The Trusteeship Institute, Inc. (TI) was founded in 1973 by Terry Mollner for the purpose of furthering economic development based on Mohandas Gandhi’s theory of “trusteeship.” From the beginning the mission of TI has been to further this worldview both with innovative projects of its own and by participating in and supporting the projects of others.
Gandhi believed that the universe is one indivisible whole. He also recognized that we are each alive for only a short period of time. Therefore, he concluded that we are each the “trustees” of our wealth and talents not the “owners” of them. As trustees we would naturally mature to where we would give highest priority to the good of us all, the one indivisible universe.
He didn’t speak to it in terms of “layers of maturity,” but this is what Terry Mollner believed was implicit in his view of human development.
Gandhi also believed that individual freedom must be honored: it was only through the exercise of individual freedom that one would discover the greater joy of being a trustee rather than being an owner.
Therefore, he believed that each person must choose how much wealth to keep for one’s self and how much to allocate to the common good. If force was used the natural and healthy reaction would be to give priority to regaining freedom before attention could be turned back to maturation. Gandhi was confident from his own experience and what he had observed in others that as people matured they would freely choose to give highest priority to the common good and only keep for themselves what was necessary.
When Terry Mollner was in India in 1979 he had the privilege to travel the entire country and interview the people still alive who had worked closely with Mahatma Gandhi. An old man told him this story. He was never able to collaborate it as true. So the old man may have been making it up to make his point.
He said Gandhi had an exchange with Mao Zedong, the founder of Communist China. He wrote Mao and said that his system would not work. Mao wrote back and said, “What do you mean? I am giving priority to the good of all the people.”
Gandhi wrote back and said, “Yes, it is very good that you are giving priority to the good of all the people. However you are having one group decide what is best for all the people. The next stage of human development will build on individual freedom, not take it away.”
Terry Mollner believes that this will eventually take the form of people freely choosing to set up corporations in the private sector where the highest priority is the common good instead of the interests of a few, usually called “the shareholders.” Besides being a socially responsible company in all of its activities, it will also have a cap on the return to equity investors based on what is necessary to acquire the needed equity. The excess each year will be permanently set aside and managed by the company from that point forward for the common good. This will mainly take the form of investment in “common good investment funds” that will solely purchase successful companies and convert them to “common good corporations” so this movement can grow.
As this movement expands for the first time in the history of the planet there will be many investment funds that all have the exact same highest priority: the common good. They will associate together and do joint ventures to buy multinational corporations.
The multinational community has discovered that it is best to be number one or two in market share in each product sector. It is then easy to coordinate their activities to dominate that market without ever having to speak to each other. They can also buy any new successful products or copy them before they are able to gain significant market share. For instance, Coca Cola and Pepsi control more than 75% of the soft drink market and Odwalla and Honest Tea had little choice but to be bought by them to survive.
This has been leading to there being fewer and fewer multinationals in each sector: duopolies, triploids, etc. which is legal whereas monopolies are not legal. Thus, when one of these is bought it will be in the best interests of the shareholders of each remaining company to not be the last company bought by the common good investment funds. Through a natural free market process all the multinationals will eventually become common good corporations or have extremely stiff competition as customer, employee and government preference turns toward the common good corporation.
Terry Mollner also believes that this will be fueled by the investments of individuals and institutions. Financial planners around the world tell their clients that they will try to achieve an 8 to 11% return for them each year. If the mature common good corporations are able to provide a consistent 12% return, much of this capital will prefer the safety of common good corporations for portions of their investment portfolios. In addition, foundations can provide endowment programs where the capital will only be invested in common good corporations, creating a more positive future for human society and the planet. In these and other ways capital will continue to flow into supporting the development of the common good corporate sector.
Finally, while the common good corporations will compete in the free market and welcome its discipline, their priority is cooperation for the common good. Therefore, they will overtly cooperate to identify best practices, synergies, greater efficiencies through common designs, etc. Their association will become the equivalent of a nation by agreement rather than by geography. They will also see all the citizens of the planet and the planet itself as part of their responsibility in operating for the common good. Thus, through this private sector activity many of the problems on Earth will be able to be solved through cooperation with governments, non-profits, and all other organizations.
Their chosen "nation by agreement" will become more important to many than their "nation by geography."
Just as we are currently members of many governments, i.e. town, county, state, nation, etc., many will continue to be members of those governments but give priority to their membership in the “nations by agreement” that will emerge where the common good of all is the highest priority. Of course, other nations by agreement will also emerge and operate on a more mature form of democracy also pioneered by Mohandas Gandhi in the last years of his life (consensus building democracy through cooperation rather than competition at the ballot boxes). Anyone on the planet will be free to join them. The common good corporations will work with them for the common good. Eventually taxation could also not be necessary because the excess profits of the common good corporations would be donated to the “consensus building nations by agreement.”
You will be able to learn more about all of the above in a book by Terry Mollner soon to be published entitled The Love Skill: It Determines How We Experience Everything Else…Welcome to the Relationship Age. Also, under Articles by Terry Mollner [ABOUT TI Menu], you will find articles about some of the issues mentioned above.
To further this in economics, business, and finance, Terry Mollner was one of the earliest pioneers in the field of socially responsible investing. In the mid-1970s, Robert Swann and he founded the Institute for Community Economics, Inc. that created the first modern think tank on socially responsible investing. Terry led a group of fifteen leaders from around the country in writing the social screens which are one of the basis for all progressive social screens to this day and which also led to the creation of the Calvert Family of Social Investment Funds of which Terry was also one of the founders and is still a board member. [see Calvert Investment Funds]
Your financial support will continue the work of building common good corporations and investment funds. They are organizations that freely choose to give priority to the common good by placing a cap on the return on equity; the excess each year is permanently set aside and managed by the firm for the common good as they judge best forever. Mail your contribution to Trusteeship Institute, 61 Baker Road, Shutesbury, MA 01072. Thank you.