Character Checks

work in progess; more to come

The pursuit of money for its own sake —— or as a foothold for unrestrained power —— has long been destroying our civilisation. There has to be a counter-balance, and this must be non-monetary and entirely independent.

The counter-balance I propose is Character. Generally those whose pursuit and accumulation of money exceeds any healthy human needs must be interrogated to establish whether they are fit & proper persons for any standing they may claim.

I explain further below what this entails, and place it in the context of a Class Society very different to the hierarchical societies of old.

For a start, we may ask why those possessing vast fortunes, beyond anything a single human being or even extended family can enjoy, have not faced a Grand Jury to examine their fitness for such stewardship. Such a Grand Jury would investigate the source of their wealth, i.e, how it has been acquired. It will transpire that it has never originated in honest entrepreneurial dealings or inventiveness.

We may not yet have the wherewithall to confiscate that wealth, or remove its holders and culpable descendants from civil society, but such a time will surely come.

We need a principle such that for every privilege there is a matching prohibition. It is a privilege to possess great wealth; the countervailing prohibition must be that the exercise of political power, including surreptitiously, is excluded. Similarly, no-one in political office must be allowed anything more than modest wealth and income.