R.I.S.E.

Real Infrastructure Social Enterprise

RISE, or Real Infrastructure Social Enterprise in full, is a new genre of social enterprise intended to ensure there is always a corner in the market for people to work and make a living so that all people can survive.

The existence of RISE can relieve the tension of deprivation created by market monopoly or market shrink due to its operation in a different market domain. It is a natural and dynamic response to react the market activities to keep the viable living environment remained intact. This concept of RISE is derived from some very ancient Chinese philosophy of ONE which was the principle of forming a society in the very early time to assure every member to live. RISE has its special capability or arrangement out of the part of GAME, or General-business Actuator and Market Enabler in full, to create business and provide jobs unboundedly and to introduce them to the normal market. It has its merit to encourage spending and it helps the new business to grow. RISE will build up a co-existence relationship with people. When it survives, people will survive, and when people survive, RISE will survive. RISE belongs to the people and will not be listed, will not be purchased and will not be merged.

Unlike ordinary social enterprises, RISE has a rather large scale of business. It is its huge earning potential and its nature of social coexistence that makes RISE possible. There will be no competition by nature among RISEs and further the alliance of RISEs will have huge multiplier effect to benefit society. Like NGO, RISE has its sole social mission. But unlike NGO, RISE is profit making instead and businesswise it is no different from any ordinary private enterprises. The nature of RISE is only to assist local people to establish local business to vitalize domestic economy. Society benefits most. RISE is a kind of non-possession administration operation (please refer to Theory), i.e. no owner has the ownership of RISE. It belongs to the public and the population will enjoy a fair share of profit out of it. RISE should be institutionalized if necessary after public recognition.

RISE only awakens the sleeping segment of the market that both the government and the private enterprise cannot do. RISE works as if a counterbalance in the market. First, it is profit making but its profit will go back to the public. Second, it serves as a mother platform for ordinary business. Third, RISE has its arm of poverty monitoring and reacts to it like the immune system.

On top of local RISE, the alliance of RISEs sees the world without boundaries. It sees the world as ONE and will act like an organic entity to circulate capital around all places to reach everyone like circulating bloods in a human body in a natural way. When the local economy is healthy everywhere and everyone can make a living at home, the world will be healthy like a healthy body of a person. There will be no reason for conflict by then.

Many Faces of RISE

1. General-business Actuator and Market Enabler
2. Business Nursery
3. Enterprise Bearing Pipeline
4. Paid Voluntary System

Start up of RISE

Tourism should be an easy approach for establishing a RISE like the Proposal “From Dead-end to Heaven” for Hong Kong. A RISE like Hong Kong RISE will be formed for the operation upon the consensus and acceptance of the public.

There must be a lot of local traditions, cultural traditions, festivals, environmental features, etc. that are cherished by the locals for any city and are exotic and interesting to foreigners as well. Many of them have already turned into tourist spots but usually isolated. In fact, there are many seen as ordinary and remain unexplored. There should exist certain affinity among these places and they can be connected. The connection of these places then creates a circulation system over the city. Such synergy of the connection will create attraction forces to mobilize people to go around. It is the increase of visitors that helps sustaining local economy. Everything is creative. It provides a new dimension for the local traditions, cultural traditions and many other features to turn into attractions with all these new ideas. A RISE is then needed to run all these created businesses to develop tourism in a new dimension.

Every place or city has its own history of development and its own special features. Different places will have their unique circulation map. Therefore, every place or city is entitled to build its own RISE or more RISEs when necessary.

If tourism resources are not sufficient, RISE can be started to begin with the General-business Actuator and Market Enabler or GAME in short. GAME will vitalize the local market first. New businesses that grow on the GAME platform may develop a new picture of local culture to give rise to tourism. Why is tourism so important? It is because tourism is easy to create jobs for people. Tourism can also give a hand to lift up entertainment business, consumers market, articles business and retail business, etc. Today, as the high-tech grows, it poses uncertainty for the future of the general public. Tourism is a very useful reliever to relieve such impact. Fundamental Human Rights have to be observed.

The business direction of RISE is not fixed. We can explore what we can do whatever we can think of for the third tier business. For example, open source will be a good attempt in the field of internet. An open source RISE can serve as a market haven and a marketing tool for new products just like another General-business Actuator and Market Enabler. RISE can also enter the business area like water supply, electricity, housing, banking, grocery, transportation, news media, medicare, pharmaceutical, environmental care, etc. whenever wherever and whatever it needs to counterbalance monopoly. That does not mean it takes one big RISE to cover all these. It will only take one or more individual RISE of the form of non-possession administration in any specific trade to restore harmony when it is needed.

Although RISE is a profit-making enterprise, its existence and its business nature will not be a threat to any other businesses. RISE will give birth to many new enterprises. Indeed, its existence will only handle the monopolization of big enterprises in order to ensure a free market to a great extent and will not be regarded as market intervention. With the existence of the business nursery platform of RISE, market competition will return to a matter of quality competition instead of comparison of the strength of money power.

POSSIBLE COMPANY FORM OF RISE

1. RISE shall never be a listed company.
2. There will be enough shares for the people of the city. For example, say 10,000,000 shares with face value of 1 dollar each.
3. There will be no prominent business owner except the shareholders.
4. The company registrants will sign a legal document to surrender their personal rights to the Board of Directors.
5. All directors and forming directors have only one share each, or only enjoy the rights and benefits of one share.
6. All legal citizens of the city are entitled to be a shareholder upon purchasing one share and no more than one share with its face value.
7. Such shares are not transferable. Shareholders can only trade back their shares with the company based on the face value. When a shareholder dies or gives up his citizenship legally, his share will automatically return to the RISE.
8. The Board of Directors shall be appointed on a term base. The period of term will be determined later by the shareholders. A new board of directors will be appointed by the shareholders’ votes on the Shareholders Meeting when the term of the sitting board expires.
9. The Board will be divided into 2 sections, i.e., the executing section and the supervising section.
10. It is the executing section of the Board to determine the business and hire the administration body to run the business. The supervising section will be responsible to supervise the operation of the executing section of the Board and the administration body. The Board of Directors and the administration body will have a well-defined scope of duty and responsibility of business.
11. The shareholders will share and enjoy the profit every year when it makes profit.
12. This company form of RISE is crucial both to establishing trust by the people and to its business.

POSSIBLE RISE’s Starting Business

1. First phase (Only with a small initial investment)
   1a) Selling merchandises of promoting the city, local features, spirit, and the RISE project and selling books about the humanity principle together with newly recovered important ancient philosophy that supports RISE. The spirit, objectives, business nature and product nature of RISE will be a strong advantage of selling.
   1b) Organizing special activities based on the local culture and traditional festivals and the RISE feature spots.
   1c) Promoting the mission of RISE.
2. Second phase (After the people’s trust in the RISE is established)
   2a) Construction of those attractions.
   2b) Financing for the constructions is needed. A kind of bond named Justice Achievable Market Enabler Savings Bond will be arranged to issue for public financing according to the law. The targeting clients will be mainly the local people. Therefore, public trust is very important during the time of financing.
   2c) A program of General-business Actuator and Market Enabler (GAME) will be launched for nursing new general business of individuals. This program will generate business and jobs continuously as long as it is needed.
   2d) RISE will earn its brand-name of morality but it is its products to be the market drive. Both of them secure the business of RISE.

SOCIAL SHARING FUND

Part of the profit of RISE will go to a Social Sharing Fund or a similar account to support GAME, PVS and RISE-san-Frontier. RISE expels the concept of charity. Everyone should endeavor to make a living on his own and be self-reliant. That means freedom and equality.

Justice Achievable Market Enabler Savings Bond

RISE has its social role. Yet RISE is entirely business-oriented. With its promising set-up of business, one can realize how promising its turnover will be once its business starts. Of course, RISE needs the initial investment to start up. Once RISE is started, it will reach a self-reliant state in a short period of time.

Justice Achievable Market Enabler Savings Bond (JAMES Bond) is proposed for such start up investment for RISE. It is a new idea of financing that is inspired by Social Impact Bond (SIB). But unlike SIB, RISE will be the issuer instead of the Government. Since RISE is profitable and can pay it back without using the taxpayers’ money. However, the Government should play a supportive role in it to make it happen. JAMES Bond shows a new channel for the ordinary people with more security concerns to invest their money in sustaining the via living environment and building a better home for themselves. Almost every member of society can be a shareholder of RISE and a shareholder more over than a stakeholder of society.

The social impact of RISE is indirect but great. The goal of RISE is to ensure a viable living environment for all so that everybody can go to work and make a living. It means the foundation of social harmony. By that, we can envisage a picture of reduction of social problems such as crimes, recidivism, social disorders, juvenile delinquency, poverty, etc., to a great extent.

POVERTY WATCH

This concept of RISE is derived from some very ancient Chinese philosophy of ONE which was the principle of forming a society in the very early time to assure every member to live. It is a natural and dynamic response for RISE to react the market activities to keep the viable living environment remained intact. That means to keep society intact. Therefore RISE is keen to monitor social imbalance in a dynamic way.

Such Poverty Watch does not mean just watching. Some counter measure will be in effect to return enough opportunities for people when a sign of imbalance shows. That is what RISE is for. Making a living is not only a right but also a responsibility of everyone to live.

Morality Brand Name

One of the objectives of RISE is to deliver social responsibility and integrity. That will be seen and done through its operation and will build up its brand name of morality. Those businesses running on the platform of RISE will be happy to share the advantage of such brand name. When these businesses become independent and leave the platform of RISE, it is hoped that the same social responsibility and integrity will become part of themselves.

Quality Brand Name

One of the strategies of RISE is to recruit the best business potentials in the city, therefore quality will be a brand name. RISE will have several selection schemes to select the top-line talents and skills and nurture them to grow and become successful. RISE will be a platform to create quality brand names.

CULTURAL PRESEVATION AND ENVIRONMENT PROTECTION

One of the objectives of RISE is to capitalize cultural preservation and environmental protection and turn them into business so that we may not have to sacrifice our cultural tradition for modernization. The local culture of a place will define its own identity which means a sense of belonging and dignity. Keep our culture alive and let it live.

Resulting in Drop of Social Welfare Spending and Tax Reduction

When all people can make a living, people will be self-reliant and less people will depend on social welfare. That means a drop in government expenditure. Consequently, we may expect tax reduction. Of course, it is always the duty of the government to take care of those incapable one like the old, the young, the ill and the handicapped, etc.