Dr. Seuss was rejected reportedly 27 times.
And the creators of Trivial Pursuit had to go to a different country to find backers for their game.
Of course we all come up with good ideas (or at least we'd like to think so), but it is an issue of finding somebody to financially back it into reality. And ironically, it's the most revolutionary ideas that are least likely to get backing simply because it disturbs the blissful ignorance of the status quo and forces people to think outside their comfy little box.
Enter the Captain's crazy idea.
It not only disturbs the status quo, it just blows it right up.
I came up with this idea about 6 years ago and have alluded to it in the past. I never came outright and said what it was because;
1. I didn't want the idea getting out
2. I was debating whether to actually pursue it.
I tinkered with it, toyed with it, and soon it just wouldn't go the frick away. I knew I would have to at least give it a shot otherwise it would just gnaw at me for the rest of my life. And so over the summer when I had some time, I pulled a ton of data, ran some charts, made some financial projections and put together a 20 page business plan.
The idea?
How to fully privatize governments.
It's actually quite a simple concept, but a revolutionary one because I believe I have found the optimal form of government, or at least the "next stage" of governmental evolution. An improvement upon democracy, or perhaps a better way of putting it, democracy on steroids.
Under this new concept, government would be inoculated against corruption, greed, theft, graft and all other ailments that have ailed democracies since they were created. Politicians would not be able to wield the power over the people like they do. Rich or influential people could not override the desires of the people (or perhaps shall I say, brainwash them with propaganda and mass media into voting against their own long term interests). And economic growth, to paraphrase Brad Pitt from Inglorious Basterds, "would be a-BOOMIN'!"
It also is about the only silver bullet that could genuinely save the US (and all of Europe for that matter) from the financial problems we face today and keep them going as a viable economic entites.
Oh, and it also wouldn't hurt that it would easily make me and any major investors the world's first trillionaires.
But you all of course know where this story is going.
As expected, after spending the better part of a week on research and drafting a proposal and after spending cumulatively another week trying to get investment banks or VC firms to take a look at the proposal, all I managed to do was waste two weeks of my summer at an opportunity cost of enjoying the decline. What was particularly irksome was not the fact investment banks, financiers of different sorts and VC's shot it down, it's that they just plain wouldn't return the damn phone call. That you could easily spend 20 minutes on the internet and one the phone trying to locate the right person to call and when you leave them a voice mail, they never call you back. And in the rare instance you actually got to talk to a real live investment banker they would dismiss it on frivolous grounds having nothing to do with the idea.
It's too much money to be raised.
It's too little money to be raised.
We're not in that industry.
We were in that industry, but not this time of year.
We might have interest, but now right now with this market.
We only do private placements.
We only do public placements.
It's Tuesday.
It's not Tuesday.
You're wearing blue socks and we have a policy against investing with blue sock wearing people.
I literally told only 2 people about the actual idea. One was an investment banker who was at least sporting enough to entertain the thought. And the other was Peter Theil's "Founders Fund" who actually requested an abbreviated 12 page Power Point presentation I put together. The rest of the time my idea was dismissed without them even hearing about the idea, and not ONE business proposal was sent out.
Naturally the curious person by now would want to know, "Well, what precisely was this great idea? How do you fully privatize a government and make trillions of dollars from doing so? Let alone, how do you make government "corruption-proof?"
And seeing how it is more or less impossible this idea will ever get financing, the next best thing would be to go public with it. Ergo, I am happy to announce the business plan's publication now available on Kindle.
Yes, I am charging for it, because I spent a lot of time on it and some of you will notice how the posts this summer have been more linkage than Cappy Originals (in part because of developing this business plan and also in part due to moving).
Regardless you can find it here for $5.64 (the reason for the odd price is I tried to price it at $3.99, but Kindle likes to add odd fees - will be tweaking the price in the meantime). Sorry, only available on Kindle, but for the price of a glass of beer you will be rewarded with infinitely more than $3.99/$5.64 worth of intellectual stimulation. And yes, no doubt there are going to be some of those endearing grammatical errors or typos that my English-nazi readers love pointing out.
In the meantime, enjoy the decline (which will probably be the title of the next book).
POST POST-Some of you have expressed interest of just mailing me $4 and me e-mailing you the MS Word Document, which is kosher too.
E-mail me at CAPTcapitalism (at) yahoo (dot) com, click on the Rumpleminze and make a donation to my paypal account. Or I can send you a safehouse address to mail $4 bucks to.
21 comments:
I don't have a kindle... publish it as a pdf and I'll buy a copy, for real.
I came up with a similar idea years ago, probably after seeing Rollerball - the original, not the pale replica. Cant watch your video on my phone, so i'll see it later.
Each state or country would be a corporation, and its citizens would be shareholders. You couldnt sell your last share, but you could otherwise buy or sell shares. The rich would have relatively more power, but they already do. The poor, if they were organized, could pool their proxies. All government agencies would have to make a profit, and profits would be distributed through dividends. The USERS of government would be paying, and the rest of us would be paid for not using government.
I also toyed with the idea of an Open Information Society, i.e. There are no secrets. Yes, you would still have privacy in your home, papers, communications, etc. However, every detail of your existence (and everyone else's) would be public info. Your salary, bonuses, grades in school, insurance coverage, political party, votes, medical history, work evaluations, bank account balances, would all be public. Sounds crazy, but the fact is we already live in a world where our information must be surrendered and can be bought for a price. This just levels the playing field. We will get to know every cent that every politician receives from every source. We'd know if our lazy co-workers are getting paid more than we are.
Most government salaries (15% of the work force) are public information, so this isnt as big a deal as you might think. The problem in our society isnt lack of privacy. The problem is that we dont know when our information isnt private. Asymmetry already exists.
Sounds interesting Capt. Unfortunetly I don't own a kindle, if my next android app sells well I'll get one and make your book the first one I buy.
I have no idea how you could get over the fact that governments hate competition and wield near absolute power. Pray tell? ;)
Coming up as $5.64 Cap. £3.44 in the UK.
I've always wondered whether if we had a sounder money system, why governments could not save a surplus and at some point work off the interest the money could make instead raising taxes for ever and ever.
Welcome to the Demoskeptic camp!
Check out Mencius Moldbug and Foseti for some kindred spirits. The former's gentle introduction series should be your first read.
Presentation ordered, look forward to a review in the enxt couple of days.
Cheers,
Frost
"I have no idea how you could get over the fact that governments hate competition and wield near absolute power."
Rowan nails it. I approve of the idea of privatizing the various functions of government and think it would be an improvement on the current situation, but I don't think that any plan that involves taking market share from an existing government is going to get off the ground. They'd rather just kill you.
I've been toying around with the concept of 'Corporate Monarchy' for us here in Canada, and other commonwealth nations. Rather than tying the state to a royal family, which has the unfortunate side effect of producing idiotic heirs, tie it instead to an immortal entity like a corporation.
CEOs, shareholders, all the like (keeping in mind that corporate 'corruption' is largely a result of collusion with government - wouldn't be as much of a problem here, aside from the UN).
The idea being that the corporation of Canada will make decisions which ultimately benefit the net worth of the country, to maximize their revenue.
Constitutional 'human rights'? Nah, but those don't really exist, anyway. Just a side effect of being wealthy thanks to technological development.
Overall, though, law would probably be more fair and just than it presently is.
If I had a kindle, I'd buy it.
Can someone buy it and torrent it so the public can truly see it?
Cap, have you read any of the 'Unqualified Reservations' blog? Wordy, and a little convoluted, but a lot of good food for thought. Here's two good short summaries of UR's content:
Summary #1
Summary #2
Kinda like the privatized governments in the original Rollerball (the one with James Cann, not the newer godawful one).
I don't know if the idea is the same as yours, but I had an idea along similar grounds some years ago as well. Ideas are worth less than nothing. It is the willingness to take risk and work hard to make an idea a reality that is truly worth something. Regardless, I plan on picking this up just to see where you're going with this.
You can get a kindle app for free on Android phones.
Great quotable quote "it's the most revolutionary ideas that are least likely to get backing simply because it disturbs the blissful ignorance of the status quo and forces people to think outside their comfy little box"
So Very True
Ask Xerox
I'll bite and order it later today. it had better have lots if graphs!
Given the timelines on how long it takes for the philosophical underpinnings of government to become actual governments, Mars has the best shot of implementing it (in an environment where O2 is valuable, mouth breathers won't be welcome).
Conceiving great ideas is easy compared to implementing them. It's like getting people to lose weight, the idea is simple, eat less and exercise, getting people to actually do that, now that's hard.
Oddly enough, I was having a discussion with my wife about this very thing a few days ago.
Governments contract out some work to the private sector now - for example my county doesn't do road striping or seal-coating, they bid out the work.
The State of MN bids out major construction projects, roads and bridges.
My township contracts with ambulance services, fire departments, gravel pits/haulers, the county sheriff and occasionally a contractor to replace a culvert here and there.
I was remarking that the sea-change of politics in MN and WI, the recognition that the states do in fact have limited resources and the emergence of a more active and vocal resistance to state spending, may push governments into more privatization.
We figured that smaller government bodies would move this way more readily than larger ones and we were thinking a gradual move to privatization (outsourcing) function by function, but what the heck, why not everything?
But you have to croak off the unholy alliance between the public unions and the Democratic party to get any meaningful progress. A stake needs to be driven through that vampire's heart.
There are companies that now do outsourcing of government services. The company I work for has contracted with several states to run welfare programs and got fired by the State of Indiana and the State of Texas for failing to do the job.
I have a great idea for the US Postal Service - contract with UPS to run the whole freaking mess, dump the current union, their arcane work rules and inability to layoff union employees. Now there's a place to start.
And alas, no kindle, not even a smartphone. God bless PDFs.
How much does Amazon keep? Id rather mail you the money and get it in a Word file.
Sure, if you want to e-mail me, I can send the Word Doc. I think Amazon gets effectively 50% and I get two bucks and some change.
So if just 1,000,000 people buy it, I would be a millionaire! So tell family and friends.
Your idea is not original. A more refined version is agorism. There's a lot more details on my blog and elsewhere.
Seeking VC for a "compete with government" business is silly. Just start it and work off-the-books.
If you "compete with government" as an on-the-books business, that's defeating the point. Any taxes you pay on your profits are funding your competitor.
I'm almost done reading it. A few semi-major problems emerge to me:
1. Unless GMS is only going to hire Batman clones (you know, the TRULY incorruptible type), there is little to stop the heads of GMS from doing pretty much whatever they want once a country is "completely taken over."
2. It's a nice idea to have a code of ethics and an enforcer to ensure these practices are held, but with our recent experiences with Congress illegally ignoring the Constitution and getting away with it, I don't get any confidence simply by hearing a political party say "Look! We have these rules that even WE can't break!"
3. Who watches the watchmen? Ultimately, men are enforcing rules on other men, even within GMS. If you've got a good AI to choose people to run and terminate their employment on violation of rules, we can talk.
4. Your goal of a strict ethical code for GMS employees seemingly goes against GMS's governmental goal of having a libertarian government that largely does not have or enforce ethical laws. I know from your previous posts you believe in a strong, two-parent family structure for the greater good of their children and society in general (you have charts for the former). But this is inherently an ethical/moral question that would not be enforced in any way by GMS if my understanding of their goals is correct. Countries that are not destroyed by natural events ultimately fail due to moral failings of their people, it's just that governmental corruption and populous apathy are the primary moral failings that get blamed.
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