membership // one ucash, the stake // pe 8128
A stake held, not bought.
A member must keep at least 1 UCASH; drop below, and the seat returns to the Corporate Auction. The Corporation counts more than two billion members under the sixteen-billion accessible ceiling, and more than eighty billion Ussociates universe-wide in their service, working the long way to the Auction.
membership // 01
The long way up
Most members rise the long way. Nothing in the Votes of the U is automatic, no birth and no instantiation: a being pays the way in, or a patron or a house pays it for them, or they earn it, wage by wage.
step one
Ussociate
Begin in the service of a Ucasher house or member: more than eighty billion universe-wide, the non-member affiliates on the long way to the Auction.
step two
standing and stake
Accrue both across years or decades. Reputation is the one currency post-scarcity cannot print: a standing built of philanthropic and heroic and profitable acts, weighed by the record.
step three
the Auction
The Auctions convene in cycles, and every lapsed stake returns its seat to the block. Standing at the Auction is multiplied by reputation, and the bidding knows the name.
step four
membership
Hold at least 1 UCASH. One UCASH guarantees Citizenship, no more and no less, and the stake is held in every class: the Corporate fortunes, the Citizen dormancy, the Spiritual convents, the Military pay-chests, the Archon endowments.
the 0.1 ucash reform
the fault line under the ladder
The Holder multitude carries the gap between the one-UCASH theory and the Auction price, and the petition stands to lower the held stake to a tenth of a UCASH. The gap strains the patronage that holds the lower classes quiet: a fault line in its own right.
the ultra prime
about 210 million memberships
Above the open stake stands the elevated elite: memberships bound to the founding families' blood and record, coveted, the majority first-rank Ucasher, the founding trade's own. Higher ranks stand with some of the families and are likely never to be auctioned at all. When one does come available, it runs at the high auctions, and the whole Corporation watches.
membership // 02
Seven classes share the Votes of the U
The split is no fixed thing: each class's share moves with the holdings mustered under it, weighed and restruck at the great censuses. These are the shares of the census of 8,128.
Corporatethe roll is bought at the Auctions
49.8%
Spiritualcalling and trial
18.6%
Citizenthe full 1 UCASH stake
16.2%
Militaryenlistment and service
9.6%
Holdersat least one Subunit
4.4%
Archonsasked, never applied for
1.0%
Artificialrecognition by the registry of autonomous cognition
0.4%
the bare majority
50.2
Corporate at 49.8 stands just under half, and the Artificial sliver at 0.4 carries the coalition over it, 50.2, the bare majority. The kingmakers petition for parity still, and are refused still; in most of Solian-year history the major classes voted much the same way, and so the crown the sliver could hand across has gone begging.
every vote rides a holding
UCASH, Units, or Subunits
Weighed where they stand, cast whole in a single class or allocated across many, class by class, share by share. A being's voting power is their holding, and it need not stand in one place.
the guilds are not a class
the honest way
The guilds are specialist groups outside the classes, cross-cutting and open to all. No vote is cast through a guild; what a guild wields, it wields by its own treasuries, the shares delegated to it, and the sway of its craft.
No class rules alone: the founders split the vote by currencies of standing, wealth and trial and birthright and craft, so that none swallows the rest. The Citizen share sleeps, waking only when the stake-holders are roused, and the sleeping share is the prize every bloc has tried and failed to wake.
membership // 03
Stakes held outside the Auction
04
the Controllers' stakes
Each of the 8,128 holds a prophecy-granted stake of 1 UCASH in trust, membership without Auction, and the granting sits ill among the classes.
05
the coin of the stake
Twenty-one billion minted, about sixteen billion accessible, and no normal being earns one in a lifetime.
Membership is held, not owned, and the Auction has recycled seats since the founding.
the canon, section 11