Inventing our new citizen governing system

A citizen governing system that contains our democratic solution process does not currently exist, so we must invent it. Each Citizen Governance Website must be sufficiently simple and accessible that any citizen could participate who desired to do so. Citizens could access the website using a computer, phone, or other mobile device. The website software would handle any number of citizens, even tens of millions of participants.

The participants in our democratic solution process

Any person or entity that benefits from governing decisions and government services is a customer of the government. Our objective is for all citizens to be equally the highest priority customers of our new processes, without regard to wealth, social status, or connections. We The People are more important than political parties, large corporations, unions, the government itself, and any other legal entities because none of those things actually exists. All of those legal entities are created artificially. They only exist on paper, like characters in a novel. They only exist and have rights because the government passed a law saying so.

The purpose of legal entities

The government allows for the creation of such legal entities to enable their owners to legally own property, execute contracts, obtain financing, and do business under the name of the artificial entity. The courts have given legal entities the same rights as real people. For example, they have the right to promote candidates for public office. They can be held liable for breaking the law and for hurting others.

While free enterprise has existed throughout time, legal entities are the backbone of capitalism. Their primary purpose is to protect their owners from liability and visibility, allowing owners to hide behind this legal illusion and let it take the blame for going bankrupt, or even for breaking the law or hurting people. Legal entities insulate the owners' other assets from any risks associated with the entities. The only risk for the owner is losing the value of their investment in the entity itself.

Legal entities do not actually exist

Regardless of legal entities having the same rights as people, legal entities do not actually exist. Each is just a concept with an assigned name. They are fictitious identities that represent one or more owners who are real people. Even legal entities owned by other legal entities are ultimately owned by real people. Nonprofits, political parties, and other entities without owners are still managed and controlled by real people. It may come as a surprise but only the real people who own and manage legal entities actually exist.

For example, if a legal entity is convicted of a crime, it doesn't go to jail. It only pays fines from assets that it legally owns. How could it be imprisoned, as it doesn't physically exist? This was demonstrated by the conviction of PG&E, the largest utility company in the US. PG&E pled guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter for the California Camp Fire. A person would go to prison for 90 years for the same offense. However, as a legal entity, it was only required to pay the maximum legal fine of $4 million. [1]

Legal entities should have no voice in government

As they do not actually exist, legal entities should not have the power to vote or to help decide laws that govern our country. They are not citizens. They should not have any voice whatsoever in the laws and decisions of the government through any means including lobbying, political advertising, or offering jobs to government decision makers. Actually, the legal entities do not and could not perform such actions, as they don't really exist. The owners and executives who operate these entities perform these actions, giving those people far more power than other citizens have in government outcomes. They are part of the power elite.

Allowing legal entities the same rights as an individual citizen creates an inequality for citizens regarding government. It allows a few people who control massive amounts of money to have a much bigger voice than the rest of us who cannot spend that amount. Legal entities even allow foreign owners influence in our government's decisions.

In our Collaborative Democracy, every adult citizen would have an equal voice. For every person to have an equal voice, no legal entity should have any ability to influence any government decision. Therefore, only individual citizens would have a voice in our new democratic solution process.

The owners of legal entities could speak for themselves and thereby represent their personal interests just as any other citizen could. However, their individual voice must not have more influence than that of any other citizen. This constraint is designed into our new democratic solution process. Only individual citizens can enter issues and participate in solving them on Citizen Governance Websites.