3/8/2010

I am wondering who to contact for a topic for Insight? My name is Michael Rogers and I am the elected Philosophy Officer of SumPeople.org.

I would be interested in participating in a show based on Citizen's United v. Federal Election Commission -- Corporate Personhood versus Corporate Peoplehood.

This profoundly significant ruling has granted unfettered constitutional rights to corporations, even though our founders wrote "We the People of the United States of America" not "We the Corporations of the World and other unorganized citizens of the United States of America" This ruling is an effective Corporate Coup d'Etat of our democracy and it is based on the legal doctrine of corporate personhood (i.e. a corporation is a legal individual).

But there is good news. Instead of fighting this reality, we can instead embrace it. SumPeople.org is educating and organizing in California based on the concept of Corporate Peoplehood.

The idea is simple. In 1770, the radical idea that a nation could be the embodiment of a people transformed modern society and laid the foundations for the prosperity and abundance we enjoy still to this day. Well, in this age of the corporate state, the idea that a large, powerful, profitable corporation could become the embodiment of a people offers the same prospects.

New internet based collaboration tools have placed us at the apex of opportunity. Social Networking is exploding and Economic Networking is next. Decentralized collaborative organizational structures are having incredible success in this new environment, from Wikipedia, Burning Man, to Linux and open source, to name just a few. The opportunity to create a complex, decentralized collaboration of highly autonomous economic units that also are highly coordinated in their actions is a real and immediate opportunity to solve many of the challenges of this increasingly complex modern society.

SumPeople.org is applying these concepts to the Western Slope of the Central High Sierra. A highly resource rich and environmentally vital area that is struggling with a host of issues from overgrown forests to a struggling economy.

Using the work of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics winners Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson, SumPeople.org is putting on a conference this Summer called Dreams of the Western Slope where their work on Common Pool Resources and Corporation as Governance Structure will be the basis for formulating a vision for the Western Slope that blends long term environmental sustainability, long term economic sustainability, and long term social sustainability.

If any of this interests you and you have more questions, please contact me.