“To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of every man. Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.” ~ Baruch Spinoza
To promote the welfare of every human being, we resolve to establish a Human Commonwealth Fund.
The Human Commonwealth Fund will be a collection of investments that pay dividends to every single human being alive.
Unlike a typical sovereign wealth fund, the Human Commonwealth Fund would be universal in scope. Every single human being alive is an equal shareholder.
While this fund does presume democratic, rule-of-law societies as the norm, every human being is an equal shareholder, regardless of their residence, government, or politics.
To provide a meaningful improvement in the quality of life for most human beings is an ambitious goal. However, it is quite likely that well before that occurs, the fund could make a significant difference in the lives of the hundreds of millions of people still living in poverty around the world. Further, it has been shown that sovereign wealth funds can promote a sense of solidarity among people across different divisions within their polity. Such broad human solidarity is sorely needed in the world in any age, not least our own.
The mission of the Human Commonwealth Fund is to broadly and directly share the economic benefits of productive work with every human.
Initially, the fund would draw revenue exclusively from voluntary donations. It may be that governments around the world elect to contribute some share of their tax revenues.
Every human being is an equal shareholder. In order to receive their dividend, shareholders must be registered.
Registration procedures will necessarily need to vary by locality and with changes in technology, but should include (where possible):
To bootstrap the fund, the fund would issue “B” shares in numbers determined prudent by the fund’s managers and governors (see Governance). These shares would be very low-risk, low-reward assets. Their investment goal would be to match the performance of a US Treasury bond (between .3% and 1% yield), or similar asset. Cash raised from B shares would be invested into the normal fund. Revenues would pay back shareholders at the note’s maturity date.
The influence of B shareholders would be tightly limited in scope. Aside from a vote for one position in the governing board and the maturity value of the note, B shares should not afford any benefits or privileges to their holder. B shares should not be transferable or tradeable. Upon death of the holder, B shares should immediately liquidate at their face value (prorated for premature maturation) into the holders’ estate as cash payments in the local currency. They are intended to be temporary fundraising measures, lasting no longer than the life of the shareholder. They are not intended as durable securities.
For people who donate to the fund with no expectation of return, the fund will issue D shares. D shares will not pay interest. D Shareholders will also be members in the Senate. The term of D share membership will be twice that of the maximum B share time to maturity.
The fund’s governors may elect to set rules like a minimum investment required for both B & D shares.
70% of profits1 should be eligible for annual disbursement to registered shareholders. However, not all eligible funds will necessarily be disbursed.
The amount of eligible funds to be disbursed would be a fraction of the total 70%. That fraction would be equal to the ratio of registered shareholders to eligible shareholders (i.e., the total human population). So, for example, if the fund had $1,000,000,000 under management, and the population of the world was 8 billion people, of whom 1 billion were registered, and the fund took in $50,000,000 in revenue that year:
In order to prevent needless transaction costs, disbursements would only be made once they reached a reasonably significant amount (say, $1 USD or equivalent).
Any revenues not disbursed will be reinvested into the fund’s portfolio. 5% of annual profits may be allocated to advertising or other activities intended to promote the fund such as registration drives, advertising, or similar.
No shareholder will be eligible for back-payments during times in which they were not registered or years in which disbursements did not rise to the minimum threshold. Shareholders who were unable to receive a disbursement due to war, political imprisonment, or other extenuating circumstances may be eligible for back payments at the discretion of the governors and subject to appropriate laws.
There will be some time between the fund’s inception and its ability to pay $1 or more to registered shareholders. During that time, every other year the fund should use 30% of its annual profits to make limited payments by lottery to registered shareholders. This should allow the fund to test and develop its payment infrastructure, promote registration, and raise awareness of the fund.
The lottery should be governed by the following rules:
Each lottery should aim to bolster the fund’s mission in some concrete way, such as:
Given that, there should be some flexibility in the administration of the lottery (such as designating some awards for certain regions), subject to the preceding rules.
The ultimate objective for the governance structure is to preserve the integrity of the fund. It is assumed to be inevitable that political rivalries, war, corruption, and other human failings will threaten the fund and its mission in various ways.
There would need to be two phases to the fund’s governance. The Provisional phase, while the fund is still growing, registering shareholders, and seeking enough partnerships to reach critical mass. Once those goals are reached, the fund would enter its Permanent phase.
The fund will need governance during its early days. During that time, it should be governed by a board of 7 members, chosen by the Provisional Senate, which will be composed of initial donors and contributors.
The provisional governors are not permitted to amend the charter. They are a temporary governing board, intended to provide needed oversight until permanent governance is established.
The provisional government should be replaced by the permanent government when all of the following conditions are met:
Under permanent governance, the fund is governed by a board of governors. These shall be:
The HCWF senate exists as a body of supporters of the fund. They would not generally meet as a formal body, and the fund would not provide for expenses related to their communication beyond providing a secure voting platform wherein they could appoint their representatives to the board of Governors.
The senate shall be comprised of
B & D shareholder votes will be a one person, one vote system. Senators cannot increase their vote’s weight by buying more shares, nor could they increase it by buying a B share and making a donation to earn a D share.
Individual Senators may, at their discretion, designate another person to act as their representative. Multiple Senators may delegate to the same person, who, on matters of voting, will vote on their behalf. In matters of voting, a delegate need not vote the same way, but may cast each vote that they represent independently in order to represent those for whom they act as delegate.
To prevent one person buying influence or simply accumulating majority voting power, the following rules apply to delegation:
A senator may need to have their voting powers removed. A delegate may need to be disbarred from acting as a delegate. Circumstances permitting impeachment or disbarment include:
To remove a senator’s voting power or to disbar a delegate requires the following:
The duty of the governors shall be:
The College of Monastics is a group of people who have forsworn typical pursuit of wealth. They are intended to act as a check against corruption of the board of governors or the Senate.
Their sole power within the Human Commonwealth Fund is impeachment. A majority vote of all current members of the College of Monastics can remove any Senator from their office or any Board member from their office. Any person so removed is permanently disbarred from serving in the Senate, on the Board, or as an employee of the Human Commonwealth Fund, such as a fund manager.
Members of the College need not necessarily be religious. They must, however, be verified to be living a life deliberately distinct from ordinary pursuits of wealth. This verification would be conducted by members of the college and ratified by a committee of Senators.
Their duties must also permit the following:
Once established, a new member can be initiated into the college by the following procedure:
While members of the College may also serve in the Senate, no member of the College of Monastics is permitted to serve on the Board of Governors and maintain a membership in the College at the same time.
The absolute maximum for management expenditures of the fund should be 1 percent of assets under management, with a target of .07 percent (benchmark set by Norway’s sovereign wealth fund).
There should be appropriate ethical constraints, oversight, and auditing comparable to any similar institution and keeping with best practices from the financial sector and sovereign wealth funds around the globe.
While the fund managers are appointed by the board & somewhat constrained by rules set by the board, it is essential that they are reasonably insulated from political pressure. To that end, each fund manager will serve a seven year term. To remove them from management early or to reduce their pay requires a unanimous vote of the board and a majority vote of the Senate.
Appointment of a new fund manager requires a majority vote of the board.
In order to ensure continuous management of the fund, there ought to be at a minimum two managers at any given time whose terms expire in different years.
As the fund grows, it will become appropriate for it to subdivide its investments and their management.
A fund manager may not be a member of the Board, may not serve in the Senate, may not serve in the College of Monastics, and may not have a family member on the Board. For this purpose, a family member shall include a sibling, spouse, parent, grandparent or other ancestor, child, grandchild, or other descendant, aunt, uncle, or first cousin. Nor shall a fund manager live with a Board member, be an employee of a Board member, or employ a Board member.
The fund’s managers should have some discretion in order to adjust to changing times and meet the fund’s goal of a more united, just, and equitable world. Likewise, as assets grow or diminish in value, their relative percentages to one another may fluctuate. That said, the general allocation of investment revenues should be divided as follows:
As the fund grows, it will begin to make sense to manage each of the above subdivisions as a separate fund with distinct management. This may be done by amending the charter through the normal process.
There are real risks for perverse incentives to creep into the administration of the Human Commonwealth Fund. The larger the fund, the greater those risks become. To prevent those risks from skewing the purpose of the fund or encouraging bad actors into its governance, the following limits and guardrails must be followed.
As a general rule, the Governors, Senators, and fund manager should avoid embroiling the Human Commonwealth Fund in external disputes, using the fund to manipulate the inner workings of firms, or to promote causes, however just, beyond the core mission of sharing the wealth of industrialized society with the whole of humanity.
The Human Commonwealth Fund is not a government, a religion, or a whole life’s purpose. It should not be treated as such or act as such.
Profits here would mean the revenues from dividends and other investment returns minus any obligations the fund would have from repaying B shares and paying the fund manager(s).↩︎