FOUNDATION ENTERPRISE

By Avery R. Davis
2252 Turtle Club Drive, Marietta, GA, 30066

Internet avery@mindspring.com


This article is an attempt to sum up my
participation in the First Millennial Foundation's 
FMF-Social email discussion list on topics 
concerning the nature of society and the 
structure of government in a Foundation Society 
colony, such as the Aquarius sea colony.
But, before I get in to the specific structure of
the concept I call "Foundation Enterprise", I need
to make a digression into the topics of democracy
and rights.

My starting point is Chapter 8 of The Millennial
Project (TMP) by Marshall T. Savage, especially
pages 361-367, and pages 88-98 of Chapter 1.  I
urge all people interested in TMP and FMF to
closely study these pages.  I was most interested
in Marshall's discussions of true democracy,
individual rights, and individual sovereignty.

Marshall talks about having true democracy within
Foundation Society (TMP pages 92 and 363), and I
was somewhat concerned about this.  Pure democracy
can be very dangerous, and has been variously
described as "mob-ocracy" and "two wolves and a
sheep voting on what's for dinner".  I prefer the
following passages from "Excerpts from the
Notebooks of Lazarus Long" in the novel Time
Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein:

     "Democracy is based on the assumption
     that a million men are wiser than one
     man.  How's that again?  I missed
     something."

     "Autocracy is based on the assumption
     that one man is wiser than a million
     men.  Let's play that over again, too.
     Who decides?"

     "Any government will work if authority
     and responsibility are equal and
     coordinate.  This does not insure 'good'
     government; it simply insures that it
     will work.  But such governments are
     rare - most people want to run things
     but want no part of the blame.  This
     used to be called the 'backseat-driver
     syndrome.'"

The way to reduce the risk of tyranny (be it via
democracy or autocracy) is found in the following
quotations from TMP chapter 8:

     "The Foundation will be built on the
     bedrock of a constitution with deep
     roots in the philosophy of individual
     rights." p.365

     "...individual liberty must be the
     cornerstone of our foundation." p.367

The quotes above lead me to believe that the "true
democracy" that Marshall mentioned must be a
constitutional democracy, with a constitution that
imposes sharp limits on the power of the majority,
that is, the rights of a minority (or an
individual) may not be infringed by the will of
the majority.  It is the job of the framers of a
constitution to implement checks and balances to
assure the proper coordination of authority and
responsibility in a government.  For a free
society, the constitution must also include
protection of rights from infringement, as well as
definitions of what those rights are.  My starting
point for this is the American Declaration of
Independence and the U.S. Constitution and Bill of
Rights, especially the following passages:

     Declaration of Independence:
     We hold these truths to be self-evident,
     that all men are created equal, that
     they are endowed by their Creator with
     certain inalienable Rights, that among
     these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit
     of Happiness.  That to secure these
     rights, Governments are instituted among
     Men, deriving their just powers from the
     consent of the governed, ...

     U.S. Constitution:
     We the people of the United States, in
     Order to form a more perfect Union,
     establish Justice, insure domestic
     Tranquillity, provide for the common
     defence, promote the general Welfare,
     and secure the Blessings of Liberty to
     ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain
     and establish this Constitution for the
     United States of America.

     Bill of Rights, Article V:
     No person shall ... be deprived of life,
     liberty, or property, without due
     process of law...

I propose that any constitution for a Foundation
Society colony contain equivalent language to the
above, and an enumeration of specific rights.  In
my opinion, the "life, liberty and property"
section of the Bill of Rights is essential to a
free society, and in the U.S. BoR, the other
articles list specific rights necessary to
maintain life, liberty and property.

After extensive discussions on the subject of how
to distinguish rights and privileges in the FMF-
Social discussion group, I came up with the
following compromise definitions:

There is one true intrinsic right:  the pursuit of
happiness.

Certain special protections of individual
possessions and activities are established by a
Constitution to be beyond infringement by the
state or other individuals.  These protections
from infringement are called "rights".

Privileges are special possessions or permissions
bestowed by the government or an individual upon
specific individuals.

But Marshall goes further than rights and
privileges with:

     "...we must accept and develop the
     principle of individual sovereignty."
     TMP p.365

I think a good working definition of individual
sovereignty is to be found in the following
quotation (also from TMP chapter 8):

     "Each person is entitled to live his
     life with perfect autonomy.  The
     individual must be free of coercion and
     interference, free to choose his or her
     own ways and means, and free to express
     their own unique character."  TMP p.367

This means that no one may impose rules or any
other restrictions on the behavior of any other
person.  Each person abides only those rules and
restrictions that are self-imposed.  But, in order
to form a civilized society and avoid anarchy, a
group of people make an agreement on basic
standards of behavior, and agree to standard
mechanisms for redress of grievances against each
other.  The codification of these standards are
what we call laws.

For a Foundation Society colony, these standards
are expressed in a Constitution and/or Charter
that everyone agrees to before becoming a
citizen/member.  This is an explicit form of
"social contract" and "consent of the governed".
People who are born into the society have the
option of leaving when they qualify for their
majority (by reaching a certain age or passing a
certain test).  People are also free to propose
modifications to the common standards of behavior
(laws), and these are accepted or rejected
according to mechanisms that have also been
standardized and codified (i.e., a Constitution).

Finally, the specifics of Foundation Enterprise.

Marshall, in Chapter 1, pages 96-97, of TMP,
discusses the possibility "that the corporation of
Aquarius is wholly and exclusively owned by the
people who live there."  From this I envisioned an
employee-owned corporation in a partnership with
the colony government, and I christened this
public-private partnership the Foundation
Enterprise.  The Charter of the Enterprise
corporation is to own and operate the
infrastructure of the colony, which it does under
a contract from the government.  So, there is a
triad of agreements that support the platform of
the Foundation Enterprise:  The Constitution is
the agreement between the citizens and the
government (and themselves);  The Enterprise
corporate charter is the agreement between the
corporation and its owner/employees (the
citizens);  And the Contract between the
corporation and the government (both of which are
directed by the citizens) spells out the
privileges and responsibilities between them.

With the distributed ownership scheme, the basic
living expenses of every individual are part of
the operating overhead of the Enterprise, and
individual citizen/employee/shareholders are not
paid a salary, as such, but receive dividends from
their share of ownership in the Enterprise.
Remember, if TMP works as advertised, there will
be tremendous revenues from exported products (TMP
p.98).

What individuals do with their dividends and their
spare time is up to them.  They can spend their
time and resources on short-term "lifestyle"
enhancements, or they can invest in small
businesses of their own, providing additional
products and services both for use within the
Enterprise and for export.  This is where I differ
from Marshall's capitalistic "straw man" on pages
96 and 97 of TMP.  Competition would be allowed.
The small businesses would constitute
"moonlighting" because every citizen is an
employee of the main Enterprise.  If a citizen was
successful in his entrepreneurship, he could "buy
back" his employee time by foregoing all or part
of his dividend and reimbursing the corporation
for all or part of his living expenses.  If his
business is really successful, he will rent
additional infrastructure facilities from the
Enterprise corporation.  Except for the basic
infrastructure, just about all products and
services are open for private competition, most of
which were provided by the Enterprise corporation
at the beginning just for convenience.  This way,
we avoid the possibility of the kind of economic
tyranny embodied by the old song lyric, "I owe my
soul to the company store..."

What an individual does with his career in the
main Enterprise is up to him.  If he is content to
clean spirulena tanks for the rest of his life,
that's great.  He still gets his dividend from his
share, and from any other investments he may make.
But he also has the opportunity to apply and
qualify for other jobs with different requirements
for skills, aptitude and education.  Studies I
have seen show that most people are motivated more
by job satisfaction than they are by better pay,
and I expect that members of a Foundation
Enterprise will be more interested in doing a good
job than in getting a raise.  The shareholding
scheme makes everyone a team member since anything
an individual does to improve the bottom line for
the Enterprise has the effect of giving a raise
for everybody (and vice versa).

At this point there seems to be some ambiguity and
confusion over where the government leaves off and
the corporate management begins, especially since
citizens are their own government representatives
as well as board members of the corporation, and
the corporation owns all of the physical
infrastructure of the colony.  The role of
government in this environment should be the
minarch model (a minimum-archy) in which the
government keeps the peace and provides for the
common defense by maintaining police, courts and a
defense force (I would prefer a force modeled
after the U.S. Coast Guard that would perform
rescue and safety duties in addition to defending
the borders).  Just about all other services are
"privatized" and provided by the main Enterprise
corporation.  Following from this, taxes would not
be paid directly by individuals, but would be paid
by the Enterprise corporation and by small
businesses as part of their operating expenses
(impacting the individual by reducing dividend
amounts).

In this, the main distinguishing feature of a
citizen from a non-citizen is the ownership of
shares in the Enterprise corporation.  All
citizens are employees, all employees are
shareholders, and all shareholders are citizens.
What needs to be developed are the rules and
procedures for investing new citizens with
ownership of shares in the Enterprise.  Possibly,
when an individual earns citizenship in the
Enterprise, that individual has the right to cast
one vote in all government referenda (which will
be just about all legislation in a constitutional
democracy), and will be issued one share of stock
in the corporation with the right to cast one vote
in corporate board decisions.

I haven't decided whether citizens should be able
to acquire and own more than one share each, and
if so, whether the additional shares should bring
additional votes on the corporate board.  Good
arguments may be made either way, so I suggest
that the decision be left up to the actual
citizens of the colony.  The main point here is
that only citizens may own shares in the
Enterprise, and all citizens must own shares.
Remember, both the government and the Enterprise
corporation are constrained by written
constitutions, each having one written as
appropriate, and of course, the government
constitution is the "law of the land", and so has
precedence.  The government constitution should be
general in scope, while the corporate constitution
should be more specific and in compliance with the
government constitution.

Each individual Foundation Society colony will
have to decide for itself what rules and
qualifications are needed for citizenship and
residency.  My recommendation is that candidates
for citizenship must past a qualification test of
some sort, and sign an explicit agreement to abide
by the laws of the colony before being eligible
for a vote of acceptance into citizenship.  My
recommendation for non-citizen residents is that
they should be fixed-term residents, that is,
their approval for residency should expire after a
fixed amount of time, at which time an application
for continued residency would be considered.  This
would allow short term visitors like tourists,
salesmen and consultants to have reasonable
access, and for fixed-term contractors to have the
time in residency they need.  My recommendation is
that all permanent residents be citizens.

Does this sound like a system under which you
could "live long and prosper"?

Lets implement 3 branches of government, similar
to the U.S., but for the Foundation Enterprise, it
would be as follows:

The Legislative branch consists of the citizens
themselves in a constitutional direct democracy,
that is, a single house with each citizen as his
own representative.

The Judicial branch implemented as a mostly
autonomous courts system.  Each colony would
determine the character of this system, and the
qualifications of the judges, justices, counselors
and attorneys.  Options range from having
permanently appointed/elected professional judges
to drafting a one-time-only judge for each case
from the general populace.

The Executive branch will be mostly privatized
with the colony corporation (Foundation
Enterprise) as the prime contractor.  Thus, the
citizens are also the corporation's customer, in
addition to being employees and owners.  This adds
to the checks and balances in Foundation society.
So, while the corporation owns all of the
infrastructure of the colony, much of it is leased
by the government.  It is this
corporate/government (or private/public)
partnership that is the basis for the Foundation
Enterprise.  The direct government employees will
be few in number, maybe a few executives and
staff, plus professional law enforcement and
military personnel.

But at some point, important decisions have to be
made that are either too technical or too time
critical to be made by the full board or
citizenry, so they have to pick people they feel
are competent and trustworthy to make those kinds
of decisions.  These people will be Executive
Officers of either the government or the
corporation (whether an individual may be an
officer of both simultaneously is another decision
for each individual colony).  The framers of a
colony's constitution, corporate charter and
operating contract will have to include checks and
balances to prevent abuse of power by people in
executive positions.  But in order to be effective,
people with responsibility must have the authority
do their jobs.  As always, "the price of liberty
is eternal vigilance", and the most perfectly
crafted constitution cannot save a gullible and
apathetic people from tyranny and oppression.

The beauty of the Foundation Enterprise concept is
that is takes the best aspects of capitalism,
communism and democracy and forms them into a win-
win situation.  Any of these three systems by
itself can be a basis for tyranny and loss of
liberty.  But through the triad of Constitution,
Charter and Contract that institutes checks and
balances, the FMF can establish a society that
provides the maximum liberty and opportunity.