no special public or common financial benefit attaches to parenthood per se. It is the liability of parents to defray the costs of supporting their children from the date of their conception to the age of their majority.

It is presupposed of adults that they understand the limits of their monthly income before conceiving children. There being, then, no possibility of financial gain from parenthood, from the Act of Consent onward the rate of population growth and the loss of common amenity within the Commonwealth, is decided in those private parliaments in which individuals debate the rival claims of self-interest upon their private resources. At the very least, a child born into the Commonwealth will not be wanted for any potential financial benefit to its parents.


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1.18.2 The Rights Of Children The rights of children in the Contracted State proceed from the laws of nature which ordain a child has two natural parents, and derives from the Common Contract which binds both parents to the Common Law. The category of the Private Interest to which the act of conceiving children belongs is that of private aspiration, but because there are always two natural parents, the consequences of that particular action cannot be privately owned. A living child is not divisible, and so can never be the private property of either one of its parents. Neither can a child be the common property of its parents, because common property derives from the constitutional equality of ownership by the individual and all its living peers. Since a child can be neither private not common property, title to a child cannot lawfully be disposed, and therefore a child is not convertible. Not being convertible, a child cannot be corporate property. There being no lawful sense in which a child can be held to be property, each child is born the unique owner of its own free will, the adventitious party of a joint adventure initiated by its parents, and remains their joint responsibility until the child reaches the age of majority. That an individual creature of any kind or species lives is good and sufficient evidence of that creature's will to live, and because pain, illness, ignorance and poverty may compromise that will, there can be no circumstances in which a viable and independent creature can be held by another to consent, implicitly or explicitly, to its own death, pain, illness, ignorance or poverty. Wherever these are manifest they are the products of either natural or human coercion, and insofar as human beings are the products of nature, all coercion may be said to be of natural origin. In all of its manifestations coercion is lawful to nature, but by Common Consent unlawful between citizens unless explicitly sanctioned by the agency of common consent, to wit the Common Law. The joint adventure of parenthood is a plea through which the Common Law admits the precedence of the laws of nature, and a child born within the Contracted State is a Minor Citizen of the State. Insofar as the rights of a Minor Citizen may be lesser than the rights of major citizenship, the inequality is capable of amelioration by its parents, or in extreme circumstances by reference to a Court of Common Law.


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1.18.3 The Privilege Of Amenity The principle governing all transactions in the Contracted State, is that of the status quo of the amenity of the Commonwealth, to which any changes are subject to the priorities of private consent, enabling subjective perceptions to inform the price of private and common resources. Where nobody is forced, in order to survive, to sell or surrender the things they value, they are able to put their own price on them, and so directly affect the purchasing power of money within the State. The Commonwealth, however, cannot survive in isolation from the global markets of which the corporate sector of the State is an integral part; there are always some commodities essential to the Commonwealth that are produced elsewhere. We have identified four systematic organs characterized as 'purses' which at any given moment are repositories of the currency of a systematic internal market: Private, Common, Corporate and Public. To these we now add a fifth, the Foreign Purse, which notionally contains the financial balance of trade with other States. Under the rules of international commerce there is a causal link between the exchange rates of sovereign currencies and the productivity of the corporate sectors of sovereign states. The link exists because there is no method independent of commodities for establishing the rates of currency exchanges, and no unanimous international settlement upon a single commodity to provide a convertible standard. The value of the Foreign Purse at any given moment floats upon exchange rates determined in specialized markets in which currencies are the commodities, traded on the promise of their ultimate redemption by their sovereign Banks. Confidence in that promise, and so the buying power of any given currency in the corporate sector, is linked causally to the success or failure of corporate productivity within the State. Money markets rely upon speculative predictions based upon current information. With the unchecked expansion of populations and the shrinking demand for labour in the corporate sector, States are inevitably driven to find sources of credit to support the buying power of their currencies, in a spiralling gamble of increasing costs and debt.

The Act of Consent breaks this chain of cause and effect. Taken together, the act of concession and the Act of Consent form a public declaration of the partiality of the Contracted State, a warning to all that in the defence of the prior rights of its Citizens, the State recognises no impediments to its powers of action within its own jurisdiction except those negotiated in the global arena through treaties. In the Contracted State, as no corporate agency of government may own corporate property, foreign debt can be incurred only by non-public corporations in the


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course of supplying goods and services to the Commonwealth, and instead of the promise of sovereign redemption, the only security the State can offer to money markets is the dynamic index of productivity represented by the Common Share. Where the bank note of the State is a unit of the Common Share, its status to a citizen is that of a voting share in the future of the corporate sector, in which every citizen votes with money in accordance with the priorities of the Private Interest. To the extent in which the Common Share indexes the per capita productivity of major citizens of the State, it underwrites the Government's fiscal projections of receipts from the single corporation tax: it underpins the value of a banknote to the corporate sector, and so the monetary policy of the Government. By allowing the currency to float on money markets without government intervention, we allow the exchange rate to shadow the objective certainty of the published value of the Common Share, instead of the uncertain statistical futures in which it sinks or swims. The status of a banknote in the Foreign Purse becomes that of a voting share in the corporate sector of the State, the value of which can be sustained only by the success of the Commonwealth. The financial risk of a State's walking away from the gambling table with at least some of the real assets of its Citizens intact, depends upon how that risk is measured and by whom. From the point of view of the non-public corporate sector, the risk entailed in becoming the guarantor of last resort for foreign debt outweighs the benefits by an impossible margin. To the citizens of the State, however, the difference is measurable only in what they stand to gain: no individual can lose more than he or she owns by legal right, and without evolutionary change to the political economics of the State, all they own by right will eventually be the negative equity in their own State represented by the Foreign Purse. 1.19 Corporate License In The Public Domain

The corporate model of monolithic authority is as essential to the agencies of government as it is to non-public corporations. But in the matter of the defence of the Contracted State, private, corporate and public interests are coordinate: none can be served unless the State can secure its outward continuity by defending its jurisdiction from physical invasion, and its inward continuity by restraining any person whose actions threaten the rule of law.

To meet these overriding prerequisites of sovereignty, the Government is required to maintain armed forces against the contingency of invasion from without the State, and a partially-armed civil police


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force to ensure the rule of law within the State. It is obliged, therefore, to place the prior rights of military and police personnel at risk, albeit with their expressed private consent. To enable the Government to respond to rapidly changing conditions, it is granted public indemnity for the material consequences of its corporate decisions.

There is a significant difference, however, between Public license and Corporate license. Public indemnity is granted to the Government by the consent of the Parliament in which it commands majority support, and given that support it has almost unlimited license with respect to its corporate policies. But those corporate agencies of the Government required to effect its policies are subject to the rules of Corporate Consent, by which license is granted to the employee, and not to the Agency. The Government is denied those measures which, having been ceded to the jurisdiction of Common Law, lie beyond the remit of majority consent.

The employee of a Government Agency, in turn, is empowered to execute any lawful order of the Agency. But the emphasis remains upon lawful: public office can be held only by citizens, and the individual cannot lawfully compromise the prior rights of another citizen. Thus the military can never act against a citizen, the civil police are constrained to meet resistance with the minimum of coercion consistent with their own safety, and the Government would be ill-advised to pass legislation or pursue policies which cannot be enforced in Common Law.

And always the exception, which proves the rule of sovereignty but threatens the rule of law: in response to an overt invasion of its jurisdiction by a foreign State, the Government may declare a state of war. License to declare war upon a named foreign State is granted by Public Consent through a Parliamentary majority, and its legitimacy relies upon the well-informed intelligence of individual members of Parliament.

After a declaration of war the coordinate needs of private and corporate survival make consent redundant as the agency of license. The State assumes the monolithic structure of corporate authority, and the only remaining legal distinctions between individuals are those between we and they, 'we' defined corporately by the list of names subscribing the Common Contract.

If it should subsequently emerge, however, that in presenting its case for war to Parliament a government deliberately withheld, distorted or confused relevant information, then public indemnity for the material consequences of prosecuting that war is forfeited by its advocates. The question, then, is who licenses the State?


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1.20 The State The State is constituted to be wholly dedicated to its sovereign interests. The conventional model of the Constitutional State contains the presupposition of an absolute and indivisible authority which is not subject to law, from which statutory law derives its authority. The conventional model is corporate, of a government exercising sovereign authority in pursuit of the general interests of its subjects. The efficacy of corporate authority in achieving corporate objectives places the democratic institutions of the State under pressure to evolve or be sidelined. The natural path of evolution for governments is that same as that for all corporate entities, toward greater power and enrichment through mergers and takeovers. The problem confronting a Government, however, is that of its own role when, instead of being the unique steward of its own jurisdiction, it yields to the inevitability of sharing its legislative powers with other States. The only clear, corporate option is demotion within a single hierarchical structure of authority, which is tantamount to abandoning the role for which the State is constituted in the first place.

In our preamble to the Common Manifesto we posited the State as the extant sovereign legal entity. In point of fact the time has long passed since the State, any State, enjoyed that privilege. Territorial borders between states are maintained by international conventions and treaties in terms of which 'sovereignty' is a legal definition, which is a way of saying that de facto sovereignty is not the property of the State but of international law. The modern State is a legal entity, itself the recipient of conditional privileges granted for as long as it conforms to international expectations of lawfulness.

The Constitutional State treated as a legal entity as opposed to a sovereign entity, contains a dangerous paradox. International conventions are legitimized by the States which subscribe to them. A State is legitimized by its own constitution, and the government of the State is legitimized by majority mandate, in a seamless legal continuity. But whenever a government submits to the authority of an international convention against the wishes (if not the interests) of its own electorate, it relinquishes the internal mandate of majority consent. With whose consent, then, are international conventions licensed, and how is a conflict of interests between the majorities of two or more States to be resolved?

This is not merely a nice academic question. If the State is de facto a legal entity but not sovereign, then so too are its citizens: entities configured from identical sets of legal definitions, standardised, reproducible units of corporate assembly lines. In the expediencies of


35

international politics, individual citizens should be unsurprised to be treated as such: in health and good fortune, favoured children of the State, but when health or fortune falter, legal entities impervious to pain to be struck from the corporate register. Or should the health and fortune of the entire corporate domain fail, then as mere cannon fodder to be consumed in the supreme corporate enterprise of total warfare.

Without clear criteria distinguishing statutory legality from common lawfulness, the private interests of any individual are automatically superseded by the corporate priorities of the State at the moment he or she reaches the legal age of majority.

In the model of a Contracted State legitimised by common consent, instead of conceding authority upwardly to an ill-defined legalistic empire of bureaucratic confusion, power and authority are ceded downwardly to Citizens in equal proportions. We make of sovereignty a common property beyond the remit of majority consent, and of the State the corporate means of enforcing the sovereign rights of the individual. We argue that sovereignty can have no other meaningful purpose in the context of international law, because any which might be conceived after the Act of Consent would already be enabled to the fullest extent possible within the limits of a common understanding of what is meant by lawful behaviour.

We argue that it is not intelligent to allow governments, as the corporate means of corporate endeavour, to determine both the cause and the ends of corporate endeavour. Doing so merely begs the question of what corporate endeavour is for, a question which, if not answered for the enrichment of the Commonwealth, always answers itself in the exploitation, despoliation and impoverishment of the Commonwealth to the ephemeral advantage of the corporate sector.

The evolutionary path offered by the model of the Contracted State is toward a single body of international law: of Common Law the universally accessible law of a global commonwealth, and Statutory Law the means of regulating that part of a free global market which falls within the jurisdiction of the State.

Because in the Contracted State, 'we' are not defined by cultural conformity, religious cohesion, racial integrity, blind obedience to authority, nor by any other of the criteria which have previously shaped the ends of States. We are defined by sharing a singular circulatory system of currency amongst private subscribers to a common cause. Any two or more States similarly constituted can make permanent common cause by the simple expedient of tying the rate of exchange between their respective and unique currencies, to their respective and unique Common Shares.

Whether or not such expediencies come to form the foundation of a


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systematic money market across international divides is not immediately relevant. What is relevant is the imperative to defend the amenity of the Commonwealth without the necessity of war, and therefore that our public posture in the global domain should be consistent with that imperative: that we maintain a high state of readiness to meet physical invasion in the same manner in which we have agreed to meet every other blind force of nature, through corporate endeavour; and in the case of war, with the corporate interest defined as the defence of human rights within the State. But while maintaining this posture, always extending the practical example of a progressive and more profitable alternative, an Act of Consent in preference to an act of war. The message is simple enough. You don't have to beat us, you can join us. ......................................................................................................................

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2.1 Introduction

For the same reason that nobody ever plays football with the intention of establishing the rules of the game, the case for contractual democracy laid out in the Common Manifesto is one which cannot be debated in the political arena. Political activity is goal-orientated, concerned with the conflict of divergent interests and not concerned with our common interests. The issue, of establishing common consent as the framework for restraining majority coercion, is out of reach of political debate.

The impasse we confront is that the citizen of the State is genuinely party to both private and corporate interests. Corporately, we already own the means of production and the license to deploy them. For as long as we can retain our corporate posts, and for as long as the corporations which employ us can maintain financial viability, and for as long as we can retain some title, however tenuous, to what we earn, it would be unintelligent in us to favour changing the rules of the game. Unquestioning submission to corporate authority is our personal financial salvation.

At the same time, advanced technology is progressively diminishing both the numbers of the gainfully-employed and the quality of life available to them. To the gainfully-employed, however, the issue of social and environmental blight associated with contemporary techniques of production is not political; it affects everybody equally, and they can intelligently leave it as a legacy, together with the progressively overdrawn PSBR, for future generations to resolve.

Nor, to the gainfully-employed, are their diminishing numbers a political issue. Those who are not gainfully employed already experience the legacy of the overdrawn PSBR and the blight, and in their camp it would be intelligent to change the rules. But their camp never includes a member of the gainfully-employed. No one person ever straddles both horns of the dilemma, and only one of those horns causes the discomforts of dispossession: the means to change the rules are owned only when the motivation to do so is lacking.

Therefore impasse. Those who have means cannot consent to relinquish them, and those who do not cannot seize them in the name of common consent. Nor can a political party seeking the monolithic authority of office plead the case of legal instruments that would diminish its authority when in office. The Contracted State has no precedent to substantiate its efficacy and no political means to endorse it; nor can its case be made persuasive through dire predictions of what might happen if it is rejected: fear is coercive and cannot command lawful consent.

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We intend to break this impasse. We see in the Contracted State the way to master corporate activities and the technologies it employs, a path to freedom from corporate slavery on which the first step must, of logical necessity, be taken without unanimous consent and so without the statutory safeguards and financial benefits entailed in the Act of Consent. In the stead of the Common Contract we will privately agree to establish the lawful conditions of the Contracted State within the legal domain of our contracting State, by means of a private covenant to administer a Common Purse. Figuratively:

common corporate

private public

Earnings in the contracting State

By taking the first step toward stabilising the contracting State, we place a living model of the methodology of common consent on the political agenda, and serve warning of the contest ahead. In the red corner, the corporate might of political authority vested in commercial, religious, racial, tribal and supranational interests. In the blue corner, the natural intelligence of each and every individual citizen of the State.

The odds are, of course, absurd. It is patently an unfair, one-sided contest because, in the final analysis, all of the commercial, religious, racial, tribal and supranational Authorities on the planet cannot command a single supporter who is not also an individual possessed of natural intelligence. In the age of electronic media it is impossible to control access to information, and no government can sustain power indefinitely without commanding common consent. 2.2 The Adventure It is our intention to persuade everyone, without coercion and regardless of their corporate affiliations, of the advantages of the Contracted State for pursuing their private, corporate and public aspirations. We are aware, from the outset, that there are a great many issues of law entailed in realising the Contracted State: constitutional, civil, criminal, commercial and international legal issues of a complexity

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demanding for their resolution a plurality of specialised expertise, and a considerable passage of time. We also recognise that changes to established laws are made only in response to real events. Our immediate purpose, therefore, is to demonstrate unequivocally that establishing the legal priority of common consent over majority consent, of Common Law over Statutory Law, is feasible and delivers the practical benefits we claim: universal opportunity for private aspirations, economic stability for corporate aspirations, and unsurpassable competitive efficiency for the national economy.

Were we not already so persuaded by reason we would not embark upon the course of action we are taking. The full efficacy of the Contracted State relies upon the inclusive participation of all citizens, but not every Citizen has access, by way of time, opportunity, language or even inclination, to our particular arguments of reason. We are consequently encumbered by our own reasoning to provide evidence of a more immediate kind.

The evidence with which we lead the argument proceeds from action rather than words, from the private institution of a common covenant which establishes a microcosm of the Contracted State within the State. We do not have to nor can we afford to wait upon the corporate deliberations of political factions to deliver rights which, in the end, can be secured only with our voluntary compliance. The rationale of our action is this: because we each insist absolutely upon the priority of individual rights over corporate authority, actual legislation will eventually converge in support of that ordination. And conversely, if we do not so insist then neither will the law. This, then, is the Last Covenant of the joint adventure of its Signatories. 2.3 The Text of The Last Covenant

In the end is the Law, and in the Law is the beginning of the Commonwealth which of itself has no ends but those for which it is lawfully disposed. Who writes the law is of no account, because in the end the conditions of lawfulness are not made by writers of laws nor by makers of laws, but are covenanted freely and exclusively between the chooser and the chosen.

This is the Covenant of the Law and of the Commonwealth enabled

by the rule of law. The Commonwealth is not singular, but may be known severally by those who have chosen to make this Covenant. Their names inscribed upon it testify that while they live they are the Commonwealth

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and, when they are finally disposed, the Commonwealth is become what they have made to be.

In the Commonwealth this, the Last Covenant made of free will,

comes first in law. It is not gainsaid by prior law religious or temporal, and though makers of laws may legislate at will and seal their wills with all the powers of their jurisdictions, wheresoever they require this Covenant to be broken their authority is unlawful.

The Commonwealth knows no territory, for though the Covenant

be written many times it is of singular intent. Wherever the Last Covenant is made and kept is the Commonwealth of the Covenant, and the names inscribed upon it are the names of the Citizens of the Commonwealth.

The Citizens of the Commonwealth are many and diverse. The

Covenant knows not how they differ, but makes in Law their common cause that they may celebrate their diversity. Whomsoever understands the Covenant and by an adult act chooses so to do, shall be granted access to add their Name to those who have already so chosen. The chooser is one, the chosen may be many, but this Covenant is made between I the Chooser and We the Chosen as two and equal parties.

I, the undersigned, preferring life to death, the absence of pain to

the experience of pain, health to sickness, knowledge to ignorance, and prosperity to poverty, do knowingly and willingly subscribe to this Covenant to secure for myself, in the greatest possible measure, continuity of opportunity to exercise these my said preferences.

We, the undersigned, recognise each Signatory of this Covenant as

a Citizen of the Commonwealth to whom we accord our common preferences as of prior right. For as long as it is the preference of the Citizen, we shall not by action nor by inaction compromise these the prior rights of a Citizen: to life, to the absence of pain, to health, of access to information, and of access to prosperity. Furthermore We grant to each Citizen the Privilege of freedom of action in the pursuit of self-interest, unhindered by Us for as long as no action of the Citizen jeopardises the Rights or the Privilege of another Citizen. We do not have the power to abolish death, pain, disease, ignorance and poverty, but in the Commonwealth this the First Contract shall so inform the Law that we do not visit these upon ourselves through ignorance or indifference. Under this Covenant We assume collective

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responsibility to defend the Prior Rights of the individual Citizen from being compromised through Inaction.

There can be no collective knowledge by which to relate the consequences of Inaction to the many and changing needs of every Citizen. Furthermore, our ability to discharge collective responsibility is limited by the extent of our collective resource and the availability of practical means to deliver it. Therefore to define, to procure and to deliver Our collective resource We shall administer a Common Purse according to the rules here written.

All that a Citizen already possesses shall be the private property of

that Citizen. In the Commonwealth, private property is that to which the Citizen can claim legal title and can be lawfully disposed only with the prior and explicit consent of its individual owner.

Moneys earned by a Citizen through gainful action or investment

are the Earnings of the Citizen, and each and every Citizen shall each month yield to the Common Purse one half of their earnings. For each citizen, one half of their earnings shall be the Private Tithe through which Each concedes equality of needs with all.

The Common Purse is common property. In the Commonwealth

common property is that which is lawfully destined for the private usage and enjoyment of Each of its several owners, and can lawfully be disposed only with the prior, explicit and unanimous consent of All of its several owners.

On the first day of each calendar month the administrators of the

Common Purse shall calculate a Common Share by dividing the Whole of the Common Purse by the number of living Signatories and shall publicly declare the monetary value of one Common Share.

Each and every living Signatory shall of Common Right be paid in

money one Common Share of the Common Purse before the Fourteenth Day of each month. This payment shall be the private property of the recipient. No part of the Common Purse except the residue of rounding shall be withheld, retained nor used for any other purpose whatsoever, nor shall the Common Purse contain any yield but the Private Tithes of Citizens.

Prosperity is a relative condition, but poverty is absolute. Poverty is

having insufficient means to sustain life without pain, disease and

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ignorance, and the Common Share quantifies each month an absolute divide between poverty and prosperity. Through the Common Share All concede access to prosperity to Each, and the income of each Citizen shall always exceed half their earnings by the amount of one Common Share. By these means We limit and perform absolutely the conditions of this Covenant in respect of our collective responsibility to defend the Prior rights of every Citizen against compromise by Inaction.

And if one whose earnings are great should ask, 'Why should I

yield so much to the Common Purse?', reflect upon this, that the products and services by which you make your living will have Many able to buy them, and your earnings will be the greater. And if one whose earnings are small should ask, 'Why should those of great earnings receive a Common Share when they have no need of it?', consider this, that only while the Common Right is unconditional is your Right to a Common Share likewise unconditional.

In the Commonwealth the source of the greater prosperity of the

Few is the general prosperity of the Many, and if you prosper greatly it is not a cause for envy amongst the Many. They rejoice in your prosperity, for as they share in its creation so too they share in its enjoyment. The Common Share is witness to the Many that the source of their prosperity is the greater prosperity of the Few, and as the Many each respect their own property, so they respect yours. And if a Common Share should be the whole of One's prosperity it will not be despised, for who has access to the means of life is not denied its opportunities.

And if a Common Share should be as little as a count of pennies it

will yet furnish your basic needs. It is the token of what has been Covenanted, and when None can pay for what All must have, providers can be none the poorer for taking in exchange a penny; because in the exchange they promote their gain to the worth of their products and services, and so enrich the Common Share for themselves as well as for others.

As the Common Share delivers you from the tyranny of fear for

your well-being and the well-being of those who depend upon you, so too it frees you from the dominion of Others. For if Another should say, 'Do this', and it be against your better judgement so to do, you may resist, because the Common Share divides the power of Another to affect your means. All your actions thus fall within the making of your own decisions, and the consequences of you actions are made by you alone.

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But as your freedom of decision in the pursuit of self-interest is constrained to lawfulness by this Covenant, the consequences of your actions are likewise limited. This, the Privilege of freedom with limited responsibility, is the greater prize of the Covenant from which all other benefits flow, but cannot be held of Right: for where you first have not life, and freedom from pain, and health, and knowledge and prosperity, freedom of action cannot truly be yours. Wherefore, under this Covenant each Citizen assumes individual responsibility to defend the Prior Rights and the Privilege of all Citizens from being compromised through Action.

It is not given to know all the consequences of one's every action,

nor are We severally endowed with equal foresight and natural ability to champion Another's cause. Therefore I, the undersigned, perform but do not limit the conditions of this Covenant with this irrevocable undertaking: that if any of My actions or proposed actions is deemed to conflict with the Rights or with the Privilege of another Citizen and the deemed conflict cannot Rightfully be resolved between us with mutual consent, then that conflict will be laid for its resolution before a Court of Law; and, with the sole condition that the verdict of the Court be consistent with My Prior Rights under this Covenant, I shall accept the decision of the Court to be consistent with My own better interests and abide by that decision even to the suspension of My Privilege of freedom of action.

That the Privilege of a Citizen should not be compromised through

error, let Each be wary of confusing Earnings with property. If your labours are rewarded with property but full legal title to that property is withheld, then are you enslaved to the extent of your dependence upon that property and, though you may live like a king on borrowed means, the name of your heritage is slavery. In the Commonwealth money alone shall be the medium of earnings, that it may enable the freedom of all Citizens through the agency of the Common Share.

That a Common Share should not be forfeited through ignorance,

let borrowers and lenders be aware that in the Commonwealth they will find no lawful remedy to attach the Common Share of a Citizen to the security of a promise. Future earnings are the means of instruments of credit, but the Common Purse protects Rights which cannot lawfully be compromised, and the Law shall not compromise a Common Share.

So shall Each approach the Law, knowing that a Citizen and the

Prior Rights of Citizenship are lawfully inalienable. And so shall a Citizen rise to the defence of the Rights and the Privilege of another

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Citizen whenever they seem threatened, in the knowledge that a violation of the Rights of One violates the Rights of All. In the Commonwealth conflicting interests will be resolved with Lawful consent, for that is equally the undertaking of all protagonists of the Law made by this Covenant their Common Property. Under the Common Law there will be equality of strength in the peaceful resolution of conflict.

Even so shall all other laws be admitted in the Common Law only

through those laws Prior to all others, the laws of nature which, being beyond our power to alter, are the even-handed servants and masters of us all. Know well, therefore, what it is you ask of nature and how to ask it, because between you and your enslavement stands Nothing but your own natural wits.

Even so through the laws of nature is bequeathed to All the

ultimate equality, that in the End each creature singly shall eventually die and in death All are equal. Therefore need the living fear no judgement after death. Death is the guarantee to the living that they have sole charge and dominion over their heritage. Their mortality informs them the future is a present trust inherited from the past, and how they exercise their freedom while they live shall, when they die, determine absolutely the Estate they bequeath to the living.

And even as that which you hold in trust as private is lawfully

destined to the ownership of your appointed heirs, the Common Estate written here in your Name will continue. Its open pages will record the living history of generations to come, and every page will express the unique meaning of your life through the continuity of your lawful works, be they great or small: to that end is the Commonwealth of the Covenant ultimately disposed, and in the End is the Law. 2.4 Standards

In the presentation of our argument through direct action, the published value of the Common Share speaks a language common to every observer, expert or otherwise, according their own financial circumstances and aspirations. But until the Contracted State is conceded by Statute, and therefore in absence of statutory regulation, it falls to us to provide effective standards for administering the Common Purse. Despite the transparent simplicity of its rules, the Common Purse underpins a complex, dynamically self-regulating, micro-economic system. It is of paramount concern to the successful operation of the system that the way

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in which the Common Purse is managed should not interfere with the way in which the system works.

The precise nature of the procedures employed to administer the Common Purse will vary from time to time and place to place, according to the practical means available. The standards we publish here are to provide guidelines to administrators, and a permanent benchmark against which the probity and effectiveness of the procedures they employ can be tested by any interested person. 2.4.1 The Agreement The text of The Last Covenant is the formal expression of the basis of our agreement to administer a Common Purse. The Agreement is a private covenant made between adults acting on their own behalf, all of whom are subject to the laws of the State. 2.4.2 The Laws Of The State For the purpose of the Agreement, the State comprises the recognised jurisdiction of a single body of sovereign law which applies consistently and uniformly to each and every individual personable to the law. By 'recognised' we mean acknowledged by an international court of law. 2.4.3 The Legal Status Of The Agreement It is not necessary for any court of law to recognise the Agreement as a legally binding contract. The Agreement has no constitutional authority within the State, no executive power within the community, and no authority over the individual. The commonality of interests created by the Agreement has no corporate identity, and associated with it are no titles, no regalia, no official marks, nor logos, nor signs. The only outward manifestations of association are the text of the covenant and the procedures by which the Common Purse is administered. In so far as the Agreement is binding it is only by virtue of subjective reasoning. To achieve our aim, it is necessary only for each of us to demonstrate in action that while our signatures stand upon those procedural documents required by law, we consider ourselves bound to honour the Agreement.

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2.4.4 Access To The Agreement The text of the covenant specifies two prerequisites of those who choose to make the Agreement: that they understand it, and that they have reached the legal age of majority. In order to ensure that the Agreement is subject to a single body of statutory law, however, it is necessary to add a third requirement, that they be citizens, by birth or by naturalisation, of the State. Subject to those requirements, any three or more like-minded people can further their common interest in the Commonwealth through the Agreement. In relation to understanding, it is required that the consent of the Signatory be knowing. As it is our contention that the better interests of the individual lie in maintaining a social framework in which every adult is made the sole judge of what constitutes its own better interests, we can require no better evidence of an understanding of the Agreement than that an adult citizen of the State, having had access to the information provided by the Essay, chooses to make the Agreement. 2.4.5 The Instrument Of The Agreement The Agreement relates to the single interest common to the corporate and non-corporate sectors of the State. The instrument of the agreement is a simple document of two parts, in the first part of which the Signatory agrees to administer the common purse on his or her own behalf, by means of two periodical transactions: to pay the private tithe into a common purse each month, and to receive a common share of the common purse each month, in consideration for having discharged all liability for the consequences to the Commonwealth of inaction. The first part of the document is to include the bank code and the number of a private bank account held within the State for the exclusive use of the Signatory, to enable the payment of the common share.

The second part of the document is to include the bank code and number of a bank account in which the common purse is to be accumulated and from which the common share paid, to enable the Signatory of the first part to pay the private tithe. In the first instrument of the Agreement, both parts of the document are signed unilaterally by a single person who consents privately thereby to administer the private tithe, the common share and the common purse, and so become the guarantor of the common share and the signatory of the second part of every subsequent instrument of the Agreement.

It is the responsibility of the Signatory of the first part of the document to check the accuracy and validity of the second part, and the

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responsibility of the Signatory of the second part to check the accuracy and validity of the first part of the document. 2.4.6 Paying The Private Tithe Paying the private tithe is the private responsibility of every administrator of the common purse. No proof of earnings is ever required of the Signatories of the Agreement, but on the occasion of signing the Agreement it is the responsibility of the guarantor of the common share to ensure the signatory of the first part of the document understands both the procedure and the process of the cycle of the private tithe and the common share. The period of the cycle is the calendar month. The 'current period' of the cycle is the whole of that calendar month which precedes the day on which the administrator pays the private tithe. For example, a private tithe paid on any day in June, is in respect of corporate earnings received during the current period May 1 to May 31 inclusively. In this way we ensure the common purse is funded in arrears. Note that the common share is not received during the current period. The corporate earnings of an administrator of the common purse should be construed as the sum of all monies received privately by the Signatory during the current period from any corporate source, by way of salary, wage, bonus, commission, dividend, interest, pension, award, prize, winnings, welfare benefit, unattached grant, or corporate charity, and subject to the following conditions: (1) The common purse should contain no monies which can be legally attached to the Government. The sum of corporate earnings is counted after income tax and all other statutory deductions have been made. (2) Any payments scheduled by the order of a Court should be excluded from the sum. (3) The common purse should contain no borrowings: the capital of any sums borrowed by the Signatory should be excluded from the sum of corporate earnings. (4) Earnings should not be included more than once in the common purse. Capital sums recovered from lending or investment, or from the sale of privately owned goods or property, should be excluded from the sum of corporate earnings.

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(5) With one exception, the common share is to be excluded from the sum of corporate earnings. The calculated sum of corporate earnings is always to be rounded up to the nearest whole unit of the currency. Should that sum amount to one unit of the currency, the Signatory may discharge its liability to the Commonwealth by the payment of one whole unit of the currency derived from the common share.

The private tithe, then, is one half of the net corporate earnings received privately by the Signatory during the current period, rounded up to the nearest whole unit of the currency. Each administrator calculates the amount of the private tithe on its own behalf once each calendar month, and deposits the amount in the bank account in which the common purse is accumulated.

If a Signatory to the Agreement is temporarily prevented by reasonable cause from depositing the private tithe as prescribed, then the amount should be retained by the Signatory and added to the private tithe of the next current period. We rely upon the random distribution of such eventualities to make them self-correcting. 2.4.7 The Common Account Common funds accumulated from private tithes may not be held by nor pass through the possession of any individual person. They are to be held by a commercial or a mutual bank of prior standing and of good repute, to which will refer as 'the Bank'.

The first administrator of the common purse will, personally and in his or her private capacity, make arrangements with the Bank for a singular 'common' account and a singular 'suspense' account to be opened and maintained. With the agreement of the Bank the said administrator will supply the bank with a copy of standing instructions for the administration of the common account.

Under the standing instructions there will be no withdrawing rights to the common account of any kind whatsoever except payments of the common share debited by the Bank to the common account, in accordance with the periodic instructions of the first administrator or a lawfully appointed successor of the first administrator, to whom we will refer as the 'current treasurer' of the common account.

Under the standing instructions the current treasurer will accept and implement amendments to the common account submitted by any established administrator of the common purse. There are to be two and only two types of such amendments: the addition to or the deletion from the common account, of standing orders to credit the specified bank

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accounts of Signatories to the first part of the Instrument of the Agreement. It is the personal responsibility of the current treasurer to ensure that for each Signatory of the Agreement there is one and only one payment order on the common account. 2.4.8 Centralising Information

It is not necessary for us to know who is and who is not a Signatory to the Agreement, and impossible to know who may become a Signatory in the future. By treating everyone we encounter as though they are Signatories we ensure our own compliance with the terms of our Covenant, and should we ever be subjected to a physical attack then we know our attacker is not one of us, and we may defend ourselves with any measure consistent with maintaining our own safety.

It is possible, however, that in the natural course of events two or more such Agreements may become established within a single State. This is acceptable, but only until the fact becomes known to their respective current treasurers, at which time the transaction processes should, with the mutual agreement of their current treasurers, be merged. Knowingly maintaining more than one common purse within a single State would invalidate the definition of poverty upon which the efficacy of the system depends.

It is the responsibility of the current treasurer to keep, safeguard and maintain all current instruments of the Agreement, filed in alphabetic order of the Signatories of the first part of the document, and to provide supervised access to the file to any authorised public official who may require it. 2.4.9 Transacting The Common Share On the first day of each calendar month the current treasurer will print a statement of the credit balance of the common account and count the number of payment orders standing against it, in order to calculate the value of a common share. It is presumed that any bank charges incurred will have been deducted from the common account by the Bank.

The value of the common share for that month will be calculated by dividing the credit balance by the number of payment orders, rounded down to the nearest whole common share, and the treasurer will effect the transfer of one common share to the credit of each and every of bank account designated by payment order.

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There are no circumstances in which a common share, having been transferred in accordance with these standards, may be lawfully intercepted or altered. The common right is extended unconditionally, and we deem it extended to the lawful and the criminal alike without discrimination. As soon as a common share is debited to the common account it ceases to be common property and becomes the private property of the owner of the designated bank account, and only then subject to further disposition.

If an order to pay a common share cannot be executed because of a failure in the transaction procedures, the current treasurer will post the amount into a suspense account where it will be held in favour of the Signatory of the first part of the instrument of the Agreement, as the private property of that Signatory. 2.4.10 Resigning From The Agreement The signature of an individual on an instrument of the Agreement expresses the private belief that the Agreement represents the best interests of the Signatory. If for any reason that belief is changed, it is incumbent upon the Signatory to notify the current treasurer who, without question or hindrance, will delete the Signatory's payment order from the common account, and withdraw the relevant instrument of the Agreement from the current file.

The signature of an individual on an instrument of the Agreement expresses the private belief that the Agreement represents the best interests of all the living Signatories. It is therefore incumbent upon the Signatory to ensure that the current treasurer will be notified upon the occasion of the Signatory's death, at which point the current treasurer will firstly verify the information, then delete the relevant payment order from the common account, and transfer the relevant instrument of the Agreement to a file which commemorates the contribution of the individual to the foundation of the Contracted State. 2.5 Policing The Transaction Process It is necessary for the consistency of the Agreement that the text upon which it is based should be that of a single document. Recognising that the Common Law principle to which we have referred has no authority in statutory law, We the Authors of the adventure grant permission for The Essay to be copied subject to the following conditions: that no alterations are made to the copy unless it is with our

The Essay

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unanimous agreement, and no payment, fee or other reward is solicited or accepted for supplying the copy to a third party. Permission is also granted to translate the Essay into another written language on the conditions that the translation is of the whole of the Essay, and that the permissions granted by the Authors are represented faithfully in the translation. It is plain that the complete confidentiality of the Private Tithe renders the transaction process capable of abuse. This very fact, however, creates an extremely high threshold of mutual trust to be crossed before any instrument of the Agreement can be signed, at which level of understanding it is improbable that abuse of the transaction process will occur. For any adult individual who has understood the Essay and identified their own better interest in subscribing to the Agreement, it would be irrational to defeat their own aspirations by cheating. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that deliberate abuse, if it occurs at all, will be exceptional. Accidental abuse through unknowingly miscalculating corporate earnings is merely one of the consequences to the common purse of inaction, against which the Signatory is indemnified by the Agreement. Given a sufficiently large number of Signatories, the common share will approximate a norm which requires massive shifts in its underlying factors to cause significant deviations. The uncertain effect of sporadic abuse upon the value of the common share is unpredictable, but certainly less than the cost of any putative method, short of the statutory measures advocated in The Common Manifesto, for precluding abuse. The transaction process enables the privilege of every living Signatory to pay the private tithe and receive a common share. A Signatory who knowingly prefers to dispose any part or all of the private tithe elsewhere than upon the common purse resiles the Agreement, and should resign from the Agreement. We conclude with the premise with which we began: we believe that being possessed of natural intelligence, no individual will both knowingly and willingly act against its own better interests. ......................................................................................................................

The Contracted State

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Transcript of The Contracted State