COG and Furturnet

[Deborah Groban Olson <dgo@esoplaw.com>]

Dear David:

        

I have
read When Corporations Rule the World and am now reading The
Post-Corporate World. I am intrigued by, and generally agree with,
your proposed agenda. I see that you include employee ownership as one
mechanism of bringing control to a more local level.  At COG we are
practitioners and academics, discussing theories, methods and means of
expanding the use of employee ownership to meet many of the same goals
you espouse. I am interested in your views on how employee ownership fits
into your proposed agenda, and even more interested in your thoughts on a
practical strategy to accomplish the political and social goals you
espouse.

        

        

I also
would like to broaden our discussions at COG by including people from
your network, and would be interested in participating in the discussions
on your network. We would like to have mutual hot links between your
website and ours.

        

        

We would
be very pleased to have you visit our website,
http://cog.kent.edu,
to see if any of the discussions interest you. The most intense one is
the ownership discussion, in which the economic and political theories of
Kelsonian binary economics and being discussed with conventionally
trained economists. We also have a partially finished matrix of the
worlds's employee ownership laws and policies, and a variety of
discussions on existing and proposed ownership policies.

        

Do you see
any way to couple a strategy towards the attainment of your vision with
the human tendency toward greed? Is the only way to get where we want to
go to appeal to the better nature of people?

        

Is there a
way to use the same type of carrot that is held out for employee
ownership, to accomplish the rest of your program? In the US we have
gotten to the level of approximately 10 million employee owners via ESOPs
by using voluntary tax incentives that make it financially worthwhile for
companies and their owners to share the wealth. Additional millions
(albeit, mostly highly skilled technology workers) have become
stockholders via the increased use of broad based stock options. However,
both of these ideas have become increasingly popular throughout the
world, and are having some impact on spreading capital ownership.

        

I look
forward to your comments.

Best regards,
Deb Olson

Attorney Deborah Groban Olson

Chair

Captial Ownership Group

c/o Shared Equity Strategies, Inc.

3163 Penobscot Bldg.

645 Griswold St.

Detroit, MI 48226

(ph) 313/ 331-7821  or 964-2460

(f) 313/ 331-2567     or 964-4065

dgo@EsopLaw.com

www.EsopLaw.com