Dear George,
This is an age that calls for bold thinking, bold ideas and even bolder schemes. We teeter on the cusp of a new paradigm. Corporations rule; governments wane. It is time to bring this paradigm to fruition. Remember, George, all great movements began life as crackpot theories. This one is no different.
Very simply, we could solve all of our problems if we incorporated the United States of America. In other words, we’re going to privatize the whole hootenanny government. And since we are no longer a country of citizens but a country of consumers there would be little or no resistance to the reorganization. For that matter, once the public sees its advantages they will actively embrace it.
The political setup we currently have is creaky, inefficient and a source of almost constant conflict and ill-will. All of this will evaporate once we are customers of a benevolent corporation.
Instead of the three branches of government we would have three divisions. In place of a president we would have a CEO, selected by the Board of Directors, who will replace the Supreme Court. The court chose you as president in 2000, so the public would accept your appointment by the new Board.
The legislative branch would be replaced by stockholders, still divided into two houses, though we might want to call them focus groups. We replace the senate with fifty executives from the top fifty Fortune 500 companies. The lower house would be drawn from the bottom rung of the same group. To maintain the democratic character of the House members would be selected from middle management based on their last three performance reviews which would be put through a matrix of standardized quantification.
Here’s the best part: the corporation nee government would no longer pass laws. They would implement policy. Think about it, George. We’d no long have lawbreakers, simple individuals who failed to follow company policy. Instead of police, we’d have policy wonks. Part of the efficiency arising from the reorganization is that these wonks would combine the roles traditionally held by law enforcement officers, prosecutors and judges. There’s efficiency—three tasks collapsed into one.
To be told, “It’s contrary to company policy,” carries more weight that being told it’s against the law. Lawbreaking implies due process and the possibility of walking. Violating policy carries no such safeguard. Rather there is the threat of sanctions ranging from retraining to termination—no time wasted on appeals or other such nonsense.
Obviously, we’d have to reposition the country. But we’ve had nearly a hundred years of convincing the public that corporations are their friend. We could facilitate this re-imaging with a simple name change from the United States of America to Our Place, Inc. Who’s going to mess with Our Place? It’s so warm and cuddly.
With incorporation we kiss goodbye to our economic woes. Deficit getting out of control? A hostile take over of General Motors would solve that. Foreign policy would be a breeze. Take Iraq, for example. We rename it Sandy Eden, Inc. and with a stroke of the pen Iraq is transformed from a colony into a subsidiary and our forces from an occupying army into home officer personnel.
There are unbounded implications to this reorganization. The potential for commercial tie-ins are endless. There would no longer be the spectacle of rancorous debate over petty issues that so sully the political process. That’s because it would no longer be a political process. It would be a commercial operation, smooth as silk and with nary a ripple. And the customers would be so happy and so serene, snug in the arms of Our Place, Inc.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
7:47:29 AM 
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