Barnes also shows how there could be per-capita dividends from trusts created for the commons' other two sectors. For example, treating the capital market as common property, a trust could charge a usage fee to publicly traded corporations for selling stocks and for having been given various rights such as limited liability, perpetual life, copyrights, patents, and the like.
Over time the "propertizing" of the commons would amass a portfolio worth trillions of dollars that could be used to fund three "universal birthrights;" a regular dividend to everyone, an opportunity endowment for each new child, and health insurance for everyone. Clearly, Barnes' proposal is a very expansive one and, superficially at least, a seductive one. Barnes appeals to capitalists, wage earners, lawyers, economists, commons entrepreneurs, and others to help build the commons sector into a full-fledged capitalism 3.0 and shows how it can benefit each of these diverse groups.
In Closing
Barne's proposals are among the most unique I've ever read on capitalism. His advocacy of pollution rights, though, really troubles me. Every human being has a sacred obligation to nature and a moral obligation to generations yet unborn to respect nature.
Notes
Barnes, P. Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2006,
Part 8. Shared Capitalism
Jeff Gates wrote a book jam packed with ideas about what he calls "shared capitalism for the twenty-first century."1 His is a decidedly populist view, not surprising since he was counsel to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee (1980-87), working with Senator Russell Long of Louisiana, son of populist governor and U.S. Senator Huey P. Long. In this role, Gates crafted federal law on employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) and pension plans.
Capitalism creates financial capital, not capitalists, he notes. Moreover, most financial capital is held by institutional investors, the absentee owners of public corporations. This, he says, creates a "detached and disconnected capitalism largely on automatic" with investment decisions devoid of longer-term concerns, including the costs of externalization.
Unshared capitalism, while made to order by the corpocracy, is totally unfit for a democracy. His solution is to make widespread ownership a specific goal of national economic policy. His opinion that people take responsibility for what they own resonates with me, having watched for two decades party-going renters misbehave and scar property in an ocean-side condominium where my wife and I owned and never rented a unit.
Achieving inclusive ownership on a national scale will take, he believes, a political era like the progressives and populists of the 1930s and a leader like FDR, or like President Obama possibly. Gates identifies six strategic initiatives: a public opinion poll that asks the right questions about inclusive ownership and informs politicians about the public will, which he believes would support populist capitalism; a government declaration of widespread ownership as a national economic goal; a bipartisan commission on economic empowerment, which he believes will conclude the desirability of widespread prosperity; a government office of asset ownership; a regular assessment of what the impact of inclusive ownership has been; and an annual ownership survey to determine who owns what.
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