
Taking "Me, Inc." Public: Market Caps for Individuals - peter123
http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2009/07/taking-me-inc-p.html
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cperciva
I don't think the author realizes this, but what he is really doing is
pointing out that sometimes slavery can be beneficial for slaves.

Selling your future output net of cost-of-living is essentially what slavery
is, after all; and the argument the author is making -- that if one could buy
someone's future output (or the future output of a group of people) then one
would have an incentive to invest in education and health care and other
services which would maximize that output -- is one which dates back to at
least the Roman republic, and probably earlier: Roman slaveowners would often
pay to have their slaves educated or trained, because it increased the slaves'
value more than the education or training cost.

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peter123
It's not slavery if one is willing to be enslaved.

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ajb
There's a reason that freedom is usually held to be an 'inalienable right'
(one that can't be sold). Even if, theoretically, it might benefit someone to
sell their freedom, its too dangerous to allow such a transaction to be
considered legitimate.

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byrneseyeview
_Even if, theoretically, it might benefit someone to sell their freedom, its
too dangerous to allow such a transaction to be considered legitimate._

That is simply untrue. We sell our freedoms all the time. I sell big chunks of
mine in two-week increments when I work; I sell my freedom for other times
when I go home to an apartment where there are certain limits on my behavior.

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ajb
There is an implicit quantifier in the phrase 'sell their freedom'. You read
'any', I meant 'all'.

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byrneseyeview
Right. If you're okay with selling it in increments, but not selling all of
it, there's probably a cutoff. And your cutoff is probably lower than 99%.

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kragen
We used to have a market for private ownership of individuals; thanks to
Wilberforce et al., we don't any more (at least, publicly, in OECD countries).
Is there some reason to believe that public ownership of individuals would be
less evil?

Debt by individuals is still allowed, though. Generally you can do anything
with debt financing you can do with equity financing, no? Student loans are an
example of this, as applied to personal development.

Some "intellectual property" laws are another gray area. If someone becomes an
expert in a patented process, the owner of the patent gets to decide,
essentially, how much that person is allowed to earn with that expertise — and
how much they have to pay in rent back to the owner of the industrial
property. Utility patents and trade secrets have this property; copyrights and
mask-work rights less so; and trademarks and design patents least of all.

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davemc500hats
appreciate the commentary, however i was really only using the individual
market cap example as a way to calculate an estimated value for the overall
asset class... in all likelihood, the financial instrument in question would
likely be for an aggregate group, not for one individual. (see my updated
clarification)

that said, i'm sure there are ways to limit moral hazard in the individual
case, and most certainly there would be a regulatory if anything like that
ever came about that would not allow anything approaching slavery -- or at
least no moreso than credit card debt and/or personal bankruptcy.

(seriously: it's an imaginary financial engineering exercise, not a moral
liberty question. you folks can now get your panties unbunched & proceed with
the discussion ;)

ahem.

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pmichaud
I'm sure that in practice it's a quagmire of ethical and practical details,
but the idea is quite intriguing. It opens the possibility of divideds,
(hostile?) take overs, stock buy backs, options for people who take a risk on
someone.

It could be great.

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popmechanic
Mike Merrill is an American individual who already has succeeded in becoming a
publicly traded person:

<http://kmikeym.com/>

Shares are valued in real time by trades made on his open public market,
implemented as a web application. Shareholders vote on major life decisions,
such as whether he should engage in certain business ventures, and even on
very personal questions, such as whether he should get a vasectomy.

Buy some shares, try it out!

