The End of The Corporation

A corporation is in itself a unique system; within it gets created its own language and rules to fulfill a purpose. The purpose would be focused on a set of skills, products or services that for it to survive should simply make money, essentially to exclusively benefit those who have a share in it and control it. The problem is that for a corporation to be effective it requires individuals moulded into its system to function solely within a small subset of its processes. It used to be thought of individuals living their whole life within the processes of this system but a trend has slowly emerged over time that individuals migrate, not only within the one organisation but across many. It seems that this trend is towards more migration and more change for the individual ultimately to a point where a person will have many careers in their life, possibly many at the same time.

Pushing the boundaries here it appears we are leading towards a time when the individual may work for a corporation as and when they wish to, on what they are capable of doing when a requirement appears. Imagine, everyone becoming freelancers of a sort, picking and choosing what jobs they will do as and when they require, or more ideally when they want to. The corporation becomes more and more just a shell of processes and stored knowledge to fulfil its purpose. Imagine the opportunity to the individual in learning and developing many skills as they please, instead of being tied to a grinding wheel fixed by the corporation. How the individual would find the work would be through some form of agency that allows all of these functions to be marketed to anyone that requires them. Today we have service auctions that allow service providers the opportunity to bid and work for other individuals or companies and I can see this idea evolving further to allow “everyone” to work on “anything” that is “available”. These have so far taken advantage of cheap labour markets; however, those markets would not remain cheap for long and if the agency is taken to evolved global form would level out all individuals with the same opportunities and benefits.

Now the corporation can be seen as just a method for achieving its purpose – ultimately to benefit its share holders. What if the corporate system existed within a universal framework that has everyone as the shareholder?

One of the biggest problems with a corporation is ultimately in its efficiency. It cannot nowadays exist as a monopoly and must therefore compete with other companies to target a market. It can never be efficient, precious effort and resources will always be wasted in its effort to compete with its rivals. If everyone is equally its shareholder then all that is left is its methods for achieving a purpose and only one set of method is required to fulfil one purpose. The corporation will not be needed. If this set of methods is developed openly and transparently then any part of it can be scrutinised for efficiency and changed, they can be used and reused efficiently to fulfil many different purposes. Different versions can be created and tested out to constantly improve them and the best of any previously learned corporate methods can made to benefit everyone.

There will be no more need for corporate secrets, no more restrictions on the freedoms of employees, all of the system will be available for anyone to challenge and the sharing of skills and creativity will improve its efficiency.
We have a final form of corporation, global, universal, where everyone is equally the director, the employee and the customer. The rate at which progress could be made could be phenomenal, no more wasted or conflicting efforts, no more misinformation or misdirection that advertising a brand would require. The days of the corporation may well be seen as the time when the rich had power over the poor and exploited them for their own financial gain. Now we exploit each other equally to fulfill our needs for products and services with the benefit of tackling any global issues and requirements effectively.

For the individuals that this final form serves, they have the means to be psychologically self-determined, never working each others’ failure because this would have a negative impact upon them directly. They will have the ability to collaborate and create ideal products and services, from society wide inventiveness, fit for purpose, fully supported and using the most ideal resources. The customer would be fully served; no more false claims or promises.