The United States of America was founded on the basis of diffusion of state’s power, curtailing the power’s potential for injustice. The dazzling success of the system has made the concepts of democracy and capitalism popular around the world. The existing form of capitalism worked very well for a while, because then, wealth making power could not converge easily into a few hands. Industrialization has changed that. Now a few rich have undesirably high power to manipulate wealth distribution and politics, and to influence social values. Unrestricted capitalism favors the rich. It is easier to make money with money than by working. Extreme greed for wealth and the power of highly concentrated wealth has a degrading effect on community.

Man is a social animal. In a community, attitudes of the perceived leaders set trends, and the followers reinforce each other’s thinking accordingly, creating euphoria over time. This is how ordinary people gear up for heroic efforts in times of community crisis, like wars. Now big money makers have become roll-models, and have too high an influence on community’s thinking. As a result, now ruthless greed generated by reckless enterprise has become popular world over. Too many of them heedlessly fall in the spider web of our luring credit industry, sinking deeper in misery. And seeking and pursuing quick money-making schemes makes one abhor hard work. Being valuable to society by honest work has gone out of fashion.

Simply defined, morality is: ‘Do unto others as you would have done unto you’. The existing degenerate environment of greed forces new entrepreneurs to compromise their moral convictions and adopt cunning ways. This craving for quick gratification is evident in mature and growing economies all over the world. Look at how processed food is made unhealthy with harmful preservatives and cheap ingredients, the quality of food in chain restaurants has degraded over the years, farm produce is made unhealthy by high-breeding, and the quality of dairy products by rampant use of hormones and antibiotics.

The U.S. seems to be leading the way. This makes the nation fat and unhealthy, requiring more medical attention. On the other side, medical drugs/treatments are marketed at exorbitant prices, and once they are in circulation, our medical drug industry shows instances of suppressing and discouraging immerging cheaper/better remedies, and of suppressing discoveries of dangerous side effects. The common man is getting squeezed from every side. Our automobile industry ignored, or bought and shelved technical innovations, to avoid prerequisite expensive modifications to production processes, loosing against foreign completion in the end.

A revolution almost always has wide spread economic hardship at its base. Too much wealth in the hands of a few robs democracy of its effectiveness. The present worldwide wave of expression of dissatisfaction for the existing political establishments is only the beginning. Man’s pursuit of happiness is ever existing formidable force. Each new generation brings forth clearer perspective of the prevailing reality. The majority of the world population feeling safer than before has shifted its focus to achieving comfort. The biggest obstacle to comfortable living, the common man sees now, is the unjust distribution of wealth. As a result the demand for more profound socialism is forming in the mind of the world masses. Often, at the beginning, revolting masses are acutely aware of their pain but not clear about remedy. Unless the real underlying decease is addressed, treating the symptoms only with political adjustments will not mollify the masses. It seems like the next lesson on humanity’s curriculum is that, ‘unchecked commercial greed is detrimental to community’s happiness’.

What we need is a way to defuse the power of money on economic decision-making, releasing the economic factors from the narrow channels of money flow that keep enriching the economically high and mighty. This needs to be effected without blocking individual’s ability to acquire wealth, which motivates economic production. It is best to achieve this economic power diffusion with least interference from other entities, like continued manipulation by government.

This can be achieved by limiting the number of persons any business can employ. In conjunction with this there has to be a limit to how much interest an individual can own in how many businesses.

What we need is a way to defuse the power of money on economic decision-making, releasing the economic factors from the narrow channels of money flow that keep enriching the economically high and mighty. This needs to be effected without blocking individual’s ability to acquire wealth, which motivates economic production. It is best to achieve this economic power diffusion with least interference from other entities, like continued manipulation by government. — Ashwin Poonawala

I wouldn't say that this is possible, would you? Take a look back at your moral edict, "do unto others...". So long as an individual perceives oneself to be getting the short end of the stick, that person will not obey such an order. Why should I be nice to those who have everything, are giving me very little, and taking whatever they can get from me? The corporations have figured out how to charge us $X per month for everything right up to the air that we breathe (and that's probably next), nickel and diming us, tapping us until we're sapped out, leaving us two choices, hate them for their unreasonable charges, or join the gravy train. If we hate them, we will not be inclined to "do unto others..." toward them. And joining the gravy train requires that we invert the moral edict, so that it now reads "do unto others what others have done to you". Welcome to the pyramid project.

A community cannot function without some socialism. By definition, socialism is nothing but taking away some individual freedom for the good of whole community. Even law of land is socialism. But in-here we are addressing financial socialism. Countries around the world try it in varying degrees and by different combinations. But so far most of the experiments have tried to shift the control from money to authority. USSR was an extreme example of this. This cannot work for long, because human greed for power, wealth and fame, has a high tendency to take over the process. The axiom, ‘the rule that rules the least is the best’ applies to any power, whether it stems from force of authority or that of wealth. A community left virtually to its own devices has the highest potential of prosperity, only proportional to its level of ideological social justice. Additionally, relatively free and prosperous atmosphere allows voices of wisdom to be heard louder, thereby enhancing positive social values.

American political philosophy has vehement opposition to socialism, because it only visualizes socialism operated by government, fearing abuse of society’s resources due to any of the combination of inefficiency, unjust system, and unscrupulous implementation. But we already have some socialism; our graded income tax and the safety-net programs. What we need is to introduce a rule by which our greedy behavior is restrained, the same way as the existing laws restrain our violent behavior.

A large business can produce more cheaply, when in tough competition, than a cluster of small businesses. But in unrestricted free enterprise, giant businesses tend to quell down competition by mergers and absorptions. Then in complacent times wasteful lethargy and inefficiency seeps in easily. On the other hand a small business tends to remain vigilant due to closer watch of its stake holders, afforded by shorter pyramid of the organization. In some commodities the system may put us at a disadvantage for a time against giant foreign businesses. But higher creativity and innovations generated by broader participation of collective mind will override the disadvantage soon enough by improving the products, finding cheaper substitutes, moving to higher technology items, etc. The desire for profit would shift its focus from squeezing consumer to creatively adding values. Euphoric motivation growing from the new hope would make the system start bearing fruits quickly, and the pace would keep accelerating until the process is close to saturation. In less than two generations from the time the system is adopted, the transformation of the community should be awesome.

Since autocracy can act more swiftly, the rest of the world used to think that democracy has no chance of survival against it. What it forgot to consider is that the governance of democracy is more in tune with the well being of all its citizens, and so it receives highly motivated support of its population, and can sustain itself against all kinds of foreign tyrannies. The results of the conflicts over the last hundred year period prove this: monarchy and dictatorship are all but dead, and communism is dying, but democracy is alive and spreading. Similarly, diffused economical power will prevail against all attacks from large foreign corporations due to massive, highly motivated, creative participation. Comparatively insignificant American colonies of merely three million people won against the then mighty British Empire, because of self respecting and fiercely independent minded citizens. Top leaders like Washington were supported by hundreds of courageous and dedicated second and third category leaders. Such a system of restrained capitalism, as addressed in here, will create a society full of upright citizens, interspersed with tens of thousands of bold and innovative economic leaders.

The essence of a corporation is an entity with the sole intent of profit. Their allegiance must be to the stockholders and exist exclusively for their mutual benefit. By definition then it cannot be concerned with externalities. That is individuals beyond that entity are of NO concern to them. While a democracy is a political ideology that attempts to take into account ALL of the people and therefore every externality has to be considered. And therein lies the problem of capitalism in a free political system.

A community cannot function without some socialism. By definition, socialism is nothing but taking away some individual freedom for the good of whole community. Even law of land is socialism. But in-here we are addressing financial socialism. Countries around the world try it in varying degrees and by different combinations. But so far most of the experiments have tried to shift the control from money to authority. USSR was an extreme example of this. This cannot work for long, because human greed for power, wealth and fame, has a high tendency to take over the process. The axiom, ‘the rule that rules the least is the best’ applies to any power, whether it stems from force of authority or that of wealth. A community left virtually to its own devices has the highest potential of prosperity, only proportional to its level of ideological social justice.

American political philosophy has vehement opposition to socialism, because it only visualizes socialism operated by government, fearing abuse of society’s resources due to any of the combination of inefficiency, unjust system, and unscrupulous implementation. But we already have some socialism; our graded income tax and the safety-net programs. But such a scheme, as proposed here, transfers operational control to society, negating state’s potential for inefficiency and abuse.

Larger the organization, the more it is open to mismanagement and abuse to the cause. The activities of government should be confined mainly to security, order within, disaster relief, and keeping eyes for trouble spots. To regulate the behavior within the country it should only make blanket laws, and should stay away from micro-management. Otherwise, we are asking for inefficiency and bad management. Being so large, it can hardly be proactive, slow in reacting, and many times use remedies that are off or worse than the problem.

This approach can make our government small and more effective. As it is, departments just grow in size, and the outmoded one refuse to die. The employees resist loosing their jobs or prestige, or taking on competitive amount of work. We all are selfish to a degree.