_faq

Related: CoBuy, co-own, General Public Law, Thesis

Q: What is this all about?
A: Incorporation (as in "the creation of a productive body") is the original and only valid purpose of government, but consumers and citizens lose control over time because divisible ownership in physical sources does not flow to those who pay prices or taxes above the real costs of producing those objectives.

Q: So you are saying corporations should take over the government?  You're a bit late.  They're already in control!
A: Well, we must make GNU corporations that treat any price above cost as an investment from the user that paid it so every consumer becomes part owner in the physical sources required for that production.  Once that is running, and once we have a currency backed by (issued against) those physical sources, then allowing money to buy votes will not be a problem, as it will simply be each owner exerting the weight they acheived as measured by others in the community that were willing to pay for the skills that person offered.

Q: What's the big deal about ownership?
A: Owners rule.  Private property already insures privacy, but humans also need public property to maximize their economic efficiency.  Representative government is one way to manage joint holdings, and collective private ownership is another way.  The advantage of collective private ownership is the opportunity for the initial investors to add any constraint as a "Term of Use" for that property while retaining full control.

Q: Constraint?  Are you saying freedom must be restricted?
A: It is power that must be bridled so that freedom and abundance can grow through cooperation.  Usury (misdirected profit) relies upon artificial scarcity through power to concentrate larger individual gains while retarding communal growth.  This is the same pattern described by the Nash Equilibrium and can be resolved through a legally binding inter-owner trade agreement that insures each consumer grows according to the amount they are willing to invest as measured by the price above cost (profit) that they pay.

Q: The market has already chosen capitalism.
A: The same could be said of feudalism during that age.  The future will prove or disprove the point, but only if we can get booted.  An ecocomics simulation could also help verify or disprove the claim.

Q: What do you mean 'booted'?
A: There must be some initial investment in physical sources by those who are willing to apply this contract.

Q: What claim is being made?  That an owner can apply arbitrary restrictions to their property?
A: The claim is that freedom is determined by access to sources and that access is determined by ownership.  Instead of condemning private ownership, we show how it may be used to apply an agreement that insures the plea for growth (a consumer's payment of price above cost = what is usually called profit) is treated as an investment from that very same user - so control remains in (flows to) the hands of the users, even while their choices and membership are dynamic.

Q: Isn't scarcity an integral part of a vibrant economy?
A: Scarcity only increases profit, never wages nor product.  Treating profit as user investment removes that faulty incentive from owner options while very likely increasing wage since the consumer already pays wages + profit in normal capitalism, while this contract drives profit toward zero as price meets cost.

Q: But who will invest without profit?
A: Citizens already invest in public utilities through taxes expecting only product, never profit.  Likewise, commercial product consumers also expect (and receive) only product while paying those costs plus the externality of usury.

Q: Why are you trying to protect the consumer instead of the worker?
A: We are all consumers.

Q: But how can you claim workers won't be exploited when they are not the owners, and therefore have no control?
A: Those workers are also consumers of their own needs.  We must protect their ability to consume, but working is not a need in itself - it is a hurdle to be eliminated on our road to leisure.

Q: Are you claiming unemployment is good?
A: When the owners of physical sources are the only consumers of those objects there is never a concern about automating that production because to do so only decreases the cost of production while eliminate the drudgery of work.  But when the owners are a random set of initial investors seeking to keep profit as some sort of reward, the workers become human resources to be exploited as though they were just another input of production.

Q: We already have competition; there are no true monopolys.
A: It is true that monopoly is rarely perfect, but neither is competition.  Profit also measures monopoly, otherwise why would a consumer ever pay more than cost?

Q: If profit is the problem, then why do non-profits not prevail?
A: The payment of profit is not a problem in itself, as it is simply an inverse measure of development.  The payment of profit should be allowed; it is only the misapplication of that payment that keeps each user from growing.  The trouble is a general form of usury caused by the misappropriation of profit by owners which then constructs the inverted incentive of artificial scarcity.  Non-profit corporations do not solve this problem either because the profit is still not treated as user investment, but is instead "turned into" wages or invested by the current owners in whatever way they see fit as so-called 'representatives' of the users instead of control flowing to those users as real ownership which would allow them to replace board members that attempted to overpay themselves and also implements direct democracy with vote weighted by holdings.

Q: May I charge money for Free Objects?
A: Yes, the GNU General Public Law is a "'commercial grade'" free (as in freedom) trade agreement.

Q: How much may I charge?
A: There is no limit.  Some sort of auction system might help maximize resource utilization to keep object prices above cost only during high demand.

Q: As an owner, how much of the price can I claim as costs (including wages)?
A: There is no limit.  Profit is separated from wages as the number of owners per physical source increases.  Workers are then hired by the collecitve owners explicitly instead of the labor being 'assumed' by some of the owners who may otherwise overpay themselves.

Q: Can I apply the GNU General Public Law to a physical source such as a rototiller and then rent it to customers?
A: Yes, in this case the 'Object' becomes the ephemeral 'Objective' of that User or the rivalrous slice of time as the duration of that rent.  Allowing users to bid against each other for time slots will maximize profit (the winning user's investment).

Q: So if a car factory were under such a contract, anyone could just wander in off the street and try to build their own automobile?
A: No, no.  Shareholders will protect their investments from strangers and/or vandals and normal wear as usual by requiring a rent floor be paid - even if the renter is a part owner, and may also require such things as tests or insurance to qualify.  The restrictions each group of owners impose over that particular physical source are arbitrary and there is no limit, but the currency issued against those physical sources will decrease as non-owning users assess those objects as being not worth the claimed costs.

Q: Why are you doing this, why not just maximize you own profit?
A: Because if we don't stop these profiteering feudalists they will eventually hire vassals to come take all of our resources for the purpose of stopping our production.  That is the ultimate problem with allowing any form of usury: it finally creates war to destroy capital for the purpose of further increasing usury.

Q: Why would owners tie their own hands in this way to forgo profit?
A: So the physical sources of production (such as land, water, plants, animals, buildings, tools) that they need for production are available to them without paying tribute to another.  It is the price we pay for freedom through cooperation.

Q: But isn't profit the prime motivator of human society?
A: Product is the only valid purpose of production.  A portion of price, interest and rent are initially meaningful and useful for reclaiming the labor expended, resources lent or opportunity lost, but these are almost always taken to far, and at the instant that an owner is paid just because they won't let the users have "at cost" access to the sources, they have begun 'earning' usury.  Most humans only expect to get paid for the work they do, but after they begin hiring employees, and as their business grows, the owners usually find there is much to be made (taken) by disallowing source access.  We must eliminate those externalizing actions before the beast destroys the entire earth in the name of progress.