Corporations Versus The Free Market
When you consider the place of the corporation in the design of the socio-economic system running our world, it is striking to consider the power structure put in place by these management innovations originally designed to better service the developmental capacity of the industrial complex. Corporations have been given legal living status as entities, with even more empowerments than individual human entities possess. As our species matures, more and more of the power and control that is manged by centralized command-style governing structures preserves the distorted relationship that individuals maintain with the wealth of humanity, held in trust by corporate entities and governments around the world.
A baby born in the year 2040 will be substantially less powerful as an independent entity at birth in relation to the power structure it is born within than a child who was born in 1940 was. This lack of gravity within an individuals inherent socio-economic existence will influence how governments respond to individual human needs, and how much control corporate structures have over the affairs of mankind. The advancements that mankind makes will collectively make our species richer and more capable, and opportunities will be afforded people in new and exciting ways, but the distortion in power between the one and the many will only grow more pronounced.
WalMart is the best example of what is enabled by our current implementation of corporate management philosophy and practices. No small business can compete with WalMart on equal footing, for there is no such thing as equal footing in the marketplace once WalMart enters the arena. WalMart is accomplishing things that violate any notion of a free market, enabling a dynamic wherein only a WalMart 2.0 has any chance of competing with the corporate structure that is WalMart, Inc. The leverage that is afforded the WalMart entity is out of proportion to the benefit it provides to humanity and its varied goals of preservation and prosperity. In a WalMart world, there is a centralized owner of all assets, employees who work on their behalf at the lowest cost structure permitted, and consumers who are encouraged to consume for consumption sake based on the incentive of low prices and limitless supply.
Humanity is not pursuing its best interests on this current path. This truth will bear itself out in time, and already is in enough detail that many people and cultured societies are taking notice. Still however, we do not have a collective notion of the alternative model that will replace our current corporate model.
What could easily be confused as more of the same by defining a collaborative model of socio-economic exchange as 'Universally Distributed Private Ownership', is in fact the essence of two negative values creating a positive outcome. To move beyond our current phase, we need to empower the individual. The most basic way to do this is to inherently provide ownership rights and definitions to the life of all human beings at birth. To reconstitute a nation such as America as a nation of citizen-owners, represented by an Identity-scheme that allows for distributive command and control within an environment that is win-win-win in nature. In such a marketplace, individuals are not simply consumers, they are owners of the very markets wherein all transactions occur. Whether the goal be to empower individual humans en route to empowering societies, or to rebalance the power that corporations possess in relation to those same individuals, the outcome is the same. Universally distributing ownership of the marketplace is a socio-economic game changer. It changes why students learn, it changes how trading relationships are managed, it changes how nations are governed, it allows for economies based on the sharing of intellectual capital assets to flourish, while providing the much needed framework of personal incentive and accountability that our world is in dire need of.
An effective collaborative network maintains a win-win-win structure. 1 + 1 does indeed equal 3 in such an evolutionary environment. Currently our education system would not have the capacity to instruct this logic, for it is designed with a 1+1=2 model in mind. We must move beyond this state of development and begin providing all the powers that we can to the individual members of our global socio-economic system, so that we do not all wake up one day soon living in a manner that violates our sense of independence and personal liberty. There is one state more powerful than freedom, and it is the freedom you own. In a socio-economic universe, you must own yourself, you must own your life.
A baby born in the year 2040 will be substantially less powerful as an independent entity at birth in relation to the power structure it is born within than a child who was born in 1940 was. This lack of gravity within an individuals inherent socio-economic existence will influence how governments respond to individual human needs, and how much control corporate structures have over the affairs of mankind. The advancements that mankind makes will collectively make our species richer and more capable, and opportunities will be afforded people in new and exciting ways, but the distortion in power between the one and the many will only grow more pronounced.
WalMart is the best example of what is enabled by our current implementation of corporate management philosophy and practices. No small business can compete with WalMart on equal footing, for there is no such thing as equal footing in the marketplace once WalMart enters the arena. WalMart is accomplishing things that violate any notion of a free market, enabling a dynamic wherein only a WalMart 2.0 has any chance of competing with the corporate structure that is WalMart, Inc. The leverage that is afforded the WalMart entity is out of proportion to the benefit it provides to humanity and its varied goals of preservation and prosperity. In a WalMart world, there is a centralized owner of all assets, employees who work on their behalf at the lowest cost structure permitted, and consumers who are encouraged to consume for consumption sake based on the incentive of low prices and limitless supply.
Humanity is not pursuing its best interests on this current path. This truth will bear itself out in time, and already is in enough detail that many people and cultured societies are taking notice. Still however, we do not have a collective notion of the alternative model that will replace our current corporate model.
What could easily be confused as more of the same by defining a collaborative model of socio-economic exchange as 'Universally Distributed Private Ownership', is in fact the essence of two negative values creating a positive outcome. To move beyond our current phase, we need to empower the individual. The most basic way to do this is to inherently provide ownership rights and definitions to the life of all human beings at birth. To reconstitute a nation such as America as a nation of citizen-owners, represented by an Identity-scheme that allows for distributive command and control within an environment that is win-win-win in nature. In such a marketplace, individuals are not simply consumers, they are owners of the very markets wherein all transactions occur. Whether the goal be to empower individual humans en route to empowering societies, or to rebalance the power that corporations possess in relation to those same individuals, the outcome is the same. Universally distributing ownership of the marketplace is a socio-economic game changer. It changes why students learn, it changes how trading relationships are managed, it changes how nations are governed, it allows for economies based on the sharing of intellectual capital assets to flourish, while providing the much needed framework of personal incentive and accountability that our world is in dire need of.
An effective collaborative network maintains a win-win-win structure. 1 + 1 does indeed equal 3 in such an evolutionary environment. Currently our education system would not have the capacity to instruct this logic, for it is designed with a 1+1=2 model in mind. We must move beyond this state of development and begin providing all the powers that we can to the individual members of our global socio-economic system, so that we do not all wake up one day soon living in a manner that violates our sense of independence and personal liberty. There is one state more powerful than freedom, and it is the freedom you own. In a socio-economic universe, you must own yourself, you must own your life.
Life Inc. Dispatch 06: Why Corporations Hate the Free Market from Douglas Rushkoff on Vimeo.
Labels: 1+1=2, 1+1=3, citizen ID, corporate managment, corporation, economics, tax entity
posted by Moxy Tongue | 7/13/2009 10:10:00 AM
4 Comments:
I respect the question you are grappling with - it is a key and core matter - and am intrigued by your suggested model. Question: Would you also modify the status of corporations so that they would no longer enjoy the entirely irrelevant rights of individual citizens?
Are you asking me about my managerial philosophy? Or are you asking me about my notion of the most ideal structural model for society? As a matter of management, I would level the playing field in the most progressive manner, by raising people up onto the default playing field under empowered Terms, starting at birth. As a matter of structural ideals, I want what is best for Humanity, defined as a sentient organism composed of billions of Individual beings that flourish when afforded the opportunity, while requiring management for sustainable development in every sense. I am not sure what the structure that unfolds after UDPO exists will look like; we have never empowered ourselves in that way, opportunity has never been universally applied or available.
I have always thought of people as infinitely superior to corporations. It will take some work for me to see the transformation of individuals into corporate entities as an improvement.
No doubt, corporations should be like hammers, glue, paint, computer software... they are tools. Its what they do in a practical sense that gives them their superior powers in our modern world. They are alive as legal entities with rights; they can live beyond the scale of a human lifetime. I, as an informed entity, can organize my life in such a way as to provide tremendous leverage above and beyond what I am afforded as a child born into this world. As a parent with this same knowledge, I can provide advanced structure to my childs life that is not available to my neighbor's child's life. Fair... sure, it is my knowledge that gives me the capability. But more than fair, it is an opportunity: we can give this knowledge away universally as a component of managing the identity of individual children and people alive on this planet. We can create owners of empowerments at birth that can truly add something practical in our world... the socio-economic natured world that it is... and is going to be for some years to come.
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