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Most citizens don't have very much power. I attribute this to us being largely kept misinformed, distracted, and relatively poor. We don't have the money to change our circumstances because many of us are in debt from college expenses, moving out as soon as possible, and needing to finance unexpected children via credit-card. Even those of us that are a little better off mostly just save for retirement and/or buy expensive toys and never get much influence.

Some people tried communism, and all they got were new tsars. Some people tried Fascism, but the interests of the state were not the interests of the people. Some people tried labor unions, and that sort of helped for a while, but eventually they were largely undermined. There have been dozens of social experiments and political factions that promise to bring power to the people, but so far none have delivered that on a wide scale. I believe the missing ingredient is proliferation of worker-owned businesses.

The more businesses that share profits and decision making among their employees instead of share-holders, the less concentrated power will become. As more money goes to the hands of the wider public, less goes into the hands of those who seek to fool us and rig our system in favor of the already powerful. The source of power is not the vote, it is the dollar, and to put the money in the hands of the people, ownership of the businesses must be in the hands of the people.

I propose that an organization be started to crowd-fund new worker-owned businesses. The profits of those businesses would be shared with the workers who create the value, but some would go back to the organization to help fund new businesses. In this way, a the number of worker owned businesses could grow until the fund started getting big enough to replace major industries, which it would, displacing the rich of their traditional source of power.