In a previous article titled, Social Organization , the three broad categories of social organisation in relation to government were explored. Equality, rather than being a universal concept, is adaptive, and follows the demands of the categories of intrinsic, emergent and dispossesive. It is in the intrinsic category that liberty and justice combine to ensure the uniform equity of every individual under the government's jurisdiction through universal political rights.

Intrinsic Equity

The intrinsic component of the government system is where equity must be absolute. Political rights must be uniform for all who are under the jurisdiction of the government. Liberty must be equal for all individuals. The justice system must be replicable, uniform, non-discriminative and accessible to all. The intrinsic component is the most primal essence of political equality.

The intrinsic component of social organization is derived from humanity's natural resistance to tyranny. The Constitution speaks to the intrinsic nature of organisation and is not complete unless it eradicates tyranny and provides safeguards for any tyranny which may leak through.

Maximum liberty and uniform justice are the paths to equality in the intrinsic component.

Emergent Equity

Modern economists often argue for economic liberty which limits the interference of government on the allocation of capital, and manufacturing quotas. This was largely in response to socialism in the early part of the twentieth century. The decentralised nature, and innovation of capitalism and economic liberty out-competed the Soviet Union's economy over a period of approximately thirty years, leaving the Soviet Union on the brink of economic collapse.

Society and culture are similarly complex systems who respond with great vigour to liberty and unrestrained growth. Government interference in society and culture is as damaging as Government interference in the allocation of capital and manufacturing quotas. At its most extreme this is totalitarianism. But all nation-state governments practice a form of nationalism, in one way or another. This is to create a false legitimacy in the government beyond ensuring equity of liberty and justice. Nationalism is an intrusion on society and culture.

The emergent component is the public realm of complex interaction. Like all complex systems they are at their most invigorated and innovative when the interactions occur without interference. Political rationalism became a by-word in Australian economic theory in the 1980s, Cultural and Societal rationalism need to become as common in political debate as economic rationalism has become.

Dispossessive Equity

The dispossesive is the burden of maintaining government. This includes ensuring that political rights are not infringed, that justice and access to the judicial system is universal, and that liberty is protected. The dispossesive can also encapsulate emergent programs that the electorate requires to be taken on. In the last century that has included programs such as universal education, welfare to protect against poverty and retirement. This raises issue as to how the funds necessary to support these programs can be raised.

The goal of any social organisation is to foment prosperity. This can be taken as the starting point for an equitable system of taxation. Those that have prospered from economic liberty have a moral responsibility to not only maintain the present system of maximum liberty, but also to ensure those that have not prospered by it, are given every opportunity to achieve in this environment. It can be derived from this principle, that taxation should not begin until after the point of prosperity.

There are two ways to determine the point of prosperity, either as those who are above the average salary, or corporate taxable income. Or those that earn the top half of all income, either private or corporate taxable income. For instance, in 2002/2003 total private income was $352,499,306,474 which was shared amongst 8,634,249 taxpayers. For corporate tax total taxable income was 156,777,560,537 shared amongst 664,146 businesses.

Using the average income as the point of prosperity;

• Personal income tax would not begin until $40,800.00
• Corporate income tax would not start until $236,052.00
• Combined income tax, both personal and corporate, would not begin until $54,770.00

Using half of total taxable income as the point of prosperity;

• Personal income tax would not begin until $60,000.00
• Corporate income tax would not start until > $1,000,000.00 (tax tables have no data about the number of businesses with over $1 million of taxable income)

I find using those that have half of the taxable income is a more equitable system of taxation. This would have the added advantage of removing the highly regressive nature of the current Australian taxation brackets. Those that have prospered carry an equal burden in ensuring not only maximum liberty remains, but also that those who have not prospered in such a system, get every opportunity to do so. This equal burden should be carried through to the taxation system. I recommend that;

• A personal tax rate of 30% for those who earn income that is in the top half of all income. This would be adjusted every year. Currently this point is ~ $60,000
• A corporate tax rate of 30% for all companies who have taxable income in the top half of all corporate taxable income. This would be adjusted every year. Currently this is ~ $1,000,000

The danger in this system is that government would skew the equitable nature of it by giving all manner of tax breaks and resulting in the 11,000 page mess of a tax code we have now. But we have that mess now. Adopting this equitable and prosperous model of dispossession, we would have a simpler, fair, and more just system of taxation than the current one.

cam

Nationalism is the political philosophy where the national government is the dominant political entity. Under nationalism the individuals derives their identity and collective memory from the nation.

The national government becomes the pinnacle of that identity and from that political grouping flows the nurturement and sustenance to maintain the national culture.

Nationalism views citizenship as a privilege, not a right. Other more individualistic forms of political philosophy such as liberalism, libertarianism and republicanism, view the individual as dominating over the government. Consequently citizenship becomes a individual or natural right in these philosophies.

The nationalist philosophy often uses citizenship as a club, to keep individuals in line, and to eject those that defy or oppose the national government. Sedition laws are a good example of nationalist thinking.

The world-view of nationalism also enables entrenched arbitrary government. For instance, an individual who is accused by the state of terrorism or sedition - a crime against the state - will have their rights stripped. The case of Jose Padilla in the United States follows this pattern.

Those not of the nation, or not citizens can also have any political rights ignored. In fact in the nationalist thinking, unless those individuals are a subsumed component of the nation - often through the citizenship process - then they have no political rights.

An example of this in Australia is who the national government dealt with refugees. Due to the discriminate nature of nationalist government, it enables and promotes the government paradigm of executive decree.

Nationalism is an inequitable political philosophy which is hostile to universal individual political rights.

Australian Republicanism is a political egalitarian philosophy. It makes no room for the social or political elevation of an individual or group through claims of divine right, accidents of birth or the physical imposition of coercion and tyranny. This leads to universal principles of political rights.

The Imagining Australia folks have a section in their book titled Poverty and Inequality ;

Implicit in the notion of disadvantage are two important, but crucially different, concepts: poverty and inequality. On the one hand, poverty refers to the inability of a person to meet the basic needs of life, including food, water, housing, health care and education. Inequality on the other hand refers to the income differential between the rich and the poor within a society.

South Sea Republic carries the byline; Freedom, Liberty, Equity and an Australian Republic . Which is a nice, perfunct statement of principle.

This site predominantly focuses on issues of political technology and organisation; infested as it is with software developers, engineers and scientists. Consequently we touch little on issues of poverty and economic inequality. I will not go into them here, they are covered better on other sites such as Andrew Leigh 's and John Quiggin 's.

The equity in the byline of South Sea Republic refers to the absence of political inequality. The forms of political and social organisation are a human choice. They are human technologies and politics itself, especially liberal democratic organisation, is a technology developed to equilibrate power relationships.

As adam commented on a site with a roped off area;

I must say I admire the boldness of asserting the nation exists but the individual does not, when readers have at least one counter-example of an individual to hand, and the nation-state is a piece of technology constructed by the Treaty of Westphalia around 350 years ago.

Too often we assume that our present condition or state is static and impermanent, having always existed the way it currently does. Constitutions, Federalism, Nation-states, etc; these are all human developed and implemented political technologies.

Technologies are difficult to develop, hard to implement and often the best technological form loses out for a myriad of social, economic and irrational reasons. There are numerous wrecks of superior technologies which have suffered darwinism at the hands of the distributor and consumer.

Since politics deals in power of the state and the public purse, those that skew the power relationships to one person or a small group usually try everything they can to maintain that advantage. Consequently, the establishment of new political technologies has often come at the hands of a revolution.

Disruptive technologies in the market often mean an entrenched competitor re-organises and seeks to capture new markets or the capital which sustained that entity is removed and passed onto a new company that is able to compete in the new market.

Sadly, this is rarely the case in politics. Australia likes to pat itself on the back by claiming it came to self-government without a revolution or blood-shed. The reason Australia achieved this was because it entrenched the interests of the existing ruling elite.

William Wentworth was the main agitator here. He wanted NSW to organise along the lines of King, Lords and Commons. This meant establishing a titled class in NSW. This was ridiculed by Dan Deniehy in his Bunyip Aristocracy speech , but the result was that NSW had an appointed upper-house.

This entrenched what Deniehy called the squatocracy into NSW politics as they could not be removed by the ballot. It was not until the 1970s that the appointed members of the Legislative Council were replaced by elected representatives.

A poor choice of technology and organisation in the 1850s took over one hundred and twenty years to remove. Harpur was not impressed either, though he was happy that self-governance had come as it was an improvement over colonial governorship;

Thank God that we at length have the new Constitution! In itself I despise it, as a disgraceful hotch-potch, that shames us by the side of our younger sister, Victoria: and awards us but a second - nay, but a fourth place in a race, in which we should have been first.

Victoria had instituted an elected Legislative Council when it came to self-governance. The other states have all faced issues of mal-apportionment in the upper houses; Western Australia is yet to solve its problems there.

Poor technology choices have long term ramifications. NSW has spent a long time flushing Wentworth from its system, just as the federal system is yet to remove the last vestiges of Deakin from itself.

Political equality is an important principle. It often exists in slogans such as one man, one vote or no taxation without representation and other proclamations of an individual's political rights, dignity and respect.

Equality requires that no there be no political or social elevation for reasons of divine right, accidents of birth, coercion or tyranny. Republicanism represents political egalitarianism from which universal principles stem.