The Importance of Ownership

As of January, 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that a corporation can contribute an unlimited amount of money to political campaigns. While political action committees (PACs) have been pooling campaign contributions for years, this opens the floodgates even further. In plain English, corporations can buy our politicians so that they make laws which benefit them ahead of citizens. The purpose of a democratically elected government is to serve the people. We vote to elect representatives who are supposed to look out for our needs. Clearly, that has not been the case for many years. At the time of the 2010 decision, Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21 summed it up best: "Under today's decision, insurance companies, banks, drug companies, energy companies and the like will be free to each spend $5 million, $10 million or more of corporate funds to elect or defeat a federal candidate -- and thereby to buy influence over the candidate's positions on issues of economic importance to the companies."

"We are moving to an age where we won't have the senator from Arkansas or the congressman from North Carolina, but the senator from Wal-Mart and the congressman from Bank of America," said Melanie Sloan, director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The powers granted to corporations threaten our democracy, freedom and our future. In addition to those mentioned above is foreign competition including American corporations that operate off shore. Because we have to compete with people who are able to work for ten cents on the dollar or less, millions of jobs have been taken from our economy over the last few decades. While the results have been ugly, the coming wave of technology will create a displacement of jobs that is completely unprecedented. The jobs so many of us depend on will no longer be available.

Automation with computer programs, robotics, and AI will forever eliminate jobs not just for us but for our foreign competitors as well. Robots do not require days off, paychecks, health insurance or 401(k) plans. If you think this sounds futuristic, think again. Take a look on YouTube and see the technology that’s commercially available today. Automation is only a scary thing because of the current state of ownership.

Imagine a company that employs one hundred people. This company is owned by one person. If all one hundred jobs are automated, the owner will become phenomenally wealthy. But what will happen to the hundred families who no longer have jobs? What if this becomes a trend and such a massive number of jobs are eliminated that unemployment soars to an all time high? This is entirely possible and even probable. The Equanomics model seeks a more equitable ownership of companies. In our example above, if all one hundred families have an ownership stake in the company, automation won't be a bad thing.

We must understand that automation is inevitable and that jobs have always been reduced over time in every business. This is best illustrated by a well established industry; Agriculture: