A Couple of Outrageous Proposals Regarding Facebook

With radio news time monopolized by Facebook “going public”a radical idea came to me. I want to raise the question who should own Facebook. We know that “going public” is a euphemism for being up for sale to the general public. But the general public won't be buying Facebook, only those with the resources and inclination will purchase any of the stock, and only those of the 1%, or some fraction of a percent will own any significant amount of the company.

The way I look at it, Facebook has, for better or worse, become the global village. Perhaps this overstates it a bit. Maybe it is the Internet as a whole that deserves to be called the global village, in that case Facebook has at least become the social gathering place at the center of the town, the Zocalo, the Piazza, the Agoura. In referring to the Agoura, that place in ancient Athens that is often translated as “the marketplace” I am referring not to that buying and selling side of the Agoura, but that place for popular assembly and political discussion that was quite important to early Greek democracy.

By its very nature Facebook has to be a monopoly. Sure there are cracks, twitter and Google chrome plus. But Facebook holds the center, and to function well as a digital Agoura a single center is appropriate. As a public service monopoly public ownership is appropriate. To quote Tom Johnson the mayor of Cleveland from 1901 to 1909 

“I believe in the ownership of all public service monopolies for the same reason that I believe in municpal ownership of waterworks, of parks, of schools. I believe in the municipal ownership of these monopolies because if you do not own them, they in turn will own you. They will rule your politics, corrupt your institutions and finally destroy your liberties”

To the extent that Facebook is part of a global village, that village is the municipality that should own Facebook, not its rich and it's investing aristocrats.

So let me suggest two proposals:

One proposal is out right expropriation. Since Facebook is based in the United States this would have to be in action of the United States, or perhaps the state of California. Were I to look for case law I would turn to the laws of eminent domain. If the space is needed for a purpose of greater public good eminent domain allows the state to take control of that space. My argument is that global democratic and full of Facebook is a far greater public good than whatever will come from its private ownership.

Once expropriated, Facebook in this scenario should be turned over to its participating members on a one-person one-vote basis. I imagine that there may be a need for a careful and lengthy constitution writing process. My readers will no doubt have a number of questions and concerns about this proposal. We could spend quite some time on these issues, but for the moment I will concede that the biggest hindrance is that neither the United States legislature nor any legislative body within its boundaries is likely to take such action in any foreseeable future, and even if this were in some way possible we still have a conservative court to contend with.

There is a second path so let me move on to that. Gandhi often spoke of trusteeship. His notion was that wealthy owners should treat their wealth not as private gain, but as something held in trust for the people. Here we can imagine a split between the concepts of ownership and control. At the moment this is already the structure of the company as it moves forward with its IPO. My understanding is that while he will no longer hold the majority shares in Facebook, Mark Zuckerman will retain a majority of the decision-making power for the organization. On the surface this may seem less democratic. But it leaves an opening for a more democratic option. Mr. Zuckerman could give away his power to all the participants of Facebook. This would not necessarily mean, giving away stock he and the other investors could be "trustees". Again great effort would be needed to come up with a fair and truly democratic constitution. I think we are capable of this effort.

Here my readers are likely to think I've clearly gone mad, why would Zuckerman ever give away his power. I myself have often misquoted Frederick Douglass, “power concedes nothing without struggle” but what Douglas said was “power concedes nothing without demand.”  According to Frederick Douglass “it never did and it never will” but that's not exactly true. If we go back to the ancient Greeks, there is a man who freely conceded power and in so doing launched the Athenian democracy. Solon was the king of Athens. A true philosopher King, he decided that the state would be best served by democracy so he turned Athens over to its people and set off to travel around the world. In so doing Solon gave not just Athens, but the world a model of democracy that has shaped all future political this course.

If Mark Zuckerman with or without his new investors could turn over the whole organization to the people who use it he would be doing something of comparable greatness to the act of King Solon. Facebook users now number so many that if it became a democracy it would be the second largest democracy in the world, behind only India. At its present rate of growth, it won't be long until it's participants number more than the population of India. Facebook could emerge as one element of a truly democratic world. Mark Zuckerman, you can be that bold.