To all Americans,
I believe that the only way to fully address the toxicity of our government is to organize and livestream a Constitutional Convention. Starting with a working draft we can rally around, we gather some of the smartest Americans in the country in a room together for a single day and have them walk us all through designing the best government possible, while millions of us comment and criticize in real time. I think this narrative, the joining together of intellectual expertise and democratic feedback, represents the only real solution to the entrenched corruption that is gradually destroying us.
Life is already a struggle for most Americans, and our lives will continue getting worse until we fix the single biggest problem in the world: the hijacking of our government by corporations and aristocrats. Our government is now a tyrannical empire, unaccountable and oppressive, and it seems there is no real option for fixing it. The Constitution, brilliant in its time, can no longer meet the demands of a modern, global, digital civilization.
The risks of replacing our founding social contract are enormous, but they can be minimized. The rest of this manifesto aims to do just that, providing the American People with a structured gameplan, a tangible roster of delegates, and a concrete constitutional framework for the next evolution of our great democratic experiment.
This manifesto can be broken down into four distinct parts:
1. Setting, why is this necessary?
2. Solution, how does it work?
3. Social Contract, what are we building?
4. Sample, what might a new Constitution actually look like?
We live in an age of information, where stories and ideas can spread to billions in a matter of hours if they generate enough emotion and controversy. This is likely the best opportunity you will get to join a nonviolent replacement of the American government because it is probably the only time you will be invited to join one. Nobody is out here dreaming this massively, trying to address the biggest problem in the world in a safe, simple, straightforward way.
The dream is not to make our nation great again; the dream is to make our nation greater than ever. My hope is that this dream becomes your own, and that you help it become a unifying story for the distressed, oppressed, suppressed American People.
All the best,
Nobody
P.S.
The very first rule of the U.S. Constitution is the freedom to think, speak, and assemble peacefully. Any military or law enforcement officer reading this proposal must understand: your oath is to the Constitution and not to a politician, party, or President. Any attempt to arrest me or interfere with this initiative would be a direct violation of the single most important principle you swore to defend: the freedom to think, speak, and assemble.
“These are the times that try men's souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
Thomas Paine
SETTING – Is radical action absolutely necessary?
"The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters."
Antonio Gramsci
The United States of America, the most powerful, successful empire in recorded human history, is in catastrophic decline. The consequences of a collapsing superpower will be terrible for the American People and our species. For several decades, the USA has maintained a world order based on law, free trade, and international cooperation; an order that provided a sheltered environment that enabled the flourishing of billions of people. That environment is now crumbling along with the integrity of the American government. If the indispensable nation falls to tyranny, the environment that generated so much peace and prosperity falls with it, and the world returns to the historic norm, where might makes right. As the compounding effects of climate change begin to limit basic resources, violent conflict between our kind is all but inevitable.
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln
The corruption in American society is obvious and overwhelming. It seems that it is simply too entrenched to remove; that it has metastasized throughout too many vital institutions; diversified across too many executives. This corruption is not a fault unique to our nation, but a pattern that is seen across history and around the world. Powerful empires fall victim to internal corruption. And while we like to think ourselves exceptional, we are no exception to this pattern. We have devolved from a healthy, democratic republic into an oligarchic kakistocracy, a society in which our most corrupt citizens are also the most powerful. The immensely powerful institutions that once protected the liberties, freedom, and prosperity of the American People have turned against us. The federal government has been captured by a powerful, wealthy aristocracy that acts in their own interests at the expense of the American People.
“In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
Orwell (?)
Tyranny, the very adversary this nation’s founders risked everything to revolt against, can be seen from three noble perspectives.
Aristotle, one of the most accomplished philosophers in history, defined tyranny as rule for the ruler’s benefit, rather than for the benefit of people. In Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court legalized unlimited political bribery, allowing corporate and special interest money to flood our elections, drowning out the voices of ordinary citizens. The corruption stemming from this ruling has corroded our government across federal, state, and local levels, spreading pay-to-play politics like a cancer. Politicians no longer serve their voters, they serve their donors; and they do so knowing that they are betraying their constituents. And that systemic corruption is completely separate from the obvious, ongoing corruption of the current administration. By Aristotle’s definition of tyranny, rule for the ruler’s benefit, we have a tyrannical government.
John Locke, the enlightenment thinker that dared challenge the divine right of kings, believed that tyranny occurs when a government violates the natural rights of the people it governs. 1st Amendment rights are under attack, with freedom of speech and assembly becoming increasingly restricted. Under the new administration, the attack on our inalienable rights is only growing more severe. Individuals are being arrested for simply voicing uncommon, uncomfortable opinions, and institutions pressured into bowing before the administration’s will. There is public discussion relating to the suspension of habeas corpus. And looking beyond the recent developments, the 4th Amendment, which protects us against unreasonable searches, has been shredded by the Patriot Act. Government intelligence agencies now spy on Americans without warrants, due process, or oversight. Our famous rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ring exceptionally hollow, as most Americans spend almost all their time working and can barely meet their basic needs. By Locke’s definition of tyranny, government infringement of their citizen’s natural rights, we have a tyrannical government.
James Madison, one of America’s original founding fathers, warned that tyranny arises when a single branch of government consolidates too much power. Trump v. United States granted the President absolute immunity from criminal prosecution while in office. And to skew the balance of power even further, a sitting President passed an executive order stating that the President’s interpretation of the law will supersede all other opinions, replacing the role of the judicial branch outright. The executive branch is not just openly ignoring unanimous Supreme Court verdicts requiring the return of an illegitimately deported resident, they are claiming it as a victory. And even beyond the recent political turmoil, the President is able to launch precision guided missiles around the world without any oversight or evaluation. He is capable of raining down death and destruction around the world, wherever and whenever he chooses, and history has shown that Presidents exercise this power frequently, regardless of political affiliation. By Madison’s definition of tyranny, the over-consolidation of power, we have a tyrannical government.
"When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty."
Thomas Jefferson
Corruption now permeates every level of our government; it runs deeper than the Presidency, deeper than Congress and the Supreme Court. Laws are purchased by corporations and aristocrats, regulators are controlled by the industries they oversee, and working Americans are left powerless, forced into trading their very time, energy, and lives away to simply survive. Because of this unacceptable, undeniable tyranny, a revolution is not only justified, it is necessary for our lives and the lives of all future Americans.
"If we fail to act now, the collapse of our civilization and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon."
David Attenborough
And while claiming that our lives are at stake might seem a gross exaggeration, the reality is that our lives depend on radical, coordinated action on a scale that is politically unimaginable right now. The climate catastrophe is way worse than people realize and it poses a clear and overwhelming threat to the American People, as it does to the rest of life on planet Earth. Consider this: James Hansen, a former NASA director, believes that an 8 to 10C of warming is already locked in. For reference, scientific consensus is that our modern civilization, with all its distracting luxuries, will break at 3C degrees of warming. We have already passed the 1.5C limit set by the Paris climate accords, 25 years ahead of schedule, and as a species we are still emitting record levels of greenhouse gases. Our civilization is built on an agriculture system dependent on stable weather patterns and these weather patterns are changing dramatically. If these patterns change so much that we cannot grow food, our civilizations breaks down. Our incredibly sensitive, just-in-time civilization is fundamentally unprepared for expected effects of climate change, changes like AMOC collapse, sea level rise, and mass agriculture failure. Our government was unable to stop our civilization from literally destroying the habitability of the world, despite knowing the consequences decades ago, and so it must be replaced.
“You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or you can have democracy. But you can’t have both.”
Louis Brandeis
And to make matters even more infuriating, our society only really benefits for a select few of us, most of whom inherited their godlike power and wealth. Our socioeconomic problems are rooted in the immense inequality in wealth, quality of life, and ultimately suffering. Millions of us are finding it impossible to make ends meet. Housing, education, and healthcare have become unaffordable, and because all Americans are bombarded with propaganda on a daily basis, we are tricked into blaming the other political party for the increasingly unacceptable state of our lives and society. Our suffering is being used by media conglomerates, foreign rivals, and bad faith actors to erode the bonds that bind us together into a single body. Our government has proven itself incapable of regulating our society so that it provides an acceptable standard of living for all American citizens.
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness”
Declaration of Independence
The challenges we face as a national are literally too many to list, these are simply the most obvious, pressing threats. As things stand, we are incapable of meeting any of them because our government is corrupt to its core. We are at a breaking point where the American People must either overcome tyranny or fall victim to it, a point where radical action is justified and necessary. Change on a continental scale is terrifying to consider, but if we do not act now, life for all Americans will become increasingly worse as our government becomes increasingly tyrannical and the Presidency becomes increasingly dictatorial.
“It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
Our current government is built around the Constitution; it is the foundation from which every single office and law derive their powers. That Constitution is more than two centuries old, making it one of the oldest in the world; and it is almost impossible to amend. It was written in an age of sail-powered shipping and horseback messengers, an age where slavery was legal and women were property. We live in an age of geosynchronous satellites and pocket supercomputers, an age of complexity and technology light years beyond what the founders could have foreseen. We are trying to run a 21st century society on 18th century laws. Our lives depend on creating a government that is loyal to its citizens and built for this age. Just as the Constitution replaced the failing system of law and order created by the Articles of Confederation, the time has come for the Constitution itself to be replaced.
"It always seems impossible until it’s done." – Nelson Mandela
We must recognize the outstanding success of our Constitution, the cornerstone for the strongest, wealthiest nation in human history. It became a living document that endured for a quarter millennium, evolving to keep pace with the needs of the American People, creating a civilization powerful beyond anything our ancestors could have imagined. Replacing it opens the door for terrible unexpected consequences. So if we are going to replace it, we need to make sure we replace it with something better.
“Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants.”
Frederick Douglas
SOLUTION – How does this plan actually work?
The best metaphor is one which almost every American can relate to: a house. Imagine our current government as an old house, where termites have hollowed out the load-bearing walls, mold grows unchecked in the bathrooms, the roof leaks with every storm, and it all rests on a cracked foundation. All Americans are, right now, living inside of this dying house, one which was built a quarter millennium ago, one teetering on the verge of collapse. Unless we build a new home, collapse and tragedy is all but inevitable. It is impossible to say which wall will collapse first, or which hurricane will blow the house apart, but it is obvious that a disaster is immanent. A house as rotten as ours cannot be repaired, it must be deliberately, carefully, professionally demolished before another, better home is built in its place. Obviously, building a house is not easy. It requires specialists from all sorts of fields. You need architects, general contractors, electricians, plumbers, roofers, interior designers, foundation experts, and many other specialists who know exactly what to do within their niche of expertise. You do not just hire a bunch of general contractors to build a home, you assemble a collection of specialists, each one tasked with a specific responsibility. We build our government the same way we would build a home. Just as we would trust electricians, we trust economists; and just as we would trust plumbers, we trust policy veterans.
"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, or the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
Charles Darwin
Given the dangerously tyrannical nature of our government, we are faced with a simple question: how do we respond? This essay provides an answer to that question, proposing a mechanism to change the trajectory of our nation in a single decisive, democratic, extremely well examined stroke. This solution for the next evolution of the American democratic experiment might be appealing for its ability to fully eliminate entrenched corruption, but it raises far too many questions and seems far too abstract to be considered a viable path forward as of this moment. This essay reduces that risk by offering the American People a tangible thing can examine, critique, and rally around. Think of these essays like a blueprint, one which can be refined by our experts and endorsed by our citizens before construction begins.
"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew."
Abraham Lincoln
This proposal is simple in theory. We gather the most capable Americans alive today, assemble them to design a brand-new government, and livestream their discussions and debates to the rest of the American People in real time. The best professors and professionals in the nation walk us through their expertise, passing the baton of national attention along to create a story, developing the structure of our government piece by theoretical piece and explaining exactly why it should be structured that way. This proposal would bring together the leadership, expertise, and knowledge of our foremost intellects, and combine it with the aggregate wisdom and democratic legitimacy of the American People. This strategy ensures that the overall structure of our government is in accordance with natural laws and teaches the American People why and how to build an awesome civilization. This plan not only provides us with a great government, it generates public support and acceptance of that government. It creates an immense amount of data regarding public opinion on specific policies and positions, which can be used to further refine the structure of our state. This proposal would allow us to harness the full intellectual capacity of the American People, instead of relying on a single director, a group of intellectuals, or pure public opinion. By bringing the three together, we can create a government that works for all.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world… the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
George Bernard Shaw
Rather than electing the most well-rounded individuals for our representatives, or the polarizing, partisan figures of either party, we must elect the individuals with the greatest expertise in a number of critical fields, knowing that together they are more capable civilizational architects than individuals with extensive experience navigating a thoroughly corrupt political system. The traditional methods of voting in politicians will only ensure that extremely corrupt individuals are in charge of an extremely delicate, consequential task. But how do we pick them? If these delegates are so important, if they have the potential to make or break our civilization, who gets to choose how we choose them?
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world.”
Albert Einstein
Conductors get to pick their orchestra and their music, coaches get to pick their roster and call the plays, and directors get to cast and edit their movies. Artists have full control over their art. My particular art is daydreaming. I consciously refine a possibility, a story, for maximum expected emotional return. I take reality and reimagine it to create the most happiness and least suffering for the people I care about. This entire plan is essentially just an extremely calculated daydream, a fantasy you can dismiss if you want. But while it is just a daydream, it is also an invitation to participate in the greatest democratic experiment ever.
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
H.P. Lovecraft
Look behind the present into our past. Every major political and social movement of the past century was led by an individual. Across centuries and continents, the pattern of massive social change catalyzed by an individual leader is remarkably consistent. When faced by a crisis, the Greek city states and the Roman republic would appoint an individual to guide them through the crisis. They were often able to navigate those crises successfully because traditional democratic decision making had been suspended in favor of centralized execution. Look at our own history, and we see the drastic consolidation of power during the Civil War by President Lincoln, or the initiative of FDR during his first hundred days to fight the Great Depression. Extraordinary circumstances demand extraordinary responses, and we are at a point of crisis where democratic ideals must yield to temporary autocracy for the sake of all citizens. One beautiful facet of this plan is that the leader never really holds actual power, as the script and draft are all we need for this to work.
"A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus."
Martin Luther King Jr.
My solution is to create a structured outline for this Convention, so that the rallying item is not a charismatic individual or a committee, but a decisive production. By taking the liberty of selecting specific delegates, identifying the length and content of their discourse, and structuring their content into a logical progression throughout the course of a single day, we can massively reduce the uncertainty surrounding this movement. We do not have to rely on a talent of a single leader or bet the farm on a chaotic free-for-all led by polarized, corrupt politicians. Having a plan laid out in clear terms, and a draft Constitution we can all refine, provides citizens with a clear opportunity, one which promises a much greater version of our union. So while final decision over the structure of the Convention and the roster of delegates rests with an individual, the entire American public will be able to criticize, comment, and evaluate the decisions I have made, allowing for a feedback loop that optimizes the overall quality of the decisions made. This compromise between executive authority, intellectual expertise, and democratic legitimacy is the best way to ensure that we actually create a better government. This hybrid model marries efficiency with legitimacy; it enables rapid execution without sacrificing collective oversight; and it seems to be the only way to get the people who deserve to lead these discussions actually leading them.
"Some men see things as they are and ask why, I dream things that never were and ask why not." Robert F. Kennedy
In light of the centralized decision making in this proposal, we must ensure that democracy plays a leading role for the actual Convention. For starters, we should acknowledge that the creation of this new social contract would be far more democratic than the writing of the Constitution itself, as it would give millions of Americans the opportunity to directly influence the structure of their state by voicing their comments and concerns in real time. Never before has the design of a social contract been democratized to this degree. So right off the bat, we are doing far better at integrating our democratic ideals than the writers of the Constitution themselves.
"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do."
Leonardo da Vinci
However, we can go further still. By holding a two-tiered vote, we can ensure that the government we design is both scientifically sound and publicly approved. The first vote is by the delegates. It would be conducted in full public view at the end of Convention Day, and it would determine if the proposed government is good enough to put to a public vote. If the vote among delegates passes, then we implement a public referendum on adopting our new social contract, government, and civilization. The veto power the American People have over this conversion cannot be overstated: it is paramount to the appeal and success of this enterprise. The referendum serves as a democratic fail-safe, and given its importance, the logistics of actually organizing that referendum should be left to individuals who are far more capable and experienced than myself. The four ex-Presidents would be stellar candidates for this job, bringing bipartisan comradery, priceless legitimacy, and decades of experience at all levels of our political system.
“The problem creates the solution. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
Marcus Aurelius
This is probably the only time someone is going to ask for your help replacing the most powerful organization in the world from your dining room table. And unless we do that seemingly impossible thing, unless we peacefully regain control of our captured government, life for the average American just keeps getting worse as the complex political, economic, and environmental systems we depend on continue breaking down. Every other possible solution I can see only patches up a miniscule portion of the rotten whole. We need a massive, sweeping, extremely delicate change, and this essay provides a way to create that change.
“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”
George Patton
Think of it with this metaphor: imagine that we have a homework assignment to design a new and improved government. It’s the night before the deadline and we have no project whatsoever to submit; we haven’t even met yet. Right before midnight, a quiet kid who sits in the last row and is always sleeping suddenly shows up with a draft of project shows up. His only condition is that we all meet one time to finalize it before submitting it, and we let the smartest kids in the class lead the effort. All 300+ million of us need to decide if we are going to help improve this project. But given that there are no other alternatives to fixing our government and the severe consequences of not fixing it, the choice seems obvious. Yes, this plan for designing and implementing a new government is imperfect, it’s a probably a B, but it looks really attractive when compared to a big fat zero.
"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."
Texan proverb
The government is broken, it does need fixing, and no one else has a plan to fix it. This plan is flawed, but it represents the most comprehensive, peaceful, immediate tool we have to retake control of our government; it paradoxically sacrifices democratic selection to ensure democratic outcomes. The final piece to this puzzle is to establish a framework, a societal blueprint, which the public and our experts can judge before committing to a revolutionary movement. The final essay in this manifesto contains a preliminary sketch of a civilization that could bring an incalculable amount of happiness, prosperity, and restore desperately needed community to the American People.
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete."
Buckminster Fuller
STRUCTURE – What are we building?
To understand how to create the best civilization possible, we must study its basic building block: a human being. By turning our attention to the inner workings of the human mind, exploring it through the lenses of psychology and neurology, we can develop an understanding of why people do what they do. After having identified the core drivers and mechanisms of our behavior, we then turn to the external fields of knowledge, such as political science and economics, to understand how to build a civilization optimized for human beings. The internal journey is about ‘why’ we should structure society in a specific way, and the external journey is about ‘how’ we actually do it. Simply put, we must build a society that maximizes the freedom of its citizens.
WHY
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."
Viktor Frankl
PSYCHOLOGY
Psychology is the study of the mind and human behavior, dealing with emotions, thoughts, and motivations. Of all the psychological models that attempt to explain human behavior, one of the most famous is known as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. There are many psychological frameworks for human behavior, some far more modern, but this one is simple to understand and has stood the test of time. Maslow, one of the most cited psychologists in history, structured human motivation into five distinct levels. To reach the higher tiers of motivation, an individual human would need to meet their more basic needs first.
At the most fundamental level, human beings are driven by their biological needs: air, food, water, etc. This is the most basic level, and these needs take priority over all others. For example, if a person runs out of air somehow, getting air becomes an overwhelming priority for them very quickly. The second level of Maslow’s hierarchy deals with safety, ensuring that a person feels protected from the elements and other humans. The third tier is community oriented, establishing the need for social acceptance and a place in society. The fourth level is probably the most complicated to satisfy, as it deals with the need for self-esteem and personal identity. We are driven by suffering to meet our biological, shelter, community, and identity needs, and all of them are competing against each other, exerting varying degrees of emotional force against us. It is crucial to realize that all humans have these needs, and that all of us will try and meet all our needs. If we are to build a successful society, we must account for how to meet the needs of all our citizens, not just those of our wealthiest citizens.
If all four lower tiers of needs are satisfied, we reach a final state Maslow called self-actualization. Self-actualization is self-maximization. It is the ability to imagine the best version of oneself, and then to go out and become that person, to realize the heroic story arc that one imagined. One person may envision becoming a famous musician, another a groundbreaking scientist, and another a charismatic politician. The nature of the dream depends on the talents of the individual and the needs of their community. As individuals across society reach a state of self-actualization, they become the most capable, contributing version to their society. Because self-actualized citizens contribute the most, it seems rational to optimize our society so that individual citizens are able to achieve this psychological state as much as possible.
It is important to note that these levels of motivation are not fixed. A person is not in a perpetual state of self-actualization, for example, because their lower tier, more pressing needs often get in the way. So while a master painter may focus completely on his work for an extended time, eventually certain biological needs assert themselves as more important. Self-actualization is a constant exercise. We must recognize that maximizing the time one spends in a state of self-actualization is the actual goal. It is not as simple as reaching that plateau and staying there forever.
In the final years of his life Abraham Maslow estimated that less than 1% of society was self-actualized. Imagine what it would mean for our civilization if we could reach 2%. Imagine if we doubled the number of geniuses in our society. Imagine what it would mean for our innovation, culture, and development if we achieved a society where our citizens were self-actualized 10% of the time. Imagine what that would do for our cultural, economic, and intellectual output. Imagine what it would do for all of our health and happiness.
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops."
Stephen Jay Gould
NEUROLOGY
While this is a basic introduction to the motivation that drives our behavior, we must dive deeper than the simplistic model outlined by Maslow and begin to explore neurology, the study of the human brain. What actually happens when a person becomes self-actualized?
The brain is the determinant of our behavior and the source of our emotion and intelligence, so understanding it is a critical part of developing the best civilization possible. To learn more about self-actualization, the highest existence of human life, we must study neurological systems like the default mode network (DMN), the executive control network (ECN), and the salience network (SN). All three networks work in concert with each other. The DMN is in charge of imagination, the ECN is in charge of action, and the SN is in charge of determining what information is relevant and which of the other two networks takes priority in distributing neurological resources. These three networks work together to shape our perception of reality, our ability to think critically, and our ability to navigate this complicated, dangerous world. A healthy mind balances between all three of these networks, and they arguably represent the most sophisticated neurological functions of our brain.
The DMN is a collection of neural structures that include the most recently evolved part of the human brain: the prefrontal cortex. This incredibly important network activates when we have no immediate task to work on, when we are bored. If we are at not doing anything, this cerebral structure enables us to imagine and daydream, or as the technical literature puts it, to engage in stimulus independent thought. The DMN enables us to tinker with and manipulate reality, ideas, and stories in our minds, creating narratives that appeal to or create anxiety for the individual. This network is the source of our innovation, creativity, and imagination. The activation of the DMN creates a small degree of suffering, as anyone who has ever been bored knows, thereby incentivizing the individual to act. By calculating the emotional cost/benefit of a particular course of action, the DMN helps us plan for the future, learn from the past, and guide our actions in the present.
This second major network, the ECN, is just as important as the DMN. This neural network activates when we are focused on doing something. The greater the degree of focus, the more energy is directed to the ECN, and the less active our DMN becomes. Take the example of driving a car. At first, driving a car requires our full attention. But as one becomes more experienced, the nature of driving becomes more automatic, more unconscious, leaving energy and attention that the mind can direct towards other thoughts. An experienced driver may be able to activate their DMN and ruminate on a problem at work, increasing the ability of the brain in meeting the overall needs of the individual.
There is a particular state of mind known as flow, which is essentially the ECN’s maximum state. Flow was first identified by a psychologist named Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, and it describes a state where a person is totally immersed in an activity, where focus on a task is absolute. Simply put, it is “being in the zone”. During a state of flow, the prefrontal cortex and the DMN shut down, and the ECN takes full control of a person’s attention. Actually reaching this state is incredibly difficult, requiring the right circumstances and intense training. If the task is too easy, the person becomes bored and the DMN activates; and if the task is too hard, the person becomes frustrated, and the DMN activates while they consciously think through the task. But get the right balance of competence and difficulty, and a human can achieve a state of peak performance, one that is inherently satisfying; a feeling that makes all the suffering leading up to that moment worth it. Flow is important because it represents the optimal performance of our kind. It is the most efficient use of bodily and cognitive resources and the highest conversion of those resources into meaningful benefits for the individual and their community.
If we are to tie our current understanding of neurological networks to our previous forays into psychology, we must understand the relationship between self-actualization and these three networks. As we know, individuals move fluidly throughout the various tiers of needs, with different neurological circuits activating in response to the body’s biological inputs. When an individual reaches a state of self-actualization, they are faced with the question of what to do. It is this state that activates the DMN. As a person begins to imagine and daydream, they are essentially manipulating their reality into possibilities that maximize happiness and minimize suffering. Once they have reached a certain threshold of risk/reward, they begin to act on those dreams, activating the ECN and ideally reaching a state of flow. The critical link through these points is to realize that self-actualization is inherently related to freedom. The less time and effort an individual must spend meeting their basic needs, the more time and energy they can spend meeting their aspirational needs. The freedom an individual possesses is directly related to their needs. Freedom is only maximized when an individual reaches a state of self-actualization, as they become truly able to control their fate. When a person reaches a state of self-actualization, they can use their lives however they think best, unencumbered by non-negotiable needs.
"Some men see things as they are and ask why, I dream things that never were and ask why not."
Robert F. Kennedy
HOW
We know from our journey through psychology and neurology that human beings have needs, and we know from experience that people are going to do what they need to do in order to meet those needs. We know that the most developed, advanced state of mind a person can achieve is either engaged in stimulus independent thought or lost in a state of flow. And we know that freedom is inherently tied to a person’s needs, with self-actualization representing the freest version of that person. Having investigated the core drivers of human behavior and the function of our most advanced neurological groups, we must now turn our attention to the broader picture of human civilization.
"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely Players"
Shakespeare
SPECIALIZATION
The bridge between the internal and external fields of knowledge is specialization. When an individual begins to repeatedly do something, the neural networks related to that activity grow denser, and the person gets better at doing that particular thing. Specialization is essential for optimizing the development and benefit of individuals in our civilization, as well as maximizing the efficiency and capabilities of that society. In the United States today we have specialized to an extreme degree, whereby citizens can do a few things very well at the expense of a lot of other behaviors that used to be necessary for our survival: foraging, hunting, farming, etc. The more developed the society, the greater the specialization of the individuals in that society, and the greater its efficiency in producing the things necessary for that society.
But while specialization brings major advantages and increased efficiency, it also makes the society more fragile. Specialization makes the individual wholly dependent on their society. If society reaches a critical point of dysfunction, it implodes, and all hyper-specialized individuals suffer terrible consequences because they cannot survive without that societal structure to meet most of their needs. This implosion of our society is a clear, present, and overwhelming danger to the American People, and it must be disarmed before we destroy ourselves. Given our earlier examination of our environmental, economic, and political systems, we can conclude that a social implosion is not an exaggeration. It is irrelevant whether the society shattering event is a civil war due to illegitimate, repetitive claims of election tampering, an economic collapse as a result of the dollar losing its reserve currency status, or environmental Armageddon as mass crop failures eliminate the common availability of food. It does not matter which civilization breaker it is. All that matters is that if society breaks down somehow, the individuals who are hyperspecialized, which is virtually everyone, suddenly find it almost impossible to survive.
Our goal is to design a sustainable society that cultivates for human potential in its citizens. Sustainability and freedom are the two constraints to our project to structure human society as well as possible. We need to consider the needs and freedom of not only our current needs, but those of our descendants as well. We need to meet the needs of ~1/3 billion Americans, while restoring the habitability of the planet, and we should do so as efficiently as possible. The hundred-trillion-dollar question is: how do we structure society to enable us to reach our highest potential?
“In this life there are two certainties: death and taxes.”
Uknown
TAXES
It is helpful to simplify our government into basic inputs and outputs. Money comes in through taxation and goes out in various ways. Using this elementary framework, we can comprehend how a superorganism as complicated and colossal as the US government works. The first question we must ask is related to tax inputs: how do we decide what our taxes are? The second question is equally simple: how do we spend the money taxes generate? But while these are simple questions to ask, they are infinitely complex to answer. This essay attempts to structure basic responses to those two questions, providing us with a unifying blueprint, which our foremost experts and the American People can refine and build around.
We begin with taxation, one of the two certainties in life. Our taxes should be based on two separate sources: land value tax and Pigouvian taxes. The first of these, land value tax, is generally considered to be the most efficient form of taxation as it taxes land according to its value, rather than the value of the property built on top of it. Whether a lot is used for growing corn or used to house the headquarters of a multinational corporation is irrelevant, the tax is the same regardless. This arrangement encourages the development of land, and far better economists have made strong cases for adopting this particular tax. Henry George, the champion of this philosophy, believed that the right to land was comparable to our right to air. More recently, the work of Joshua Vincent is something to be analyzed and considered for a modern understanding of the concept. Additionally, nations like Estonia, Denmark, and Taiwan have implemented various forms of land value taxes to great success; they should be examined as case studies when developing our own system. A land value tax would be incredibly helpful in distributing investment according to population density and economic necessity, whereby population centers would optimize to build taller developments, and rural areas would face much lower taxes. Land Value Tax has been proven to work at the local level, in environments ranging from Pennsylvania to Estonia. If we are to fully address the shortage of housing and the excess of hoarding, if we are to create geographic justice and house all our citizens, a land value tax must be implemented at the federal level.
The second tax is applicable to major negative externalities, problems that people and corporations create but do not pay the cost for. Pigouvian taxes are helpful because they enable a government to transfer the social costs of a particular good or service to the organization producing it. This transfer of costs reduces the amount of problems a particular good or service creates because it lowers the consumption of that good while also raising tax revenue for the government. Countries around the world, Germany, Sweden, Canada, and the UK, have adopted this tax structure to resounding success. Putting these taxes on harmful products would be immensely beneficial to actually addressing the structural issues they cause, reducing their consumption and the eventual harm they inflict on the broader society. Since these costs will be borne by us all at some point in the future, shifting those costs to the organizations that create them is necessary to reduce those costs and ensure the producers pay their fair share. It also ensures that taxation is justifiably in proportion to the harmful behavior a consumer is exhibiting, so that the more one pollutes, the greater their tax burden. There are, of course, downsides to this form of taxation, with the calculation of these externalities and the producer-consumer allocation being primary ones, but they can be worked around. As this essay consistently argues, an imperfect solution is better than no solution. For further understanding of this form of taxation, see the work of Gilbert Metcalf.
Other taxes, those on income, wealth, and other sources, will likely be necessary and appropriate for the functioning of a modern government. After all, virtually every government in the world derives a major portion of their income through income taxes at the individual or organizational level. Even if these two taxes are the best kind of taxes, it is irrational to assume they would be the only two forms of taxation. This essay aims to highlight two sources of taxation that would provide immediate and long-term benefits to our society, rather than dictate the entire tax policy of that government. My understanding is that these two obscure taxes would be massively supported by economists, the only issue is that they are politically impossible because our legal and political systems are pay-to-play, and it is far cheaper to bribe your congressman than it is to change manufacturing processes. We have an unjust tax system that is exploited by our aristocrats and corporations and overburdens the rest of us. Annette Nellen makes compelling analysis of the general status of our tax code, and offers insight into potential reforms we might make.
"The care of human life and happiness... is the only legitimate object of good government."
Thomas Jefferson
GOVERNMENT
And having analyzed the inputs of this financial equation at a very basic level, we must turn to the second question: What do we do with all this money?
I believe that the best way to meet the needs of hundreds of millions of Americans is to organize our government into a series of ministries, each of which is tasked with meeting a particular need. Rather than create three branches, this proposal seeks to create over a dozen. These organizations would operate without a profit incentive and maximize economies of scale, offering us the goods and services necessary to meet our basic needs at the lowest possible cost. By structuring our government as a series of non-profit organizations, we should therefore increase the disposable income, free time, and energy of individual citizens, enabling us to live fuller, richer lives, creating societal stability, safety, and success. In other words, by reducing the cost of basic needs as much as possible, individual citizens would be able to meet their needs with the least effort and expense possible, maximizing their freedom. To better understand the types of ownership, an incredibly complex, nuanced topic which most people claim to know far too well, the work of Derek C. Jones is worth exploring.
If we adopt this blueprint, there will need to be many ministries, covering physical and psychological needs like healthcare, internet access, justice, energy, food, etc. Looking at the major departments of the executive branch would be a good place to start fleshing out this concept. Many of the industries that supply us with our basic goods and services necessary to live, industries like clean water and energy, operate on a monopolistic or oligopolistic market structure. These concentrated market structures ensure that corporations have low incentive to improve their product and high incentive to increase prices for consumers. The research of David Sappington, his last book in particular, provides analysis of anti-trust regulation at a much deeper level.
There is a clear logic to eliminating the profit incentive for our basic needs in order to allow for greater human freedom. Rather than identify exactly how many branches we would need or what they would be, this essay aims to introduce the concept of government via ministries. The idea of lifting up the executive branch so that various departments are equal, accountable directly to the American People, and work to guarantee the needs of all Americans are the salient points. A healthy tree does not have only three branches, it has many; our government should distribute power and resources across many more branches than it currently does. Doing so would improve the checks and balances that these branches have on each other, providing stability to the whole tree.
Under this proposed structure, each ministry would be headed by a minster. Like with any private corporation or public department, the head of this organization would have full authority and responsibility over the organization. This should not be a controversial idea, but it naturally raises the question of how these individuals would be selected. Currently, the upper echelons of corporations are largely selected by a board of directors, who act in the best interest of shareholders, while the heads of departments are appointed by the President, who, in theory, acts in the best interest of the American People. For both of these examples, a small, extremely well-informed entity makes decisions on the leadership of a large organization. It seems prudent to follow the logic we have seen work, but we can incorporate democracy far more into the selection of these executive ministers.
One proposal is to have ministers elected by weighted votes every few years, staggering the terms so that the same day every year sees the election of a few ministers. Weighted votes are a way of incorporating democracy and balancing it with expertise. It seems reasonable that professionals and experts in an industry have more of a say in how that industry operates than the average citizen, who knows little or nothing about the laws and mechanics of the field. A weighted voting system still allows the average, non-specialized citizen to have a hand in selecting their leaders, but ensures their vote is proportional to their expertise. Under this system, a master economist would have, for example, five times the voting power of a regular citizen, who would have one vote. This weighted influence would improve the quality of decision-making in these ministries and increase the incentive to specialize. This technocratic-democratic-meritocratic mixture would retain flexibility that allows citizens to advance themselves across multiple ministries, or to switch specializations later in their career, limited only by their self-discipline, intellectual capabilities, and ambition. And if this proposal is deemed unacceptable, then it would be relevant to look at the work of individuals like Steven J. Brams, who has spent his career analyzing voting from various perspectives.
"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."
African Proverb
OWNERSHIP
So far, all we have discussed is how to structure government as efficiently and effectively as possible, without diving into the field of private ownership. Under this framework, individuals would still be able to form for-profit organizations. Given that the brain is far more sensitive to selfish needs than altruistic ones, it is critical that individuals retain the ability to profit from their own work, as doing so allows us to harness the core driver of human behavior: self-interest. If we are to tie the broader economic picture to our earlier forays into psychology, the porous boundary between for-profit and non-profit would exist at the boundary of self-actualization.
For example, if an entrepreneur dreamed of founding a restaurant they would be able to, and they would be able to profit from its success. However, they would be forced to compete on quality instead of price, as the government ministry for food would be able to offer meals at a lower price. In other words, the bottom four tiers of needs according to Maslow’s hierarchy would be guaranteed at lowest cost by the state’s non-profit organizations, leaving for-profit organization created by self-actualized citizens to harness the innovation, initiative, and self-interest that is so critical to America’s technological and economic dominance.
While for-profit organizations would be encouraged, one initiative we could adopt would be to require publicly traded organizations to split profits and board seats across capitalists, workers, and government equally. Germany stands as an example here, bringing in labor as a core part of co-determination on a reduced scale. Each of these three parties is necessary for the operation and success of a productive organization. Capitalists provide the investment, workers provide the labor, and the government ensures there is an environment where complex production can take place. Given this division, it stands to reason that large, publicly traded companies divide their profits and decision making across these three groups. No modern economy can exist without all three parties being involved, so it seems prudent to ensure that all have an equal share in the profits and a say in how the organization functions. Adopting a three-way co-determination split would also bind the interests of all parties closer together as they all share in profits, further improving efficiency of the overall firm. The data show that co-determination improves productivity, turnover, and long-term decision making while reducing inequality. This trifecta would propel us into new era of economic productivity, harnessing all of our drive, meeting our physical and psychological needs as fully and efficiently as possible.
We do not have to rely on theory alone. We can examine the nations around the world to see what works best and what doesn’t. The nations of the world who most resemble this proposed system would be the social democracies of the Nordic nations. These nations have managed to find a balance between socialism and capitalism, ensuring that the basic needs of their citizenry are met, while also enabling citizens to pursue their creative, individualistic pursuits. They have some of the least corrupt, safest, most stable societies in the world. Their students score extremely well in education, their citizens are some of the happiest, and they are some of the wealthiest in the world per capita. They top so many categories of societal success because they have managed to find a balance between the two extremes of socialism and capitalism, a balance which we can fine tune if we dare to go beyond what other nations are doing. Similarly, see the Chinese economic miracle, which brought hundreds of millions of individuals out of poverty and created the world’s foremost industrial power in a matter of decades. Their remarkable success is a result of fusing key concepts of capitalism to a socialist model. The longer we ignore the benefits of fusing these two extremes together, clinging to the outdated, polarized ideologies of our past, the more stagnant and inefficient we become.
"The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home."
Confucius
COMMUNITY
So how do we get those publicly produced goods and services to the average American? As far as actually ensuring citizen’s access to the resources provided by these ministries, there are two conduits that we could use to amplify the efficiency of distribution: schools and religious centers. These two focal points, which exist in every community in the USA, would become the cornerstones of our civilization if we followed this blueprint. We could shift away from the unsustainable, toxic myth of individuality and meet the need of community that no longer exists for most of us, eradicating the epidemic of loneliness and creating a tighter, thicker social fabric, one defined by the reemergence of third places.
The dual distribution proposition should provide many benefits.
First, our education system is overdue for a full reset. The work of Diane Ravitch is worth investigating for those of us that require a comprehensive breakdown of our educational failures. These problems are not the fault of the students, teachers, or principals; they are the fault of the system as a whole. Our solution must be systemic because the problem is. Beyond the failures of the existing system, the rise of smart-phones and social media has essentially destroyed the attention spans of our children, raising uncomfortable questions about their ability to integrate into and benefit their communities. Furthermore, AI can now be used to do most of a student’s homework. As technological development accelerates, the failure of our education system will only become more pronounced. This manifesto does not seek to lay down concrete cornerstones regarding the education system, but it does seek to do two things: (1) put a spotlight on how badly our education system is failing us, and (2) move education to the center of our national identity.
My personal bias is to make education free, like many nations in Europe have done. This would allow schools the opportunity to teach according to mastery as opposed to age. We must begin to teach for mastery and customize for personality, incorporating critical, reflective thinking as a core element for all students. We must create an education system where children are able to explore their interests and begin specializing from a young age, when their brains are still developing. To thread this stray strand of thought back into our tapestry of freedom, we can see that education may be the single biggest determinant of the possibilities open to an individual. In other words, education can be liberation. It is through education, whether in academia or in the trades, that an individual is able to specialize effectively, providing value to their community and earning enough to pursue other passions.
The second cornerstone for our mansion would be to elevate religious centers to the other center of community life. Firstly, this would allow religious institutions to better fulfill their divine mandate, which largely boils down to helping the needy as much as possible. The founding fathers ensured that there would be a separation of church and state when creating our Constitution, and while I agree with their decision to separate the two, we cannot simply ignore religion when designing our government. I cannot think of another institution that is a core, foundational aspect in the lives of so many Americans. By establishing religious centers as community centers for distributing basic resources like food and healthcare, we would be able to incorporate these places into our society in a cooperative yet secular way. These facets of the government services would still retain full independence, but they would be conveniently located next to other services and a religious institution, creating a natural hub of community.
The foremost benefit of establishing these two centers for our communities is to reunite the fragmented American People together into natural, local tribes, where all citizens are welcome and our social integrity can be reforged. Yes, the education system needs an overhaul, and yes religious institutions need to be integrated into society in a more helpful way, but the resuscitation of the American community is the foremost objective of this dual distribution proposition.
IMMIGRATION
“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.”
Edward O. Wilson
TECHNOLOGY
Finally, we must consider what technology to incorporate into our government, as the modern technology influences society enormously. At a basic level, there are four facets to techno-governance: website, app, data, and AI. As stated, what these become and how they are structured depends on the knowledge, creativity, and wisdom of individuals with far more experience in human-technology interfaces, as well as the will of the American People. That being said, we can lay down some initial thoughts to focus our debates.
As before, we must look at other nations around the world and evaluate the applications and websites they have developed, using them as inspiration for our own. One particular example worth analyzing is Estonia. They have developed a centralized, sophisticated digital government website, whereby citizens can access hundreds of services from a single portal. Denmark, Singapore, and others should also be evaluated as case studies. In the age of data, information, and connectivity, we must utilize and structure our nation’s digital resources in a way that maximizes the benefits they can provide. We know that our government and our corporations are gathering enormous amounts of data on all Americans, and they are doing so with virtually no oversight. We must move this conversation on data, privacy, and digital rights to the forefront of the nation’s attention, working together to create policy that benefits the American People, creating checks and guardrails against the enormous power of these institutions.
Data and artificial intelligence are two rapidly evolving fields, and their technology has not been incorporated into governance in a way that fully harnesses their benefits and minimize their risks. For AI in particular, there must be a concerted, coordinated effort to create a superintelligence. As of this moment, for-profit corporations have far too great an incentive to act rationally, and we are in danger of creating a flawed superintelligence. This is a project that would compare to the Manhattan Project in its scale and importance, and it must be undertaken with a single collaborative movement between the major technology firms, our government, and ideally, the nations of the world. If we are going to create what amounts to a technological God, we must take every precaution to ensure that it is a benevolent God; and currently, we are incentivizing speed over safety to the danger of everyone.
We must also consider fusion research as a critical goal. A race for sustainable fusion is unlikely to yield very many immediate benefits, but in the long run it yields unimaginably positive benefits. If our energy industry is to be managed by the government, (and there is a strong incentive for that to be the case since our existing energy industry has literally destroyed the habitability of our planet in order to increase shareholder dividends for a few decades) then it would seem prudent to spend considerable resources pursuing this objective, ideally as part of an international coalition of nations. After all, the sooner we can provide clean energy to developing nations, the fewer carbon emissions they will emit, the slower the Earth will overheat, and the more time we will have to mitigate the worst of the climate apocalypse. And while apocalypse might seem a gross exaggeration, the reality is that our civilization is built on top of our agriculture system, which relies on stable weather patterns. We know for a fact that those weather patterns are changing already, and that change poses a threat to our agriculture system, which poses a threat to our civilization and very lives.
Finally, using our data and AI for the public good would provide immense benefits to our civilization in the efficiency and effectiveness of meeting our needs. The benefits we would derive from pooling our healthcare data alone would lead to massive leaps in the quality, accuracy, and timeliness of medical treatments. Take a moment and consider just how useful an app would be when interacting with the government. What if we had an app that allowed for voting, scheduling and paying for meals at the local school, and messaging your representatives? Modern technology is incredibly powerful, and we must account for it at a foundational level when designing our civilization. As things stand now, our government’s digital interface is extremely siloed and inefficient, and so the wisdom and insights we can derive from it are greatly reduced. This essay’s central thesis is that rather than tinker with a profoundly outdated system, we must begin anew with a fresh canvas. Technology has become a defining part of our society, and if we are to design an optimal government, we must ensure that we incorporate our technology in a way that benefits our citizenry to the fullest.
“People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.”
Blaise Pascal
CONCLUSION
At the heart of this vision lies a simple truth: we can do so much better. This manifesto is not an ultimatum or a proclamation, it is an invitation. In order to build a better civilization we must acknowledge hard, uncomfortable truths about ourselves and our society, and then use that knowledge to overcome our flaws. We are at a fork in our history, one where we either adapt or become trapped, and as far as I can see, no one else is proposing a path to this particular mountaintop. By blending insights from psychology and neurology, fusing capitalism and socialism together to utilize the best of both systems, and organizing a society that maximizes human potential, balances efficiency with equity, and creates a better life for the American People. We must remember what made our ancestors extraordinary: the courage to say no to the tyranny and terror, and yes to something far greater and more noble.
The American Dream was never about owning things. The American Dream was about freedom; it was about the liberty to build a life you can be proud of; it was about the freedom to pursue happiness. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, these are the foundational rights of our people, and they are rights we must all exercise if we are to survive the coming storms. The potential that is our United States of America lies right in front of us. If we all work together to nurture and cultivate that possibility, it will grow greater than ever before.
“A Constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government."
Thomas Paine
P.P.S.
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