I own an apartment in cooperative apartment building, which is a common type of ownership in New York City and uncommon elsewhere. We all own shares in the corporation that owns the building. We all own multiple shares and the number of shares is based on the relative size, layout and placement of each apartment.
Remember, while corporate shareholders may voice opinions and air grievances at the annual meeting, they usually vote on one thing and one thing only, a slate of candidates for the board of directors. If they don’t like the way the corporation is being run, their recourse is to organize and replace the board. Even in a situation like ours, where there are numerous small shareholders and not many people with large blocks of stock- that can be difficult if the board is deeply entrenched.
Some corporations, including ours, use a process called cumulative voting to make it easier for a group of voters with a minority to gain representation.
Let me try to explain it. In standard voting, if you have a seven member board you are given a ballot with the names of all the candidates on it and instructions to vote for seven people, your preferred slate of candidates. Your vote is then multiplied by the number of shares you own. (I think this is right- all the boards I’ve served on use cumulative voting and I’m not 100% sure about the details of the other methods so feel free to correct me or clarify)
In cumulative voting, you get the same ballot with the names of all the candidates. Then you get 7 votes for each share of stock you own. You can then split those votes any way you want between the candidates. You can split your votes equally among your preferred slate of 7. You can throw all your votes behind one person - this is good way for a small group with a special interest to gain a seat at the table. You can split your votes equally between 4 people (if there is a large group of shareholders trying to overthrow the existing board, this is a sacrifice strategy they may use to retain a majority). It’s flexible and intensely strategic.
This is about as democratic as a corporation is going to get, I think. There may be other structures where every shareholder votes on everything but I would think that would be problematic unless it’s a really small organization.
That is, in effect, not different from what co-operatives really do. Anyone can sign up and become a member. Of course you need to pay up you share to do so; after all, that’s how the co-operative raises the capital it needs. So if your question is “Could a co-operative offer every citizen an opportunity to become a member?”, then the answer is clearly yes - that’s what is happening. If the question is, however, “Could the co-operative offer a share to every citizen for free?”, then the answer would be that it would not be a viable business because the co-operative needs to raise capital somehow.
Just to clarify: many cooperatives limit the people who can join, for instance by area – to join my credit union, for instance, you have to live and/or work in a certain area. To join my agricultural co-op farmers’ market, you have to be eligible to sell at the market, which means you need to be growing or making a product eligible to be sold at farmers’ markets and to be growing/making it within a described area. And so on.
In the case of credit unions, those limits are required by law. That is, you can’t create a credit union open to just anyone. To create a credit union, you have to identify a population that’s underserved by banks and limit it to them. This is usually either employees of a certain company or companies or people who live in a specific area.
Not all corporations have to be viable businesses, though. There are non-profit corporations that raise capital through means other than selling stock.
At some point though, what the OP is describing is a broadly accessible club. You can start a club! Let anyone who wants enter and vote on stuff. There’s no real need to call it a corporation or call the membership interest in it stock, because you’re not going to have any profits to disperse and there isn’t much value in an ownership share because you can’t sell it to anyone (anyone who wants can get their own allowed one-share stake directly from the club). You can write your own charter, elect your club officials, collect dues (if you feel like it) do… whatever it is you want to do.
And it will probably accomplish about what most clubs accomplish: whatever its members are motivated to organize and accomplish.
Just to be clear, I wasn’t arguing against co-ops in general, or their size. But that direct democracy tends to break down when there is enough diversity (in ideology, class, race, what have you) among its constituents, and economies of scale seem to favor hierarchical organizations except in times where command and control collapse.
As far as I can tell, Federated Co-Ops is a network of smaller co-ops that wanted to combine their buying power. It has an apparently traditional (and all white) board and leadership structure (but let me know if I’m wrong). Maybe their members vote for board members (that’s how REI in the USA works), I don’t really know, but it’s not really the same thing as the OP’s “one person one share” kinda democracy. It’s just traditional representative democracy, where voters elect leaders and leaders make choices and appoint minions. Frankly a lot of co-op owners don’t want to be directly involved anyway, seeking more just a vague feeling of community, wanting to stick it to big biz, or hoping for some small return on investment. Doesn’t really mean they necessarily want to help decide next month’s purchase orders or how to deal with the latest sex scandal between two staffers.
It’s distinctly different from worker self-directed non-profits, Occupy, or employee-owned coops operating on a consensus basis. That’s the kinda stuff that’s incredibly difficult to scale, because ultimately people will fracture along some sort of line and cluster into sub-groups.
I’ve wondered if it might work to make incorporation require that some percentage of dividend providing shares might have to be given to the state. That way, every corporation with it’s mandate to provide maximum return to shareholders, would automatically provide a percentage return to the state ( everyone ).
It seems that these days we all bail out corporations, give them breaks. That it could be a way to get some of that back. Of course there are the liabilities as well. But it seems we are all taking those on as well. A corporation gets fined for dirty dealings. They write off fines on taxes. At least we might have got some dividends off those dirty dealings as well.
A simplistic idea on the face of it. But with proper caveats it might be useful?
If the aim of that requirement would be to simply provide the state with part of the dividends, then I think you can achieve the same purpose by simply taxing corporate profits - which is already being done. I don’t see what the added benefit would be of making the state hold equity shares in every corporation. Sure, it would give the state also votes in the shareholders’ meetings, and thus a say in the running of the company; but exercising these possibilities would require an elaborate bureaucracy actively administering the state’s shareholdings.