View source for Own Your Country: Incorporate the State and Upgrade Citizens into Dividends-Earning Shareholders

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{{DES | des = "Because profit is possible only when there are owners to demand it from managers, and the states have no owners. Today’s citizens, being just members of an association with non-transferable rights to vote, are too weak and disinterested to make such a strong demand. Citizens need an owner’s stick. Just casting votes can never do it." | show=}}
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Own Your Country

Incorporate the State and Upgrade Citizens into Dividends-Earning Shareholders



A Proposal by Dusan Miljevic



Why don’t we live longer and healthier? Why don’t we suffer less? Why aren’t there fewer wars? Why are so many struggling to make ends meet? Why aren’t we more careful with our environment? Why isn’t everything much cheaper?  Why aren't all human endeavors achieved much more efficiently and cheaply?

The answers are same everywhere: Our political systems are preventing it. 

Our political systems are designed with a major fault in them. That fault actively breeds destruction, needlessly creates huge friction, and builds senseless barriers for people attempting to solve problems and deal with life challenges.

The essential fault of our political systems is that citizens, as principals, are not given enough power nor incentives to effectively control their representatives, the agents. 

Controlling any kind of agent is generally a very difficult and important job for a principal, but the greatest risk from a mistake or abuse is where the greatest power is delegated. Therefore our political representatives, whom we entrust with the enormous power of the state to make enormously big decisions that affect all of our lives, must be kept in check by all means available.

A good system would make sure that every person is given every bit of power possible and does not have to trust or rely on his representatives even a tiny bit more than absolutely necessary. It would make sure that representatives can be fired as quickly and easily as possible, if they do not use their delegated power for the biggest benefit of the citizens.

But our political system is nowhere near that ideal, as it keeps our representatives safe from our proper control and always leads to the only consequence possible: huge unnecessary costs for the citizens. 

Why don’t citizens do anything to make representatives act more responsibly?

Because we don't have enough power nor incentives. We can choose our representatives but we couldn't adequately control them even if we had incentive to really try. There is no economic interest for a citizen to go through the significant effort of getting properly informed just to cast one irrelevant vote.

The good news is that this root of all evil in political design can be fixed easily.

It does not require that the government finds money to finance it, it does not require a tax increase, there is no need to confiscate anybody's property and there is no need for violence of any kind.

All we need to do is:

Declare the state a corporation and the citizens its shareholders.

The same applies wherever we have voting rights: town, city, region, state, country...

Citizens make that happen by simply voting one sentence of this meaning into law:

“Each citizen is a legal owner of an equal share of equity in every political body in which he has voting rights, as well as the owner of his voting right itself.”

Ownership here means an unlimited right to sell, rent or mortgage an equity share with voting rights at any time and at any price and under any other terms agreed on by a buyer and a seller.

By choosing to upgrade themselves from voters-only into voters-shareholders of the state itself, citizens have nothing to lose and a lot to gain. This change promotes citizens from only tenants into real landlords of their countries. This will create a major transfer of wealth not just in terms of value of the shares, but even bigger from the benefits that will come from improved policies and thus the dividends earned.

Those that decide to keep the shares, or even buy some more, will eventually enjoy the dividends and the rise of value of the shares that happens with improved policies, while those that sell the shares will still remain citizens and get all the money from the sale. They can also buy shares any time in the future.

All will enjoy the benefits of living in a much better country, a for-profit one. It will be as huge of a difference as between using lousy services of Post Office while paying billions of dollars for its losses every year, or using far superior services of Fedex while being its shareholder. 

Another great benefit of having shareholders that can sell their shares is that we would finally have a live and independent number, a stock price, that we can look at when judging the performance of our political leaders.

We must strengthen our countries by giving them the most powerful protection known to mankind: institution of ownership. The best way to do this is by making its citizens legal owners of the state itself.

By comparing the most prosperous countries in the world to the least prosperous, we see that prosperity is directly correlated with the extent of the countries' property rights. Yet, the countries themselves are ownerless; they are nobody’s property. They are left unprotected at the mercy of human nature and without the benefit of the most effective method for ensuring peaceful cooperation among people: the principle of property rights. 

That is why corporations get much better results for their shareholders then our ownerless countries get for us, their citizens.  We should learn from such powerful organizations and reorganize accordingly.  

Today’s states are set up as non-profit associations with citizens being mere members with usage rights of their votes. In such system the members are weak and leaders have a lot of power. 

When citizens become shareholders of the state itself they gain not only the value of the shares and dividends but also much better control of their leaders due to the powers that shareholders have and members of associations do not.

The main power of being an owner of voting shares compared to today’s citizen, is the ability to sell what he does not like and get an equal value in exchange. But a citizen cannot sell his vote, he is just stuck. That’s bad for citizens, but great for leaders. Citizenship should be much better than just being stuck.

Upgrading citizens to owners of their political rights and owners of the country itself, may sound like blasphemy, but that is exactly the change necessary to reduce the waste, corruption and mismanagement we now live with. That change will make the system profitable and able to send dividends to its shareholders, instead of running ever bigger debt while enriching a few. 

The state’s sovereign power to set rules and charge taxes as it pleases means that it effectively owns its territories. So how is it even possible that with all that land owned and all the powers at its disposal, states still cannot turn a profit and cannot send dividends to its citizens? 

Because profit is possible only when there are owners to demand it from managers, and the states have no owners. Today’s citizens, being just members of an association with non-transferable rights to vote, are too weak and disinterested to make such a strong demand. Citizens need an owner’s stick. Just casting votes can never do it.

We must convert our countries from today’s non-profit associations into for-profit corporations, and upgrade citizens from only users of voting rights into the OWNERS of voting shares of the state equity. All other rights of citizens may remain the same and unalienable.

When judging this proposal, do not expect it to solve all the problems of imperfect people in imperfect world as no system could do that. Judge only which one of these two systems would solve specific problems better.

Brave new ideas cannot be understood without being heard and discussed by many people. 

Please support the freedom of speech and discussion and spread this message, ask questions and offer answers at our forum: OwnYourCountry.org/forum.

Those that understand the power of this idea should take part in the global grassroots movement to upgrade voters into voters-shareholders of all political entities and give the unused wealth of the state to its citizens.

Don’t ask for anyone’s permission, start your own initiative in your own place today.

Power to the people! Wealth to the people! Prosperity to the people!
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