If we assume that most people of USA have exactly one share, then changes from current system are mostly in immigration law - citizenship is for sale, and people are rewarded if they leave country and drop citizenship. We can expect much more rich immigrants and huge increase in government (INS) policy toward them - government will begin to actively attract wealthy immigrants. On the other side, poor americans will emigrate to probably cheap countries and live there on the money that they will receive for their share. (Or they will sell share and live as underclass without voting rights (and may be right to work and so on)) Both changes look attractive for me. I think we cannot expect big changes in voters behavior - so may be elected officials will be more or less the same (but with different motives, if they are rewarded for share price). We can expect, that generally market for shares would be small (not very liquid), so effect of wealthy people wanting to be USA citizens can be very strong (so, for example, their expected interest in low taxes can make taxes smaller, than now).
On the other side, if we allow people to buy more than one share (as it happens in real corporations) - then I think we can expect that rich people will buy many shares (as they do in existing real corporations) to get political influence more directly than now and USA will become oligopoly with poor people having less power than they have now. Mikhail Gambarian Robin Hanson wrote: > Imagine that a nation like the US were run like a corporation. To > live (and vote) here, you'd have to own a share. You could sell your > share and leave, and foreigners could come if they bought a share. > The corporate management would be given financial incentives to > maximize the market value of these shares. They could issue more > shares if these new shares were handed out to previous share holders > in proportion to the shares they currently hold. > > What would go wrong or right with running the US this way? Would > management focus too much on making immigrants happy, versus people > already here who are reluctant to leave? Would there be too many or > two few people here? Would government spending increase or decrease? > Would we get less desirable immigrants, relative to picking and > choosing among applicants? Would the homeless prefer to cash out and > leave, rather than stay and beg here? Would people tend to leave when > they retire? > > > > Robin Hanson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hanson.gmu.edu > Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University > MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 > 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 > >