What could our next civilization look like?

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 human 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. To boil down 6,000+ words into a sentence: we must build a society that maximizes the freedom of its citizens.

"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. The level of suffering one feels from not meeting a need is inversely related to this hierarchy, so that lower tier needs exert a great deal of acute suffering while higher tier needs are less pressing and more insidious. It is crucial to realize that all humans have these needs, and that all of us will try and meet all our needs. Once we meet our more basic needs, our mind begins exploring how to satisfy our more complex 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 act on the daydreams they 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 as capable and stable as possible. If we are self-actualized, we are not working for or worrying about meeting our more basic needs, we have the freedom to pursue whatever our mind dreams up. Because self-actualized citizens contribute the most, because they find and fix the biggest gaps in their community, 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 assert themselves. So while a master painter may focus completely on his work for an extended time, eventually certain biological needs assert themselves as more important. These lower tier needs supersede our higher tiered needs by exerting a greater emotional force against us, by causing us more acute suffering. Self-actualization is thus a perpetual exercise. It is not as simple as reaching that plateau and staying there forever. Maximizing the time and energy one spends in a state of self-actualization is the actual goal. 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 innovation, culture, and development if we achieved a society where all 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, happiness, safety, and security. Imagine if we had a society optimized for our humanity, instead of one optimized for extracting as much value as possible from its citizenry.

"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 freest state 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 of these 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 for our attention. 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.

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. These abilities may sound trivial, but the reality is that imagining what could be is arguably the most advanced capability of our minds.

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. We must recognize that the DMN is directly linked to an individual’s freedom, to the choices and possibilities available to them, because it is the things that creates those possibilities. The more time one spends with an active DMN, the more possibilities one can imagine, and the better that individual can adapt to meet the needs of themselves and their community.

            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, leaving no space for the DMN to influence our consciousness. 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 focus their attention and ruminate on a problem at work, for example. This ability to run on auto-pilot allows the brain to direct resources to meet other, less pressing needs.

There is a particular state of consciousness 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 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 stress and suffering leading up to that moment worth it.

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 internal and external inputs. When an individual reaches a state of self-actualization, they are faced with the question of what to do. This dilemma activates the DMN, triggering a person to begin imagining and daydreaming, manipulating their reality into possibilities that maximize happiness and minimize suffering. Once they have reached a certain threshold of promise, 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 the hierarchy of needs and the interplay of these three networks are inherently related to the nebulous concept we call freedom. Freedom is only maximized when an individual reaches a state of self-actualization, only then do they become fully able to direct their lives and pursue their own happiness.

Now we could go deeper, exploring the mechanics of neurochemistry, the physics of that biology, and the hard problem of consciousness, but doing so would be too granular. We have established a basic scientific base for our individual citizen and can therefore build a societal structure around these foundations. We know from our brief journey through psychology and neurology that human beings have needs, and we know 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 finally, we know that one’s freedom is inherently tied to their 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. In other words, practice makes perfect. 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 social implosion is the 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 what 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.”
Unknown

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 our taxes generate? But while these are simple questions to ask, they are incredibly difficult to answer well. This essay attempts to structure basic responses to those two questions, providing us with a unifying framework which our foremost experts and the American People can refine and build around.

Our taxes should be based on three separate sources: land value tax, Pigouvian taxes, and organizational taxes. The first of these, land value tax, is generally considered to be the best 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 on that plot of land 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. Additionally, nations like Estonia, Denmark, and Taiwan have implemented various forms of land value taxes to great success, along with city wide experiments in the USA. These implementations 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. 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 national 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 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 burden allocation being primary ones, but they can be worked around. As this essay consistently argues, an imperfect solution is better than no solution.

The third tax is one imposed on all organizations. This form of taxation will be explored later in this manifesto, as it deals with ownership specifically. Other taxes, those on income, wealth, and other sources, will likely be necessary and appropriate for the functioning of a modern government, but they would be much lower than they currently are. 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 unnecessary 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, and it needs changing.

"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 our 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 of our people. 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.

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.

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; so to should our government should distribute power and resources across more branches than it currently does.

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 greater influence 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 knowledge and 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 electing our ministers and increase the incentive to specialize. This technocratic-democratic-meritocratic proposal 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.

“A threefold cooperation is necessary: that of capital, of labor, and of the State.”
Pope Pius XI

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 personal 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, these entrepreneurs 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. This is the aforementioned organizational tax. Each of these three parties is necessary for the operation and success of any productive organization. Capitalists provide the investment, workers provide the labor, and the government ensures there is a stable 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. I believe that this distribution trifecta would propel us into new era of economic productivity, helping us meet our 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 does not work at all. 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 are so successful because they have managed to find a balance between the two extremes of socialism and capitalism, a balance which we can improve if we dare to go beyond what other nations are doing. We must also examine 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 begin meeting our need for community, eradicating the epidemic of loneliness and creating a tighter, thicker social fabric, one that result in the reemergence of third places. Third places, areas apart from work and home where communities could congregate naturally, are virtually non-existent across much of America; but they are essential to meeting the needs of community that we all have. 

The double distribution proposition should provide many benefits. First, our education system is overdue for a full reset. The problems within our system of education are not the fault of the students, teachers, parents, or principals. As this essay consistently argues, these failures are a result of the systematic decay. Our solution must be systemic because the problem is. Teachers are burning out, our rankings in international metrics are average, we over-emphasize on standardized testing, and funding inequalities are just some of the many alarm bells warning that something is seriously wrong with our education system. This manifesto does not seek to lay down concrete laws regarding the education system, but it does seek to do three things: (1) put a spotlight on how badly our education system is failing us, (2) move education to the center of our national identity, and (3) create awareness around the developmental implications of technology such as smart phones and AI.

Because 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. Depression and anxiety are skyrocketing, with almost half of all college students experiencing depression for example. Free, publicly accessible AI can now be used to do most of a student’s homework and a majority of their critical thinking. The brain is like any other muscle in our body, it needs to be challenged in order to develop. As technological development accelerates, the influence it has on our children and their education will only become more pronounced. This essay does not have the answers to these challenges, but it does position these challenges as key questions we must answer as a society.

Education may be the single biggest determinant of the positive possibilities open to an individual, and as a result, of that individual’s freedom. It is through education, whether in academia or in the trades, white collar or blue collar, that an individual is able to specialize effectively, providing value to their community and earning enough to pursue other passions. The positive relationship between education, employment, and freedom is one that is rarely mentioned in the national conversation but is essential to the development of healthy, complex societies.

Another cornerstone for our metaphorical 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. While religious leaders would have no special input into the mechanics and operations of our government branches, their centers of worship would be a core part of our American civilization.

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 recultivated.

“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 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 ground rules 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. Just imagine how many hours and stress would be saved by having a simple tax system – and that is just one of hundreds of potential benefits a centralized digital portal would create. Furthermore, 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 data hungry institutions.

Beyond a centralized digital portal, we have big data and artificial intelligence. These 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 safely and rationally, and we are in danger of creating a fatally 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 digital 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.

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 understanding, quality, accuracy, and timeliness of medical treatments. Again, this is just one of many potential uses of our aggregate data. 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, taking into account the fullness of our reality and capabilities. 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 manifesto lies a simple truth: we deserve better leaders than our unaccountable congressmen, pathological liars, and probable pedophiles. Part of what separates us from every other living being is our capacity for imagination, creation, and collaboration. We were born into a failing society, but we can use these capabilities to make a new and improved one. This manifesto is not an ultimatum or a proclamation, it is an invitation to collaborate on a proposal that greatly affects all of us. We must acknowledge ugly truths before they destroy us, only then can we use that knowledge to right our wrongs and save ourselves. We are at an inflection point in this nation’s history, one where we either adapt and begin the hike to the mountaintop, or become trapped in a dark, despair inducing abyss; and as far as I can see, nobody else is actually proposing a path out of this pit. We must remember what made our ancestors extraordinary: the courage to say no to tyranny and terror, and yes to something far greater and more noble. I ask each of us to follow their example, to change the course of human history, and to create a civilization greater than any on Earth.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt