Yes, I have. I have also thought of the Ashoka Foundation. My friend from school, xxxx xxxxxxxx was funded by Soros. I am not sure how I would go about that. Thank you for your insight. It is very useful.
Logos, Ethos and Pathos shall be my three musketeers. I very much believe that the ethics of the policorp will need to be firmly rooted in the ethical traditions of the great democracies. I believe that the only way for a complex, interdependent, economic structure to function efficiently is if great amounts of time and resources are not wasted by individuals having to protect themselves from greed and dishonesty. What is _actually_ hopelessly naive is the belief that we any have any chance of economic renewal if the growing prevailing ethos of "dog eat dog" takes hold. It is counter to evolutionary history. Reciprocal Altruism was an absolute necessity to a soft tissued organism without fangs and claws. A sense of justice has been proven to be hard coded into our very DNA because of the evolutionary imperative of cooperation.
The emotional pull for me is the absolute dread I feel for the world I am leaving to my children. I have actually entertained the thought of sacrificing my marriage and my relationship with my children in order to attempt to secure a more abundant and just society for them to inherit, just as I would place myself in harm's way to protect them. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, I am too selfish in my need to be with them as much as possible to ever take such drastic action for an idea. Although, I am grateful that Benjamin Franklin and John Adams made such personal sacrifices for me. Even though they could have been said to be great fathers of our nation, they were not such great fathers to their own children.
I also recently saw a 60 Minutes piece on the closing of the Las Vegas Oncology ward and the actual death sentence that the closure was to many cancer patients without insurance. One retire security guard, when asked what he would do without the chemotherapy he need, said "die peacefully." That this is the fate of people who worked hard and played by the rules in this "greatest country on earth" is a nation shame and an outrage.
I feel that there is a sense of outrage and disgust growing in this country, that if not given positive constructive solutions will turn in on ourselves. Let us not forget those people in America who stood on bridges in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina with shotguns to stop desperate refugees from seeking safe haven in their town. Our vaulted social contract is paper thin, and we may find that not everyone has the resignation of that gentle security guard in Las Vegas.
Michael Rogers
“Great things are wanting to be done.” -- John Adams, 2nd President of the United States
xxxxx xxxxxxxx wrote:
> Have you ever thought of writing this proposal to George Soros's of
> Foundation? I wonder if you could actually get funding for developing
> this (public speaking,workshops, publishing,...)
>
> Previously you mentioned the squirrel running 3 times around the tree,
> the ancient Greeks and the need for shaping your thoughts (the tree).
> Now you speak finding motivation. Back to the ancient Greeks and
> motivation: Beside logos - the logic you mentioned, ethos (ethics - a
> call to principles) and pathos (an emotional pull) are needed. You
> have stated ehical considerations - making them more explicit - how
> doing the right thing is more productive or rewarding in the long run
> - is necessary. The emotional pull needs to be thought out more.
>
> My two cents for the day. May you stumble upon better change!
>
> xxxxx
King George did not willingly allow democracy to blossom in the colonies. It would require a concerted effort to create from scratch, or purchase and transform existing companies. But unlike the democratization of governments, armed rebellion is not required. Much more difficult is the finding of the internal motivation to organize without the assistance of the rally cry of an external enemy.
There are only two ways to start a company -- as an entrepreneur or as a financier. Some entrepreneurs have been convinced to sell their companies to ESOPS for the tax advantages, but by and large an entrepreneur who has worked 80 hour a week for years, for less money sometimes than their employees, deserves everything that they are able to reap from their company. So, starting policorps as financiers is the only logical method. You would either need to find large investors (who I believe would have an interest in investing in self regulating companies having been recently burned so badly by the excesses of ponzi capitalism) or lots of small investors who aggregate their capital.
I have developed a method for funding a policorp that takes advantage of the aggregation of capital of a multi-level marketing structure (but used for good not evil). Conceivably 10,000 people investing $50 per month (come on -- start your own business for only $600 per year?) would generate $500,000 per month in salaries for the initial staff. An additional $75 per month investment would generate $10,000,000 per year to begin acquiring capital assets that could be put to productive wealth producing use. The initial start up staff would have the job to conceive, organize, plan, and lobby for the development and implementation of a business plan the goal of which would be the hiring of the other "citizens" as the company required them and could support their base salary needs. This initial start up capital could be leveraged with municipal bond measures that would used to build radically resource efficient communities so that wealth was kept working in the community and not exported out to Houston and Saudi Arabia. Like bonds are used to build auto-centric subdivisions, in a resource efficient community a portion of the bond would be paid back by the sale of individual units of the development -- it is a tried and true financing method that is just tweaked a little.
By simply organizing the market power of the 10,000, a bank, a large food distribution company, all sorts of retail stores, and a variety of other businesses could be started. The working partners running these economic "colonies" would have the independence of front line action to take care of customers and deal the with the day to day running of the company, but be interdependent in the sense that their capital would come from the larger policorp and there would be economies of scale with one human resource department, one healthcare plan, one accounting and finance department, one maintenance team, etc. First we take the power of our purse back and then we "hire" people away from their "day jobs" as resources allow.
Also, as we begin to act together to manage our resource efficiency, we begin lowering the cost of living in the community by, for instance, buying food in bulk from local farmers instead of in pre-packeted microwave pouches that travel an average of 1,500 miles to get to your plate. The cost might be the same, but the resources are going into hiring cooks to prepare meals instead of trucking and packaging with the benefit of increased convenience and nutrition. The cooks money is more likely to stay working in the community than is the money paid for trucking and packaging.
I might have to stand out on the street corner giving out the "Return to Common Sense", but hopefully people will see the inevitable logic of Incorporated Democracy and it will take off like the 100 monkey theory postulates. I think it could be a block buster book that could be at least as popular as "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People." And like that book, and "Atlas Shrugged", the book could be used to support a marketing juggernaut of speeches, meetings, and seminars that attempted to take people intrigued and bring them into an interdependent, successful economic community.
My project is the decidedly un-sexy idea of the evolution of organizational structures. My study of the evolution of cooperation has led me to believe that the mechanisms at play in this second tread of the evolutionary story, that runs concurrent to the traditional "dog-eat-dog" view, have immediate applicability to our current crises . It goes something like this -- in order to keep free riders from taking all the benefits of cooperation, and therefore creating a barrier to cooperation, it is necessary in designing human organizational structures to insure that cooperators are able to capture the effects of cooperation.
We did this 230 years ago with governments, where we designed American Democracy to have checks and balances on power, branches of government, and elected/accountable leadership in order to insure that those who gained power in our political democracy could be removed if they became free riders. But now governments are a declining power and corporations are ascendant. 2007 was the first time in human history that of the 100 largest economies in the world, more than half are now corporations not traditional governments. It is hopeless naive to base an economic system, as our current one is, on the hope that leaders will do what is right.
I have attached some of the pieces that include an effort to explain the evolution of cooperation piece. Thanks for your interest. I should get back to running my business.
With hope and determination,
Michael Rogers
“Great things are wanting to be done.” -- John Adams, 2nd President of the United States
xxxxx xxxxxxxx wrote:
> Thank you.
>
> Questions that popped up immediately:
>
> Why or how would corporate leaders be interested in doing anything right?
>
> Corporations use and have been using governments in order to get some
> free rides;
> why would they change?
>
> Who would be in the first circle of recipients of this booklet? How
> would they be attracted?
>
> And, unrelated to above, what a beautiful place(s) you have or manage
> - lovely. I was very near there in 1998, just west, close to the
> 20/80 junction.
>
> Yours from a very different place, Shrewsbury, where the first English
> parliament met with both houses, but long before that, where the
> Romans decided to build a settlement on the land inside a horsehoe
> shape of a river.
>
> Tell me more about your study of the evolution of cooperation, before
> the summer rush on cabin renting.
>
> cheers (as everyone says here)
> xxxxx
>
> On 4/9/09, Evolutionary wrote:
>
>> My project is the decidedly un-sexy idea of the evolution of organizational
>> structures. My study of the evolution of cooperation has led me to believe
>> that the mechanisms at play in this second tread of the evolutionary story,
>> that runs concurrent to the traditional "dog-eat-dog" view, have immediate
>> applicability to our current crises . It goes something like this -- in
>> order to keep free riders from taking all the benefits of cooperation, and
>> therefore creating a barrier to cooperation, it is necessary in designing
>> human organizational structures to insure that cooperators are able to
>> capture the effects of cooperation.
>>
>> We did this 230 years ago with governments, where we designed American
>> Democracy to have checks and balances on power, branches of government, and
>> elected/accountable leadership in order to insure that those who gained
>> power in our political democracy could be removed if they became free
>> riders. But now governments are a declining power and corporations are
>> ascendant. 2007 was the first time in human history that of the 100 largest
>> economies in the world, more than half are now corporations not traditional
>> governments. It is hopeless naive to base an economic system, as our current
>> one is, on the hope that leaders will do what is right.
>>
>> This latest implosion of ponzi capitalism only exposes the urgent need for
>> self regulating economic structures because our society is so dependent on
>> multinational corporations. Incorporated Democracy is the cure to a vast
>> myriad of social ills, and in it lies the rebirth of community and broad
>> prosperity.
>>
>> Michael Rogers
>>
>> “Great things are wanting to be done.” -- John Adams, 2nd President of the
>> United States
>>
>>
>>
>> XXXXXXXX wrote:
>>
>>
>>> ** CRAIGSLIST ADVISORY --- AVOID SCAMS BY DEALING LOCALLY
>>> ** Avoid: wiring money, cross-border deals, work-at-home
>>> ** Beware: cashier checks, money orders, escrow, shipping
>>> ** More Info: http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams.html
>>>
>>> Tell me more. I'm curious, but need to know more about the content.
>>>
>>> I'm currently in England, finishing up a book project. I will be returning
>>>
>> to California in a month or so.
>>
>>> I look forward to hearing about your brochure idea.
>>>
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