America is endowed with an extraordinary wealth of natural resources and human energy. These are the people, plants, animals, land, water, and air we work to keep healthy and put to use for American Life to thrive. Let’s call all these physical parts of America our Public Resources. Americans know our future depends on how well we protect, sustain, and renew our Public Resources.
There’s always a balance to maintain. The price value of our Public Resources can lead to threats to the life value of our Public Resources. The price value can drive speculation, abuse, and depletion. Purely in terms of prices, it can make sense to poison our soil, dump carbon into our air, and dump toxins into our water. Price value demands maximum possible strain and sacrifice from America’s workers for the least possible pay.
The price value can change dramatically. Any advance in Public Knowledge can change the price value of a particular Public Resource. For example, learning how to harness the power of electricity causes the price value of copper to increase, while advances in robotics and AI can cause the price value of human labor to decrease.
In contrast, the life value of our neighbors, our environment, our own lives—that’s priceless. Money doesn’t work to name the value. We don’t use money to measure the value of human life or our environment. We understand the life value of our world through faiths, science, and our humanity.
Usually Americans can defend the life value of our Public Resources against extreme abuses. We can set up rules to regulate how we draw on those resources, to stop extremes and keep things in balance. We can make sure that when Contributing Americans go to work, we have the power to defend the value of that work. We can defend our wellbeing.
But the extreme money of the Counting Class knocks America out of balance. Elite, entitled Counts can easily override the will and efforts of Contributing Americans. Armed with extreme money, a Count can simply ignore or take apart the agreements we put in place to protect the health of our Public Resources.
It’s too easy for Counts to abuse our Public Resources for self gain. They don’t have to live with the consequences. They retreat to remote compounds and insulate themselves from any harms. Absentee Counts know they can afford to use up American lives. Counts know they can afford to damage and deplete America’s land, water, and air. And Counts know they can avoid any responsibility and leave Americans to clean up their messes.
When Americans stand united to trim back extreme Money Counts, that’s when we can truly protect our wealth of Public Resources.
On the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Big Woods Declaration (BWD) renews the call for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, free from the corruption of extreme money.
The BWD is a First Amendment petition to the American people and our government. It is not limited to any political party or group.
The BWD is a total of 60 pages: the Core Declaration (4 pages), the 13 Notes, the 27 Dangers to America, and the 16 Solutions for America.
The BWD may be shared and reused under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. View a copy of this license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
The BWD was created without the use of any AI, opinion polling, or focus groups. The BWD draws on many core American ideas as well as the work of Thorstein Veblen, America’s visionary from the Big Woods of Minnesota.
All photos in the BWD were taken in the Big Woods. The BWD was framed by Erik Christopher Sahlin with Alyssa Beth Wulf.