Why Community-Owned Businesses Are Better for Everyone (except the 1%)

Want to create a better world? Follow the money. 

Think of all the bad stuff big corporations do today- like polluting the environment, buying off politicians or underpaying workers. Most manage to do all three at once! It isn't hard to think of several more, but do you ever ask why they do it? Money's one answer, but another is that the people who actually own those giant corporations aren't affected by the decisions they make.  Unless it moves the bottom line, a shareholder who lives 5,000 miles away couldn't care less about poisoning the atmosphere or forcing young children to work 12-hour days. If these big companies were decentralized, owned & operated by the people who lived nearby, do you think they would allow any of those things to happen? 

City residents would never let a corporation pollute, since it would ruin the air they breathe. It wouldn't make sense for a community to buy off their own politicians. And workers would never agree to underpay themselves. It's funny how we claim to love democracy, but run our businesses like tiny communist dictatorships where a small elite make all the choices. 

If we want to right the ship, we can't afford to give people personally unaffected by the decisions they make any power. We don't let people from Idaho vote in English elections, do we? There's no reason to let someone living in China decide whether or not 200 people in Maine get to keep their job or not- and ultimately they do by electing that company's board of directors. Businesses should be run by communities, for the benefit of everyone in a community. Period. Giving outsiders a say via external share ownership sets a city up for failure by placing their economic future in the hands of profiteers. That's not all- money from local businesses is sucked away instead of being reinvested in the surrounding area.  But worst of all are the tax breaks communities give big corporations to relocate in the first place! It's like paying to get robbed. 

It doesn't have to be this way. A world where none of the corruption we typically associate big business with happens isn't just a pipe dream, it's within reach. 

This only works if every corporation is set up like this though, because otherwise absentee business directors would still make bad decisions without personally being effected by them. That's why having control of the businesses in your community is a constitutional right enforced under The Global Assembly's authority to regulate international commerce. Needless to say, there's an exception for small businesses with less than 20 employees where this would be impractical. These businesses are owned by the people who work there instead of the entire community. 

Did I mention this isn't communism? The free market still exists and it's as powerful as ever, directing the trade of scarce resources between cities. There is no central commissar rationing what you can buy, choosing where you live or what job you do- in fact, you get to decide who runs the major businesses in your city. If you feel like you aren't qualified enough to make a choice, you can hand over your vote for that business to someone you trust. Even cooler, at the end of the year you get a check for a portion of whatever profits the business makes! If this sounds like capitalism, that's because it is. It's only a better version of it called community capitalism, or contributism for short.