Welcome to Capital Futures
Maintained by Robert Hockett
Public Finance for Perpetual
Public Progress
Welcome to Capital Futures, a Site dedicated to Financially Engineering Ever More Just and Remunerative, Labor-Owned Modes of Production and Distribution in the Spirit of Hamilton, Hilferding, Lincoln, List, Luxemburg, Marx, Perkins and Wicksell, Among Other Heroes of Human Emancipation.
High Theory
Noncomparabilities & Nonstandard
Logics, NeoAristotelian Philosophy of Action, Action-Theory-Informed Legal & Political Theory, Distributive Justice Theory & Meta-Theory, Distribution-Focused & Recursive Social Welfare Functions, Purging Pareto & Paretianism from Normative Economic & Political Theory, and More.
Meso Theory
Recursive Collective Action Problems, Endogenous Credit-Money Theory, Rousseauvian State Money Theory, Capital Theory, Systemically Important Price Theory, Central Banking and Public Finance Theory, the Public-Private Franchise Account of Both the Corporation and Modern Banking & Finance, and More.
Plans & Schemes
Real Arrow Securities for All, The Eminent Domain Plan for Underwater Mortgage Writedowns, Extended Fed Open Market Operations in All Markets with Systemically Important Prices, Digital Greenbacks & the Democratic Digital Dollar, 'Spreading the Fed,' the Green New Deal, Share-Spreading 'Labor Capitalism,' and More.
Legislation & Testimony
Legislation & Testimony on the Plans and Schemes Cited Above. Ranging from the Eminent Domain Plan for Underwater Mortgages, through Public 'Citizens' Ledger' Banking for All and a 'People's Portfolio' for System-Wide Price Stabilization, to Redesigning Our Public Institutions to Enable Perpetual National Development, and More
Publications Catalogue
Columns, OpEds, Occasional Journalism
I'm no Marx or Keynes, but like them I do try to accompany most of my scholarly, policy advocacy, and legislative work with more accessible journalistic companion pieces. Here are some of my regular columns for Forbes, The Hill, FT, and Huffington Post, along with other occasional journalism.
The Green New Deal
The Green New Deal initiative begun in 2018 marked the beginning of a return to ambitious public-private coordination in the cause of rebuilding the American economy along more just, productive, and sustainable lines. Hockett worked with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and her team from the start on the GND Resolution introduced to Congress in early 2019, then on the initiative's finance plan as well as much follow-up legislation found in the 'Legislation' Module of this site.
Posthumous Mentors
Alexander Hamilton, born out of wedlock in Charlestown, Nevis, Danish Virgin Islands, was orphaned as a child and 'discovered' as a prodigy by local merchants and clergy. An autodidact, he taught himself law and finance while serving in the Revolutionary War, then worked with seemingly boundless creativity and energy in devising the US Constitution, financial system, and public finance architecture. He has been my hero since age 7, when I too lived in (the northernmost city of) the Caribbean.
This one is personal. Chaka, whose life and whose friendship with me is recounted in Chaka's Widows - among the projects catalogued here - was a self-described 'homeless entrpreneur' when we met. It was with him that I founded the 'Shoebox Bank' and 'Homeless Kibbutz' described in the book, and it was thanks to him that I decided ultimately to pursue law and finance degrees with a specialization in what I called 'financial engineering for the dispossessed.' He disappeared and I pray he lives.
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