The Human Assembly

Restoring American Democracy

Preface:
A Conversation with Ben Franklin

When I was younger I looked forward to bumping into Ben in heaven and having a grand old chat with him. There was so much that I wanted to ask him about. What was he feeling when he was flying that kite in the lightning storm? Was he scared? Was it a rush? Ben was also reportedly very good with the ladies. I wanted to compare notes with him about the elusive thing we call charm, and see whether the elements of attraction then were the same as today or completely different. I've read Ben's autobiography and it is clear that he's a genuine, sincere fellow. I'm very excited at the thought of having a conversation with him, even an imaginary one.

However, there is one part of the conversation that I dread. Eventually the topic will turn onto the state of the nation today, and quite honestly I feel shame at the prospect of telling him what has happened to the country that he worked so hard to build. "How is my dear country doing, Kim? Is freedom alive and well?" Ben might ask. And I would have to reluctantly respond: "I am very sorry to have to tell you this, sir. America is in serious trouble. We've taken the liberties you fought so hard to give us for granted. You and the other Founding Fathers freed us from the tyranny of aristocracy, from being peasants with no rights under the absolute rule of capricious nobles. But we have allowed ourselves to be sold into financial slavery. The United States is easily the most properous nation on the earth... but the average American works their fingers to the bone just to pay their bills. It doesn't matter how much money we make, either, the bills take it all and there is little left for us at the end of the month. Big money is the new ruling class: banks, corporations, credit cards, insurance, media conglomerates, and the very wealthy. Those in our working class are forced to be 'wage slaves', scraping by paycheck to paycheck. Their lives are like the indentured servants of your own time, except we call them 'disposable employees' now and they work their entire lives with little opportunity for advancement. Our corporations are engaged in economic imperialism across the globe, exploiting the workers in other nations the same way that King George did to the colonies. We are literally letting money rule our world. We aren't free anymore; we are peasant Slaves to Money."

"But surely the people wouldn't let that happen!" Ben would protest. "What about democracy? Why don't the people just elect better representatives to change things?" And my honest reply would have to be: "Our elections today are too big, and are consequently all but rigged. The only choices we are given are between one wealthy politician and another wealthy politician, and no matter which one we choose, someone rich is always in power. So our votes basically mean nothing. The average American no longer has a voice in their own government anymore. A typical citizen can't even talk to their own representative; if you try, you reach their 'staff' and get an impersonal form letter as a reply. In order to lobby before Congress you need to be what's called a wealthy special interest group. The saddest part is that it's not even the fault of our representatives. In order to be elected at all, a politician needs enormous amounts of campaign funds to advertise in this new thing called the 'sponsored media'. You don't really exist in a big election unless you have a strong media image. So, even our good-intentioned leaders have to kowtow to the Money, otherwise they won't get elected. And the system is, in fact, too big for them to give the personal touch to their own constituency."

"This is a dire situation that you portray," Ben says, looking concerned. "And it must be changed. My compatriots and I intended that the Union should have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Democracy was supposed to be personal and under the control of citizens. We learned bitterly in our day how a ruling class would readily abuse the common man, and it sounds like that is precisely what Money is doing in your time to your fellows."

"Well, what do we do?" I ask plaintively. "I would change it if I could, and most Americans I know feel the same. But something else that has happened in modern times is that we are starved for leadership that we can believe in. We've been disillusioned with our politicians because of many affronts and scandals. We literally don't know what to do to change the situation, and we don't know who we can trust to lead us out of it."

"What you must do is simple. You must find the leaders of your communities, common men and women like yourself, and follow them. Find good people you know and trust, and charge them with the responsibility to improve your lot."

"Ah... that's another big difference between our two times, sir. Local community as you knew it has all but disappeared in the United States. Back in your day, people lived on rural farms and everyone knew one another. People died not ten miles from where they were born. Today most of us live in this thing called an urban jungle, in vast cities with hundreds of thousands of people in them, often millions. We live in neighborhoods of strangers. Americans are 'upwardly mobile', moving around a lot, usually to follow high-paying jobs. And many of us feel very lonely and isolated because of it. When we are young we attend schools where we are surrounded by classmates and have a strong community. But then when we live in the real world it is very difficult to comfortably meet people. The change is drastic. In our youth, we are drowned in our peers, and as adults, we thirst for company. This, too, is something I would change if I could. People are unhappy with their lives, because they are effectively alone, even in a teeming city crowd. I lived in New York City for awhile and was more isolated there among its jam-packed twelve million denizens than I ever was in the sparse little town of Dracut where I grew up."

"Hmmm... " Ben says in thought. "Let me see if I understand you then. As I see it, there are three essential Problems of your modern era. There is the unfettered Rule of Money. The faulty system of Mass Election. And the Unhappy Isolation of the people." Ben liked capitalizing things for emphasis, and you could hear it in his voice. "Is this so?"

"Yes. We have a number of other concerns..." How could I even begin to explain 9/11 to him? "but those are the biggest, and just fixing them would be a huge thing."

"Well, it appears to me that your trio of Problems all have the selfsame Solution."

"Really?"

"Indeed. But only if things haven't changed so much. Tell me, do people in your era still have friends?" Ben asks keenly.

"Well, of course," I reply. "For all that has happened, people still have family and friends. Sometimes our jobs take up so much of our time and energy that there is little left over, but essentially our private lives are still are own."

"Excellent!" Ben exclaims. "Then that is where we shall start, with our friends. You have done a fine job at explaining the Problems. You have clearly stated them, and it shows you have given them much thought. But identifying the Problem is just the first step. Now we must turn our minds to a Solution. Every Problem has a Solution. If we constantly think to ourselves of all the reasons why we can't do something, then we will never do anything. Instead, we must think hard about what we can actually do. We must be very practical and formulate plans that any person could follow. And then we must do it. Can you do that for me? Could you turn your mind toward finding Solutions?"

"I think so. What would these Solutions look like?"

"Well, here's the gist of it. Gather with your friends and tell them about your concerns. A small and cozy group is most desirable, say ten people. Meet with them regularly. That immediately addresses the third Problem of Unhappy Isolation with the Solution of Friendly Companionship. People are happy when they spend quality time with friends, and when our social engagements are at an appointed time we can look forward to them with anticipation."

"I completely agree. Actually, I'm something of a social instigator myself. I create series of themed parties that I throw every week. Some have been Healthy Organic Potluck Specials, others have been Murder Mysteries. My friends and I always have fun and we feel closer afterwards, more alive."

"Very good," Ben affirms. "However, these weekly meetings with our friends will have another purpose in addition to building friendship. To wit, at these gatherings we shall elect one of our peers as our personal Representative. That replaces the Problem of Mass Election with the Solution of Personal Selection."

"Whoa! What do you mean, elect one of our peers as our own personal Representative?" I ask, confused.

"Just what I said. If Mass Elections do not work, then make elections smaller. Remove Money and Media from the process of election entirely. If you don't want to vote for a wealthy politician that you don't know and have no relationship with, instead vote for your friend, whom you've known for years and trust completely. Your friend represents you and your group of ten, personally."

"Can we do that?"

"Of course you can. In the very first Amendment of the Bill of Rights, we wrote that 'Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people to peaceably assemble'. In fact, that's what we'll call these gatherings: Assemblies. Unless, of course," he said with a feral gleam in his eyes, "America no longer follows her Constitution. In which case I shall be wroth with anger."

"Rest assured, Mr. Franklin, the Constitution is a revered document in my day. We still follow it as best we can." I said, trying to assuage his concern. "But that's wasn't my question. I meant more like, do we have the authority to elect our own Representatives?"

"My dear boy," Ben said, his face assuming kinder features, "of course you have the authority. All authority in the Union flows from its citizens. The only reason why the very President of the United States has any authority whatsoever is because the American citizens have decided to vest the office with their own personal power. The Office of the President didn't exist before we, as a people, created it. Governments rule by consent of the governed, and have no other charter. The only reason why your Representatives rule you because you as a citizen have given them your power to do so. But ultimately, it is your power, and your authority."

"With great power comes great responsibility. Because you, as a citizen, are the ultimate authority in determining the shape of your own government, that means that you are also solely responsible for making sure that it represents you fairly. If it doesn't, and you do nothing, then you are fully accountable and no one else, not even those cads who might take advantage of your apathy to exploit the system. Thus, it is your civic duty to improve your system of representation to be more just and fair. If you feel that you don't want to elect any of these distant politicians that you don't even know, then you must provide an alternate way to represent yourself. Elect your friends."

"I'm not sure," I say hesitantly, "that seems highly... revolutionary. It seems risky."

"Those who would give up an essential liberty for a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security," Ben said firmly. Then more softly. "But I see your point. Others have told me of the great Civil War that wracked our nation, pitting brother against brother. And a Revolution of this sort would do much the same. Instead, we want a Reformation. A slow and gradual change from the system of Mass Election to the system of Personal Selection. And we must never set brother against brother, or indeed put any two people in contention at all, if it can be avoided."

"I think it could be done," I say tentatively.

"What would you propose?" Ben asks.

"Well, we can still vote, right?" And then it all came out in a jumble. "Suppose we could find a way to organize all these groups of people, with all their personal Representatives? Then we could get people to vote for one of their own friends into a public office, playing by the rules of the current game of mass election. After all, why can't we confer with our friends on how we are going to vote? Nothing says we can't. Initially we could treat these Assemblies as just little voter caucauses, and then have them band together into larger voting blocks. Why couldn't we elect one of our friends as our Representatives instead of a wealthy politician? Isn't that what democracy is all about?"

It kept pouring out. "You know, one of the big reasons why all our politicians are wealthy is that they are the only ones with the free time to run for office! The average working fellow can't afford to take time off work, they've got mouths to feed and those damnable bills to pay. So the candidates are all rich. What if we could find a way to support our own Representatives? Like, pay them a salary? Then we could elect anyone into office, rich or poor. Our friends could become viable, because we'd pay them just like a job would pay them."

"Well I am greatly heartened to hear this," Ben say, bemused. "You are starting to think of Solutions now. Let's take it one step further while still playing by the rules, as it were. Once our Assemblies have elected enough Representatives to Congress, then have them write Amendments to the Constitution changing the way elections are held. Legitimize the entire process entirely within the current framework. That is, after all, exactly the reason why we Constitional Delegates created Amendments. To account for changes in the society that we couldn't foresee."

"Wowsers! That seems like a pretty big goal, sir. I'm not so certain people would feel comfortable with that."

"What? What about getting together with your friends is too big?" Ben asked disarmingly.

"No. I meant the changing the Constitution. Officially changing the way elections are held. It seems so big... maybe too big."

Ben was silent in thought for awhile. "I have heard tell that every city and town across our nation now has a public library. It is, in your time, a 'big thing', as you put it. Would you like to know how I started it?"

"I'd love to, sir!" I said enthusiastically.

"In my day I had a group of friends that I met with regularly, and we called ourselves the Junto. We would get together and discuss the issues of our times, share pleasantries with one another, and otherwise conduct ourselves as friends. Perhaps most importantly, our agreed-upon charter was that we should help each other out. We helped advance one another in the community, introduced Junto members to other friends to their mutual benefit, and even found one another wives." Ben had a smirk on his face with that last bit. I'm certain there was a juicy story behind it, but he continued on.

"Anyway, at one of our Junto meetings I proposed that it would be advantageous to us all were we to pool our personal libraries and make them generally available. The idea met with approval, and some valid concerns. We must take great care with the books, since we were dealing with one another's treasured property. And we would want to keep meticulous track of what book belonged to whom and who had it at any given moment. And no person should keep any one book for too long, should others want for reading it."

Ben looked at me with wise eyes. "The public library wasn't magically brought into being all at once. It wasn't decreed one day, and then everyone had one. The very 'big thing' was very small when it was first born, and it grew at its own pace. As we found benefit in our plan of sharing books, we told others about it, and they followed a similar course. Then at a certain point enough people derived benefit in it that it became obviously something everyone should have. Then we got a lot more organized and it became a formal institution. But the big public library originally began as a small agreement among friends. That's where social conventions are truly born. Among friends who meet regularly."

"I think I understand, sir." I said wonderingly. "We should focus on the small, on what we can accomplish with our friends, and the rest will follow. If we think about changing the Constitution, it is too daunting, and we'll never do anything. But if we focus on getting together with our friends and choosing a new way to represent ourselves, then that is something we could easily do today."

"Exactly!" Ben slapped me on the back. "Always keep your mind on the Solution, on something practical that you can right now, at this very moment. Do not delay doing that which you know to be good and just."

At this point, I was quite taken with the idea of the Assembly and wanted to hear more. "What about the Rule of Money, then? What are we going to do about that?" I asked eagerly.

"Well, the Solution to the Rule of Money is the Public Good. The quality of our lives comes first, and the Public Good is paramount. We are free humans, not slaves to money. In fact, that's what you should call this whole thing: the Human Assembly. Let people know right from the very name what this stands for."

"How do we make the Public Good come first?" I persisted.

"That is really a task for the newly elected Representatives of the Human Assembly. You all know your own modern time better than I do. You must replace the Rule of Money with Rule of Humans, the just leadership of the common man." Ben must have seen that I was looking for more, because he followed up with, "But I can tell you how you must do it. Money is our Servant, not our Master. If need be, change the economy, change the law, change whatever is needed in order to ensure that Money serves the people and not the other way around. You must seek Solutions that will result in the Public Good, and you must employ all your sincerity and ingenuity to do it. Your Solutions must be fair and just to all, including the wealthy."

"Okay," I said. "Actually, just the Human Assembly looks like enough to get started on for right now. And I've had some ideas kicking around on how we can change Money and our economy to be both more fair and also more efficient."

"Good, good." Ben smiled. "And for you, my young little patriot, I also have a task."

"Me?"

"Yes, you. You must go forth and talk the people of the nation we both love. You must remind them that America is still their land. The people own the Union, not the wealthy special interests groups. And you must devise a plan for citizens to reclaim their own government. Get the people to create democracy the way we Founding Fathers intended, a personal democracy in their living room. You must inspire them to act."

"How... I've never..." I was at a loss. "How do I do that?"

"Speak from your heart. Tell the people how you feel, in plain language. Share stories from your life. Vividly show them your hopes and fears about America. Bare your soul; it is the only way to touch the soul of another. In all things, be genuine, and be yourself."

Benjamin Franklin stared me directly in the eyes. "But there is one small thing that you have to change about yourself. You must let go of your timid reservation. You speak reasonably, Kim, but you must needs be bolder. Use provocative words that shake people up. You seem like a man of reason that would try to convince another by showing them how something is in their own best interest. Instead, you must incite people to action. You must rouse the ire of your countrymen." His voice rose. "Let the words thunder forth about the Injustice of the Rule of Money. Ask your nation: Are we nothing but consumer sheep? Were we born free or were we born wage slaves? Prod them with: Do you want to vote for distant politicians that you don't even know, or do you want to elect your friends? Do you want your cast your worthless vote in a rigged Mass Election, or do you want your vote to count in the Human Assembly? Proclaim to them: Humans were ordained to live in communities! We can choose to live alone and alienated, or we can choose to connect ourselves to family and friends! Cast down the guantlet before your peers. Empower them with the truth: The Power to shape your Destiny is yours! The Authority to Represent yourselves is your own! It has always been so, and let no one tell you otherwise! Choose! Choose your Destiny! Choose your Own Representation!"

Ben returned to a more moderate tone. "Then, and only then, will your audience even be interested in what you have to say. Grab their attention first, connect with their hearts next, and finally convince their mind."

"Mr. Franklin, sir." I said, humbled and sober. "I do not know whether I am up to this task, but I accept it wholeheartedly. I will do my best. I will write a book called the Human Assembly that will describe in greater detail the Solutions that we've talked about here. I will outline a plan called the Human-Scale Reformation designed to topple the impersonal Rule of Money and restore human judgment to the Public Good. I will go on a civic speaking tour called This is Your Land! to remind our people that this is their land. I will share my private life with others and try my best to genuinely connect with them."

My gaze was steady as I faced Benjamin Franklin, the man I most respect in all of history. "And I will not rest until every American can once again claim the Representation with Participation that is their due."

Introduction:
We Can Improve Our World

In 2002 the stock market crashed and my mother lost over half her retirement fund. Now, some of that was money that she had made off interest from her investments, but most of it was from the sweat off her brow, earned by helping other people. That is money that, quite honestly, I feel she didn't deserve to lose. And now that it is gone, the quality of the rest of her life has been seriously impacted. She can no longer retire even in modest comfort; the remainder of her days will be spent in frugal husbanding of what little she has left.

My mom stoically accepted this turn of events, but I am wroth over it. I am by any measure a pretty easy-going guy, but her misfortune has filled me with righteous anger. Why? Why the hell should someone who has worked honestly her entire life lose half her life savings in one fell swoop? My mom wasn't trying to exploit anyone; she wasn't playing the craps table at Vegas; she wasn't even making high-risk investments. She just did what she was told to do by trustworthy financial planners, and the result was that she lost years of her savings overnight. Why should my mom suffer for the next thirty years of her life because one day the made-up numbers on a stupid stock ticker went down?

I went through a pretty bad period after this. Who was to blame for this outrage? Did brokers rip off my mother? No, no, they're guys just like you and me who are only trying to make a living doing what they know. Were corporations responsible with their bloody stock market? No, no, it's not their fault either; no corporation wants their stock price to plummet. After considerable soul searching I concluded that no one, really, was to blame. My mom lost her retirement money because that's just the way things work in our world today.

So the only solution is to change the way the world works.

0a: Despite burying my Head in the Sand I have felt growing Concern

In recent years I have become concerned. My wake up call was my mom losing her retirement money; suddenly the problems of the world became very personal. And once I lifted my head up out of the sand, I was staggered at the enormity of what was going on around us. 9/11. Social security breaking down. Health care becoming unaffordable. A ballooning deficit and once prosperous states like California losing money hand over fist. We have entered an energy crisis, with massive brownouts and rising gas prices, and the environment is still being polluted. And perhaps most striking of all: "start a war" is now a viable option on our foreign policy strategy list. Whoa, I don't want to get into an argument about the validity of our recent wars. I'm just trying to say: I am damn concerned about the whole state of affairs. Not just the wars, but also the situations that made us feel like we had to launch wars in the first place. It's almost like we've become so frightened that we feel the need to strike out at something, anything.

I can tell you quite candidly that I still wanted to cling to isolationism. I wanted the problems to go away, and I wanted "someone else" to make that happen for me. But then I recalled the words of John F. Kennedy:

If I do not love my country enough to act, why should I expect anyone else to improve things for me?

Even as I type this there are tears in my eyes. I believe in America. I really, truly, honestly believe in all that stuff we are taught as kids: about freedom, justice, equality, and a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. I want America to be a beacon of goodness to people everywhere that liberty is important: that democracy works.

Unfortunately, our democracy is not working anymore. Money is buying our elections and our laws. Let me tell you, I have felt more than a little outrage at that. Not against the rich, mind you, but that we have a system where that is even possible. Government exists to serve the needs of the people, and to promote the Public Good. It shouldn't be a flunky of wealthy special interests groups. Is this what our forefathers shed their blood for in the American Revolution? We need a new form of democracy that places the Public Good over special interests, that restores our right to actively participate in our own government once again.

0b: We must Get Involved in order to Promote Change

I feel like the United States is reaching a watershed. We have clear and present problems that need immediate addressing. So, do we just go on business as usual? 2004 is an election year. Do we go out and vote and hope for the best like we've done so many times in the past? I believe that if we do the same things we've always done, we're going to get the same results we've always gotten. The results that have led us to the sorry state the we are in now. It is time to make a change.

Now, for some readers this message is inspiring: "Finally," you think excitedly, "someone who feels the same way I do!" Involvement is precisely what you've been looking for; you've felt frustrated at how difficult it is to participate in modern government. However, for other readers, this message could also be frightening. "It sounds like," you think cautiously, "this man is talking about launching a second American Revolution". And for these more conservative people involvement carries with it an aspect of risk and uncertainty. To both of these readers, I want to let you know up front that what I am proposing is democracy in your living room. We're going to talk about a lot of seemingly big, weighty things on this page, but in the end, what we're going to suggest is that we all spend some more time with our friends. To the activists: this is something you could act on today, go get to it! And to the reserved: building a community network of friends is without risk; your time is well spent enjoying the company of friends. If we're starting a revolution, it's a mighty friendly one. ;-)

However, nothing will happen at all unless we get involved. Many of you are where I was four years ago: wanting nothing more than to just live out your life in peace, with your head in the sand hoping it will all blow over. Maybe you are gunshy; perhaps you've tried to get involved before, but you got burned by a big waste of time where nothing actually got done. Or maybe you don't see what you could do that would make a difference in these big issues. Of maybe you feel too busy in your life already, distracted by work and your other obligations. Whatever the cause for your reservation, I'm sure you've got good reasons; I hear where you are coming from. I just want to let you know that there is a new alternative available called the Human Assembly. It is a detailed, sure-fire plan to restore American Democracy. All it asks from each of us is just two hours and $1 per week; we'll spend both the time and money with our friends. I have been uncertain about the best course to navigate our troubled waters for awhile now, but once I conceived of the Human Assembly I have been inspired to set sail and act. I no longer feel paralyzed: I know what to do. I no longer feel uncertain: I know I make a difference. I no longer feel powerless: I feel empowered to change our world. And I feel good because of it. If you are isolated like I was, then there is a good chance that participating in the Human Assembly can make you feel the same way I feel now.

Thank you for listening to how I feel. I guess that's a big part of what we really want: just to be heard. Now let's clarify our overall approach: namely, to incrementally change our systems of organization in a peaceful and fair way.

0c: We humans can Improve our Systems of Organization

Then American colonists made a Declaration that all men were created Equal, and devised an entirely new system of organization, one in which each person was free and was entitled to receive the benefit from their own hard work. Consider how crazy it would seem at the time, to move from the known comfort of feudalism to the preposterous "civil liberties" thing. "Pah!", medieval people scoffed. "What an idealistic pipe dream. They just don't understand how the world is. This 'equality' thing will never work." If our forefathers had resisted change, doubted that they could improve their lot, then we wouldn't have the freedoms that we have today.

And what happened with that crazy idea, that bold break from feudalism? The system predicated on equality, which defended civil liberties without regard to class, unlocked the latent productivity in every citizen and propelled the United States into unparallelled economic affluence. The people all over the world are really no different than the people in America, and yet the US holds a domineering economic position. Why? It is our well-considered system of capitalistic freedom that has powered the dramatic improvement in our standard of living. Our economic system harnesses our individual inclinations to "get ahead" and thereby collectively increase our standard of living.

Well, mass elections are the feudalism of our era. The unconscious assumption we've made is that the vote has to be exercised in mass elections with millions of people... why couldn't the vote be exercised in groups of ten?

I know the idea seems crazy. How can we elect our friends, in this modern world of ours run by money and media? It seems just as crazy as the idea of equality did to those peasants. How could they believe they were the equals of nobles, in that feudal world of theirs run by the aristocracy? Our friends are the equal of our politicians. More importantly, our friends would be better than wealthy politicians at promoting the Public Good. Democracy works when our personal representatives are people like us that we have a relationship with, which we have with our friends but not with distant politicians. A Human Assembly based on a community network of friends is just plain better than our flawed system of mass election.

Moreover, I want to show you that this bold leap into personal democracy will reap the same reward as the bold leap into equality. Namely, that we will harness the natural inclination of every citizen to improve their own quality of life and convert it into a force for the Public Good that benefits us all. The Human Assembly is a well considered system of human relationships that restores the personal touch to our democracy. Just by making that one small change, by slightly altering the way we play the election game, we can fuel a profound improvement in the quality of human living.

0d: We want Just Reformation not Rash Revolution

More specifically, we want our Reformation to be organic and fair. We want to grow our new solutions slowly within the framework of the current systems, and then have a smooth transition from old to the new. We are looking for guaranteed evolution, not rash revolution. That gives us time to get used to the new system and refine it while still having a working backup. This entire migration process must also be fair. Sure, we could redistribute wealth by robbing the rich like the Communists did in China, but that's not who we are as a people. Americans are just, and fair, and we defend the sanctity of civil liberties. Our programs should be voluntary and rely on the fact that they are a genuine improvement to get support, instead of employing force. No one should be penalized for having succeeded in our current systems. Wherever the Human-Scale Reformation changes fundamental aspects of our systems of organization, we must ensure that anyone impacted during the transition receives fair compensation.

Now, many of you might be looking for someone to blame for the state of our world, much like I did when tragedy befell my mom. I believe that we have been looking in the wrong place: our foe is not a someone, it's a something. We waste a lot of time fighting each another in "us vs. them" scenarios, Hatfields and McCoys engaged in pointless feuds. Whenever the fight is phrased "the poor vs. the rich", "citizens vs. politicians", or "Republicans vs. Democrats" then real live people always lose. Our true "enemy" is our broken systems of organization, and that's where we should focus our efforts. Wealthy politicians are not the enemy: a faulty system of Mass Election is. Rich corporations are not the enemy: the systematic Rule of Money is. If we change the contest to "all us humans vs. them flawed systems", then it is possible for everyone to win. Humans, with the right system, can make a world worth living in; humans, with the wrong system, become little more than cogs in a machine. Some of us need a foe to fight in order to focus our energies; if you need to fight, then fight the system, not other people.

I don't want what happened to my mother to happen to anyone else ever again: not to you, not to me, and not to future generations. That's just one of the many things that I want for our country. Let me share some other wants with you.

0e: I want to feel proud talking to Ben Franklin

We've already seen the conversation that I fear having with Ben Franklin. Now let me share with you the one I hope to have with him afterwards.

"Well, Mr. Franklin, it was a near thing," I would begin. "At the start of 2004 things looked bleak at home and abroad. I didn't know whether I could make a difference, but I tried anyway, and I wrote that book I promised you I would. And then I started talking to people about the Human Assembly and how we could restore American democracy the way you Founding Fathers intended."

"I started in my hometown of Dracut, MA. First I got my friends together just like you suggested. And we talked about our concerns and I discovered that we shared a great many of them. Lots of people felt the same way I did, about a number of things. I was pleasantly relieved to find that many people felt as passionate about democracy as I did. I guess I had feared that I would be too preachy, or that people wouldn't care. What I found was that I had struck a nerve. The desire for a true democracy of the people, it appears, still beats strong in the heart of Americans."

"And then an amazing thing happened. People started helping out. They introduced me to their friends, and I spoke with them. They presented me before their local groups, and I spoke with them, too. Before I knew it the word was spreading. People were forming Assemblies. And they were electing their friends as their personal Representatives. And that election season was the craziest we've seen in decades. Citizens just like me were being elected to public office; in one state, we even got a Senator elected."

"Well, after that, the idea was proven. Over the next year I toured the country spreading the message about the Human Assembly, showing people how it had worked in New England and it could work in their state, too. And it caught on wildfire. The Human Assembly was everywhere, and overnight we had this really effective public organization comprised entirely of citizens. It became a real force for the Public Good, and we ended up abolishing the Rule of Money in a fair and equitable way. And then we went on to solve many of the other ills of our society..."

That's the conversation I want to have with Ben Franklin. I want to be able to tell him that when times looked darkest, the American people rose up and met the challenge of their day. That citizens like you and I became heroes, restoring a working democracy in America, and defending the Public Good. That we pulled together and overcame.

But only you can help me make this dream come true. It is in your power to reclaim your own representation... yours and no one else's. I can show you how to do so, but ultimately you, and only you, decide how you are going to live your own life. What will you choose? Will you choose the safe road of doing nothing, the status quo? Or will you choose the courageous road of action, of improving your world?

Let's talk in more depth about what the Human Assembly is, so that you can make an informed decision.

Overview:
A Chapter Summary

The Human Assembly is a return to American Democracy as our Founding Fathers intended. It replaces the money-driven bureaucracy of politicians with a community network of friends. Specifically, it changes the mass election of distant politicians that we don't even know to the peer promotion of trusted leaders as our personal representatives. This change from large-scale popular election to human-scale personal selection restores the vital relationship between the represented and the Representative. In the Human Assembly, we personally know and trust our representatives, have regular face-to-face contact with them, and they are directly accountable to us. The community network is designed specifically to further the interests of the Public Good, without being unduly influenced by wealthy special interest groups or mass media. The Human Assembly is representation with participation, which our forefathers assumed we'd always have but has been lost in modern government.

In the Introduction we began with some stories about the events in my life that prompted me to write about how we citizens can reclaim our world. I have buried my head in the sand for many years, hoping that "someone else" will solve the clear and present problems in our government. In recent years I have become concerned, felt outrage, been stunned, and felt paralyzed at the enormity of how much needs fixing. If you have felt anything similar, then you'll want to know about the solution of the Human Assembly. Today I feel galvanized because I have a plan that is guaranteed to work, and I see a sequence of steps that I personally can take that will make a difference. I'd like for you to feel that way, too: confident and empowered.

In Chapter 1 we take a long look at what we currently have and what we really want in our government. What we have is representation without participation, wealthy special interest groups, distant politicians we don't even know, politics and mass media, ineffective bureaucracy, no accountability, and no recourse. What we want is representation with participation, for the public good to take precendence over special interests, ongoing relationships with leaders like us, leaders we know and trust, who get things done, and who are personally accountable to us. Along the way we discuss the crucial size assumptions made by the Constitutional Delegates in the design of our government

Chapter 2 is an in-depth description of the nuts and bolts of the Human Assembly, a system where we make a difference and our one vote counts. We describe how things would actually work, with specific recommendations for customary term lengths, replacement vs. removing vs. impeaching, vice representatives, citizen funding, expected commitment, etc. We'll consider many novel benefits of the network and how to leverage them effectively; foremost among these is fast idea and concern propagation because every voice is heard. We'll then discuss how to integrate the Human Assembly into the Legislative and Executive branches of the United States Government.

The Human-Scale Reformation is based on citizen activism, and this participatory activism is completely unlike politics or anything we normally associate with political movements. The Human Assembly is focused on building personal community. Since fusing friendship with government is an unfamiliar idea nowadays, we'll want explicit instructions on what to do; so we flesh out a detailed step-by-step guide in Chapter 3. In the initial stages, the goal will be to grow the Human Assembly to a large enough size to get our friends elected to legislature. In the middle stages, we'll want to focus on implementing Reformation goals. And after that, we'll follow the wise direction of leaders that we trust.

We then address your hesitant concerns in a heart-to-heart conversation filled with real stories in Chapter 4. Citizens like you and me can construct the Human Assembly easily, quickly, and agreeably. Unlike our current political system, it won't require huge momentum of life-crushing commitment, or a constantly annoying missionary zeal. The Human Assembly can be created with only two (2) hours per week of commitment from each Citizen, where one hour is spent amiably among friends, and the other in casual promotion to other friends. The cost of Citizen Funding is only $1 per week. Taken together, we can restore American democracy if we all watched one less movie a week and instead spent the time with our friends.

The Human Assembly offers more advantages than just making our elections process personal once again. In Chapter 5 we examine several of these benefits. Minorities are better represented, because minority representatives no longer need mass viability, just local viability. The small size and abundant relations works better for our representatives as well as for we citizens. The short, weekly feedback cycle leads to a rapid evolution of the quality of government. The community network is a sound investment of effort that can be leveraged for other purposes. And the Human Assembly also decreases factioning, an express goal of the Constitutional Delegates.

We'll wrap up in Chapter 6 by exploring a somewhat philosophical view of what's going wrong in our world and how to reverse it. Decisions are now being made for us by non-human entities, and these entities are concerned more with efficiency that with the quality of human life. These entities include such things like the law, the economy, corporations, and the workplace. We need a working symbiosis with these entities in order to flourish, but we don't want them making our lives inhuman. So, we propose a division of labor: humans as decision makers, and non-human entities as process automators.

Lastly, there are some addenda on various topics worthy of mention.

Enjoy!

P.S. The Human Assembly is the first crucial phase of a larger plan called the Human-Scale Reformation. If you find these ideas interesting, you may also want to check out the Reformation.

Chapter 1:
What We Have and What We Want

As our government has grown larger, it has drifted inexorably away from the vision of democracy intended by our Founding Fathers. The essential problem is that the entire system has grown too big. Things that work fine on the human-scale (like voting) break down when applied to a large-scale, because it becomes too impersonal, political, and bureaucratic. Making elections a personal process once again rectifies the major problems with our government.

Let's take a look at what we currently have in modern government and in particular, how it differs from what we really want. Along the way, we'll consider the history of our customs; it's very illuminating to see how they once worked, when the world was a smaller place. What we'll discover is that personal human relationships are the magic ingredient that makes organizations work, and good friendships are far more important than rules and regulations.

Here's a summary table of what we'll discuss in this section and the next:

What We Have	What We Want	The Solution
Representation without Participation	Representation with Participation	Personal Selection of Representatives
Wealthy Special Interests Buying Our Government	Public Good over Special Interests	Citizen Funding
Distant Politicians We Don't Even Know	Ongoing Relationships with Leaders Like Us	Peer Promotion
Politics and Mass Media	Leaders We Know and Trust	Community Network of Friends
Ineffective Bureaucracy	To Get Things Done	Real Time Checks and Balances
No Accountability Nor Recourse	Direct Personal Accountability	Active Partnership with Leaders

1a: Large Popular Elections favor Wealth, Celebrity, and Conformity

Let's examine how large popular elections work in modern America. In order to be elected president, one needs campaign funding, media exposure, free time, and the desire to be a career politician. Thus, the primary qualities our current system selects for are the capability to generate wealth, possession of celebrity, freedom from obligation (free time usually follows from being wealthy), and political disposition. Moreover, because of the influence of the party system, we are only allowed to choose among pre-selected candidates. More often than not we are choosing the "lesser of two evils" instead of the "best candidate for the job". Popular elections force politicians to become sensitive to the party line (otherwise, they aren't supported at caucuses) and their viability (how to garner the maximum number of votes). The current system breeds politicians that know how to suck up to money, put on a good face for the camera, stay wealthy, cut deals, become a staunch party advocate, and have a saccharine pacifier for the masses. Our current political system makes it difficult for them to remain successful otherwise, irrespective of the personal inclinations of our leaders. Note that nowhere is it required that the politician be wise, capable, or benevolent; furthermore, a relationship with their constituency after election is conspicuously absent (or any equivalent way to build trust). The mass election of our public officials is fraught with numerous problems.

How did the good idea of the popular vote go so wrong? The critical flaw is size. The method of popular election only operates effectively at human-scale. That means a small community of people, who all know each other, have regular contact with one another, and in the best case have existing relationships they can build upon. All the vote does is guarantee a fair outcome, but the vote by itself doesn't ensure a good outcome. The way we get a good outcome (i.e. the best qualified person representing us) is to exercise our own human judgment about people we personally know. Human-scale systems are time-honored because they are known to work; we are rudely discovering in our times that impersonal large-scale systems don't work. Let's consider point-by-point what is wrong with our large-scale political system, of which several points will be about mass elections alone.

1b: We Citizens are Barred From Participating in Our Own Government

However, in the large-scale popular elections of today, we have lost that vital component; we now have representation without participation. We are allowed to vote for politicians in flashy mass elections, and then are discouraged from participating in the decision-making process after that. This discouragement is not explicit; it is implicit in the practical barriers to citizen participation in our current government. Few citizens have the free time, disposable income, media presence, and lobbying power that it takes to influence government today. It has become apparent that wealthy special interest groups have a more direct influence into government legislation than we citizens do. Special Interests are overriding the Public Good, because wealthy lobbying groups can participate in our current government in ways that we can't.

1c: We want Representation with Participation

Moreover, participatory citizen activism is the only way our current system can change. It is a remarkable insight into how much we have been discouraged from participating in our own government that the word "activism" now has a negative connotation. "Activism" today connotes "political activism", which is an oft distasteful process of annoying mass advertisement usually doomed to failure from the start (like intrusive petitioning). That's a pretty paralyzing thing, when people are dissuaded from taking action that improves their own situation. We will need to untarnish the name of "activism" by offering a reasonable alternative to politics to citizens. We might call this "participatory activism" or "citizen activism" or whatever we like. But the point is clear: we citizens must act to reclaim our representation in government. It is our right, and our responsibility to do so. If we don't act, nothing will change, and it will be no one's fault but our own.

1d: Money is Buying our Elections and our Laws

The influence of money on elections has been folklore for ages; let's back up that belief with some facts. The year prior to a presidential election year there is a "pre-election" held by the top 0.1% most wealthy people and corporations in the United States; they "vote" by making donations to the campaign funds for different candidates. Over 98% of all campaign funds come from this "pre-election", which means the money people like you and I contribute makes no difference. In modern times we can track the statistics of presidential campaign funds, which confirm that the candidate that raises the most money wins the election. They win because they can spend huge amounts of money on media publicity; in fact, paid election funding has become the number one source of advertising revenue for many major media networks today. Campaign funding for a single candidate has reached $10s of millions of dollars; not surprisingly, their primary supporters are media organizations. Public support no longer wins elections; in fact, we now have presidents elected against a majority vote. Citizens liked McCain's reform platform, but the rich didn't, so his party supported someone else. The people liked Howard Dean, but corporations didn't, so he loses to more accomodating nominees. Money buys our elections, and it is that top 0.1% deciding who our next president will be, not citizens like us.

Moreover, the influence of money on government isn't limited to just elections. The only candidates that we are allowed to vote on are the ones chosen by our party system; these candidates are always wealthy, with personal portfolios in the $10s of millions of dollars; many have $100s of millions of dollars of assets. Lobbying groups spend $10s of millions of dollars a year in order to influence government legislations. And, of course, there is the ever-present shaping of public perception on key issues through mass media in advertising campaigns that cost millions of dollars. Altogether, our modern government has become a breeding ground of wealthy special interests groups, who promote their rich peers in all-but-rigged elections and then buy the laws favorable to their industries. "Intolerable" is not too strong a word to describe the pervasive influence of wealth on modern politics; nor is "disgraceful" or "infuriating". It is distasteful to free citizens everywhere.

1e: We want the Public Good to Take Precedence over Special Interests

Now, sometimes the Public Good and Special Interests coincide. We are not proposing to eliminate the input of special interests entirely; that would be ill-advised as well as unfair. What we are proposing is that wealthy special interests groups should have to convince legislators on the basis of how much their proposals actually improve the Public Good, instead of how much money they can slap down to buy lobbying power or media influence. The quality of our lives come first, before money, before economy, and before politics. In all cases, the first consideration of government should be the effect on the lives of real people: not how much money can be made, nor how big a market can be captured, nor how good a deal can be cut. The Public Good is paramount.

1f: We elect Distant Politicians that We Don't Even Know

Let's consider what life was like back in the day when elections actually worked. A typical city-state in ancient Greece would have several hundred free citizens that could participate in polis meetings. All the citizens lived in the city, kept their businesses there, and had estates inside the city walls (as well as outside). The citizens all knew one another (or had close mutual friends), they shared the same concerns, and they could all visit one another whenever they pleased. Early American society worked much the same way, and on the same scale. Agrarian communities would number in the low thousands; some were much smaller. People saw one another regularly at church, at festivals, and at town meetings. They married within the town, making many related by blood. When our forefathers elected someone, it was someone they personally knew, had regular dealings with, and who they could visit at any time.

Elections back then were done with a ballot, which means "little ball". There would be a ballot box for each representative, and people would vote by dropping a small stone into the appropriate box. At the end of the voting, the little balls were counted up and the person with the <ahem> most balls got elected. The unconsidered assumption that we've made is that the Vote using Ballots is what makes democracy work, and it's the reason why we now have an entire industry devoted to making ballot machines. However, the vote was only one part of an overall system of election, which also included a personal relationship with the candidates. When the ancient Greeks voted, it was between people they had personally known for years. This is the conspicuous piece missing from our modern government, and we are now seeing that it is by far the more important piece. How can we be expected to make an informed vote when we don't even know who these people are? At best all we can do is choose between different media images, because that is the only relationship we have with our candidates today. We need to restore the personal relationship between the representative and the represented in order to make our democracy work once again. The vote is important because it is fair, but by itself it is not enough.

We can now see the crucial spot where our government has broken down, as the human-scale was the implicit assumption made in its design. Election was always intended to be of people that we knew like us, who shared our concerns because they lived similar lives. In fact, it would be inconceivable to our forefathers that we would ever elect people we don't even know, but that has become the norm in modern society. As much as some of us might like to turn back the clock to agrarian societies, we can't. The world is, in truth, much different than it was two centuries ago. The towns of today (with 50,000 people) were the cities of yesterday; we are operating on a scale unseen and unforeseen by our predecessors. In fact, we can quantify what our forefathers meant by "small". Hamilton pushed for Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, which explicitly states apportionment: "The number of representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand"; elsewhere, he mentions that he would prefer an even smaller constituency, but Hamilton had to raise that number in response to the method proposed by Jefferson. In the year 2004, there were 435 seats in the House and each representative represented 572,000 people. That's 19 times larger than the expressly stated upper bound written directly into our Constitution. Our modern systems have clearly exceeded their original design parameters, and we need to return to smaller voting communities. So, we must seek a new solution that fuses both past and future: a human-scale network based on personal relations, that can effectively address the needs of a global community of billions.

1g: We want Ongoing Relationships with Leaders Like Us

In addition to having qualified leaders, the Founding Fathers of the United States also felt it vital that leaders have a close relationship to their constituency. They designed the House of Representatives explicitly to be "sensitive to the needs of the represented" and "reliant on the goodwill of the constituency for continued election". (Recall that the Senate was a compromise between the smaller states and larger states; in a population-based system like the House the smaller states felt they were receiving short shrift.) In this relationship, personal contact and the size of the constituency was crucial, and the Founding Fathers knew it. Jefferson once wrote to Madison "I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural" but that "when they get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe, they will become corrupt." Small communities and personal relationships were paramount in his mind as moderators of government, and the best examples in his time were agricultural communities.

So, we want a system that naturally elects qualified leaders like us with whom we have close contact and a vital relationship. Moreover, the two go hand in hand. Trust is a human feeling that we extend in varying degrees to people that we know, and we get to know people over time by having a personal relationship with them. We also have an uncanny knack for realistically assessing the strengths and weaknesses of those close to us (as well as a stereotypical characterization of those distant from us, and an idealization of celebrities). We should select leaders who we already personally know and trust, with whom we can have an active partnership to ensure that our real needs are met. The specific qualities that we look for in our leaders may change over time; wise, capable, and benevolent is a good first approximation of what we are looking for. Most importantly, we want leaders like us, who share our concerns because they live similar lives.

1h: Distant Relationships are formed through Media and Politics

A direct consequence of this secondhand relationship is a lack of trust in our authority figures. After all, the media can manipulate public image however they want, independent of who people really are. That works both ways: both presenting a cad more virtuously, and besmirching the reputation of a truly upstanding individual. Consider what happened to Senator John McCain during the year 2000 presidential primaries. McCain is an honest-to-goodness reformer, the likes of which haven't been seen in Washington in many a year. He upset the Bush election machine by claiming the New Hampshire primaries through his sincere grass-roots campaigning. However, by leveraging a larger media presence fueled by an immense campaign fund, Bush was able to portray himself as a "real reformer" in the southern states and thereby take back the vote. This was despite the fact that McCain had a publicly declared platform of reform for many years, and Bush had never spoken on the topic of reform before that election. (It's abundantly clear what their positions really are, with McCain pushing for the landmark McCain-Feingold act on campaign reform and Bush deftly defusing it by miring it in FEC regulation.) We can't trust our politicians anymore because we have a system that encourages them to manipulate image, because it gets better results than honestly following through on campaign promises.

1i: We want Leaders we Know and Trust, not Politicians nor Rulers

We want leaders.

Now, there are many types of leaders out there, so let's try to carefully distinguish the desirable attributes we want. There are highly charismatic leaders who make fine rock stars as well as warrior leaders who should be military commanders; however, cultish charm and fierce cunning aren't quite what we are looking for in our Representatives. What we want is more like a common sense leader in tune with their followers. These common sense leaders are gifted with clarity and can sort through all the obfuscating flak and see straight to the heart of any matter. Their wisdom constantly affirms the sense of what's truly important. This type of leader is a powerful catalyst of the will of their followers. They express clearly what their fellows have always felt but didn't quite know how to say. And most importantly, a leader is an inspiration to those around them. They have a solid conviction (separate from magnetic charisma) that lends to their followers both the motivation to act and the certainty that it is the right thing to do. Common sense leaders don't like politics; it compromises the integrity of their beliefs for the expediency of "playing the game". This type of leader doesn't need to rule; when they speak, what they say is obviously the best thing to do (it was in our hearts to begin with!) and it naturally inspires us to act. When we use the word "leader", we will mean the kind of common sense leader as described above; in particular, we'll mean a leader as distinctly different than the politicians and rulers we normally encounter in modern government.

Unfortunately, our current political system does not favor the creation of leaders; at best, it tolerates hybrid leader-politicians to survive. Citizens like you and I are starved for solid leadership that we can believe in, because leaders that we trust are becoming few and far between. We need a new system that naturally selects trustworthy leaders over politicians and rulers. Every one of us personally knows someone with leadership qualities. That person with quiet confidence that we trust implicitly is a leader; not the next Martin Luther King perhaps, but a common sense leader nonetheless. Our friend we've known for years who always seems to know the right thing to say, who genuinely touches us at times with their sincerity, and whom we admire for their honesty and integrity: they are a humble leader in our midst. Right now, people like that go unharnessed by our government, their talent for leadership wasted if not actually suppressed. We want a society that quickly identifies leaders wherever they may be found, actively promotes them, and encourages them to grow their leadership potential into a force for the Public Good. We could all live just fine without politicians or rulers, but we need leaders we know and trust, and we need a network that naturally promotes leaders.

1j: Checks and Balances work because of Human Oversight

As a people we are very sensitive to any potential abuse of power by our government officials. This sensitivity is an outgrowth of our history; recall that the American Revolution was ignited by the persistent injustices leveyed by King George III of England. In fact, in the "Autobiography of Ben Franklin", Ben stresses that the colonists wanted to remain loyal to the crown, but eventually couldn't stomach the exploitive taxation without representation. So, the issue of how to build a strong central goverment yet somehow limit the power of our rulers was of paramount importance to the Constitutional Delegates. They wanted a robust system, but one that inherently prevented the rise of another King George.

The solution they arrived at was a system of checks and balances, where powerful rulers are held in check by other rulers. The American Government is split into three basic branches: Executive (the President), Legislative (Congress), and Judicial (the Supreme Court). The actual rules involved in checks and balances are remarkably simple. The President has the power of Veto over Congress and appoints judges to the Supreme Court. Congress can Impeach a President and make Laws. The Supreme Court can rule that Laws are unconstitutional. There is some other fine print, but that is pretty much it. Checks and balances has stood the test of time not because of the complexity of its rules but because it harnesses the human nature of our rulers. Our government is effectively self-policing because it is mediated by the judgment and oversight of real people.

We have an Ineffective Bureaucracy mired in Procedural Rules

How did we go from a vigorous nation to the most litigious society on the planet? The major factors are the loss of relationships and community. To illustrate, we have a distant relationship with politicians; we don't even know who they really are, since we have no personal contact with them. That leads to a lack of trust, and eventually to a need to proscribe the scope of their power. Similarly, we hardly know our neighbors anymore; we live in neighborhoods of strangers. In a previous day, a private dispute would be resolved through conversation and compromise; nowadays, our primary recourse for resolution is through the courts. Rule-based decision-making is the road to hell paved with good intentions; we must change our course in order to get what we really want. We need to promote relationships and build personal community. Once we've restored the relationship between the represented and the representative, we can safely start building trust in them again. And with this trust in place, we can start empowering our leaders instead of hamstringing them. And as a fortuitous side effect, we'll probably also develop alternatives to suing people in order to resolve our personal disputes with them.

1l: We want Leaders with Good Sense who Get Things Done

Rules become outdated, and are only as fair as the foresight of the person who created it. We should trust the judgment of a real person seeing a problem today as much if not more than the judgment of someone who made up a rule in the past. So our community network should be based on the living wisdom of trustworthy people instead of blindly following procedural rules. We want a government that accomplishes goals and gets things done, not a vast bureaucracy hampered and handicapped. Hamilton wrote in the first Federalist Paper that "the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty" and the two "can never be separated". Our political and economic systems are burdened with endless procedures that accomplish next to nothing; we need to restore the vigor of our society by granting our leaders wide latitude to act. And we needn't fear that they'll become too powerful, because we'll keep them in check and balance with other leaders.

1m: Politicians have No Accountability and Citizens have No Recourse

Of course, elections were intended to be that accountability, but we have already seen that mass election no longer fulfills any of its originally intended functions. Moreover, given that terms run for many years, not much can be done about a politician who decides the day after their election to go rogue. For the president there is impeachment, but that's reserved for serious offenses on par with treason. Our politicians should be held accountable for their actions, good or ill. Moreover, we need a variety of alternatives to hold them accountable, and these options should be available in real time not just election years.

1n: We want Direct Personal Accountability

However, there are other forms of personal accountability which are perhaps more effective. What if our leaders were also our friends? We are also held accountable by our friends in the course of having a relationship with them. This might seem like an odd way to phrase it, but if you think about it, we often avoid doing things solely on the basis that it would hurt or upset our friends. This is a form of preventative accountability; we treat our friends well because we want to be nice to them, not necessarily because we fear retribution should we do something wrong.

We are now entering the realm of the bold proposal of the Human Assembly. What if we didn't need any of this bullcrap? What if we didn't need mass elections, or wealthy special interest groups, or media images, or distant politicians, or distasteful politics, or procedural rules, or ineffective bureaucracy? What if we could build a simple community network based on our friends that could get rid of what we have and replace it with what we want? What if we could make democracy work in America the way it was intended?

Chapter 2:
The Human Assembly is the Solution

Let's review what we are looking for:

What We Want	More Specifically	The Solution of the Human Assembly
Representation with Participation	Personal, human-scale groups of our friends A close relationship with leaders we know and trust Citizen activism instead of politics	Personal Selection of Representatives
Public Good over Special Interests	To improve the quality of human living The will of the people, not money nor media To ensure that our lives come first	Citizen Funding
Ongoing Relationships with Leaders Like Us	Leaders like us who've lived similar lives Honest people instead of media images To visit and talk to our leaders whenever we want	Peer Promotion
Leaders We Know and Trust	Common sense leaders, instead of politicians or rulers A network that naturally promotes leaders Direct communications channels so every voice is heard	Community Network of Friends
Direct Personal Accountability	To check and balance our government with human oversight  To regularly see our leaders face-to-face Ways to change our representation in real time	Real Time Checks and Balances
To Get Things Done	Qualified leaders, say those wise, capable, and benevolent To trust the wisdom of leaders to get things done The personal responsibility of leaders	Active Partnership with Leaders

The Human Assembly is a single solution that gives us everything we want in our government, and more. Let's take a look at what the Human Assembly is in detail and see why it is a return to the democracy the Founding Fathers envisioned, a democracy that actually works in furthering the Public Good.

2a: We personally select our representatives in Assemblies of ten peers

The process continues: Second Level Assemblies meet on Friday evening for 2 hours per week, and Third Level Assemblies meet on Saturday for 2 hours, and Fourth Level Assemblies meet for 3 hours on Sunday. Taken altogether, the Citizen through Fourth Level Assemblies are known as the Local Assemblies. These are formed by geographic proximity and are focused primarily on local community issues. Fifth Level Assemblies and above are collectively known as the Global Assemblies. At this point, Representation is now a full-time job, and we expect Level 5+ Representatives to be focusing their full attention on providing solid leadership on global issues. We further expect the Global Assemblies to be organized more by ideology and functionality (like Congressional Committees) than by geography. Fifth Level Assemblies meet on Monday during the day; Sixth Level Assemblies meet on Tuesday day, and so forth to Ninth Level Assemblies which meet on Friday day. There will undoubtedly be much more contact among Representatives in Global Assemblies than just this; these designated times are to preserve communication channels up the Assemblies (more on that later).

In the Human Assembly, we build relationships through face-to-face interaction of small groups of ten peers. Popular election is fair in this venue, since every Level N Representative is voting with the same number of votes. So, let's make election by the majority in each Assembly. The first thing to notice is that every vote counts: every vote is always one out of ten, instead of one out of ten million. Let's keep in mind, though, popular election works here because at the human-scale it is a personal selection of the best person as leader. There is nothing intrinsically magic about the vote; the magic is the real live people exercising good judgment about people they know. It's the people, not the rules, that make the real difference. Now, we all know at least one person with good sense that is wise, capable, and benevolent and would make a decent leader. Also, we all know people that we trust. Let's make a person like that our personal representative, instead of distant politicians that we don't really know and have nebulous contact with. Now, as a further benefit of personal selection, note that we have almost completely removed the influence of the media on our elections process. We don't need gallop polls to know which of our friends are true leaders: we already know them. In fact, when compared side-by-side with the quality of friendship, the media relationship we have with our elected officials seems like a pretty shallow substitute. The Human Assembly gives us all the benefits of human-scale personal selection without the drawbacks of large-scale popular election.

Now, getting into some nitty gritty details, assembly elections have customary terms and occur at specific months and years. In this respect, everything works much the same as it does now, the only difference is the schedule. For Citizen Assemblies, terms for their Level 1 Representatives are 1 year long and elections happen sometime in the month of February; the exact date is at their discretion. The Local Assemblies (Citizen through Fourth) follow the general rule of thumb of 1 year per level and the next month. Level 1 Reps are elected every February, Level 2 Reps are promoted every even year in March, Level 3 Reps are chosen in April of a year divisible by 3 (2001, 2004, 2007, etc.), and Level 4 Reps are selected in May of years divisible by 4 (2000, 2004, 2008, etc). Once again, we get a significant change at the Global Assemblies, which are all 5 year long terms staggered through a five year cycle. So, for example, Sixth Level Assemblies elect Level 7 Reps in the August of every fifth year ending in 2 and 7 (2002, 2007, 2012, 2017, etc.) Any election that begins mid-term (say, because of resignation or Vice promotion) lasts until the next election date.

Our Constitution also prescribes age limits for elected officials, but these are largely unnecessary in the Human Assembly. Citizens, of course, will need to be adults aged 18 or above, say those who have completed high school. A meteoric rise through local assemblies could happen in four months, but the fastest someone could be elected in the global assemblies is one level per year. Much more likely to happen is seasoning on the order of a term length per level, so Level 5 Representatives will have a decade of experience and Level 8 Reps thirty years. Once the Human Assembly "gets going", it will have stable Assemblies that slowly change composition. New representatives will probably have to prove themselves over the course of time in their peer assembly before advancing in level, which is most often what we would want. But on the other hand, if several hundred leaders with several thousand years combined experience believe that a 23 year old woman is the best person to lead the country as a Level 8 Representative, then we should trust their collective judgment and follow our modern-day Joan of Arc.

Here's a specific timing chart of the Human Assembly, which details when election months and years are, terms lengths, and the projected time commitment of each level.

	Assembly	of	Elects a	in	Term	Cycle	Representing	Meets	for	Meet	Reps
	type	Reps	Rep	Mon	Years	Yr End	# Citizens	day time	hrs/wk	hrs/wk	hrs/wk
L o c a l	Citizen	Citizens	Level 1	Feb	1 yr	Every	10	Mon/Tue eve	1	1	2
	First	Level 1	Level 2	Mar	2 yrs	Even	100	Wed/Thu eve	1	2	4
	Second	Level 2	Level 3	Apr	3 yrs	Third	1000 = 1T	Fri eve	2	4	8
	Third	Level 3	Level 4	May	4 yrs	Fourth	10T	Sat any	2	6	16
	Fourth	Level 4	Level 5	Jun	5 yrs	0, 5	100T	Sun any	3	9	32
G l o b a l	Fifth	Level 5	Level 6	Jul	5 yrs	1, 6	1000T = 1M	Mon day	3	12	FT
	Sixth	Level 6	Level 7	Aug	5 yrs	2, 7	10M	Tue day	2	14	FT
	Seventh	Level 7	Level 8	Sep	5 yrs	3, 8	100M	Wed day	1	15	FT
	Eighth	Level 8	Level 9	Oct	5 yrs	4, 9	1000M = 1B	Thu day	1	16	FT
	Ninth	Level 9	Level 10	Nov	5 yrs	0, 5	10B	Fri day	1	17	FT

2b: Citizen Funding supports the Public Good by removing Special Interests

The solution is Citizen Funding. Every Citizen participating in a Citizen Assembly pays $1 per week to fund the network. This grass roots funding is sufficient to completely support all Representatives as well as the salaries of their associated staff, and has numerous benefits. First and foremost, citizen funding makes Representatives dependent on real people for their salaries, and removes the direct input of large sources of wealth into the elections process. Citizen funding enables us to promote people from any economic class, unlike our current system, which selects politicians primarily from the already affluent. This means that our citizen-funded leaders can make decisions more in line with the Public Good, without the conflict of interest of having a large portfolio. In addition, the informal personal selection done in Assemblies eliminates the vast waste inherent in mass election. Hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man hours are wasted in corn-and-games spectacles in large popular elections. The time, money, and focus would be better spent on solving the real issues that impact our lives.

Now, despite the clear advantages of citizen funding, for many readers a red flag probably just went up: the "someone is asking us to give away our hard-earned money" flag. We have to stare the beast right in the face. Either we citizens fund our government... or wealthy special interests groups will do it for us. The groups are more than happy to do it now; I'm certain wealthy special interest groups would be delighted to throw money at the Human Assembly as well. The only way we can guarantee that our leaders are never hostage to the wealthy is by supporting them ourselves. I don't like it any more than you do, but that's the economic reality. Moreover, we are just talking about $1 per week. For most of us, that's pocket change. Our forefathers were called upon to risk their lives, the security of their families, and all their property to give us the freedoms we have today. In comparison, we're getting off pretty easy with a very reasonable trade to fund the creation of American democracy in our times. (For those readers that are still hesitant, check out the addendum On the Necessity of Citizen Funding.) In any event, let's continue looking at the finances.

Since everyone is contributing $1 each meeting, that means that a Citizen Assembly has a cash flow of $10 per week. For the local assemblies, their cash flow is split as follows: 50% is drawn as the salary of their personal representative, and 50% is contributed to the next higher level Assembly. So, in the Citizen Assembly, this effectively means that all Citizens pay $1 per week and the Representative receives $4 per week ($5 salary minus their own $1). We expect that a Level 1 Representative contributes 4 hours of their time per week: 2 hours in two 1 hour meetings, and two taking care of whatever other tasks need to be done.

The pay scale and time commitment of the Representatives increases exponentially with level. A Level 2 Representative is expected to spend 8 hours per week on the Human Assembly, for which they are paid $25 per week, representing an approximate hourly rate of $3.13 / hour. A Level 3 Rep will spend 16 hours a week and receive $125, a nominal rate of $7.81 per hour. At this point, Representation is a hobby grown into a part-time job. Level 4 Representatives are a transition stage, expected to spend 32 hours per week on the Human Assembly and be paid $625 per week at an effective $19.53 / hour. Whether they keep another job part-time to supplement their income or devote their full attention to the Human Assembly is entirely at their discretion. For the Global Representatives (Level 5 and above) their salary is fixed at $2,000 per week and for this ample salary they are expected to have only one full time occupation: leadership. All excess funds go into a discretionary pool to be spent as the Assembly decides.

Here's a chart detailing the cash flow of the Human Assembly:

	Assembly	of	Elects a	Representing	Rep	Money In	Salary	Money Up	Excess Pool
	type	Reps	Rep	# Citizens	hrs/wk	$/wk	$/wk	$/wk	$/wk
L o c a l	Citizen	Citizens	Level 1	10	4	$10	$5	$5	-
	First	Level 1	Level 2	100	8	$50	$25	$25	-
	Second	Level 2	Level 3	1000 = 1T	16	$250	$125	$125	-
	Third	Level 3	Level 4	10T	32	$1,250	$625	$625	-
	Fourth	Level 4	Level 5	100T	FT	$6,250	$2,000	$3,125	$1,125
G l o b a l	Fifth	Level 5	Level 6	1000T = 1M	FT	$31,250	$2,000	$15,625	$13,625
	Sixth	Level 6	Level 7	10M	FT	$156,250	$2,000	$78,125	$76,125
	Seventh	Level 7	Level 8	100M	FT	$781,250	$2,000	$390,625	$388,625
	Eighth	Level 8	Level 9	1000M = 1B	FT	$3.9M	$2T	$1.95M	$1.95M
	Ninth	Level 9	Level 10	10B	FT	$19.5M	$2T	N/A	$19.5M

2c: Peer Promotion is better than Appointment from Above in a Democracy

The Human Assembly works off a completely different principle called peer promotion. Recall that a Level 1 Representative is created by Citizens, not by higher level reps. Peer promotion creates an organization above us, where advancement comes from the lower tiers. The inverts the normal power structure, giving the people at the base of an Assembly the power of promotion. Moreover, consider who is immune to whom in this scenario. A lower level rep cannot be removed by any higher level rep, only by the Assemblies that support them (more on that in a couple sections). That means that they can speak their truthful mind to everyone, and don't have to "cover their ass" to the "boss". However, a group of lower level reps can easily dislodge a higher level rep, which means the higher tiers are never immune to the lower tiers. The only way to get and keep rock solid support... is to actually act in the best interests of the Public Good as seen by you and your constituency, which is what "kissing up to the lower tiers" would look like. And relying on leaders for effective leadership is how we will "exploit" the higher ranks. This is a preferable form of brown-nosing and exploitation than what we currently have. :-)

Peer promotion and appointment from above both have their respective uses; there are some organizations in which the latter is more applicable. Consider the military. In military campaigns the people most likely to become casualties are the lower ranks who are doing the actual fighting. Officers need to be able to quickly grow a command structure underneath them, both on the battlefield and off. Furthermore, generals sometimes have to make hard decisions that enlisted men won't like, and thus immunity to their opinion is also reasonable. So, appointment from above makes sense in a military hierarchy. However, it makes no sense in a democratic government. Governments rule by the consent of the governed. Power should flow from the people to our leaders, whom we have chosen because we trust. This power should increase the more we trust them, but be conditionally revokable so that leaders are never immune. Peer promotion is the vestiture of our own personal power into leaders we know and trust.

Now, many readers have no doubt recognized a certain superficial similarity of our new system with pyramid schemes; at first glance, the whole premise of the Human Assembly seems remarkably pyramid-like. There are profound differences between the two. Pyramid schemes are grown from the top down where the network is predicated on unwanted parasitization of the lower by the higher. The Human Assembly is grown from the bottom up where the network is predicated on deliberate support of the higher by the lower. The reason why pyramid schemes don't work is because no one wants their hard work to go unfairly to someone else. The reason why the Human Assembly is feasible is because everyone wants greater representation. Pyramid schemes use appointment from above, whereas the Human Assembly is based on peer promotion; the former is what we put up with, while the latter is what we want.

2d: A Community Network of Friends is Highly Responsive

We citizens are a tremendous resource of good ideas and a litmus of public concerns. We are a untapped force for the Public Good. Every single one of us has had at least one really good idea in our lifetime, hashed out in that late night conversation with friends. And what happened with that great idea? Nothing. There is no communications channel in our current society to automatically bring that idea to the attention of those who might act upon it. Maybe our idea was so good that we even tried pursuing it... but then went unnoticed and unheard in the maelstrom of our impersonal political machine. Our current political system ignores us, and refuses to let us initiate change; as a consequence, the system has deluded us into thinking that we are powerless. We have the power to change our world. We've always had it, we just haven't had a system that encouraged us to flex it.

We belong in a community network of friends. The Human Assembly is designed to be lightning fast with respect to idea and concern propagation. Consider that all Assembly meeting times and elections are staged from lower to higher level. That means that if someone comes up with a good idea in a Citizen Assembly, it could be handed a week later to a Fifth Level Assembly, already refined by four Assemblies and ready to act upon. Our good ideas will spread quickly; our real concerns will be heard. Communication from the top down will also be fast, since media organizations will focus on higher level reps intead of lower level ones (much like they do now with the President, Congressmen, and Supreme Court Judges). That means that that system is responsive in both directions, not just top-down like it currently is. The Human Assembly harnesses the talent of its Citizens: by promoting capable leaders who stay in touch. And the best part is that the whole thing happens naturally: just by friends talking with each other every week in a community network.

Now, some of us, having been burned by our ineffective bureaucracy, might be skeptical that restoring American democracy could possibly be this easy. And those fears are justified in our current system; just getting together with our friends without any other structure or plan won't do squat to affect our political system today. However, a community network of friends is the most effective organization to effect positive progress that can be found in our world. Let me share another story with you. Years ago, I worked at a corporation and there were a lot of meetings. Some were productive, others were a chore, and they all took up a lot of time. I went to my boss and asked him if there were a better way to get things done. He told me: "Kim, I know that sometimes these meetings are a waste of time, but there is no better way to do it. Memos don't work, ordering people around doesn't get them involved, and you've got to keep people in the loop. You point out the drawbacks to meetings, of which there are many; but consider the alternatives, which are worse and less effective. You go think on it and if you come up with a better system, we'll try it out."

So I started looking around at organizations and tried to figure out what made some effective and others not, and a general trend among the effective ones became apparent. Whenever people got together, shared things, reached agreement, and took action, that's the way things actually got done. Ask a politician how they spend their time and they'll say: "Oh, I spend most of my time talking to people. See, I first meet with my aides every day and they tell me what committees I'll be meeting with. Then we talk about..." Ask a pastor how churches actually work and they'll respond: "Oh, the most essential part is to get people to congregate and then make sure you talk to them every week, more often if possible..." Ask a diplomat how countries get along and they'll tell you: "The most important part are the summits; that's when agreements are actually reached. Until you get leaders in the same room talking to one another, nothing much really happens..." Ask a businessman how companies effectively produce and they'll say: "Getting the most out of your employees is key. You have to keep them personally involved and pointed in the right direction. Management uses meetings to..." Ask a general how armies are run and they'll bark: "Meet with staff. Discuss options. Strategize the best. Take decisive action." Our community network of friends seems easy because it harnesses our innate tribal instincts. But don't let the natural simplicity mislead you: it's the most effective kind of organization in the world. The Human Assembly follows the best known template for progress: gather, discuss, agree, act.

2e: Representatives are held Accountable through an Active Partnership

In the Human Assembly, Representatives are in intimate personal contact with their constituency and this relationship will guide their decisions on a timely basis. We expect that most issues between Representatives and the represented will be resolved just by talking to one another. However, representatives are directly accountable to their constituency; to be more explicit, we will have many ways to change who we want representing us. Changes in representation that occur at the customary election times are called Replacements. Replacements can occur for a variety of amiable reasons, not the least of which is that the current Representative wants a change of pace and would like the Vice to run things for awhile. So, all it takes to Replace a Representative is a majority vote of an Assembly at the customary election time. Assemblies can also ask their representative to voluntarily resign at any time, which works fine if the two parties are on good terms.

However, a Representative might seriously diverge from the will of their Assembly over the course of their term, thinking that they are a ruler instead of a leader. In this case, it is possible to Remove them from office. Let us call the assembly trying to remove their rep the direct assembly, and the ten assemblies of the members of the direct assembly the ten-fold assemblies of the rep. Removal of a representative requires the two-thirds vote of their direct Assembly in addition to a two-thirds vote of the ten-fold assemblies of the rep. So, to remove a Level 6 Representative would require 7 votes in the direct Fifth Level Assembly, and 67 votes total from the ten-fold Fourth Level Assemblies they represent. In matters of treason, conduct untenable, or loss of soundness of mind, a Representative can also be Impeached. Let us call the assemblies of the members of a representative's ten-fold assemblies their hundred-fold assemblies. Impeachment is a serious offense requiring the three-quarters vote of the direct assembly, ten-fold assemblies, and hundred-fold assemblies. So, for that same Level 6 Rep, it would require 8 votes in the Fifth Level Assembly, 75 votes in the ten Fourth Level Assemblies, and 750 votes in the hundred Third Level Assemblies. A person Impeached can never be a Representative of any Assembly ever again. Note that by implication a Level 2 Representative can never be impeached, and a Level 1 Representative can never be impeached or removed (only replaced).

Note that this recall system has all the desirable attributes we were looking for. We have a wide variety of ways to hold our Representatives accountable, all the way from congenial conversation to punitive impeachment. Hand in hand with this accountability comes real time responsiveness. Remember, the customary elections are really just there to formally affirm the continued support of the Representative. The essential thing is the support, not the election. In a curious way, a global representative will be more dependent on their local assemblies for continued re-election than their global assemblies. After all, if six Citizens of the rep's Citizen Assembly decide to replace them next February, then they lose every level of representation above that. Of course, this is unlikely to happen, since the Citizen Assembly has the ear of someone who is effectively a high-ranking official and has been their friend for many years. The Human Assembly ensures that there will be close and vital contact between the represented and the representative.

However, we have to get out of the mindset of adversariality that exists in our current political system; we are partners with our Representatives, not foes. It's comforting to know that we ultimately have the power to change our representation, but that's not what we really want. What we really want is to never have to exercise that power. If you think about it, the best way to fairly hold someone accountable is to have a relationship with them. We need regular contact so that we know what they are doing, we need a dialogue with them so that we can understand why they are doing it, and we need goodwill so that both sides can air concerns. Without a relationship, accountability is just a mechanism of blame; finding a convenient scapegoat might satisfy our baser urges for vengeance, but it never resolves real issues. The best way to guarantee that we can hold our leaders directly accountable is to engage in an active partnership with them.

In summary:

# People  Called 1  The Representative 10  The Direct Assembly of the Rep 100  The Ten-Fold Assemblies of the Rep 1000  The Hundred-Fold Assemblies of the Rep

To Requires Of Assembly(s) When Resign Just the Rep Anytime Replace Majority Vote  Direct Customary Election Time Remove 2/3 Vote Direct + Ten-Fold Anytime Impeach 3/4 Vote Direct + Ten-Fold + Hundred-Fold  Anytime

2f: Checks and Balances enables Responsible Empowerment

Let's make sure we understand the implications of this empowerment. The ultimate authority in the United States flows from free citizens. We have perhaps forgotten this in our increasingly specialized day and age. We are told by doctors: don't aid other people when they are hurt, leave it to the medical professionals. And since we've seen instances of samaritans doing more harm than good, we follow. We are told by the police: don't take the law into your own hands, leave it to trained officers who can catch and prosecute criminals successfully. And we are confused by all these laws anyway, so we let them handle our safety. Altogether, we are told "let someone else handle things"... and it is such a small step to believe that they handle them because they have the authority to. However, we retain the right to and responsibility for our own lives. For example, when the law breaks down, it is the responsibility of we citizens to enact civil disobedience in order to get it working again.

We have the authority to make changes, and moreover, every office in our fair land has authority only because we have granted it to them (in a collective sense). If we take a look at the functions of our representatives in government, their primary purpose is to provide direction, make decisions, and act in the Public Good. Every United States citizen is eminently qualified to perform these tasks. Whenever specialized talent is needed, the Human Assembly will do exactly what our current government does. It will form specialized bureaus subordinate to legislative authority, and then invest them with the responsibility to carry out specific functions for their locale. That's exactly how municipal services like water, trash removal, etc. get their charter. Remember, you, you personally, are the fountain of authority from which our government flows, and you are capable of promoting change.

Now, some readers have been wondering "How are these Assemblies going to get anything done?", because they implicitly assumed than an organization of citizens has no authority. Organizations of citizens are the first authority in America. Whoa, we're not talking about free license to anarchy here. We're talking about: getting your representative elected to existing offices that are vested with authority in our current system. We're talking about: dissolving unneeded offices on a case-by-case basis, completely within the current framework. We're talking about: a well-planned migration from the current system to the new one in key places like legislature. If you are a representative of a coalition of citizens that wants a streelight on a dangerous intersection, go to the specialized bureau that handles that in your city and get it done. We don't have to be officials in a government in order to enact change; we citizens don't need permission to make our communities better. America is our country, and our representatives are empowered with our authority to get things done.

2g: We can Integrate the Human Assembly into Congress and the Presidency

The tactical goal is to grow as many Level 4+ Representatives as possible and then get them all elected to the House and Senate. This makes our trusted leaders and decision makers into national legislators as well. Then, once a sufficient number are installed in Congress, the Representatives of the Human Assembly will make two Amendments to the Constitution. The first will change how Congressmen and Senators are elected; namely, they must now be Level 5 and Level 6 Representatives. Assuming that all 200 million adults in the United States participated in the Human Assembly, that would mean 200 Senators and 1,800 (2,000 - 200) Congressman. The second amendment will change how the President is elected. The President will become the single highest Level Representative of the Human Assembly, which in the United States would be a Level 8. Note that there would be 20 Level 7 Representatives, and thus only two Level 8s. One of them would become the President, and the other would become the Vice President. Without doubt, our Representatives will also see ample opportunity for other reform, but tactically speaking, the first goal is to make the Human Assembly formally acknowledged within the current constitutional framework.

Chapter 3:
A Step-By-Step Plan

So, you've read this page thoughtfully and decided that you want to participate in the Human Assembly. After all, in the worst case scenario, you'll be spending some quality time with friends every week. But in the best case scenario... well, you will be helping create a genuine force for the Public Good. The next natural question in your mind is: "What do I do?"

3a: Talk with Friends likely to Help

1. Introduce the topic to your friends, and get them to read this page
2. Create a special time and place dedicated to talking about it

Which of your friends should you talk to first? In all endeavors we should stack the deck in favor of success. We want to spend our effort with those friends who are already inclined to help, and who have specific qualities that would be helpful. We want to begin with those friends most likely to agree and join, instead of our argumentative "devil's advocate" friends that we'd get nowhere with.

More specifically, here are the qualities in your friends that you should initially focus on:

1. Activist - Someone who is already looking for a solution like the Human Assembly is the most likely friend to help you start a Citizen Assembly. They are also the ones who will be the most grateful for you bringing the Human Assembly to their attention.
2. Leader - Someone you trust and would want to be your Representative likely has the leadership qualities to help you, too. Many people would also be sincerely flattered that you would want them to be their personal representative.
3. Connector - Every one of us knows someone who knows a lot of people. They are the ones introducing people to one another, throwing the parties, and instigating the fun. Connectors can help you reach lots of your mutual friends quickly.
4. Maven - Similarly, we all trust experts who keep up with current events and give us sound advice. Mavens come in all stripes, from consumer reporters to social watchdogs. If you trust the opinion of your Maven friend, then many other people do, too.
5. Promoters - We also have friends that always seem to know the right thing to say, who are persuasive at convincing others because of their genuine connection. That's a good friend to help you reach others. [Many thanks to Malcolm Gladwell for clarifying these latter three categories.]

3b: Create a Forum for Quality Conversations

Now, you know your friends better than I do, so you probably already know the best way to approach them. Here are a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing on how to create a forum:

• Hold a weekly book club meeting using these Reformation pages as your topic. Go over the topics at your own pace and make sure you are comfortable with each one. [I hereby grant anyone the right to copy these pages for private use, as long as they charge no money on the distribution thereby. You'll probably want to click the "Printer Friendly Text" link in the main menu.]
• Make one day a week your Assembly Lunch and invite some friends to them to discuss the prospect of forming a Citizen Assembly. Dinners may work better for this, depending on the lifestyles / work-schedules of you and your friends.
• If you are a member of the online generation, create a chat room dedicated to the Human Assembly. Chat. Maybe you are a member of tribe.net, friendster, orkut, or the like. Get your tribe involved.

3c: Form Citizen Assemblies

1. Agree on a day (Monday or Tuesday), time (probably after work), and place (usually someone's house)
2. Get-together weekly
3. Elect a Level 1 Representative, and a Vice Rep (once you have ten people)
4. Handle the money
5. Choose a general topic for each meeting
6. Have fun!

The assemblies will proceed more smoothly if you have a topic to focus on each week that everyone knows about beforehand. These are intended to get the conversation started and keep it going, instead of being rigid topics that allow no other discussion. As for what topics to discuss, here are some ideas:

• Talk about how you can convince other people to form their own Citizen Assemblies. This should be the primary focus in the early stages of the Human Assembly. Keep a reasonable target: 1 person per week to join, for each person in your Assembly network so far.
• Review the Reformation topics and discuss how you feel about each.
• Raise topics that are personally and locally relevant. This should be the primary focus once the Human Assembly becomes established.

3d: Meet with Local Groups sized 5-150

• Groups you have been a member of for awhile, where you personally know the people in the group.
• Groups sized 5-150. We actually don't want our groups to be too big, since we lose the "human touch" in a large organization.
• Groups already pre-disposed to promoting American democracy.

BTW, this is precisely the approach I am going to take on the This is Your Land! Tour. I intend on starting in my hometown in Massachusetts, and talking with the friends I grew up with that are still there. And then I'm going to talk to their friends over dinners and casual conversations. And then I'm going to visit the local American Legion and ask them if I could give a presentation on the Human Assembly to them. I'm going to find a Daughter of the American Revolution and see if she and her compatriots would be interested in helping restore American Democracy. And so on, and so forth. The process is entirely human scale, and completely within the capabilities of people like you and me. We don't need mass media, or paid advertisements, or cold calls, or telemarketing, or any of that junk to promote the Human Assembly. All we need is some quality word-of-mouth with real people just like us.

Let me emphasize that you don't need me in order to get the ball rolling: you can do it yourself today. First, this web page has everything that you need in order to get started and to answer the questions and concerns that people might have about the Human Assembly. Even if you can't remember specific points in conversation, you can direct your friends to look here on their own. Second, you can probably promote the Human Assembly better than I can. I'm the person who thought up the idea, so my opinion is biased. But if you, of your own accord, pursued the Human Assembly it's very persuasive because you must have done so because you actually thought it was a good idea. Third, you have many local connections that I don't have. On my tour I'll be focusing on patriotic groups, but you can bring up the Human Assembly at your church groups, at your soccer practices, at many more places than I ever could. You have the power to change our world, right in your own two hands.

3e: Form Level Assemblies

1. Find ways to promote the creation of other Citizen Assemblies
2. Find other Level 1 Representatives in your area
3. Gather together with the other Level 1 Reps
4. Form a First Level Assembly (similar to Citizen Assembly above)

The "pioneer" process becomes increasingly more challenging for the higher Level Representatives. However, I believe that they will be up to the tasks at hand. Just a Level 3 Rep is a one in a thousand individual, gifted with rare insight, trusted by many people, with unmistakable effectiveness, and capability to lead. Lead! You know what needs to be done to grow the Human Assembly, to get it formally constitutionally recognized; you see the value of the Human Scale Reformation, and how to implement each of the pieces. At this point, we Citizens are entrusting you to find the best ways to accomplish these goals, and we are willing to follow your direction as long as it remains sensible. The Human Assembly and the Human-Scale Reformation is only the beginning; once these goals are achieved we'll be looking to you to find other ways to act in the Public Good. The best way to discover these concerns is to communicate with your constituency. Listen to us, and then lead us.

3f: Get your Representatives Elected to Legislature

Now, the positioning of these Human Assembly Candidates will be very tricky. First and foremost, the Human Assembly must remain a non-partisan organization. In order to work, it has to support both Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, and any other platform that people actively believe in. This is a highly radical notion in our party-ridden political system. So, for simplicity, probably the best thing to do would be to label the candidate as "Independent", or perhaps even form a new local party called the "Human Assembly Party". However, we must be very careful to ensure that the Human Assembly remains inclusive. The way parties work nowadays is exclusive: if you are a Republican, you can't also be a Democrat. That is exactly not what we want. We want every citizen, no matter what their beliefs, to be personally represented by someone like them in the Human Assembly. That means we have to allow everyone in, which isn't how "parties" function normally. There isn't an appropriate analog to that in our political system: the Human Assembly really is something new. We don't want to fight against parties: we want to include and integrate them. Remember, it's all us humans against our flawed mass election system.

Very effective mass election campaigns can be run by Human Assembly Representatives. In fact, their position will be the envy of every other candidate. They can honestly say that they truly represent the people, who are their friends, with whom they have an active partnership. They can leverage the most effective kind of organization in the world: a community network of friends. They have a personal relationship with their consitutuency, which allows them to harness the latent talent in every citizen in ways that partisan candidates can't. And they can get the best press imaginable: quality word-of-mouth. By participating in the Human Assembly, we can ensure that our trusted leaders like us also become our official legislators. I am hoping that 2004 will be the most amazing election year in history, where at least one member of Congress is a genuine popular representative. The timing is a little tight until November 2004, but I believe it can be done. At the very least, we should start seeing a lot of local elections won by Human Assembly candidates.

3g: Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Hold election parties. One of the nice things about the Human Assembly is the guaranteed weekly quality time with our personal Representative. It would also be nice if we could meet the other people that support the same Rep. Consider that a Level 2 Rep is supported by ten Citizen Assemblies, even though they are the Level 1 Rep of only one of them. So, after a Level 2 Rep is elected (in the March of every even year), let's hold an election party where these 100 or so people get together and all hang out for a bit. Specifically, it gives every Citizen a chance to personally meet the Level 2 Rep of their Level 1 Rep. For higher level reps, the celebrations would include not just their ten-fold assemblies, but also their support assemblies as well. So, a Level 5 Rep would hold an election party with ten Third Level Assemblies, as well as one Second, one First, and a Citizen.

Shine the Media Spotlight. In parallel with the development of personal communities by word-of-mouth, it would also be helpful to get some media coverage. This isn't quite the creation of a personal forum for conversation, but at least it gets the word out. So, if you happen to be (or know) a member of a media organization, lend some media spotlight power. Do an editorial on the Human Assembly. Make this website your "website of the month" and focus on the Reformation. Call me up and I'll do an interview for you. The Human Assembly is news and of interest to everyone; moreover, from a media angle, it is definitely a new kind of human interest piece well worth covering.

Create a Citizen Exchange. This is a more long term concern. Once the Human Assembly becomes the formal way elections are held, there should be an easy way to take into account people moving. After all, a Citizen shouldn't have to reconstruct a new Assembly, especially in an area where they just moved to and don't know anyone. So, there should be some type of way that Assemblies short one Citizen can meet up with Citizens that are about to move. The preferable way would be to create a protocol where people could call up friends and the message could percolate through the Assembly network itself. Alternatively, there could be local structures (say, the Post Office) that could direct the newly moved to the right people to talk to. In any event, we are highly mobile society and we'll need to find a simple way to address this case. [Note that this Exchange is for Citizens only. A local rep that moves shouldn't retain their position; that's the whole point of being locally connected. For global reps, this is a non-concern, since we expect that they'll have to do considerable travelling anyway.]

Well, there you have it. You know have everything that you need to restore American democracy. Moreover, there is no external force that can stop you from doing it. Through tremendous foresight our Founding Fathers built the capability to create the Human Assembly into the Constitution itself. The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights states: "Congress shall make no law... abridging ... the right of the people peaceably to assemble." Nothing prevents us as free citizens from choosing to create a closer relationship with our representatives, to found a more personal community network that robustly acts in the Public Good. Nothing, perhaps, except the distraction of our own busy lives and the belief whether it is possible or not.

Chapter 4:
We Citizens Can Do It

4a: Reformation begins in your Heart and inspires Action

We've arrived at the most important part of our dialogue. There is only one place that Reformation can happen, and it isn't in grand sweeping social movements. It is in your heart right now at this very moment. Until you take the bold leap of faith and believe that we can change our world for the better, then all these good ideas don't mean diddly. We must act to improve our situation, and I very much want to convince you that you have the power to make things better in your own two hands. It is your real concerns (and your hesitant fears) that I wish to address now, in order to convince your heart to act on what your mind already knows to be a sound idea. We'll need to let go of our pre-conceptions: fears that are justified in our current political system but do not apply to a personal community network. We Citizens can make the Human Assembly work, and we can do so easily, quickly, and agreeably.

4b: Citizen Assemblies are fun weekly gatherings with friends

So why are we hesitant about something that seems so natural?

One reason why we are so hesitant about involving ourselves in anything that looks even remotely like a political movement is that they suck up time and accomplish little in our current overlarge system. Let me tell you a story about my good friend Joe Durand. Joe lives in Palo Alto, a well known city in northern CA. Palo Alto is very concerned about retaining their small community feel, and so they've methodically been trying to shut out the outside world. They changed their speed limit to 25 mph. They re-arranged streets to prevent outside traffic. And in 2003 Palo Alto put posts smack dab in the middle of intersections that closed them off to automobiles. Joe and his neighbors thought this was going too far: the posts were dangerous, they were a hassle to people living there, and they didn't really achieve the goal of preserving community. So he tried to get them removed. And tried. He keeps gathering support (since everyone agreed with him) and keeps losing it (since people saw nothing was getting done). And today, the posts are still there even though no one in the neighborhood actually wants them.

Our current political system of organization is too big and too difficult for citizens like you and me to change. One has to go on something akin to a holy crusade just to get the simplest things done, because the current system has too much inertia for the average person to alter. That's an inherent flaw in our current large-scale organizations, which is one of the reasons why we have to build a new one from scratch instead of trying to salvage what we have. The Human Assembly requires only a modest commitment of time from its Citizens in order to function well. We are talking about 1 hour per week spent enjoyably among friends, and 1 hour per week talking with people. If everyone in the country were to do just that and only that, then we could fuel a reformation that would change our distasteful political system into a pleasant human-scale community network. We have to toss out all of the bad associations we have with politics and let go of our pre-conceptions; we are building something new and better based around our friends. The Human Assembly isn't about petitioning people outside of supermarkets, it doesn't need to drum up a rally with thousands of people, and it doesn't require you to become a raving fiend proselytizing others at every opportunity. All it requires is a modest bit of your time, some occasional attention, and your sincere goodwill, and Human Assembly will grow like wildfire on its own.

4c: Peering Networks are becoming Easier to Self-Assemble Quickly

Let's see if we can come up with a ballpark estimate of the rate of growth of the Human Assembly. Suppose that every Citizen in the Human Assembly can convince one of their friends to join every week. That means that if you were to start today, then in less than 30 weeks the Human Assembly would encompass the entire United States of America. You personally would only have to convince 30 new people or less to participate; a few of those would be your friends that you formed a Citizen Assembly with. Now the skeptical reader will note that we've invoked an exponential growth rate argument here, which is accurate for small numbers but is much less so with large numbers unless there are forces that sustain the growth. In our increasingly interconnected world several other factors make it possible to sustain rapid self-assembly for quite some time. Once any Second Level Assembly gets to the point where it influences a local election, then the idea will spread through media publicity in addition to word-of-mouth. There are existing organizations (political and otherwise) that would endorse the Human Assembly with en masse adoption. And most compelling is that at a certain point participating in the Human Assembly will become a competitive advantage; those people in Assemblies can leverage more voting power and more effective representation than those who aren't. Taken altogether, these factors make the normally suspect exponential argument much more reasonable. The world is primed and ready for a grass roots movement for Citizens to reclaim their world. What has been missing up to this point has been a clear universal vision that citizens like you and me can support wholeheartedly and without reservation. I offer the Human-Scale Reformation as that vision.

Now, upon reading of that paragraph above, my editors and I thought that it sounded uncannily like the advertising pamphlet of a pyramid scheme. Recall that pyramid schemes work by appointment from above and the Human Assembly from peer promotion. Pyramid schemes can't sustain their advertised exponential growth because it's a system that parasitizes the lower levels without giving them anything in return. Exponential growth of the Human Assembly is not only possible it's also favorable, because participating in an Assembly is a competitive advantage over being an isolated citizen. Part of the reason why it's more advantageous is because assemblies can operate as a voting block. But much more saliently, the Human Assembly is simply a more effective and efficient system than what we currently have. The Human Assembly will self-assemble before our very eyes in less than a year, if you choose right now in your heart to support it.

4d: The Human-Scale platform is a human stance agreeable to everyone

Would the same thing happen if you were to support the Human Assembly? The answer is an emphatic no, because by supporting the Reformation you are taking a human stance and not a political one. Let's look at the Human-Scale "platform" so far:

• Trust is important. Friends are important. Community is important.
• Relationships are a human way to build trust. Small groups promote relationships better than large masses.
• We want qualified leaders we can trust. We want direct accountability. We want to talk to our leaders face-to-face.
• We want to be heard. We want to be part of something we believe in. We want representation with participation.
• Let's make our friends into leaders we can relate to and trust.

However, the best litmus test is how you actually feel at this very moment. Do you agree with the platform above, or would you argue against it if we met face to face and happened to start talking about it? Most people I've met agree with the human stance. (The best response I've received so far was "politics leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but the Human Assembly is minty fresh" :-) At the time of this writing, I've discussed these ideas with over fifty people. Far from getting into arguments, I have received almost unanimous and instant agreement with the Human-Scale platform. The only thing even remotely like argument that I've gotten is constructive criticism on the details intended on improving the proposed system so that it more faithfully adheres to the platform, for which I was greatly appreciative. Participation in the Human Assembly is an agreeable experience. Citizen Assemblies will be casual meetings with your friends, not hotbeds of political zeal. Promoting the Human Assembly will likely meet with more agreement than argument. (Of course, there's nothing that everyone agrees on; there are still people who maintain the earth is flat!) We can change the partisan political process into a universal human one, and do so in a completely agreeable way.

4e: You Make a Difference and Can Start a Trend

What Gladwell has so clearly pointed out is that trends don't work according to our intuitive sense of proportion. Epidemics are started by small things, not big things. The Human Assembly follows the model of successful trends. For example, when we enthusiastically tell our friends and local groups about this new alternative to politics: that's contagiousness. If we enjoy spending time with our friends every week we'll continue to do so (whatever the ostensible reason): that's stickiness. Right now there's a lot of people up in arms about the breakdown of our modern government: that's context. And the relationships we have are the network that all this will propagate through; in fact, we are going to specifically design a community network to make it even easier for future trends to move through. The Human Assembly will work because it has all the key attributes of a successful social trend. On the other hand, if we throw our effort onto a big heap to push against our government, well, that will probably end up being a big waste of time. That's what we've been trying to do for a long time, to make things a fight of effort against effort, and it hasn't been getting us the results we want. But if we do the counter-intuitive and all just spend a modest amount of effort creating a social epidemic, then it will spread like wildfire through people just like you and me. And unlike a disease (which leaves behind a lot of sick people), the Human Assembly "epidemic" will leave it its wake an effective human-scale democracy. We citizens need to work smarter, not harder, to get the results we want.

There is another compelling reason why you, you personally, make all the difference. If you participate in the Human Assembly then you give permission to others to do the same. A question in many reader's minds is probably something like: "I wonder how many people are already participating?" People are often afraid of trying something new, but the moment they see someone else doing what they want to do, they feel empowered to do it. Permission-giving is another powerful force in society that is counter-intuitive. We already have permission to start the Human Assembly: we were given it by the Founding Fathers in the First Amendment of the Constitution. Remember, citizens are the source of authority. And if you take the initiative, the effect that you will have will be much more than what you might intuitively expect. Your small, human-scale actions will be multiplied many times over by setting a trend and giving permission to others, completely out of proportion to the amount of effort you are actually expending. You make a difference. You, you personally, can be the one person that tips your entire community into restoring American Democracy.

In the words of Aragorn, son of Arathorn: "What does your heart tell you?" Creating the Human Assembly would be easy, quick, and agreeable. It can be done, and we citizens can do it. "What say you?" Are you ready to change your world?

Chapter 5:
Yet More Benefits

By this point the Human Assembly might seem too good to be true. We shall see that it is, in fact, much better than that. :-) There are several distinct benefits the Human Assembly offers over our current political organizations that we haven't touched on yet. Here are five major ones: fair representation, small constituencies, quality evolution, renewable infrastructure, and decreased factioning.

5a: Representation by Population, Ideas by Merit, Opportunity for Everyone

Well, the Human Assembly offers every group, minority or majority, the opportunity for fair representation, where fair is in proportion to their population. After all, if you are a member of a minority then you could form Citizen Assemblies in groups of ten and promote one of your peers as a Representative. You have the same opportunity, right out of the gate, that everyone else has for representation. And if those representatives felt their minority identity was important enough, they could band together with similar representatives and promote someone even higher. The Human Assembly guarantees that everyone gets personally represented. Furthermore, it all happens naturally. We won't need affirmative action programs, since our community network will tend to center around people "like us" to begin with. Altogether, it is a much more favorable system for minorities.

There is another way that the Human Assembly is a fairer system of representation than mass election, namely that every person makes a difference. In a way, each one of us is a minority of one, and our say and our vote gets washed out in a mass election. But in the Human Assembly, our one vote counts. Remember that votes will forever after be in groups of ten. That means you, you personally, your one vote, makes all the difference in an Assembly. Moreover, every citizen is viable as a representative, regardless of race, creed, or color. Our leaders will no longer have to worry about whether they are viable to ten million people they don't even know; all they'll have to worry about is whether they have good relationships with the people they already know. In the Human Assembly, we make a difference.

Now, at a certain point, numbers will become less relevant and personal merit will become more important. If you are a member of a 5% minority, then altogether you should expect no more than 5% representation. What is going to make your interests stand out is the strength of the ideas that you propose. Let me reiterate: the Public Good is paramount. If the members of your minority are genuinely acting in the Public Good, then they have the opportunity to be promoted to 5% of every level of representation. But if your minority is just trying to promote its own special interests at the expense of others, then your representation will be less. The way to make your minority stand out is to promote ideas with merit, where merit is measured with respect to the Public Good.

5b: One Representative of Small Constituencies works better for everyone

• "I don't even look at the names in the local elections anymore when I vote; I just pick them randomly. I don't even know who these people are."

We've spent a great deal of time looking at things from the perspective of the average Citizen, but consider what the system looks like from the perspective of the Representatives. A Level 3 Representative represents 1,000 people but has an effective constituency of 27 people, nine from each Assembly that supports them. They don't have to worry about re-election as long as they get along fairly with just 27 people. They don't have to waste time drumming up huge support every election season. They don't have to suck up to higher level reps or tow the party line. They don't have to divert their effort into building Machiavellian power structures to secure their position. All they have to do is talk to 27 people every week, and make sure that they are acting in their best interests. If the President of the United States were a Level 8 Representative, then their effective electoral constituency would be just 72 people. The Human Assembly is human-scale not only from the perspective of the Citizens but also from the perspective of the Representatives as well.

Up until now we've focused on the hierarchy in terms of elections and propagation, and have yet to discuss that these will be dense concentrations of the best leaders our society has to offer. A high level Representative has several ready-made Assemblies at their disposal that they can leverage to get things done. Finding earnest, capable followers is the hardest task of a leader; the Human Assembly hands these people to every Representative on a silver platter. Level 4 Reps are more than just the people that create Level 5 Reps, they are a valuable resource capable of effecting change on their own. Moreover, higher level global reps will be able to use the system to create widespread initiatives that are acted upon immediately by thousands of leaders the next week, targetted at exactly the right level of Assembly that it is most relevant to. The Human Assembly is good for us as Citizens. And it's a better system for our leaders, too. The Human Assembly is just a better system for everyone.

5c: Active Participation yields faster Quality Evolution of Government

This representation with participation leads to a higher quality government. According to the principles of industrial quality control, the most important factor influencing quality is "a short duration (preferably continuous) feedback loop" that provides "direct responsive measurement of product quality". In the parlance of quality control, what drives the increase of quality is "adaptive dynamic response". Right now, our voting feedback loop is 2-4 years long and elections are our only explicit measurement of government quality. Our world is changing every day, and the years long cycle of traditional electoral response just cannot keep pace. The Human Assembly has a feedback loop of one week and we have direct participatory input every week. Effectively, the government "product cycle" for the Human Assembly is profoundly shorter, allowing us to build and select among much higher quality alternatives much faster, causing the rapid quality evolution of our participatory network. So, in addition to meeting our intuition about a being "better" than our current political system, the Human Assembly is also objectively a higher quality-producing organization because it has a faster dynamic response. The Human Assembly can address our changing concerns on the timescale of weeks, much more nimbly than is presently possible.

Moreover, within the context of the Human Assembly we are free to choose our own amount of participation. Maybe we get busy with our lives and we trust our representative, so we start going to meetings just once a month. Or, we have an issue that we feel we have a good solution for, so we go to every Assembly gathering and continually bring attention to both. The Human Assembly provides every Citizen with a direct and ever-present communications channel into our collective decision-making process, and gives them a clear human-scale way to act in the Public Good. We choose the amount of participation in our personal community network that we are comfortable with, instead of having it proscribed to us by an impersonal political machine. The Human Assembly offers the ready-made option to easily participate, which is a choice we don't have in our current political system. This is yet another example of good dynamic response: citizens have little obligation when things are going well, but can bring lots of focus to bear when a public concern is shared by many.

5d: Our time is well Invested in Renewable Infrastructure

Many people have seen the need to create an infrastructure that gives continuing benefits. Our party system is perhaps the clearest example. The parties are long-lived and highly effective at mobilizing large numbers of people. Moreover, in recent times we've seen the emergence of citizen organizations like Move On. Move On began as a online petition by Wes Boyd and Joan Blades... but then quickly grew into a meetingplace for petitions of all kinds. Just the fact that it has stuck around means that some of the effort that goes into each petition also is invested in an infrastructure. Moreover, that structure is renewable, meaning that it is constantly giving benefits, in this case by making future petitions easier. The best types of infrastructure to build are the ones both renewable and multi-purpose. In the early twentieth century AT&T made an investment in laying phone cable across the United States. Eventually that cable was used for things they had never even envisioned, like sending faxes and accessing the internet. That century also saw public works projects like the Interstate System, which is used for not only public travel but also commercial transportation. Whenever an extensive renewable infrastructure is created, people find new ways to use it for the better.

Our community network is a renewable infrastructure of personal relations. Right from the start the time we invest in creating it is well spent, because we'll be spending it getting together and having fun with our friends. Leveraging the Human Assembly to address the concerns of the Public Good means that we can use that network from day one to replace our flawed system of mass elections. And once the Human Assembly is in place... people will find more and better ways to use it. What we can see right now is that it can be leveraged to address a wide variety of concerns for the Public Good. But who knows? Maybe we won't need online dating services anymore because someone will find a comfortable way to mingle singles using the Assembly network. :-) The point is that the Human Assembly is completely unlike the transient fads that make a big flash and then give no long term benefit. Every moment that we spend building the Human Assembly, we are getting closer to friends, restoring American democracy, and creating a renewable infrastructure that will give us dividends for many years to come.

5e: Unity is encouraged over factioning

The Human Assembly dissolves the tendency to factioning in three main ways. First and foremost, it removes the primary environment in which factions thrive: large popular elections. We've all heard terms like "splitting the vote" and "aligning forces". The reason why factioning parties are favorable in our current environment is because of their ability to act as voting blocks in large elections. That makes people who stick with parties more likely to take a large segment of the vote, and thereby win elections. Within the Human Assembly, large popular elections no longer exist, and hence the primary advantage to staying with a faction. The second way that the Human Assembly reduces factioning is by automatically representing every Citizen's interests with ample numbers of representatives. We might back up and ask: why do people fight so hard to win elections anyway? It's so that people who think like they do get into office, and thus represent their interests. Moreover, while there are too many offices for just one Citizen to keep track of, there are very few compared to our entire population. So, they are in short supply and people fight over them. The Human Assembly supplies both personal and ample representation, addressing the root causes for conflict, and thus the proclivity to factioning. The third way that the Human Assembly erodes factions is through human association. The fine-scale Assemblies make it difficult for completely homogeneous groups to form. So, at a certain level in the Human Assembly, Republicans and Democrats are going to have to sit in the same room and come to agreement about what to do. And so will liberals and conservatives, and so will basically every major faction out there. It's pretty easy to vilify the stupidity of all those idiot _insert faction you don't like here_ when you don't have to actually deal with them. It's much more difficult to deal with a real human being every week, especially when they seem just as earnest in wanting to improve our society as you do. So the Human Assembly removes one of the major ways factions can remain separate by introducing human unifying forces into what used to be politics.

Of course, this will only hold within the context of the Human Assembly. Wherever it interfaces with existing large-scale systems we will still see some factioning. For example, if the Level 5 and 6 Representatives become Congress and laws are still made by popular vote there, then it would still be favorable for Congressmen to unite in voting blocks. However, the need to maintain a strict party line will be diminished, since the connection between elections and large-scale parties has been removed. What is more likely is that we'll begin to see an emergence of A La Carte Parties like in Parliament. A single representative might be liberal on one issue and belong to the Liberal On This Issue Party, and at the same time be active in the Conservative On That Other Issue Party. This is a slightly better system than what we have right now, where so many issues have to get bundled into a single platform in order to be viable. Some people agree with 75% of what the Democrats say and 25% of what the Republicans say, but are forced to vote consistently Democrat anyway. The Human Assembly will likely foster the emergence of custom created parties among global representatives, but still overall decrease the time wasted in factioning at that level.

Okay. We've drifted into some perhaps esoteric concerns. Trust me: decreased factioning is a good thing even though it seems like only a political science major could understand why. Let's turn to a different topic, namely, trying to wrap our head around a different way to view the growing inhumanity in our world.

Chapter 6:
And Now, Some Philosophy

Why is our world becoming so impersonal and inhuman? We've already talked about a big culprit, namely that our systems of organizations grew beyond the human scale. However, there is another substantial factor worth mentioning: decisions are being made by non-human entities, and these entities are concerned more with efficiency than with the human quality of life. This philosophy section offers some insight into this phenomena, as well as a working solution.

6a: We want Happy Lives filled with Human Quality

Human happiness is near and dear to our hearts, so many people have been trying to understand the growing problem of inhumanity in our workplace. The initial suspicion people have is that automation is the culprit, because we deal with so many machines nowadays and so few people. We impulsively think that "Well, if we just had more people around and fewer machines taking our jobs, things would be fine." However, this hypothesis doesn't fit the facts. There's lots of people working at McDonalds. How many times have you had a heart-to-heart conversation with a fast food cashier? The presence of people doesn't guarantee a higher human quality experience. On the flipside, I was in Home Depot a month ago and they had installed automated self-service cashiers; for every four automated cashiers there was a human one, who stepped in if you were having problems. So I stopped and had a chat with the person, we talked about the advantages and disadvantages of the auto-cashiers, and the consensus we reached was that they were just a good thing all around. Customers never needed to wait in line, and human cashiers had a much more pleasant job. Machines are not the problem, because when used properly they actually increase the quality of our lives.

Yet automation is involved somehow. I propose that the problem is not machine automation but human automation. The decrease in human quality living is when people are forced to do the same thing over and over, against a clock, with their jobs on the line. As a further injury to insult, people who work in these highly routinized jobs often have ailments like Repetitive Motion Injury, in addition to the diminishing of their human spirit. Note, however, that repetition is not the key part: many people can happily spend hours improving their tennis game taking the same swing over and over. By "human automation" we mean something more like people being treated the same as a machine. More specifically, when humans are considered replaceable, they are no longer unique, and the first criterion is how much efficiency and productivity can be squeezed out of them. This attitude is fine with machines, but completely inappropriate for people. We humans are not automatons, and we shouldn't be treated as such by our workplace, our government, or our social institutions.

6b: Quality of Life is more essential than Standard of Living

Anyway, the part that interests us is that the Industrial Revolution cemented the idea in our heads that an increase in the standard of living meant a consequent improvement in the quality of life. After all, if we are poor and items are scarce, any small increase in the standard of living makes a huge impact on our happiness. And that has been the formula that modern governments have followed faithfully for three centuries now. They focus on measurable quantities that track the standard of living, and then take action to improve those quantities. Corporations focus on their bottom line, and governments on their economies, because those are things that they can track the progress of. Moreover, we've all implicitly assumed that it's a "good thing" to do that, because we come from a background where we've seen the benefits to our lives by doing things to measurably improve the economy.

However, focusing just on measurables can only bring us so far. According to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, our needs in life are roughly ordered as Body, Security, Social, and Ego. Whenever a need isn't being fulfilled, we focus all our efforts on meeting our most basic need. If we aren't getting enough to eat, or are sick, all our attention goes on that. But, if all our body needs are met, then we are concerned with issues of security, like whether our neighborhood is safe, or our job is steady. In the United States today, our body and security needs can be reasonably met, because those are the precisely the needs tracked by our standard of living, and therefore been improved over the last couple centuries. Today, we are more concerned with things like having good friendships (social) and finding a meaningful purpose in life (ego). Our society does not meet these higher needs, mainly because up until very recently it's been hard enough just trying to feed people and prevent widespread disease.

What we want is the Public Good, an increase in the quality of our lives. It used to be that standard of living was a good approximation of that, but that is no longer the case in America today. Moreover, following the "measurables" approach has just recently been working against us. A significant factor in the increasing inhumanity in the world is because measurable quantities get preferential treatment over human qualities. The most obvious disparity is profit over happiness. We have eighteen-kabillion ways of measuring the fiscal productivity of the United States... and not a single one as to whether people are happy and fulfilled with their lives. As a result, large scale policy tends to get made on the measurable quantities and human qualities usually suffer. We must promote the quality of human life as a primary paramount goal and employ the utmost of our wisdom, judgment, and faculty to that end. Personally, I could live with a GNP that was half as much if everyone in the US was twice as happy. A healthy economy matters only insofar as it promotes human happiness. The quality of human living is more important than the arbitrary value of any measurable quantity.

6c: Humans as Decision Makers and NHEs as Process Automators

BTW, let's not go overboard and paint NHEs in a negative light. The reality of the situation is that every NHE does, in fact, contribute in some way to the standard of living and therefore indirectly to the quality of life. When NHEs work well, they automate processes that humans would prefer not to do, thereby liberating us to focus on higher concerns. After all, who wants to do the same tedious thing over and over when the process could easily be automated?

We are now in a position state the "inhumanity problem" in a different way. In a philosophical sense, the fundamental reason why our world is becoming inhumane is that Non-Human Entities (like corporations) are becoming the decision-makers and humans (like fast food workers) are becoming automatons. The solution, of course, is to reverse the roles. Humans are very good at making decisions, especially human-scale decisions relevant to their own happiness; at the very least, humans are better than NHEs at decision-making. Good old-fashioned human judgment, with all its flaws, is still light years better than rule-based decision making. NHEs are very good at automating processes, especially highly repetitive processes requiring precision and accuracy; moreover, NHEs are better than humans at automating processes. Computers have revolutionized our society, mainly because they are so much better at automation than we are. So, let's try to arrange things so that each side plays to their strengths. We want lives filled with human quality where all the details are automatically taken care of for us. So, let's start deciding to make it that way, act upon those decisions, and re-architect our NHEs to automate whatever processes we'll need along the way.

Addenda

On the Necessity of Citizen Funding

In any event, I'd like to further elaborate on why citizen funding is the best option available. First, only wealthy economic classes are truly represented by our current political system. That means that neither the middle class or the poor are actually represented; we can only choose among the pre-selected candidates the party system offers us, and those representatives must perforce represent their wealthy campaign donors. So, the Human Assembly is a step forward insofar as middle class interests will now be represented; moreover, our best leaders can arise from a broader segment of our society. The Human Assembly isn't perfect, but it is clearly better than what we already have.

Second, as an effective initial price reduction, recall that the Assembly funds are needed as contributions to the next level Assembly. That means that partial Citizen Assemblies don't even need to pay the $5 per week until they reach a quorum of ten and select one of their number as a Level 1 Rep. At that point, that Level 1 Rep will be seeking to grow a First Level Assembly, and they'll need the funds to get started. But before then, it's not really needed. So, a partial assembly can waive the contribution from each citizen right up until the moment a representative is elected.

Third, citizen funding is intended to be the interim funding step until the Human Assembly is formally acknowledged within our present constitutional framework. At that point, it should be pretty straightforward to make the salaries of our leaders come from taxes. Of course, we are all still paying then just as we were paying initially; but collective repooling of wealth would then enable the very poor to directly participate without the "money out of pocket" barrier.

Lastly, the lack of representation of the poor in the Human Assembly is only a problem only as long as we have people in our society living in poverty. More explicitly, if we could find a way to bootstrap every poor person into the middle class, then we've also addressed the shortcoming of citizen funding. That's the thrust of the Support For All phase of the Human-Scale Reformation: to give everyone a home, job, food, and clothes. I believe that the question of poverty can be solved at the root: namely, by eliminating the causes why people are kept poor.

Real Proxy Influence contrasted with Direct Mass Voting

Perhaps the biggest thing we need to separate is ideal from reality. Ideally, every vote counts; realistically, one vote doesn't mean squat in a presidential election. In the ideal, direct voting is an expression of the will of the people. In reality, mass elections are won by campaign funding. Ideally, our vote determines policy. In reality, we have little influence in our own government anymore, relative to wealthy lobbying groups. In the ideal, the vote picks the best person as representative. In reality, broken voting machines in Florida determine who gets elected. Mass election is fraught with real problems and does not function even remotely like the ideal image that we have in our heads. It isn't accurate to compare the reality of the Human Assembly with the ideal of mass election. We either have to compare ideal to ideal, or reality to reality. And in both cases, the Human Assembly is clearly the better alternative.

What about the question of power? If citizens aren't exercising power through the vote, how are they doing so? The reality of the world is that influence is more relevant than voting. Politicians give preference to their influential supporters, and tend to form relationships with them. Real influence arises from relationships, and the dependencies in those relationships. Direct voting in "one-night stand" elections has a certain seductive appeal. But if we take a long look at how things really work, we'll find that knowing our representatives personally and being able to vote them out at any time is the best way to leverage influence over them. The Human Assembly is designed from the ground up to foster exactly that relationship and accountability, which converts into actual influence over our leaders, which is what ends up determining policy. Direct voting is flashy but ultimately not effective.

So do we have to give up our power to vote for the president, then? Not at all. Remember that our representative represents us, personally. That means that on a large issue (like who becomes a global representative) they'll consult with us before casting their vote. Our rep will have lots of personal insight they can share, because they know the people involved and have personally spoken with them. How many presidential elections have you been in where you knew someone who knew the candidates? In effect, we've replaced potentially faulty mechanical voting booths with real live people. Moreover, we'll get better quality information about our higher level reps, because we won't have to rely solely on media to get a sense of who they are; our community network is likely to transmit character gossip as well as ideas and concerns. The reality of the Human Assembly is that we'll have more power than we have now, we'll simply exercise it by indirect proxy voting through our representatives, instead of ineffective direct voting in mass elections.

On the Difference between Partiality and Affection

Right off the bat, we have to distinguish between partiality and affection. Partiality is favoring one group to the detriment of another. Affection is doing something for someone close to you that others distant from you had no claim to. So, for example, if a representative grants a juicy contract to their friends, deliberately overlooking other companies, then that's partiality and it shouldn't be done. However, if you help your friend move and you didn't help the person across the street move because you don't know them, well that's affection. The other companies had a fair claim on a competitive bid for a contract. The people across the street have no claim to your back-breaking sweat. You helped your friend because you liked them, and it didn't hurt anyone else.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the president treating their friends well, even if they do so in ways that are unique to the office (say, letting their friend hitch a ride on Air Force One to a destination it was already going anyway). However, there is something seriously wrong with the president trying to secure their position by currying favor with their support assemblies to the detriment of other assemblies. And that's the reason why it will never happen.

Recall that every high level representative has many support assemblies, and in particular their direct assembly represents the same people that they do. If one portion of their representative constituency felt another portion was receiving preferential treatment to their personal detriment, then they would instruct their representatives to vote him out. That's the whole check and balance thing in action. But then we might think that a representative could favor those assemblies as well... at which point, what they are doing becomes a Public Good that is benefiting everyone, and is no longer favoring one group to the detriment of another. Moreover, because of the sensitivity to this potential abuse of power, the likelihood is that global representatives will compensate in the other direction, taking care to not favor their friends at all lest they give the appearance of partiality.

Addressing the Global Community

That being said, my intuition tells me that the Human Assembly is a global solution applicable to more nations than just the United States. The entire Human-Scale Reformation touches upon meeting basic human needs; hence, it seems likely that the proposals would meet with wide acceptance no matter what our nationality. The Human Assembly offers the possibility of a truly global government, since it offers a functionally practical way to integrate officials from different nations. Namely, same Level Representatives from different countries can form Assemblies just like peers within a country can.

So, what I'd like to do is open the floor to my counterparts in other nations. You know your country better than I do; do you think something like the Human Assembly would address concerns where you live? If you were going to modify it, how would you do so, and why? I would be very interested to hear your feedback; solutions often cross-fertilize. On a far more prosaic note, it seems like the first step in getting your countrymen to even consider the ideas behind the Human Scale Reformation would be to translate it into your native language. I would welcome any and all translation efforts, and would be happy to collaborate with any citizen of our one free and human world.

Remaining To Do:
Stress friends as peers in peer promotion section
Find different word for bureaucracy?  Want red tape connotation, not municipality
Find scalpel word for partiality.  Affection?
New chapter: Parable of the Bank?  Hmmm...
Address comments or remove
Proofread thoroughly / spellcheck