How The Perfect Government Would Work (Part One)

Let me describe for you what I think the perfect government would be.

In a perfect country, investment banks, hedge-funds, and anything like that would be illegal. The only allowed banks would be traditional ones that store your money and give loans, and that kind would only be allowed as community-owned banks, which would not operate outside of their controlling community. There would be one large government-owned bank, but even that would not make investments or anything of that sort of thing. Stocks wouldn’t exist, and so neither would stock exchanges.

Small businesses would be allowed, as long as they are privately owned. Medium-sized companies would have to be collectively owned by their employees. (The Mondragon Corporation is a current example of this kind of ownership). Large companies would have to be not-for-profit, keeping all revenue inside the company, and collectively run (not owned) democratically by their employees.

Much power would be devolved to local administrative divisions. Each of these divisions would have a roughly equal number of people, so large municipalities contain several of these units, while smaller municipalities would be grouped together, in a manner similar to cantons in France. This would give people less of a sense of alienation from the government. Except in very large countries, most mid-level administrative divisions would lose much of their legislative and administrative powers, and would mainly exist to regulate the smaller divisions, to prevent corruption. Some autonomous areas would be allowed, but only where there is a strong sense of identity among the people. Too much autonomy  can breed contempt among different parts of a country.

To be continued in a later post…