How Could An Advocacy Corporation Possibly Work?

Understand that existing corporations are doing what they are designed to do and they are VERY effective at it BECAUSE structurally they are cast in a specific mold.

Start with this understanding:

If Jesus Christ himself ran a corporation and it was cheaper to outsource jobs to China or India - HE WOULD BE REQUIRED TO DO SO

Now, I know you are saying - hey, he's Jesus Christ - he's the model of Christian goodness - HE WOULD NOT DO THAT. It turns out that Jesus Christ, just like every other CEO, would need to outsource your job to India BECAUSE the ONLY legal responsibility of a corporation is to its shareholders.

So to be effective, we need to quickly get past these ridiculous emotional arguments and not allow ourselves to "play politics":

1. All corporations are evil
2. If it wasn't for India or China or so and so we would still have our jobs
3. We can close our borders and put up REALLY BIG FENCES so corporations can't go to China or India

Well, this behavior has NOTHING to do with the CEO - it is a STRUCTURAL PROBLEM. This is the nature of the institution itself - argue to change it at your own peril.

So if you can't beat em - join em!

I am NOT advocating changing ANY existing corporations - they are FINE the way they are.

The Walmarts of the world are VERY efficient at hitting that LOWEST cost measurement and this DOES provide a lot of value to society (i.e. poor people can BUY stuff cheaply). More importantly, there is nothing like some good old fashioned human greed to drive an economic system - people by definition, act in their own self interest and we need to REALLY stop pretending we do not.

So we have a VERY good economic system that through competition supports a whole set of voluntary actions that, while selfish for the individual, the combined effect of that produces value for society. Through this process we drive innovation without massive amounts of bureaucracy and are capable of relegating the role of government to national defense and protection of infrastructure.

What I AM advocating is completely changing the system of governance OVER these corporations and using another corporation type to do it.

Traditionally, Democrats favor more government and spend more on "taking care of people"

Alternatively, Republicans favor less government and spend more on "ensuring people take care of themselves"

So this is the classic argument of "taking care of other" Vs. "taking care of self".

The tragic irony is that we need to do BOTH and we have been too divided to see that we really need each others perspective.

More tragic, is that the traditionally intellectual people who encourage public debate, such as Bill Moyers, are being pushed out of the political area in favor of the pundits such as Ann Coulter and Bill Mahr - in other words, it's becoming "entertainment". I am not in any way faulting those two parties - I listen to them - but what I AM saying is that "reasoned debate of facts" is being replaced by "entertainment" and this is DANGEROUS to a democracy which requires an informed populace to function. Even Sesame Street, on PBS a publicly funded channel, is under attack as being partisan. This is retarded.

So historically, what the Democrats did to ensure that corporations did not send their kids down into mines and chopped off body parts did not end up in the food of the population by careless meat packing plants (this heralded the creation of the FDA), was to put the role of regulation in the hands of government - and thus started the classic "Democrat/Republican Debate" which was a HORRIBLE error in judgment.

This error in judgment consolidated power BACK into the hands of government under the auspices of regulation. So now you have a huge bureaucracy that exists whose sole purpose is there to REGULATE your life and the life of your company.

On the flip side, what you have is the corporate model which says profit to shareholders above ALL other concerns. We can go into specifics of this later, but the point is that BY DEFINITION corporations HAD TO BUY the regulators and now we have a opposing polarity in government called lobbyists. LOBBYISTS WERE A REACTION TO THE REGULATORS.

So what we have thought was working REALLY wasn't working for the last 200 years
but it's weaknesses were not exposed until we entered a FLAT WORLD.

When we entered a FLAT WORLD and globalization really kicked in, we saw the upheaval first hand with the World Trade Organization (WTO). This is the stage this drama between lobbyists and corporations is now playing out on on AND WE HAVE FORGOTTEN WE NEED BOTH.

We need corporations to reward people for being efficient and to encourage efficiency so we can progress as a society as capitalism is driven by the engine of change. The Boom/Bust cycle of business that says there is a built in rise and fall of EVERY corporation once it outlives it's usefulness. It's goal is to just find new ways to continue to GROW until it outlives it's usefulness (which the PEOPLE determine).

We need regulators to ensure that the greed of some people does not get too far out of hand such as in the case of ENRON which led to the creation of Sarbanes Oxley regulations. There is also the work day being a reasonable 8-10 hours and not 16 - we owe that to regulators. There are countless examples on each side both positive and negative.

The problem with BOTH corporations and regulators is that they LIMIT OUR FREEDOM in WAYS WE DON'T KNOW.

Once the media was bought by the corporations and lobbyists replaced regulators a new problem emerged. There was no one advocating for the people anymore. Back door deals between regulators and lobbyists REMOVED THE people from the process and with the media owned by the owners of the lobbyists (who are also interested in entertaining you) - we have been effectively removed from the political process.

If you do not believe me, then look up your SIC code for your type of business and you will find that it has now been replaced by a NASIC code. Were you involved in this decision? Was there a debate? Was there even a news broadcast?

This is where we are today.

Sure there are pockets of advocacy but advocacy is NOT a built in structural part of our democracy. What we have been told is that Regulators good - Corporations bad - or vice versa, and what we need to realize is that the problem comes from separating them in an NON-TRANSPARENT way.


The role of Advocate must be institutionalized into some protected structure in society otherwise we will find that there is no one advocating for US.

A Modest Proposal:

An Advocacy Corporation would:

1. Have as it's ONLY Legal Responsibility being an advocate or a protector for something that provides some kind of value to the people
   
2. Have an advocacy charter (which outlines it's values)
   
3. Invests in companies, people, resources, social programs, government that are supportive of the advocacy charter
   
4. Allows people to own stock in it (it may or may not make a profit)
   
5. Allows people who donate to it to receive a tax deduction from the federal government (as this corporation is providing a function of government as we know it today which over time the government can stop providing once the ecosystem of advocacy corporations is in place)
   
6. Be fully transparent to the public in all of it's dealings
   
7. Own a news organization that is NOT DRIVEN BY PROFIT (i.e. it is immune to pressures to generate profits)
   
8. Cannot acquire OTHER Advocacy Corporations (although they CAN work closely together)
   
9. Supports a "voting" system for "advocates" that fall into the advocacy charter and once a specific number of "votes", based on the charter, an infusion of cash is invested from the stockholders money to that specific "advocate"
   
   

This need not be stodgy either. If say, you want to create an Advocacy Corporation to provide a different economic incentive for Timbaland to produce his music in "positive and upbeat way" and not make it all about "sex drugs and violence" and the corporations are saying "no, he needs to produce music that sells", then you can do that (right now all you can do is boycott the music company).

In other words, the creation of the Advocate Corporation type preserves the essence of the capitalistic system to ensure that it can never become communistic or socialistic (the Republican goal) AND it gives the Advocates collectively MORE POWER than the corporations (the Democrat goal) AND the Government . It also makes lobbyists functionally obsolete (Fringe Benefit).