New Constitutional basis for re-establishing right to abortion

With the recent dismissal of the Constitutional basis for privacy and personal control of one’s body and property derived from the Fourteenth amendment (protecting “persons born or naturalized in the United States” i.e. irrelevant in protecting unborn entities), the proponents of the right to abortion need a new approach. With the decision that fetuses are a matter of controlling interest to the government (prenatal wards of the state, perhaps?), I propose that the Third Amendment now has relevance to this issue.

“No Soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner prescribed by law.”

The Government (Supreme Court, GOP, whoever) has apparently decided that the fetuses are not in control of the person in whose body they reside. The Supreme Court, etc, are demanding that these unborn non-citizens be involuntarily housed in nonconsensual wombs. Since the Supreme Court has chosen to conscript these “individuals” under Government control, the term “soldier” is not a far stretch to cover the relationship newly established. It is likely that the Third Amendment would also prohibit the Government (federal, state, and local) from compelling the quartering of postal workers, FBI/IRS/CIA agents, or any other governmentally controlled person. And so, the Government-”adopted” unborn wards should be properly prohibited from peacetime involuntary quartering. If the Government wants these fetuses, it must arrange alternate housing without the nonconsenting Owner of the womb. Wartime “baby factory” legislation will be required to be enacted to provide the needed “prescribed by law” condition.

A Marriage Proposal

MARRYING IGNORANCE AND BLISS

The world possesses many more problems than I personally suffer.  That detachment provides an atmosphere for both a dispassionate reflection and a regrettable disinterest (for these are real problems for many real people to whom I harbor no ill will).  When I might be affected by a problem directly, my judgment will likely be impaired by my emotional biases.  Such problems may not be the proper topics for my reasoned advice.  But when urged to overcome my disinterest, I might be expected to produce a balanced analysis of a problem and its fair resolution or, at least, amelioration.

Recently, I was asked to undertake just such an evaluation.  The issue is currently under US Supreme Court consideration: Same-gender marriage, or more specifically the banning or legal denial of them.  While the deliberations of those learned jurists on the specific matters of the cases under review will surely be both intensive and historic, I wish to examine the issues more broadly.

Choice of language may play an important role emotionally in how people react on this matter.  The phrase “same-gender” implies much less about the shared activities and roles of the partners than the term “homosexual” which subtly emphasizes “sex” as their primary binding force.

Similarly, “marriage” has connotations from many realms of human affairs: religion, culture, history, law, and even science.  In the USA, while we share history and law (and sometimes science), we have made the deliberate Constitutional decision to allow Americans to live bound only by their own choices of religion and culture and not those of others, even if the others are a majority.  Thus, “marriage” in the context of this debate here should be restricted to what marriage conveys legally and historically.

As far as I have heard, there has not been a single challenge against the anti-marriage legislation for the denial of sexual conjugal rights.  Sexual relationships between consenting adults are often still subject to the moral teachings of religions and cultures, but, both historically and legally, this aspect of humanity has not been limited to (or from) the state of matrimony.  In prohibiting same-gender couples to marry, governments do not seek to ban or restrict sexual activities, extramarital or not.  Any religiously or culturally based discomfort with such relations between homosexually coupled Americans is not provided any relief by legislation such as the Defense of Marriage Act and its kindred State legislation.

The effect of these anti-marriage actions is to deny the advantages (and obligations) of marriage “under the law”.  Why are there legally granted and required conditions related to marriage?  If the society is not seeking to promote sex, what is society attempting to favor in the differential treatment of “married” couples versus “unmarried” couples?  The answer is: FAMILY.

The family is considered the basic unit of society.  While individuals may exist alone or congregate into populations, once they gather to form societies, the need to develop rules for interactions amongst individuals leads to identifying “more than one” entities within the larger group and to defining the rights and expectations for these units.  The word family derives from the Latin word for household (including the servants (famulus)).  The household members are ultimately responsible for the care and behavior of all those who live within their walls.

When one looks up “marry” in the dictionary, it is quickly discovered that we use the verb with a variety of subjective and objective nouns.  The bride’s father will marry his daughter to her husband.  The bride and groom will marry their spouses.  The justice of peace will marry the couple.  This is not just sloppy use of language – this is a formation of a new family from the old structures, with parents “giving” the bride (and groom) into the marriage, the spouses “pledging” themselves to the marriage, and the community “witnessing” the exchange as a new binding contract under law and custom.

Traditionally, we as a society have sanctioned a lot of privacy to what happens within the walls of that family household.  Sex is one cultural and religious taboo that receives a blind eye within the sanctioning of marriage.  It is this carefree license to copulate that some anti-gay advocates wish to refrain from granting.  They do not wish to be seen as approving this behavior that violates their sense of propriety.  This is most commonly stated as the biblical “Adam-and-Eve-not-Adam-and-Steve”/”it’s not natural” argument.  

In this biblical tale, Eve was created from Adam’s rib (the world’s first clone) which would “naturally” endow her with his XY composition as a male amongst believers in modern biology. Her “supernatural” origin as Adam’s only option for companionship defeats the “natural” part of this viewpoint.

Further, overlooked by the quick readers of this tale, is that after God decides “it is not good that man should be alone,” He takes on the task to make him a helpmate and starts by creating “every beast of the field and every fowl of the air” as possible candidates for Adam to meet (and name). When Adam finds no helpmate amongst them, only then (three verses later) does the God of Moses created Eve as his helpmate.  If sex was God's purpose in creating a "helpmate,” it is a strange biblical endorsement of the consideration of bestiality.  Something more innocent (unashamed in their nakedness, as were all other creatures) was the original intent of this first marriage. Only in skipping ahead in the story to the “sinful parts” about the serpent, the apple, and the casting out does Adam finally get to "know" his wife two chapters later. Sex would appear to be as “natural” to Adam and Eve as clothing became – e.g. not some God-intended attribute, but a habit (habiliment) they picked up on their own.

But the biology of intercourse is not the purpose of families.  If it was, society might not sanction two octogenarians either getting or remaining married.  Families are about the psychology of joining with and caring for others, be they children or spouses.  Families, for society, are about sharing responsibility for finances and, more importantly, behavior both within the private family household walls and on the streets of the community.  Early response and adjustment within strong and stable families lessens the necessity of the community to “fix the problem”.

How then does the stigmatization of same-gender couples who wish to commit to a family contract help society?  Sadly, the anti-marriage argument is often a condemnation of the societal advantages given to married couples and their families.  Some advocates of denial point to the expense of granting spousal benefits to the additional “other half” of the proposed newly allowed couples.  By the same logic, those benefit-reducing advocates should be encouraging programs to promote divorce and lifelong decisions to remain single.  In advocating based on economics instead of humanity, they attack their own opposite-gender marriages in a terrible contradiction to the title of their keystone piece of legislation, the Defense of Marriage Act.

But, in this argument lays the common pathway to a solution.  If sincere about the burdensome impact of marriage on our government and legal system, then these advocates should work to remove the 1,138 (2003 estimates) federal statutory provisions in the United States Code in which benefits, rights, and privileges are contingent on marital status.  They might still decide to remain married themselves devoid of these advantages if the sex is good enough.  Or they too may recognize the other reasons that couples cleave together through better or worse, richer or poorer, under the power of their marriage vows.

Taking Aim at a Solution

Gun control is a controversial argument starter.  Many Americans have guns that have never misbehaved and therefore see no need to discipline those inanimate objects with great restrictions on their rights of association.  Such gun owners rightly perceive that “gun control” legislation is really “gun owner control”.

So, let’s start with both the owners and non-owners admitting to this simple truth – Gun do not need to be controlled; it is the users of guns that are the targets of our concern.

There exist many laws about what an individual is not permitted to do with a gun.  One may not assault or kill people.  One may not intimidate to rob or coerce people.  One may not damage public or other persons’ property.  But with a gun, one can do any of these activities.  The existence of these laws is to define a prohibition and the consequence (penalty) for breaching that prohibition.  The deterrent impact in knowing that some action is illegal does not always prevent the criminal act from being committed.  In our shared experience indeed, there are nearly 300,000 instances each year of guns being used in US to commit these violent forbidden acts.  There are likely more crimes than these recorded murders, assaults, and robberies, but within these reported crimes, one in thirty criminal uses of a gun apparently results in a homicide.

As numerous crime dramas have taught us, crime happens because of motive, means, and opportunity.  Laws prohibiting the various uses of guns work to counter-balance the motives of the criminal (with the perception of penalty to offset (illegal) gain) with a minor effect on the choice of means (i.e. if it was legal to poison a person but not to shoot him, some murderers might change their weapon (although perhaps not a mugger)).  “Gun owner control laws” seek to diminish the opportunity for criminals to commit their intended offenses.  The ease with which an available loaded gun may be employed to commit criminal acts (versus, say, bare knuckles as the weapon) is a great equalizer of the opportunity for more people to do so if so motivated.

Some people argue that it is the imbalance between the armed and unarmed citizens which is the real source of the problems of gun violence in our society.  That is, if all persons were armed with the easily used weapons of death and destruction, the advantage for the potential assailant would be decreased.  My early childhood education in cinematic Westerns suggests that the trained gunslinger might still outdraw the farmer (and the body-armored, semi-automatic armed bank robbers might feel sufficiently confident against a lobby of bank customers with pocket derringers).  Such gun owner rules requiring more people to carry guns do not seek to lower opportunity, but offer the prospect of increasing the counter-balance to motive in the face of ubiquitous defense and reprisal amongst the potential victims.  With the increase in mutual annihilation at the scene of crimes, we might indeed see a decrease in costly judicial proceedings (and corrections housing and supervision) against the deceased criminals not persuaded by this increased risk.

But perhaps lost in the solutions of the escalation of gun ownership as a deterrent on criminal motivation is the fact that 55% of gun deaths in the US are suicides (and another 5% are unmotivated accidents).  There are few, if any, documented instances of a suicidal assailant being deterred by his victim also being armed.  Perhaps, as a society, we believe that the suicide victim “was asking for it” and so deserves his/her fate (and that self-inflicted gunshots are a quicker and more certain means compared to more resuscitatable methods that might be used).  In the absence of guns, we might reason, those are 12,000-16,000 lost souls amongst us who would find those other means to their ends.

So, perhaps our problem is only that 3 Americans out of every 100,000 are murdered by guns each year (and 30 times that number are assaulted and/or robbed), and not the 4 Americans who die by their own action or by accident.  Motor vehicles kill over four times that many (usually accidentally), we are told, and there is no clamor to restrict their ownership.  Heart disease kills 60 times as many and yet there is no campaign to remove these killers from everyone’s chest.

But, before we rush to arm our toddlers, perhaps we should consider what the other options are to gun owner control: (2) lower the availability of guns, or (3) do nothing (i.e. learn to live with the problem at its current “minor” effects amongst the myriad of other risks we survive (or not) each day).  While the latter option is the most likely outcome of the prolonged debates which will be occurring, let’s examine the reduction of availability strategy.

How may guns be made less available (or useful)?  To whom should guns be less available?

Underlying those questions is the fundamental assumption that “guns should be available (if limited perhaps).”  While it may not be unique in its legal policies around gun (weapon) ownership, the Constitution of the United States of America defines an undeniable right of its citizens to keep and bear arms.  The one explicitly stated purpose for citizens to be armed is “the security of a free state.”  While the amendment suggests that a well-regulated militia is necessary to achieve this purpose, it is understood that the manning of a militia (in the framework of the society of the Founders) was from the individual private citizen drawn into service as needed.  Such a citizen would return to his business when the need passed.

As a matter of history, the original version proposed for the Second Amendment contained a phrase suggesting it was the expectation that every citizen would be armed and ready to serve in the militia unless a “religiously scrupulous” person objected to rendering “military service in person.”  That clause was stricken from the draft submitted for ratification, leaving the restriction upon the Government not to be allowed to infringe (reduce) the rights to arms.  The Government was not prevented from raising the requirement of gun ownership (as the NRA and others may today be proposing).  Indeed, only a few months after the ratification of the 2^nd Amendment, the US Congress enacted a law that required every white male between 18 and 45 to enroll in the militia and bring his own musket, flintlock, or rifle and ammunition.

Thus, growing out of a culture of self-reliance, parochial organization, and even a bit of sanctioned rebellion, we have been placed in our current position by the thinking of our 18^th century Founders.  They allowed the possibility that the nation and society may change and thus need new structure and rules.  One method was in the forceful resistance of its citizens to the tyranny of its government.  But the other was in the peaceful and deliberative process of enacting and amending these rules.

Ask yourself – if the Second Amendment was proposed today, would it be ratified?

If you believe the answer is No, then the clear action required is to Repeal the Second Amendment.  Or amend it to 21^st century standards of technology, society, and culture.

What does the necessity of a militia to maintain security mean in our day?  We now do have fulltime professional armies and police forces doing the duties 24/7 that the old militias were called upon in such emergencies to perform.  The standing forces maintain sufficient arms in their controlled arsenals to equip any volunteer or draftee called into auxiliary service.  The citizen does not need to park a tank (or jet fighter) in his driveway to assist in the national defense.  He does not need a semi-automatic to help direct traffic at a rock concert.  The militias (and their private arms) that might be required are those to oppose government, not to assist it.  Do we as a nation still believe in the rights of private militias like the KKK, Hell’s Angels, and deep-woods survivalists to prepare to fight locally against oppression by our enacted laws?  The Constitution/2^nd Amendment, as is, seemingly states that such “gun clubs” are a necessity for our freedom – does the vast majority of us believe that now?

Or should the 2^nd Amendment be amended to state the more restricted and modern purpose for keeping household weapons?  Recreation – sports, hunting, and collector’s hobbies.  Law enforcement and military defense is no longer the province of the private citizen – those are the regulated and controlled business of governments, local, state, and national.  Perhaps, under the revised 2^nd Amendment, anyone may own a gun, but it may only be carried outside the home (or designated shooting and hunting establishments/locales) when unloaded and/or disabled from use without special government license and permission.  Carrying a concealed weapon (without regulated permission) is always an offense as is carrying a loaded or enabled firearm.  Those with criminal intent may be no less motivated than before, but their opportunity to get weapons to the scene of their crimes will be limited by the vigilance of those around them.  We do not need to wait to see if the person carrying an AK-47 actually shoots before the police can intervene to ensure there is no ability to fire the weapon.

But, if you believe the answer is Yes, the 2^nd Amendment would be ratified today, then let’s give it an in-depth reading to understand what the 21^st century voter has approved.

“A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

We acknowledge and uphold the right to arms in the context of “well-regulated militia being necessary”.  In the 21^st century, we do not understand “regulated” to mean “drilled to march in regular columns.”  To us, regulations are rules and laws and a well-regulated industry has such guidelines and restrictions on operations from top to bottom.  The Constitution, Article I Section 8 ascribed the regulation of militia to State authorities within the disciplines provided by Congress.  A modern vote to ratify this amendment means the individual private citizen has the non-infringeable right to arms if he/she operates within the regulations of the State militia.  There is not a restriction on the Government to control gun ownership outside of the citizen’s participation and adherence to the regulation of the State militia.  There is no granted power to form, recruit, and train private militias in the Constitution, no matter how well-regulated.  If you think that there should be – Amend the Second Amendment.   Drop the introductory phrase to allow citizens to have any weapons they want for any purpose.  Or add language changing Article I to permit extra-governmental militia to be formed.  But, until the Amendment is modified, acknowledge the responsibility of the State governments to impose regulations (within the context of militia membership rules) on who may own (and register) what and how they may keep, carry, and use firearms.  Enroll in your local State militia and pledge to abide by their regulations.

So, let’s put it to a good, old-fashioned American vote.  Let’s propose two amendments – one to reaffirm the Second Amendment as written by our Founders and another to repeal it (and perhaps replace it with a more modern understanding of what American society wants in its nation and neighborhoods).  Either outcome might give us the ammunition to solve this problem.

Practically a Solution

Practically A Solution

For Ameliorating the Discord Inherent in a Society of Economic Inequality

In recent months, before winter and sanitary needs set in, a stroll in a familiar park was disrupted or totally prevented in cities and towns throughout our nations (and others) by protesting occupiers of those spaces. By self-proclamation, they represented the economically lower 99% of Americans disproportionally removed from the nation’s financial wealth, as embodied in investments principally owned by the other 1%. While this 1% owns 43% of the interest in corporations (and the next 19% owns another 50%), the vast majority of Americans have only a small slice of control over corporate actions which define their jobs, income, goods and services to purchase, and general economic world in which they live.

At the beginning of the 19^th century, there were only 300 corporations in America (and only eight were in manufacturing). Now, a bit over 200 years later, there are nearly 6 million of these legal fictions allowed to act with the privileges and obligations granted to a “person” under civil law. With the ability to gather the resources and powers of many “natural” people into a single “corporate person”, these entities conduct vital business in our society in a coordinated and self-perpetuating manner beyond the scope of mere human individuals.

But whether with fear, resentment, and/or envy, we are reacting to the corporate Pinocchios not only escaping the control of their human creators, but grasping the strings to dictate the stage and the play of our human drama. Their collective lobbying and legal actions over the last two centuries have extended their privileges seemingly beyond those of natural citizens while avoiding, or at least diminishing, the extension of their obligations. It is right that they have done so, for their fiduciary responsibility required them to gain value and better advantage for themselves (and thus, indirectly, for their owners). It is what made (and still makes) America grow. But both the owning and non-owning human citizens of America now share their relative disadvantage to our fellow corporate citizens.

Recently I was asked by a learned friend if I might apply my modest skills of research and analysis to examine this issue. The nature of the situation has been studied and discoursed upon by many before me, both scientifically and emotionally. For somebody to come forward with a plan to balance the dynamic needs of an economy for investment of otherwise unencumbered funds and the incentives of prosperity to drive productivity and progress with the egalitarian desire for all society members to participate contentedly in our shared community would be worthy of universal praise. Humbly, I present such a plan herein, not for fame, but for the simple benefit of restoring our American unity and pride.

While the reason it has been overlooked heretofore is unclear to me, the solution is obvious. Natural persons need to become corporations. Humanity has run its course as a basis for society and its exchanges.

My fair reader may ask, how does the flesh and soul of our humanity holds us back from the benefits of the artificial embodiment of corporations?

Mortality. Unburdened from the frailty of flesh, the corporation is prepared to be immortal. While in actual fact an incident of unfavorable cash flow can be as lethal to a corporation as excessive loss in blood flow, the lifetime of a corporation is independent from those of its mortal owners (and employees).

Liability. Bound by personal responsibility, humans have the consequences of their actions able to tap into (and deplete) all their available resources for recompense, whether related to the actions or not. Corporations limit the liability felt by its owners to only those resources invested in the corporate enterprise. Buy a million dollars of stock – risk a million dollar loss, but never a larger one.

Criminality. While corporations are persons of legal standing, corporations lack the body to serve the time. Even the managers of corporations seem rarely to serve punishments for the “white collar” criminal misbehavior and malfeasance; they are more often seen to be rewarded with retention bonuses and stock options for their clever (albeit failed) stratagems to test the bounds on the behalf of the corporation. Owners not employed by the corporation are clear of personal risk of such charges, bearing only (limited) financial risk. The corporation picks up the tab for any penalties and changes its practices to avoid (being caught) committing such offenses again.

Taxation. The corporate citizen pays its taxes. But the rules for income and gains versus expenses and losses recognize the long term nature of the corporation and its needs to perpetuate, grow, and even thrive beyond a mere tax season. A person receiving $10,000 in income and spending $5,000 to feed and clothe the demanding body required to earn that income is still liable for taxation on the full $10,000. But a corporation selling $10,000 of goods to produce its income and spending $8,000 for raw materials, equipment, and labor (by self-clothed/-fed employees) to manufacture and deliver the goods has tax exposure merely on the net profit of $2000. The allowable necessities of human life are limited to standard and well-defined itemized deductions, while the necessities to conduct business life are less confined in definition and volume in their cost subtractions. At the federal level, taxable income of large multi-billion dollar corporations are treated essentially equal in tax rates (34-35%) as all but the smallest corporations (net income less than $335,000) without the disincentive of progressive taxation to limit their entrepreneurship, growth, and contribution to the societal economy.

Sexuality and Sensuality. Lacking anatomical and metabolic components, Lust drops out of the cardinal sins that tempt and drive corporations. While the same may not be possible to say for its human owners and employees, the goals and motives for corporate actions are not thrown into disarray by hormonal surges. Similarly, the corporation does not fall prey to the carnal whims of hunger, thirst, nor pain.

Morality and Religion. The moral duties of the corporation are defined by the fiduciary trusts in its founding charter. In the very many cases of “for profit” corporations, that chief responsibility is to manage the owners’ investments to maximize financial return. All corporations must act within the rules of Law, but are not generally bound by the diverse sets of non-secular rights and wrongs of our many competing religions. Corporations derive their moral code from that which can be agreed upon by all religions and non-religions, not their differences. That and what their accountants and market research tell them.

How does our society convert humanity into negotiable corporate commodity?

One of the greatest beauties of the proposal offered here is that its requirements for implementation have already been enacted in our American jurisprudence. The replacement of the word “person” with “corporation” in our legal and constitutional documents is established law under the prevailing interpretation of the due process of the Fourteenth Amendment. The simple completion of the process from an implicit application of our laws to an explicit literal statement in the laws is a mere find-and-replace operation away. Any word processing software on the market can achieve this task. It is but a mild additional complexity to search for “people”, “man” and “men” (“woman” and “women” if such exist) to perform similar substituting edits.

As our Declaration of Independence proclaims, all corporations are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights (life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness (profit)). To secure these rights, governments are instituted amongst corporations, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed (corporations).

While initially people of all ages will need to file their incorporation documents to ensure their rights under the United States of America Inc., henceforth the process of citizenship would commence at birth (or as the final step of naturalization – hereafter called “citizen acquisition mergers”). Following a two-week investigation and review period triggered by the IPO filing for the newborn, the parent corporations will issue the standard (and universally equal at creation) one thousand shares in the new incorporation. Such issuing corporations may elect to retain full or partial ownership in their progeny under market rules, but, after standard processing fees and commissions, they would share equally (or as stipulated in a procreation contractual agreement between the parties) in the net proceeds of the sale. Such funds as are so raised (supplemented as decided in subsequent transactions) should be prudently managed to ensure the rearing of the new corporate resource to a productive and autonomous adult entity.

At the attainment of adulthood, the shares in an individual corporation shall be doubled (to two thousand, or more as necessary to accommodate earlier stock splits and allowed subsequent issuances) with the new half assigned to the newly matured entity. Again, the new owner may elect to retain all, part, or none of these new shares dependent of its own desires and decisions related to the prevailing free market value at that time. It would be common practice for most adult individuals to retain at least partial ownership in themselves to allow for some future free will.

Thus, no individual will lack value and presence in the affairs and conduct of business in America.

What advantages will society and civilization gain by converting to a corporate basis?

Commodity. Even the poorer citizens will have something valuable of their own. While all human resources will not be of equal total value, the marketplace will ensure a merit-based evaluation of their portfolio.

Government. The derivation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers of the government from corporations will eliminate the often messy process of elections by the populace. While the tabulation of corporate opinion may still be more efficiently implemented with term-selected officers mandated with the management duties to make and enforce intercorporate laws, the politics of such selections would be streamlined to simple concensus amongst shareholders deciding each corporate vote. Most individuals may not even be troubled to express their opinions with their proxies having been assigned on controlling ownership by holding companies and other corporations.

Incarceration. With the shielding of personal responsibility under corporate ownership, the practice of imprisonment of offenders will disappear (or at least greatly diminish). This will be a huge cost savings in America where more than one person out of every two hundred adults is residing in our jails and prisons on the average day. The switch to civil penalties instead of criminal-corporeal punishment will not only eliminate these expenditures, but also develop a robust source of revenues for the operations of our federal, state, and local governments.

Civil Agreement. The existing law covering merger, acquisition, and divestiture will become the basis for the often emotionally entangled relationships between humans. Parenthood, marriage, and divorce are the most obviously improved under properly drawn contractual agreements. Freed of overriding personal issues of gender, religion, age, race, etc., corporate mergers will allow all unions considered in the best interest of the owners to be negotiated and implemented (with customized clauses and riders as agreed by the parties).

Perhaps less obviously, but certainly as dramatically, affected are employment relations. The daily value of a human resource's production is a necessary commodity for which an employer must compete. Without contractually granted rights to draw upon these resources, the employer has no employees. Other organizations seeking membership and contributions (churchs, charities, even leisure/recreation clubs) will also be in the bidding for favorable agreements with the owners of these resources.

Reinvestment. There has been considerable controversy and agitation over inheritance following the demise of persons. The heirs of the deceased feel entitled to the fruits of his/her lifetime of accumulation and often argue (or at least complain) about a division of assets based on the capricious “will” left behind. But under corporate ownership rules, the division of the assets retained by the deceased are dictated clearly in the proportional shares of ownership in that individual. Whereas individuals enter into the incorporation of USA Inc with one thousand shares, their departure (and revocation of corporate charter and its associated privileges) should similarly, in balance, require an absorption of one thousand shares at their current market value at time of death by the government (to control inflationary pressure due to overissuance of stock in the total market). The reinvestment of value is thus ensured into both the private and public sectors of the economy.

Do we need to give up our humanity to achieve peaceful accord in our society?

There may be some who argue that tweaks of the status quo are all that is required to calm the tensions and discord we are experiencing. It is difficult to share their enthusiasm and belief after witnessing the gridlock and morass that has stymied past efforts. Who can still hold hope that the government will enforce the existing regulations, that industries will calculate favorably the profitability of self-policed restraint, or that corporate chartering will return to a requirement of public good as one of the fundamental fiduciary duties in equal or greater importance to profits? Does anyone expect that human managers of faceless corporations will truly be held to account to the public for the subversion and destruction of our economy in the pursuit of corporate profits? What new regulations can be promulgated without funding or staff to enforce that will divert the corporate world from its well-trodden, although ill-advised, paths?

I offer this adaption of our society without prospect for personal gain on my part. My wife and I are neither impoverished nor wealthy under the current system and should have no more political nor economic power as two small corporations amongst 325 million than are afforded to us now.