Political Manifesto: Part III
United States, Inc.
Sail on, o Ship of State! Sail on, o UNION, strong and great!
Humanity, with all its fears, with all its hopes for future years,
hangs breathlessly on thy fate!
(from Henry W. Longfellow's "Ship of State".)
USS Constitution in Boston Harbor
Poetic sentiment has its limits. Most Americans don't read poetry. They have probably never even heard of Henry W. Longfellow. They may see this poem for one day in school, where it goes in one ear and out the other. If we want Americans to connect to nationhood—to a mindset that has both a personal and national character—as an acknowledgement that we share ownership of an important asset whose welfare fate has entrusted its to us, then we should look no further than the financial pages of the newspaper. The best approach to understanding nationhood has to involve an understanding of assets. We Americans, as citizens, own shares of stock in a corporate entity that I will call "United States Inc." The shares of stock you could term "presumptions" about our lives.
I wish that United States, Inc. appeared on the stock-market pages of newspapers, along with Apple Computer, Google, and New York Munis. The assets of America, Inc. don't include just intangibles like Truth, Justice, and the American Way. They include functioning stop-lights—not a presumption in many countries—advanced consumer logistics, public water, sewage and lights, lawful orderliness, and the technology of connectedness.
Americans could see how United States, Inc. has to maintain its value, in the face of current events and bad press, from as non-partisan a source as you can get, its monetary value—in order to inform and connect Americans to the idea of ownerhip in America as a financial entity, using its monetary value as an indicator of its overall health. United States, Inc. could reward its investors with heaps of good news about the economy. Bad press, fearmongering, and rumor-mills don't stand a chance in the face of America's non-partisan financial data.
Media organs report everyday on the stocks and bonds issued by corporations, known collectively as securities, and report their valuations daily, so that investors can measure the value of their stock positions, compared to valuations from the week before, or from last year. Good projections mean optimism about the future. Bad projections mean that maybe the investors can do better if they sell their positions in United States Inc. and invest in something else. But a loss of confidence in United States Inc. leaves Americans with few options.
Loss of confidence in a private corporation usually leads to a shuffling of leadership, sometimes to a division of the corporation, sometimes to its selling. For all the public tumult of such measures, it happens everyday. Business leaders do not see a division as a huge risk, because they can rely on the non-partisan monetary valuation of the corporation to guide their decisions.
The old Prudential Insurance slogan "Own a piece of the rock," could serve as the basis for the new slogan, "Own a piece of the country." You don't buy it. You get it with citizenship. You understand that your future depends of its success, and its dollar value is a quantity you can easily grasp. If the "Rock" increases in value, each "piece" increases, as well.