Month: February 2019

GUILDS

The right of workers to organize into collective bargaining units is fundamental requirement of Equity Capitalism.  It is required to maintain the balance of power.  Unions are not effective at accomplishing this.  Union philosophy is based upon communist ideals which have proven to be a failure.  To continue to use a system that is based on a flawed theory, is foolhardy.

In a guild system, almost all workers would belong to a Guild that represents their field.  All business and commercial enterprises would be required to hire from a guild.  There will be non-guild work readily available, for new entrants to the workforce, those wishing to change guilds, etc.  Non-guild work would be mainly from individuals operating personal enterprises (family business, etc.) and ECBs.  Members of ECB cannot be members of a guild and vice versa.  There would be a clear separation between the obligations to the worker, from the employer and from the guilds.

First let us look at the business perspective.  A business is not a person, it is an abstract concept.  Businesses do not go on vacation, read books, retire or eat.  The sole purpose of a business is to make money.  It is not for the betterment of humanity or to raise our standard of living or bring about social reform.  A successful business does accomplish these things by making enough money to pay wages, by providing products, services and contributing to the community, but this is a result of successfully making money.  It is in the best interest of the workers and community that businesses be as efficient, successful and profitable as possible.

The only obligation the employer has toward the employee is to pay the guild price for the work done.  The employer makes the necessary government remittances, submits a guild fee to the Guild, the remaining balance is paid out to the employee.  If an employer needs a new staff member, a request is sent to the appropriate guild.  The Guild has a set price for an individual with the experience and qualifications requested.  The Guild selects the person sent to the employer.  The employer may request a replacement from the Guild, at any time.  If an employee is unable to show up for work, it is the Guild’s responsibility to send in a suitable replacement.  A Guild guarantees a worker for every guild position, for every work day.

A guild is responsible for the welfare of its members.  The guilds collect guild fees from every member.  The fees collected, are for member benefits; medical, dental, wage-loss, training programs, etc.  This would lead to almost universal benefits for everyone.  The provision of benefits in our current system is spotty and costly.  Two people in the same field, different companies, one gets benefits the other does not.  Also benefit packages are expensive and beyond the ability of many small companies.  A guild with few million members would get a very good deal on a benefit package from an insurer or even set up their own.

Guilds are responsible for ensuring the qualifications of its members.  Each guild will have reasonable minimum entry requirements, guild membership is not a right.  Non-guild work in each field, at a lower rate than guild price, would be made available.  This would allow people to gain experience for guild membership or to change fields or people could test different fields before committing.  Companies with many employees would be entitled to hire a small percentage of non-guild workers for their workforce, to give them enough experience to join a guild.  The state would set the percentage per industry based on: expected future needs, numbers entering a given field, etc., as part of a long-term employment strategy policy.

Twenty-One Ideas

Tell our elected governments to pass the following laws:

  1. The highest paid person in a publicly held corporation or group of corporations cannot earn more than 25X as much as the lowest paid person.
  2. Bonuses paid by publicly held corporations must be paid to all employees of the corporation on a proportional, pro-rated basis.
  3. Limits on the rate of return and dividends paid to shareholders with the over limit amount paid out to the employees of the corporation
  4. Corporation are not persons under the law, they are not entitled to rights of the individual
  5. Publicly held corporations cannot own land
  6. The publicly held corporate tax rate can never be below 50%
  7. The maximum corporate political donation cannot exceed $100,000
  8. Publicly held corporations are not permitted to lobby the government.
  9. Banks cannot be publicly held corporations.  Financial services are to be provided by public banks, credit unions and privately held (with limits) corporations.
  10. Banks are an essential service for the convenience of facilitating financial transactions.  Profits are secondary. Excessive profits are to be returned to the consumer through lower service fees. 
  11. No individual or corporation is permitted to own more than 6 media outlets and their aggregate coverage cannot be more than 20% of any defined boundary i.e. city, state, province, county.
  12. Corporate Directors and Executives can be held criminally responsible for the actions of the corporation.
  13. Personal tax rates start very low for low income and increase exponentially as income increases
  14. All personal income above $400,000 per year to be taxed at 90%
  15. Consumer credit not secured by assets is not permitted, in case of default the lender must repossess assets and accept them as payment in full, to settle the debt
  16. Privately held corporations, those with 7 or less shareholders, are entitled to all the rights and privileges as afforded to any group of individuals.
  17. Privately held corporations may only lobby the government on behalf of their principle activity or industry which produces products or provides services to the public.
  18. Privately held corporations may own shares in publicly held corporations but not vice versa.
  19. All privately held corporations will be subject to a donation fee tax of 10% on taxable corporation income.
  20. Distribution of after-tax income from a privately held corporation to any of its shareholders will be deemed the personal income of the recipient when received but taxed at a preferential rate.
  21. A privately held corporation is not required to distribute its income in any given time frame, it is solely at the discretion of the shareholders.