WeWill

WeWill: Give me money.

Rational Skeptic (RS): Of course.

WeWill: More specifically, pledge to give me money every month.

RS: You’re being cute. No more, please.

WeWill: Okay, here’s a serious question—does a commercial endeavor necessarily have to have an owner?

RS: By “commercial endeavor” you mean?

WeWill: Any person or group of people providing something with the intention of profiting.

RS: So, like Walmart or Seven Eleven or something?

WeWill: Exactly. Or Amazon, or the corner bar, or your plumber. Just what you’d expect. Not a trick question.

RS: And your question is, do these entities need to have an owner?

WeWill: Right. But, I started with the wrong question. Let’s start with “Do commercial entities, like the ones we just listed and a million others, need customers.”

RS: Customers? That’s so obvious I feel like I don’t understand the question.

WeWill: No trick questions here. Trust me for the sake of conversation.

RS: Well, then, sure. Yes. Assuming we’re not talking about some bogus entity funded by corruption or crime or really serving some purpose other than what it purports, it needs customers. Even entities funded by corruption or crime have customers, I guess—just not the ones you think. But without customers—or one customer, at least—no business.

WeWill: Okay. That’s how I see it, too. Our great minds are simple. So, next question. Does a commercial entity need employees?

RS: Again, seems patently obvious. Someone has to do something to provide something the customer will pay for, right? I mean, desirable things spontaneously and freely appear. An orchid once bloomed in my side yard, right outside the window where I sit and read quillete.com every morning. That was valuable to me. But it wasn’t the basis for a going concern. For one, I couldn’t count on it happening on demand, and two I didn’t have to pay for it. Somewhere along the way, someone has to do something. I’d call that person either an employee or an owner.

WeWill: Good point. Sometimes a person is both owner and employee.

RS: Commonly, in fact. Doctors, lawyers, electricians. Pretty much any sole proprietor.

WeWill: Yeah, agreed. So, a commercial entity has to have one or more employees, who may or may not also be the owner. But in any event, the employee is necessary, right?

RS: Couldn’t you say an entity needs either an owner or an employee? 

WeWill: You could. I think that’s fair. But—and, maybe this is splitting hairs—but isn’t that another way of saying the owner is the employee? 

RS: Or the employee is the owner, yeah.

WeWill: Okay, so if a commercial entity has employees and customers, does it also need an owner?

RS: I haven’t thought about it. I’d think so. 

WeWill: Why? What essential role does the owner fulfill?

RS: I think I see where this is going, but I’ll play along.

WeWill: Do more than play along. Be as skeptical as possible. Skeptical, but rational. I’ll be the rational optimist (link to book). You be the Rational Skeptic. Make the best possible case you can for an owner. Maybe this entire notion is misconceived. I don’t think so, but maybe. And if that’s the case, it would be best to figure that out with as little expenditure of effort and money as possible.

RS: Okay, then to really talk it through, let’s start with some functions that I typically associate with ownership even though I can already see that they don’t have to be fulfilled by an owner and in fact often aren’t. So, for example, serving as the President or CEO or whatever title. The ultimate authority. Where the buck stops. But, obviously, plenty of successful businesses are run by people who don’t own them.

WeWill: In fact, it’s probably the case that the bigger and more successful the business, the less likely it is that the owner runs the it on a day to day basis. I don’t have stats for that. Maybe we’ll know the stats someday.

RS: If you’re talking about sole ownership, yeah, probably. But wouldn’t you say most of the people running those businesses are partial owners? Almost certainly people running publicly traded companies.

WeWill: Yes, good clarification. I absolutely agree that’s probably the case. I guess what I mean is more often than not the person running a business like that doesn’t have controlling interest. They have a stake, but even though they’re in charge of all operations on a day-to-day basis, they answer to a higher authority.

RS: Right, the higher authority being the person with controlling ownership.

WeWill: Or a board that represents a lot owners, some of whom have more influence than other. Again, like in a publicly-traded company.

RS: Okay, so then actually, most big, successful companies are run by owners.

WeWill: But not owners with controlling interest.

RS: Not usually. But let’s not just gloss over that. Ownership interest is a big deal, right? Isn’t that almost like an axiom of management and maybe even capitalism itself? Like, ownership is the critical ingredient?

RS: How is this different from a coop?

RS: Are we talking about some sort of democratically-run business structure? Where employees have to vote and agree on who’s working Saturday or whatever?

WeWill: What have I said that gives you the impression our goal is to create a breeding ground of dysfunction and inter-personal rage, and—at best—marginal success in the market?

RS: That’s a “No”?

WeWill: That’s an emphatic “No.”

RS: Earlier you used the phrase “marginal success in the market.” That’s strikes me as a bit stilted, and you seem careful with your words, so I have to ask, why use that phrase instead of, say, “marginal profits?”

WeWill: Profit and Power are related. There is a question of how much profit the company should accumulate and retain. The thought/question is, if the public doesn’t continue on a year-to-year basis to vote (with its dollars) for me, how long should I persist, and what power should I continue to have. We need reserves for many reasons that for now lets put all under the umbrella of “remaining highly competitive” but I’m concerned about becoming something that has lost its purpose but not its war chest. Or worse, found some dangerous new purpose to pursue with that war chest.

RS: What if the new purpose isn’t dangerous, but benevolent? 

WeWill: Who decides dangerous or benevolent? Good ideas don’t always win, certainly not in the short-term. But even the best ideas imposed on people who don’t accept them willingly almost always go bad.

RS: Aren’t laws a kind of idea imposed on people?

WeWill: Particular people might chafe or worse against particular laws, but don’t most people want laws? It takes a pretty ardent anarchist be happy with the jungle.

RS: Seems slippery. Lik

WeWill: Yeah. So, isn’t the best thing an open market of ideas where everyone has not simply a vote, but a mechanism to direct their power as precisely and immediately as possible toward the ideas they support? Turn every penny and every purchasing decision into a vote?

RS: Seems wishful and impractical.

WeWill: How. We aren’t requiring people to do anything different than what they do now. We’re simply providing a way for those people who are so inclined to direct their power in ways they can’t readily do now. Or to at least not lend their power to ideas they don’t support. 

RS: Walk me through how that would work in practice.

RS: So, what, there will be a different company for every idea?

WeWill: Ultimately, maybe. For the most important ones anyway.

RS: So, what’s your idea?

WeWill: No idea. Which is to say general market-driven (not state driven) redistribution of power through simply allowing to direct their individual power away from ideas they don’t want to support. That is inherently political, of course, but we will not pursue any explicit political objectives.

RS: Let’s talk about ideas. What do you mean by idea?

WeWill: Good question. Can we agree that everything is either fact or idea?

RS: Not sure. What do you mean?

WeWill: Not sure either. Pursuing a thought. I guess I mean, a fact is something you’re stuck with. An idea is something you can accept or reject.

RS: People deny facts all the time.

WeWill: But denial doesn’t save them from having to deal with reality.

RS: Facts change.

WeWill: Sure, some all at once, some slowly and then all at once, some never for all practical purposes. Some are really never in a fixed state. They are constantly evolving but are nevertheless a fact at any given instant. There are probably lots of other different kinds of facts, but all of them would be distinguished from ideas in that they aren’t changed by different pattern of electrical and chemical impulses in a person’s brain and that is exactly all that’s needed to change an idea. (In that case, the only fact that changes is the fact of the electrical pattern.)

RS: Is it?

WeWill: The goal is create a free market system that allows people to most efficiently direct their power to the ideas they support.

RS: How do you define power? 

WeWill: I = We.

RS: What about tyranny of the majority?

WeWill:

WeWill: I’m optimistic that good ideas win in the long run if they are advocated courageously.

WeWill: Ownership is a vested interest. Might there be different kinds of vested interests?

RS: All this aside, doesn’t there have to be an owner by law? I mean, does the law allow for an ownerless entity?

WeWill: Unknown. We will figure that out. In the meantime, there are workarounds.

RS: Like what?

WeWill: A figurehead owner, restricted by checks and balances.

RS: I’m suspicious.

WeWill: Good. You should be. The person I have in mind is suspect. A broken vessel. Maybe a snake and a lowlife. Hopefully a useful tool.

WeWill: When Jeff Bezos uploads himself into the boundlessness that is AWS, will Amazon disappear?

RS: What about robots? AI?

WeWill: No one said the employees have to be homo sapiens. The employees are whatever gets the work done.

RS: AI is here, right? What’s the point? With that in mind, isn’t exercise sort of fixing a problem that is about to disappear anyway?

WeWill: Why will it disappear?