Utopian Vision: Citizen Contractors Replace Corporations, Unions

Modern societal organization is composed of large scale institutions such as corporations and unions. The problem is that large corporations dominate the private economy sucking profits while minimizing labor costs. In other words their aim is to pay the people working for them as little as possible while enriching a few at the top. Hence you have outsourcing, hiring of illegals and obscene CEO pay among other maladies. Likewise, government workers are mainly unionized resulting in huge pension and health care costs and inefficient work performance since unions protect their workers from being fired regardless of their performance. This has put a stranglehold on many municipal governments which would be better off contracting out the work and firing city employees. The only problem is that the work would be contracted out to large corporations who would replace good paying jobs with low paid workers taking the difference in profits. What is the solution to this syndrome?

The idea is to set things up so that society serves and empowers the individual worker/citizen. The laws regarding corporations need to be changed. They should no longer be given the rights of personhood as they now are. The employer-employee relationship, which is basically a master- servant relationship, needs to be changed. Corporations, most  of which are now publicly owned via stock, should be set up in such a way that stock ownership is extended to all members of society and not just a select few. The corporation would still be publicly owned except now it would be owned by all members of the public and not just those who had the money to invest in stock, in other words not by just the investor class. Each citizen would have the rights of a contractor and not just the right to be hired as an employee. That means that various entities, government and corporate, would contract with citizens in such a way that the citizen and not the entity is empowered. Rating systems which monitor the citizen/contractor's performance would allow high performers to negotiate from a stronger position. Low performers would have an incentive to improve or else face the prospect of lower pay for their efforts.

Government would function in such  a way as to provide a giant  job search matching citizen/contractors to various openings that meet their requests for location, hours, working conditions, full or part time etc. Corporate power would be diminished to the individual level.  Corporate ownership would be society wide. Union membership would be society wide. That is each citizen (and not just a few union members) would benefit from union membership. A union member would be basically just a  citizen. For  example, unions ususally negotiate with corporations for health care benefits.  If health care is society wide such as in a universal health care system, then there is no need for a variety of unions to negotiate this benefit just for their members. In a democracy all the citizens should be able to vote for benefits that would apply to all members of society and not just to union members. By the same token, unions would not be in a position to protect "deadwood," non or low performing workers.  This would be reflected in each worker's job performance rating as an individual and in subsequent contracts. High performers would be able to command and  negotiate more money for the same contract than low performers. 

Small business enterprises could be started by individuals or groups and be privately owned. Once they reached a certain size, they would have to go public much as they "go public" today after they reach a  certain size.  The only difference would be that public ownership would be  extended to all members of  society. The  original owners of the business could be "bought out" by society mush as they are bought out today by the infusion of cash from an initial public offering (IPO).  So the essentials of entrepreneurship would  remain the same. The difference would be that corporations as entities in themselves would be disempowered and individuals would be empowered. Government and the corporate world would function in much the  same way in their relationships with individual workers. Government inefficiency is eliminated  by virtue of the fact that individual workers who didn't perform well would not be considered as seriously in the next round of contracts. There would be no need for firing someone. They just might not be given a subsequent contract or they wouldn't be given it on such favorable terms. However, non performance of a contract would be handled much the same as it is today. Managerial pay including that for CEOs need not be substantially higher than that for any other kind of work. Those qualified for any particular type of work would be taken into consideration for any openings. Their performance rating from previous contracts would be taken into account, and then the best person or persons would be chosen in such a way as to provide society with the best quality and quantity output for the monies expended in pay.

Just as huge amounts of money and power should be taken away from corporate management and ownership, the same should apply to government. Lobbying should be outlawed. Influence peddling should be eliminated. The revolving door between government and corporations should be  restricted. Political advertising should be curtailed.  It is by these means that relatively small groups of individuals seek to dominate the entire society for their own benefit and to the detriment of the vast majority. Their attempts at concentrating power and financial benefits in the hands of a relative few is something that should be severely restrained. Society should be self regulating and self organizing in such a way that each citizen has roughly the same power. Power and financial benefits need not be exactly the same for each individual; there can be a range of outcomes dependent on each individual's ability and performance, but no one individual or group should be able to dominate the entire society either politically or economically.

Preferensism is a philosphy of societal organization which accomplishes most of what is desirable in terms of the dispersion and distribution of power among all individual citizen voter/contractors. It enables the self organization and self regulation of society by providing a mechanism for linking financial rewards to quantity and quality of work performed. It empowers the individual by expanding the scope of available jobs, by providing a giant database of work available under a variety of working conditions. This is all integrated in such a way that all the desired work gets done as efficiently as possible. The individual is empowered. Equality of input to the system is guaranteed; equality of outcome is not. Dominant submissive work relationships such as employer-employee relationships are eliminated.