The First Advocacy Corporation (a Model)

The Problem:

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.


The Solution:

Now imagine if the people who created the movie "The Corporation", incorporated into the form of an "Anti-Corporation" or Advocacy Corporation and Jesus Christ was the CEO of THAT corporation....

• THEY would now have protected status in society (like the FDA does), so they no longer need to make money - as an advocacy organization they get money via subsidies, directly from the federal government.

• THEIR advocacy charter would state that they are advocating for changing the role of corporations in society to more effectively balance individual needs with group needs (in society we need both and they recognize that). THIS CHARTER CANNOT BE CHANGED.

• You and I can also BOTH get tax deductions for donating to THEM AND can directly invest in THEM and be issued non-voting stock.
  

• THEY now must have a list that THEY maintain of corporations, organizations and people who share THEIR advocacy goals (advocates).
  

• THEY MUST also now take federal money, invested money and donated money and DIRECTLY invest in these corporations, organizations and people (THEY can also be one of these companies), in a fully transparent way (accessible to anyone via a web site), based on some "stated point system" (of course stating why the "advocates" got the points THEY gave them).
  

• THEY now MUST also use that money to maintain THEIR own media consisting of reporters, bloggers and other advocacy tools. According to FCC regulations, as THEY are now a federally sanctioned government entity, THEY get free media time (like a political candidate) so a media corporation CANNOT block THEM or their message in any way (we would have to make this so also).

...now, try to tell me THIS would not change the game forever (and set Jesus Christ free to make his own decisions :)).


Help me make creating the "Advocacy Corporation" or the "Anti-Corporation" type, the main election issue for 2008.

The Advocate Vs. The Regulator

There is a sharp difference between regulation and advocacy.


Regulation seeks to enforce penalties against offending organizations. It requires a HUGE bureaucracy which is both costly and dangerous (unfair privilege and power can easily be exerted). Oftentimes you need a oversight committee to "regulate the regulators". It also creates the WRONG incentive. The incentive created is one of "well, if everyone is following the rules we need to have something to do so let's regulate MORE". In fact, let's use regulation as a form of income. If this regulation framework is an outsourced corporation to do the bidding of government, you REALLY have a problem (that should be obvious by now).

Advocacy on the other hand is providing information to make voluntary choices. It's an Opt-In process and requires little or NO bureaucratic involvement. You just see what you like and you say "I want to tell people about that". There is no incentive to profit from the regulation and you REALLY don't need much government involvement or oversight at all. What you do need however is the TRUTH or at least the "advocates perspective" and you MUST ensure that all advocates are heard equally.


So let's go over some examples of how an "advocacy framework" would work compared to a "regulatory framework". The ultimate goal of creating corporations based on the Advocacy Corporation Type (instead of a C Corp for example), is to build an ecosystem that "self regulates". This is not to say that all situations will benefit from just advocacy but it having an "advocacy layer" in society and formally institutionalizing it into some kind of transparent structure (instead of a "lobbying class"), could prove useful.

So onto the examples:

________________________________
Problem:
-
Chopped up body parts are ending up in our food becasue the meat packing plants provide poor safety conditions for their workers (pointed out by Uptown Sinclair in "The Jungle").

--Regulatory:
Create an FDA to FORCE companies improve safety by having "Inspections" and ensuring that companies follow the prescriptive guidance of the regulatory body OR THEY CAN'T SELL their products and will be shut down for endangering "public safety".
->
Result: Public is PROTECTED from UNKNOWN dangers; Company cannot continue behavior
-> Option For Corporations: BUY the FDA; Fix the public safety issue (Do Cost/Benefit Analyis)

--Advocacy:
Create 100 companies that are of an Advocacy Type, each with it's own media, and provide an unstoppable media awareness campaign; suggest practices that would allow the 100 companies to invest in and transparently endorse companies (i.e. provide financial incentives) that DO follow their recommendations (similar to how ISO 9000 works + additional financial incentive) - provide tax deductions for people who drove companies to act more "socially responsible".
->
Result: Public is INFORMED about KNOWN dangers; Company CAN continue behavior
->
Option For Corporations: PR Campaign To React to "Damaging Information"; fix safety issue; public pressure too great - can't lobby govt -can't buy regulator - can't apply media spin effectively - MUST act responsible [This has now been made the Only reasonable option to create shareholder value - the other options are discontinue product or ignore the danger but THAT will not increase shareholder value]

________________________________

Some problems like corporations sending children down into mines or issues of the maximum number of hours people SHOULD be working CANNOT be addressed by Advocacy alone they need to be addressed by regulation. So it appears like Advocacy is ONE form of governance and regulation is another. When we had a healthy media, that was not consolidated and owned by corporations (5 Corporations OWN the major media in this country today), we HAD advocates and advocates when met with resistance, kicked it up a notch and sought legal relief.

Now the pendulum has swung the other way. EVERYTHING is handled by regulation. Sexual harassment, inappropriate conduct, hate speech, jokes in poor taste, general levels of immaturity and all points in between are points of LITIGATION and REGULATION. This is VERY dangerous to a democracy based on notions of freedom.

So BECAUSE we lost our media to the corporations we have reacted by OVER LEGISLATING and OVER REGULATING. Clearly if someone tells a joke in poor taste you should not be able to press charges against a company for not "ensuring that people don't tell jokes in poor taste". We are not robots. More importantly, this is the PERFECT place for an Advocacy Corporation type to work within. Just create some bad press for a company that allows it's employees to tell jokes in poor taste and they can then come out and say "look, this was the joke: - do you find this funny? - No? OK, we'll we will try to set up some internal policy to discourage this" - and not risk getting penalized for "discriminating" against people who "tell bad jokes in poor taste". It's a joke - someone is going to be offended - the workplace does not need to be this place of unreal people (but I am getting off topic).

The point is you could actually have Advocacy Corporations promoting "supporting companies that allow their employees to tell jokes in poor taste" and other ones "discouraging companies that allow their employees to tell jokes in poor taste" - and the government would have NO INVOLVEMENT whatsoever here other than providing tax deductions for people who donate to EITHER Advocacy Corporation.

Each advocacy corporation in this sense, would have it's own set of people and organizations it actively supports and invests in though a transparent process. Bill Mahr, George Carlin and HBO might be some of the people and organizations "supported" by the advocacy corporation that agrees with telling jokes in poor taste, for example. The Christian Coalition and Pat Robertson may be standing on the side of the advocacy corporation (AC) that disagrees with telling jokes in poor taste. The people would donate to both and the AC's would invest in their "advocates" - maybe each would have a set of reporters reporting on "offenses" or perhaps the negative impact of creating a "robot like" employment environment. So you see the AC is very multifaceted.


Now, lets look at something a lot more practical.

________________________________
Problem:
Your cable company has no respect for your time; your time is worth $50 an hour and they are careless with your time - putting you on hold for hours at a time transferring you between departments trying to get "the left hand to know what the right one is doing".

Regulatory:
-> Force companies to respect your time and collaborate more effectively [not going to happen]
Advocacy:
-> Create an AC that goes to people like you and reports on these behaviors that ONLY invests in companies that have respect for people's time (that is the advocacy charter). This over time will change the game because if a company could get a call from anyone and all of the sudden get an infusion of cash they may train their people better; they may collaborate better they may get systems in place that help this transition more efficiently; Your AC may even have a software engineer as an "advocate" that you can refer to these companies and fix their internal problems. So you have a company that did not care about "customer service" and all of the sudden because the company is "afraid" that someone might call and be someone who could drop cash into the company as an investment - the customer service improves (i.e. you never know who's going to call).

So here are just some thoughts on how a Advocacy differs from Regulatory and how in most cases, its the better way to go.

Help me make debating the merits of the Advocacy Corporation the 2008 Election Issue.

What Is An Advocacy Corporation Type?

An Advocacy Corporation Type 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).

Help me make creating the Advocacy Corporation THE ISSUE DEBATED for the 2008 Election - Do that and the system will NEVER be the same again :)

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).

Introducing the Advocacy Corporation

Few people can argue that the United States has radically changed over the last 10 years - but many wonder why.

It is not uncommon knowledge that corporations are here to make a profit. That is a good thing - we want a healthy economy. Capitalism is the ONLY economic system that preserves free choice by letting the market decide what is good and bad for the people. Yet what you may not know is that PROFIT IS THE ONLY LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY of a corporation.


THEY MUST MAKE A PROFIT FOR THEIR SHAREHOLDERS. It does not matter how they do that according to the legal definition of a corporation. Even if the people in the Corporation were a bunch of peace and love environmentalists or Born Again Christians or if Jesus Christ himself were at the head of a Corporation - HE WOULD STILL BE LEGALLY REQUIRED TO MAKE A PROFIT.

In other words, this has nothing to do with a person - good, bad or indifferent. The structure demands this behavior (it's amoral like a building), and this structure is cast in the mold of a psychopath (i.e. they have zero empathy), so all it MUST do is make more profit upon more profit upon more profit regardless of the consequences (externalities). Period. It's like trying to argue with a raging bull - you cannot reason with it - just get the hell out of it's way (however it is good that we have good upstanding moral people who run corporations - otherwise we would REALLY have a problem).


This is all but an annoyance in a world that has borders (i.e. they only put shows on television and in theaters that have sex, violence, drug use and pointing out people's faults because that's what sells - Jerry Springer taught us that) - so we don't get intellectually stimulated or engaged - small price to pay.

However, in a FLAT WORLD - where you are competing with every other man woman and child on this planet for a job (and you probably don't know that) - this translates into outsourcing your job to China. Your employer can build the widget cheaper there. You are expendable. Tough luck - you lazy people, pull yourselves up by the bootstraps, stop expecting the state to take care of you and learn something new :).

If only it was that simple. At least the media informs the people so we CAN know we need to start retraining now and we have the government, social programs, lawyers, advocacy groups, churches, the ACLU, ad nauseum to make sure that people don't end up on the streets.... that was 10 years ago.

Where We Were 10 Years Ago:

So what has changed? Take a look.

Where We Are Today:

What We Need NOW - Introducing the Advocacy Corporation

Without some force advocating that the people of a democracy remain informed - a democracy is dead. We are now at this point where the amount of money required to continue to inform the people is growing exponentially in a time where there are changes occurring on the planet RIGHT NOW that are as significant as the invention of the light bulb (and you probably do not know that).

Let me explain some things to you. Thomas Friedman wrote in the book the "The World Is Flat" that AFTER the dot com bust billions of dollars of fiber optic cable was laid down to China and India - this effectively connected the whole world together on a global web based platform.

The REAL reason behind the dot com boom was that businesses saw that they could take a process, break it apart and digitize it so that they could farm that process out across the planet to the cheapest labor market (i.e. seek the CHEAPEST way of producing a widget for the dollar and the shareholders of the corporations). Our educational system, political system and our social social systems - nothing we have right now though government or the media HAS REMOTELY PREPARED US FOR THIS.

Put simply, very soon I can imagine a day where you are in a hospital and will request a meal that will be taken by a call center in India, sent to the short order cook in your hospital over fiber cable under the ocean and then sent up to your room. This is the model of efficiency (since India has cheaper labor than here) and MUST be followed. Don't believe it? I write software to do this kind of thing called "work-flow automation" software and it will put the lowest paid labor in a different country at the rate it's being used by big business.

What is needed right now is the next challenge to the American people to get a man on the moon and what we are getting is the outing of CIA agents, which even according to George Bush Sr. is treason - because their ambassador husband proved that Iraq had no yellow-cake uranium and this risked spoiling the party to invade a sovereign nation that has lots of oil. This is asinine and immature.

We have a real crisis on our hands and the media is actually NOT TELLING US THIS. most importantly, they are not giving us a framework to understand these events within - no context - just a lot of pundits spewing information. The truth is you are on your own - and you better be prepared - you NEED an Advocacy Corporation on your side.

We have the head of New Line Cinema spending 15 years to produce a movie that is 10 times better than ET called "The Last Mimsy" and it is only in theaters for less than 2 weeks.

We have a music producer called Timbaland who is a genius who will probably mainly end up producing songs that advocate sex, violence and drug use (but his skills can EASILY cross genres - his new album "Shock Value" - PROVES IT - as songs range from everything from collaborations with 50 Cent to collaborations with Fall Out Boy to collaborations with Elton John to collaborations with artists in India.


There is actually now a major financial incentive to keep people dumb and stupid and just "entertain" them:

Dumb and stupid people cannot compete with China or India in a FLAT world

Dumb and stupid people cannot complain when the Budget of The National Science Foundation is cut

Dumb and stupid people cannot understand how to act in their own best interests

Dumb and stupid people cannot vote effectively (they vote with their emotions and not fact)

Dumb and stupid people cannot exist in a functioning democracy or it will crumble


In these desperate times, we MUST protect the role of the advocate in society and to do that we need to institutionalize it. This will ensure that governments nor corporations can deprive people of what they need most in a functioning democracy: The Truth.


Join me in helping make creating a whole new type of corporation, the Advocacy Corporation, THE CENTRAL ISSUE DEBATED IN THE 2008 ELECTION.

I do not know how we are going to do this but if enough people believe in something ANYTHING is possible - go to YouTube and type in "Obama girl" :).

Thank You.