Theme: Institution

Athens (and Rome for that matter) was policed by young aristocratic males as part of their duty of service. Aristocrats had to rotate offices. Nobility performed ceremonies. Men earned the franchise (right to own land) through military service. Men who owned land were required to provide military service. When I was in Ukraine, during the revolution, groups of 100 young men would form a line and travel the streets. I never felt safer in my life unless I was hunting with other men with rifles. While the de-facto need for military service (preservation of the commons) requires a broader (or at least different) range of skills, the construction of infrastructure (engineers), and the increase in beauty (aesthetics, decoration, maintenance) is just as necessary a function for a polity. There is no reason we cannot shift from all this rent seeking, to employment of men in the service of the commons in exchange for the franchise. We would produce more socialized, stronger, healthier boys and men. Since the primary desire of the aristocracy from the rest is to behave in construction, preservation, and improvement of the commons – including their behavior, there is no reason why we cannot implement shareholder returns to citizens the same way we do so to common shareholders in corporations. This would radically restructure compensation since if we did so, people could just about survive on those dividends, and then work wages could free-float, and be used for entertainment not survival. As such the construction of commons can be produced at far lower costs – rivaling the rest of the world’s infrastructure costs – by the virtue of shifting the compensation methods from high rent to no rent.