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Corporatisation of Politics

 
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The market, yeah? It has companies acting in it. The companies are owned by shareholders. Certain of the shareholders tend to band together to provide advice to the companies in which they invest as to how to conduct their business. The shareholder groups that band together and are listened to tend to be the groups with large aggregate stakes. For example, pension funds are (in the UK) represented by the National Association of Pension Funds and they issue widely accepted guidance on things like corporate governance, even though their remit is pensions policy.

What I am proposing is something along those lines: to create new entities which represent shareholder groupings of roughly consistent political philosophy, with the aim of having that philosophy shape the recommendations that the grouping provides to its members with reference to the members' interests in companies that are active in the market. By this mechanism, you unionise(!) shareholderhood (while retaining individual shareholder autonomy) and allow for the excercise of politically-coloured control/influence over corporate entities.

The ultimate goal is that nations (or subnations) will themselves become corporate entities. Really, we're tweaking the democratic form, so that
a) the right to vote is tied in with the extent of your investment in the corporate entity, thus bringing the structure of political engagement closer to the reality of political engagement; and
b) by retaining the typical AGM cycle, the shareholders of the nation entities are able to exercise more frequent and therefore better control over the activities of those appointed - no longer elected! - manage the affairs of your beloved nation entity.

Everyone wins.

calum, Mar 29 2012

Wikipedia: British East India Company http://en.wikipedia.../East_India_Company
//he ultimate goal is that nations (or subnations) will themselves become corporate entities.// not to put too fine a point on it, but isn't there a certain precedent here? In fact, isn't the whole corporate structure the very same financial vehicle that allowed nation states to go forth and do all that colonisation so effectively. The early colonies of the Americas were run on these well established Company lines, and the ultimate formation of the United States was fundamentally a management takeover - all that Bill of Rights stuff, the new company's "Mission Statement". - and the flags - just look at the flags! [zen_tom, Mar 29 2012]

Shareholder Groups http://duckduckgo.c...lder+groups%22&kp=1
Plenty of them it seems. [DrBob, Mar 30 2012]

[link]






       <Abraham Lincoln Inc.>   

       "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in a liberal regulatory framework, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created as minority shareholders ...."   

       </Abraham Lincoln Inc.>
8th of 7, Mar 29 2012
  

       //the right to vote is tied in with the extent of your investment in the corporate entity// So, I have to pay to vote on who runs the country?   

       If I understand correctly (which happens from time to time), this is basically political parties but with subscriptions and with frequent referenda, no?   

       Also, how does the government ever get to do things that need to be done, but which nobody likes? Under the present system, they get to do plenty of things which don't need to be done, and which nobody likes; some improvement is needed, but I don't see how this delivers it.
MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 29 2012
  

       //this is basically political parties but with subscriptions and with frequent referenda, no?//
You are understanding the words but not the implications of the words. If the statehood is corporatised then nations can interact with each other in ways currently unavailable to them - they can own each other, they can be owned, they can take out security over each other, they can trade nation assets with one another, they can - ulp - securitise their various obligations and huckster the fuck out of one another and so on and so forth. This, however, is an idea that has been done to death on the halfbakery (by me and others). The idea here is to allow for politics to interfere in the market interactions, rather than straight ahead corporate self interest. And, sweet irony, it is the corporate form that is the vehicle through which democracy is achieved, with active, voluntary participation.
calum, Mar 29 2012
  

       The idea of a charge for being unionised is electrochemically puzzling.
MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 29 2012
  

       Everybody wins except for people who are not in the market for whatever reason.
rcarty, Mar 29 2012
  

       "We'll have a coupon day."
MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 29 2012
  

       With this coupon I hereby have enough market worth to submit all of my political power to this party for the next four years.
rcarty, Mar 29 2012
  

       //isn't there a certain precedent here?//
Yep, in terms of corporation nationhood. My astounding innovation - which came to me during a "Hot Topics for the 2012 AGM Season" seminar - is to add politics explicitly into the mix.
  

       //Everybody wins except for people who are not in the market for whatever reason.//
Absolutely and in this regard the proposed corporatisation of politics is identical in effect to the present "adults can vote" approach.
calum, Mar 30 2012
  

       What happens when the company decides it needs to downsize?
RayfordSteele, Mar 30 2012
  

       Rather than being a new idea this sounds rather like the current reality to me. Aren't activist shareholder groups rather baked calum? And aren't nations, the democratic ones anyway, already corporate entities? Even the 4 or 5 year AGM is essentially the same. A beauty parade where the shareholders/electorate get to vote for which capitalist is going to screw them over for the next couple of years.
DrBob, Mar 30 2012
  

       This whole notion of corporatising politics smacks of some sort of hobbesian functionalism. Isn't saying corporatisation of politics the same as making a person out of people. Dumbass Hobbes would probably say that politics is already corporatized but some parts of the person are sick or are otherwise not working in unison. This idea is to use the market as the mechanism to align all the body parts into the very image of godlyke man, using none other than His imperceptible guiding appendage.
rcarty, Mar 31 2012
  
      
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