Imagine a woman. She is a successful employee, an investor, and a mother. Between the demands of work and shuttling her kids to sports practice, she cares about her world. She worries about damage to the environment. She is troubled by explicit sex and violence portrayed on television—and the impact it has on children. Paradoxically, she owns the companies that pollute the environment and the media. During a successful career, she has accumulated savings, which she has invested in equity index funds. The woman owns a slice of the corporate world—and there are a million other moms like her. Collectively, they have the economic clout to shape corporate behavior. But this is hypothetical.

Scrambling from a planning meeting to soccer practice, the woman doesn’t think such thoughts. On the car radio, an announcer describes the latest indictments in the latest corporate scandals—more names to join Enron, Quattrone, subprime …

Let’s change this picture. Let’s make one minor modification to the woman’s world and see where it leads us. Suppose the woman receives a letter from her mutual fund company reminding her that her mutual funds vote the shares they hold on her behalf. She has never had a choice about this, but the letter now offers her one. She can have the mutual funds continue to vote the shares, or the voting rights can be assigned to an organization of her choosing—perhaps some charity involved in environmental or children’s issues. The letter explains that this is possible because a new "proxy exchange" has just been formed. The proxy exchange is like any other exchange except that it is not for trading stocks or futures. It is for transferring proxy rights. Use of the exchange is free, and the woman can access it through a secure website. She can transfer her rights to anyone she chooses—anyone willing to accept them.

What will the woman do? If she and a million moms like her  transfer proxy rights to charities, professional associations, unions, investment advisers, advocacy groups, and other organizations, what will happen? What will those recipients do with their new economic power? How will capitalism be transformed?

How this will work.