Organizational DNA for our new Metropolis

Thank you for allowing me to contact you regarding "corporate
peoplehood" -- or, to speak of it another way, "indigenous economics".

I introduce myself to you after the recent SPUR event and you gave me
your email address. I hope that I did not unduly monopolize your time
at the event and I hope that my aggressiveness in reaching out to you
was not offensive.

I grew up in the Tahoe/Truckee area but I went to Burning Man last year
for the first time because the theme of Evolution spoke so directly to
my passions (I was also getting divorced, so I was finally "allowed" to
go, but that is another story). Black Rock City was the first place in
the world that I felt that I was accepted as my genuine self -- a man
with a vision of renewal. I have always been the boring guy at the BBQ
that can't seem to focus on the latest advancement in mountain biking
technology, or the political intrigues of local Little League Baseball
draft. On the playa, I offered footbaths to the community with my
clear, clean Shinneyboo water. The baths came with or without a vision
of evolution. Only one person took it without the vision, and I
appreciated her candor and enjoyed giving her a footbath just as much as
all the others. I learned to offer my vision as a gift, without
expectation of anything in return, and that has profoundly changed my
life. Thank you for your part in providing me with that opportunity.

The theme of Metropolis is again deeply aligned with my life's work.

I believe that you cannot understand the form of any Metropolis without
looking at its organizational DNA. The large skyscrapers of San
Francisco sprang from the organizational DNA of Wells Fargo and Bank of
America just as castles and moats sprung from the organizational DNA of
medieval monarchies, just as the mighty oak springs from the
organizational DNA held within the diminutive acorn, or Black Rock City
springs each year from the organizational DNA held within the surveyor's
flags that inform the annual unfolding of the Burning Man mandala
metropolis.

An intrepid band in the High Sierra seeks to evolve the organizational
DNA of the dominant structure in society (corporations) and we believe
that the evolution will be manifested in the new metropolises we build
-- but without changing the current corporate organizational DNA then
visions of new metropolises will not be possible. We seek to create
this radical change by looking back to our indigenous roots and fusing
the best of that knowledge with new zero cost, mass coordination tools
-- tools that allow for decentralized but coordinated incorporations of
community never before possible in human history. We call it
"corporate peoplehood" and it is nothing less than the rebirth of the
indigenous tribes based on the economic models of the rabbit runs of the
Shoshone and the buffalo runs of the prairie peoples. In fact, we are
in talks with the The International Council of 13 Indigenous
Grandmothers <http://www.grandmotherscouncil.com/> to host a healing
ceremony where indigenous people forgive the wandering ones for the pain
of the past and ask them to become indigenous again and to enter into a
great economic alliance to nurture the Earth and each other with radical
love and inclusiveness.

In the 1770s in America a handful of people, inspired by the great
Iroquois Confederacy, began to dream of national peoplehood and those
dreams changed the world. In the Western European world up until that
point it was national personhood that prevailed. Europeans even went so
far as to call the monarch by the name of the state, so France and
England meant the Kings of France and England, not the people. But that
was the age of the Nation State, and now we are entering the Age of the
Corporate State and corporate personhood is dominant. 2007 was the
first year in human history that the majority of the 100 largest
economies in the world are now corporations, not governments. We
believe that now is the time for us to imagine corporations that are the
embodiment of a people -- strong, powerful, profitable corporations that
are of the people, by the people, and for the people. We believe that
an incorporation of community of this kind (Us Inc., if you will) has
the potential to become the largest economy in the world, based on the
emerging power of decentralized, coordinated economic structures (e.g.
Burning Man, Wikipedia, Linux, etc).

So enough theory, now to practical matters. We are caretaking 160 acres
of the most spectacular High Sierra county around
<http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=shinneyboo> on the Western Slope of
Donner Summit near Cisco Grove now called Shinneyboo Creek Cabins
<http://www.shinneyboocreek.com/> . We are building an economic tribe,
a democratic corporate nation on this land. We plan to build an ARC
(aggressively resource-efficient community) Ecosphere that will be a
live, shop, work, play village without cars. We will seek radical
efficiencies in the use of natural resources (and the full use of the
creativity and potential of our human resources) to liberate ourselves
from fossil fuel tyranny and to build a just, abundant, and sustainable
economy. But this is just the beginning. We are working on a regional
vision to apply these ideas to the entire Northern High Sierra.

What I ask of you, if you have made it this far, is any time you might
have to advise us. Burning Man in so many ways embodies the indigenous
economics that we are attempting to animate in our lives. Your insight
and experience would be greatly appreciated. Shinneyboo is a great
place to enjoy the High Sierra, and we would be honored to have you come
and stay in a cabin if that works for you, I travel to SF often if that
works better for you, or if you have time on the phone then that would
be appreciated (although I greatly prefer face to face communications).

Thank you for your time and consideration.

With Hope, Determination, and Love
Michael Rogers (Pilgrim)
530-587-5160

Failed State Conference

Hello,

This is Michael Rogers and you gave me the courtesy of walking you to
your car at the Failed States conference. I am forwarding you a link to
the work of Thomas Malone from MIT, one of the originators of
Coordination Theory (and the Thomas Paine of our times).

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/229

Here is one of the top business schools in the country talking about how
the democratization of business will be as significant to human history
as was the democratization of governments. He puts this all down to the
lowering cost of communication and communication. He states that the
lowered cost represented by the printing press allowed for the
democratization of government and that the Internet is what allows the
democratization of business.

Also, here is a link to Elinor Ostrom and her work on Common Pool
Resources, which when combined with Professor Malone's allows for an
innovative Common Pool Asset Building program that I believe will be
more resilient than the more traditional approaches such as home ownership.

http://www.cogs.indiana.edu/people/homepages/ostrom.html

SumPeople is working specifically on the Northern Sierra and the
creation of an economic, political, and social alliance to build
community capital and to manage our wealth of resources for abundance.
We have a broad range of interested parties from political figures,
business interests, environmental groups, youth groups, indigenous
peoples, and concerned citizens from all walks of life.

We are looking for organizational partners to help with this great work
and believe that New America would be an ideal match. If you are
interested in talking further please let me know.

Michael Rogers
530-587-5160

Regarding Changing Congress.

Dear Professor Lawrence Lessing,

I recently was speaking to Carla Dardis from the Tides Center and she
linked me to your End the Corruption speech from the Momentum
Conference. I know that lots of weird stuff comes in from the Internet,
however I was hoping you might be willing to speak with me.

I was inspired by your patriotism and civic commitment. Yet, at the
same time I was frustrated by what I believe to be the core of the issue
of corruption that you did not address. I will outline briefly the
work I have been doing, hoping you will not dismiss the concepts out of
hand if I fail to articulated them with sufficient skill.

Akito Morita, the Founder of Sony said almost 30 years ago that "Nations
are a dying industry, Corporations are the structures of the future."
Since I first heard that offhanded comment while a student at Yale, I
have seen the truth of it more and more every year. 2007 was finally
the tipping point as, we finally entered the "Age of the Corporate
State" with 51% of the 100 largest economies in the world now
Corporations, not Governments.

The King is dead, long live the King!

As important as government reform is, corporate reform is first, I
believe. The democratization of capital is the great movement of our
generation. Just as in the 1770's when a handful of evolutionary
thinkers conceived of National Peoplehood and changed the world forever,
so too the time has come for a handful of thinkers to present the
concept of Corporate Peoplehood to the world, so that community of the
people, by the people, and for people shall not perish from the earth.

Corporate Peoplehood is not ESOPs or Co-ops, it is not Socialism or
Communism. Corporate Peoplehood is based in the glorious tradition of
Corporate Personhood, just as democratic government is based in the
glorious tradition of monarchy, but both are natural evolutionary steps
in human organization to insure that cooperators thrive and free riders
are marginalized.

If you have made it this far in this email, I thank you for your time,
and if you have any interest in learning more, please contact me.

Michael Rogers

3/19/10 New America Meeting

Thank you for your time and consideration. I am available Tuesday,
Wednesday or Thursday of next week to meet with you.

Specifically, what I wanted to discuss was New America's possible
involvement in an innovative asset building program on the Western Slope
of the High Sierra. We are a very troubled community economically, but
with very strong social capital ties which make us an ideal pilot
program site.

The Western Slope of the Central High Sierra is a resource rich area
with big problems and big opportunities. Some of our problems include
overgrown forests and fire dangers, over use of natural resources,
devastated salmon population, a mono-culture economy that is in a free
fall after the collapse of the trophy home industry, socially and
economically marginalized indigenous population and Central and South
Americans.

But the opportunities are just as big. PG&E will be giving away
approximately 20,000 acres of land in the near future for the best use
of the people of California, 1,500 people are organizing to create a
Collaborative Ski Area, economic opportunities from small wood
utilization, carbon neutral micro energy production, enhanced recreation
opportunities that create revenue to properly manage the resources,
non-profit youth outdoor adventure programs, strong progressive
non-profit community, a Forest Service seeking innovative ways to manage
the Tahoe National Forest, green technology and industry funding
opportunities, jobs stimulus packages, to name a few.

The goal of SumPeople.org is to organize a conference call "Dreams of
the Western Slope" to bring together this "apex of opportunity" to begin
to imagine a systemic resource management plan with the goal of
sustainable resource management, just and broadly distributed economic
development, and enhanced and non-extractive recreation access.

We envision the possibility of the creation of a Collaborative
Corporation that would gain long term resource rights on the Western
Slope, and, in the Common Pool Resource management model of Nobel Prize
winner Elinor Ostrum, manage those resources for the collaborative goals
of the community. Where this becomes an innovative asset building
program is in the collaborative control of the capital created by this
new type of corporation. For instance, resources earned by a
housekeeper are used to send her daughter to get a Master's Degree in
Engineering, or profits earned by a Janitor are used to build affordable
housing for his family.

By adding democratic civil government mechanism to the modern corporate
model such a checks and balance, branches of governance, and elected
accountable leadership we believe we can build a wealth building model
that does not depend on everyone becoming a sole proprietor. As a sole
proprietor I can say that it is an incredible obstacle to overcome, you
need to a jack of all trades and often master of none. Which is an
incredibly high barrier for historically marginalized communities.
However, we believe everyone can have a productive role to play in the
creation of a complex corporation and should have the right to a
representative voice in the government of their enterprise.

Let me know what times work for you.

With Hope, Determination, and Love,

Michael Rogers.

3/19/10 Health Insurance Blog Posting

How about the unhappy customers of the current insurance companies form
together to create a new insurance company with elected leadership,
checks and balances, and branches of governance. We could then create a
new company that's primary goal was providing the best health product at
the best price for its customers (what a novel idea). It would be
relatively easy to create a new company (no legislative initiative
needed) because insurance companies, like banks, have none of their own
money.

What if this Collaborative Insurance Company (CIC) created Population
Care Units (PCUs). For instance, my county has 100,000 people and two
hospitals with combined budgets of $100 million. At the $500 a month I
currently pay for insurance, this PCU would generate $600 million in
annual premiums. This CIC could negotiate with the hospitals to take
care of the 100,000 person PCU with no billing, no administration, no
overhead. The insurance company could probably operate on less than a
$1 million budget.

This would take our current system, where hospitals, doctors, etc become
richer the sicker people are, and instantly change it to them making
bigger profits the healthier the PCU is. You could also get the
government to put every dollar spent on healthcare (medicare, worker's
comp, disability, etc) into the pot to drive down the costs of
premiums. From a business point of view you could say, "Move your
business to our county and you don't need to buy insurance for your
workers because we are all covered anyway". This would drive up
property values and have lots of benefit for the community.

Also, the internal pressure on the real cost saving factors like smoking
and obesity would be huge. If I knew that my chance to have heart
surgery at 70 would depend on whether my friend was over weight, then I
would be saying, "Hey, Joe. Do you want to take a walk with me at lunch?"

We need to stop thinking that government can solve these problems, but
instead we must look to ourselves and build new collaborative
corporations that are accountable and self-regulating.

Sparkplug Mike
www.Sumpeople.org

3/19/10 Michael Moore website dialog

Collectives are nothing but another form of corporation. So, maybe we
need to agree upon terms. I don't use the term collective or
cooperative because I believe they more often than not come from a
tradition of consensus decision making. This is limiting concept and
does not lead to economies of scale and division of labor, which is why
I believe that they have never become more that a small percentage of
the overall economic output despite their clear social advantages.

The problem with consensus decision making, with everyone making every
decision, is that it quickly runs up against the Movie Picking Paradox.
That is to say one person can easily pick what movie to go to, two
people have a simple negotiation, three people is actually 300% more
difficult (not 33% like you would assume), so by the time you get to 10
people deciding on a movie it is approaching the impossible. What
usually happens in that case is that one person gets fed up and says "I
am going to X movie and Y time, who ever wants to join me can".

I prefer the concept of collaborative corporation because I think that
we need something that is capable of processing more complexity in
decision making and can take tactical action more easily when a general
consensus exists on goals and objectives. In a collaborative
corporation you initially start out with a pretty standard corporate
structure with the sole addition of elected CEO, an elected Board of
Directors that is more like a legislature, and a form of Judiciary (I
personally like the idea of a Grandmother's Council because I assume the
Executive and Legislative Branches will be weighted to the Masculine and
I think the nurturing, loving, Matriarchal is important regardless of
the actual gender of the Grandmothers).

But then, the Collaborative Corporation has the general Olstrum"design
parameter" of driving decision making to the finger tips of the
corporate body. We know that corporations that resist top down planning
are more in touch with their markets, customers, more efficient, and
just better places to work.

In the Collaborative Corporation the "leaders" really make very few
decisions (the CEO of Southwest Air was proud to say he made only two
decisions in the company -- who to hire and where to have the Christmas
Party). The role of CEO in this "leaderless" Collaborative Corporation
is to be the Catalyst, the Champion, the Visionary and to encourage
everyone to work together, and most importantly to give voice to the
unifying identity of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

I believe that a Collaborative Corporation can be this "third" way.
And, yes, this is not clearly spelled out in her work but I believe it
can be inferred from it.

Thank you for the intelligent and provocative dialectic.

Sparkplug Mike
www.sumpeople.org

3/18/10 Letter to Michael Moore

OK, do you get it now Mike? We are in the age of the corporate state.
Your efforts need to be focused on the democratization of capital.
Jefferson, Adams, Paine, and friends did not throw out government
because of the abuses of the Kings. Royal Capitalism is the problem, not
capitalism itself. Socialism is just government capitalism and it
doesn't work very well, does not have sophisticated checks and balances
on power, and will never work in our country given our traditions and
history.

Come join the great movement of our generation Mike, stop trying to
destruct and create, build, and work towards the creation of
corporations of the people, by the people, and for the people.

The Evolution of our times is the democratization of capital, but we
don't need to storm the castles on this one, we just need to aggregate
our power to build new corporations worthy of us as honest, hard working
corporate citizens.

If just 10,000 people, the population of my small town, were to commit
$10 a month, that would generate $1.2 million a year in salaries to
start a Liberation Bank. If we then took our money out of the Royal
Banks at an average of $1,000 each, that would create $10 million in
assets, we could lend out $9 million to buy good existing business to be
owned by a combination of working and investing partners, thus instantly
creating $19 million in assets, and so on.

Now imagine if the Liberation Bank had branches in every town in the
country. We could have bought your favorite company GM cheap and then
turned around to the workers and said, "Here, this is your company now."
We will appoint an interim CEO but you will start an election for the
new CEO, you will also elect your board of directors and they will act
like a legislature and make the laws of the company, then you can
appoint or elect the Judiciary branch of your company to rule on the
constitutionality of your laws. Good old check and balances, branches of
governance, and elected accountable leadership so that community of the
people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth.

If we can nation build in Iraq, surely we could build a democratic
economic nation in the heart of Detroit among the good, hard working,
corporate citizens on Michigan.

The only catch is that they make their loan payments before they pay
their salaries and benefits just like any small business person has to
do. Then when they pay back the loan we go and look at another fragile,
hierarchical, monarchical corporation to scoop up at pennies on the dollar.

This is good old fashion capitalism where the benefit inure to the
people who do the work and not the freeriders who take our money to buy
the companies we work for and then fire us to make even more money.

I believe in you Mike, but please open your mind and imagine that you
could fall in love with the right type of corporation.

We have started a group called Sum People to move these ideas forward,
it is less than a month old, with no funding, but a dream and a plan
that we believe can change this F'ed up system. Sum People will be like
Wikipedia and not Microsoft's Encarta. It will be created by the people
who join with us to make it happen. It has no concentrated capital yet
(neither democratic nor undemocratic) so don't expect fancy graphics or
detail proposals. We are starting with an idea and are willing to let go
of where it goes and allow that to be decide by the Whole. Come be a
greater part of Sum People and lets all stop whining and get to work
building the just economy our children deserve.

We are the people, the time is now!