Would you give the first generation the right to allocate to future generations?

“As a kid my parents taught my brother and me how to split a cookie without disputes. If my parents split a cookie and then distributed the pieces, then we would fight over who got what half. It was impossible to ever split it “perfectly” and so there was always a dispute. My parents got tired of having to resolve the dispute so they gave us a new strategy. One of us would be given the task of dividing the cookie, the other would have the right to choose which half they wanted. To decide who was the divider and who was a chooser we would either flip a coin or take turns. The result of this algorithm is that the divider would be meticulously fair, because the chooser is assumed to pick the better half. By agreeing to this algorithm there were no more disputes and therefore we didn’t need a higher authority to resolve disputes for us. You could say that we had a moral hazard-free algorithm for building consensus and avoiding a physical altercation under the law of the jungle.

Let’s apply the lesson of brothers dividing a cookie to the task of property rights. Imagine that mankind had to come up with a system for allocating property rights that fully accounts for all generations. Imagine you were tasked with the job of dividing the universe among individuals in all generations and that someone who doesn’t like you got to decide which slice you get and which generation you are born into. Would you give the first generation the right to allocate to future generations? Would you give the victor the spoils of war? Would you want to leave it up to chance? Historically speaking, the odds would not be in your favor of getting the better piece of the cookie.

It is through pondering this question that I came up with a process for universal inheritance. I assume that each day is a new day and each generation deserves an equal division of the unearned natural resources of the universe.

In order to keep things fair between generations I propose that each person should be lent a share of the earth’s resources for the duration of a long human life. This is based upon the premise that members in one generation would never agree to give the previous generation more favorable terms assuming all generations were represented by competent attorneys.

From this perspective each year some percentage of the Earth’s resources should be redistributed to the “current generation” such that over one lifetime the resources (wealth) are passed fairly (evenly) from one generation to the next. If we assume most people live less than 100 years, then the resulting rate of inheritance should be around 5% per year. This would redistribute 99.5% of initial wealth over 100 years. This “redistribution” is nothing more than a “loan repayment” by one generation and a loan issuance to the next.

A simple way to implement a universal loan of resources is to issue the community currency evenly to all people in the community. Every year the currency supply would grow by 5% and the newly issued currency would be divided among the parties to the community peace treaty. Since currency is effectively a claim on future resources this inflation would seamlessly and transparently implement the principle of universal inheritance.

An algorithmic redistribution denies rulers that power and therefore rebalances wealth without concentrating power."

Author: Daniel Larimer

Source: https://moreequalanimals.com/assets/MoreEqualAnimals-1.15.2021.pdf