The Human Assembly

Restoring American Democracy

Preface:
A Conversation with Ben Franklin

You know those games where we ask each other questions like: "If you could talk to any person, alive or dead, who would it be and why?" Well, my answer has always been Benjamin Franklin. He is, hands down, the coolest person I can imagine: patriot, scientist, humanitarian, maven, author, and ambassador. What I find most inspirational about him was his unceasing efforts to improve people's lives. Ben started writing the Old Farmers Almanac in 1792 to help the average American (then a rural farmer) and the publication is still going strong. That's not the only institution he founded that's alive and well continuing to help people: he was instrumental in creating fire stations and public libraries as we know them. And, of course, Franklin was a pivotal figure during the both the American Revolution and the Constitutional Convention. This one man was personally responsible for building much of our country. He deserves the title Founding Father, because he earned it.

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 1992 my mom, then aged 53, started saving seriously for her retirement. My mom is a registered nurse that does hemodialysis, helping patients with blood problems stay alive. She's a hard-working citizen that follows the law and wants little more than to live a happy and productive life, sentiments I believe we can all identify with. My mom did some research about how to invest her savings and followed the conservative advice of respectable sources. They basically told her to invest in low-risk mutual funds. She wasn't looking to "make a killing" in the stock market; she just wanted to save her money so that she could retire in safety and security.

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

For most of my life I have been apolitical. I haven't followed politics, don't know who my representatives are, and avoid subscribing to partisan positions. I've tried to live my life by listening to real people and making decisions based on the merits of their proposals, instead of playing the political game. I've never voted, and I'm not even registered to vote. Even when I was a kid it seemed pretty pointless: almost randomly replacing one set of people that I don't know with another set of people I don't know. And if voting turnout is any indicator, a lot of us feel the same way: what difference would our one vote make anyway? In our current mass election system, it doesn't make any.

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:

"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country"

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

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill,
that we shall pay any price, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe,
to assure the survival and success of liberty."

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

My good friend Vlad Gluzman had a fortune cookie fortune on the dashboard of his car for many years that read:

"Unless we change what we are doing, we are likely to end up where we are going."

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

Three hundred years ago in Europe feudalism was a way of life. It was simply assumed that there would always be nobles and peasants, with peasants owing nobles the fruits of their labor and nobles obliged to rule the peasants. Medieval Europeans further assumed that any future system of organization would have to be built upon this fundamental division. It is difficult for modern Americans to imagine what it was like living back then. Feudalism was more than just the way things were, it was the way people felt things should be.

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

Despite Ben's exhortation that I use bolder words, I feel the need to temper what I have said. I am firmly against revolutionary tactics: sharp or violent changes are a method of last resort only. Our current systems are mighty good despite their numerous flaws, and we hardly need to overthrow them in order to enact positive change. It is high time for a serious Reformation: working slow but sure to transform the current system into a new and better one. The concerned citizens of the world must unite to create a better system of organization that more fairly represents our needs. It is our right and responsibility to do so. But we can do so peacefully and justly.

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

I want America to once again be a paragon among nations. Somewhere along the way, I think we lost our clarity of focus about what this whole life thing is about. We've let money become the ultimate driving force in our society... instead of the quality of human life. I also feel like we've let fear cloud our moral integrity. We've launched a lot of foreign wars lately... where we have been the aggressor. Make no mistake, I love America and wouldn't live any other place. But I want every American to be able to pursue their own unique dream, and be more than just a wage slave to their bills. And I want every American to live safe and secure free from the fear of terrorism. I want us to live in strong communities where privacy and solitude are respected, but no one is ever forced to live isolated and alone. I want so much for this great country of ours.

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

We citizens have the right to participate in our own government.. We have the right to be heard.
Americans are not completely free until we are free to actively participate in shaping our own futures.

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

Most representative democracies nowadays (the United States included) elect by a method called the popular vote. Each person has one Vote, which they then use to choose between two or more Candidates for a particular Office. The candidate elected is ostensibly the one with the most votes; in some cases, a majority is needed. The implicit assumption is that more votes corresponds to a more accurate representation of the actual will of the people, which is reasonable when we are allowed to choose among all alternatives. Popular voting is a dramatic improvement over the previous forms of "election", e.g. royal primogeniture, in which the first-born son of the King rules next. Popular election is also a good method when the groups of people are small and everyone knows one another. However, popular voting breaks down when the voting pool gets too large and beyond human-scale.

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

In a broad sense, the purpose of government is to serve the needs of the people. The whole reason why we gather together, pool our resources, and vest authority into officials is because we've found that we all receive a net benefit from being part of such a system. In smaller communities, that "being part of" also meant participation; every citizen's voice was heard. In fact, going all the way back to the origin of democracy in Ancient Greece, that was how polis meetings were held. Anyone could stand up and speak their mind on what they felt to be an important public issue, and then everyone voted on it according to their own best judgment. The entire process was human-scale: you saw everyone in a large room, and everyone already knew one another. This tradition continued in the United States in the form of town meetings, which were in an integral part of early American 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

There is a growing groundswell of citizens like you and me who want to be included in the governmental process. Most of us don't care for or care about politics, what we really care about is participation in the decision making that affects our lives and the future of our families. We each have our own concerns, and we all want our voice to be heard. Unfortunately, our current system forces us to become political zealots in order to be heard, because there is no direct communications channel between us and our leaders. And sometimes we scream loudly but politicians don't listen. Our participatory enthusiasm is squelched without an outlet, and we are frustrated because we want to make a positive difference, but don't know how in our current political system. Representation through voting alone is not enough: democracy requires the active participation of citizens in order to work properly. We have more than the right to vote; we have the right to participate in our own government.

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

Let's look at another major point of discontent of the American people: our government is now run by money. In the world of politics fueled by large popular elections, politicians must get election funding and cater to wealthy special interests groups in order to succeed. The clear and direct influence of money on our elections is well-documented in The Buying of the President series released by the Center for Public Integrity. As the lead author Charles Lewis quips: "Racecar drivers are more honest than politicians; at least they publicly advertise their sponsors. Maybe we should get politicians to wear patches, too."

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

What is the Public Good? The Public Good is anything that improves the quality of human life. That includes not only our measurable standard of living but also the more intangible conditions under which we all live. The Public Good is about addressing the real concerns of citizens like you and me. Now, we often think of the Public Good as this abstract collective thing, like "cleaning the environment" or "creating world peace"; and it is true, the Public Good encompasses those concerns. However, the Public Good is based upon the lives of we citizens and our personal, individual concerns. Helping people find fulfilling jobs is a Public Good; reducing the burden of your bills is a Public Good; making your neighborhood safe for your children to play in is a Public Good. Ultimately, the reason why we act on the global concerns like a clean environment is because individual people like you and me want to be able to eat healthy fruit, breathe clean air, and be free from disease. The Public Good is personal, it's about you and me acting to make our lives better.

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

Mass election has more problems than just too little participation and too much money. We no longer have a relationship with our elected officials, because they are not like us anymore. Politicians are drawn from the wealthiest segment of our society; the concerns they face are completely different than the ones we face. The average citizen struggles to make ends meet every month, while the rich jetset around the globe. While we battle with the health care system, they receive the best medical attention; many have personal doctors. To us taxes impact whether we can take a family vacation next year; to the wealthy it is a big game to see how much they can avoid paying. Let's not hold the benefits of wealth against the wealthy, because truth to be told many of us wouldn't mind having their problems. The point is that the rich don't even live in the same world that we do. How can we expect our wealthy politicians to act in our best interests when they've never lived the lives we do? How can they really know our concerns, when they are so unlike us?

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

According to John Campbell in his essay "Constitution for Utopia", the most important part of the political process is "selecting rulers that are wise, benevolent, and competent". If you get good leaders, then they will use whatever system they have as best they can (of course, we want to provide them with as good a system as possible). If you get bad leaders, it doesn't matter what safeguards you have in place, they will find a way to circumvent them and corrupt the system. The ancient Greeks believed much the same: the leaders were of primary importance, and the form of government only mattered insofar as it supported the leaders. The Greeks originated the idea of democracy, but what is little known is that they also created and endorsed dictatorship. In times of crisis, they would appoint an absolute dictator and charge them with the responsibility to lead them to safety: to "dictate" means to tell someone what to do. And even though they were free men, the Greeks would follow their dictator even unto death, because they only chose leaders they trusted. So, they too believed that the selection of the right people was important, in particular more important than rules and exact governmental structure.

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

Consider the relationship that we do have with our officials nowadays. Our knowledge of politicians is almost completely secondhand through mass media. We read about politicians in the newspaper, we hear about them on the radio, and we see them on television. How many of us personally know our own Senator? How often do we see the Mayor of our own city? How much time do we hang out with our school superintendent? Our officials are both literally and figuratively distant: we can't "drop by" and visit any of them to have a chat like we could have back in the day. We have no personal relationship with our officials anymore; voters don't even know them, except through what we are fed in the media. The immense power of the media on our elections becomes obvious once we realize that the media is effectively the only source of information we have about our politicians. Distant relationships are media relationships, a "he-said" "she-said" of hearsay.

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

According to Merriam-Webster, politics is "competition between competing interest groups or individuals for power (as in a government)". However, the best definition I've seen of politics is "poli, from the Greek meaning 'many', and tics, which are bloodsucking creatures". 8^) Politics in our modern world is this very unsavory thing dealing with competing influence that employs widespread manipulation to achieve its ends. Only politicians can get elected in governments with large popular votes; the current bureaucracy forces officials to cut deals in order to secure and maintain their support. The fault is with the political system, not with the people who must become politicians in order to succeed. Similarly, no one wants a government filled with rulers, either. Rulers are people obsessed with power, enforcing their commands through laws and threats. Americans rejected the premise of unfettered rulership a long time ago; if anything, we have gone overboard in our fear of rulers by unduly limiting our well-intentioned officials. We've seen both rulers and politicians, and we don't want either of them in government. So whom do we want?

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

How do we know we can trust our rulers?

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

Unfortunately, in America today we have moved away from this time-tested solution into a headlong flight toward rule-based decision making. As a nation we have been seduced by an insidious premise: "more rules makes things more safe and more fair". We naturally want to limit politicians from unjustly abusing their office, so we've endorsed the creation of a huge legal super-structure of procedural rules designed to remove human judgment from decision making. Even though it seems like it might be a reasonable idea, we have seen that rule-based bureaucracy does not work. First, we are rediscovering the findings of the ancient Greeks: bad rulers are more cunning than any set of rules. But perhaps even worse, we have handicapped our good leaders as well, as procedural rules prevent good leaders from assuming personal responsibility and getting things done. This tragic trend toward increasingly ineffective organizations mired in litigation and useless, expensive regulatory oversight is well illuminated in "The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America" by Philip Howard.

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

In order to return to effective government we need to place our trust in leaders who are directly responsible to us. This formula for success has been known for a long time. Franklin Roosevelt started the immense positive changes of the New Deal by giving key people a rough outline of what needed to be done, the authority and responsibility to accomplish the goals, and then setting them loose. During the heyday of IBM, the company motto was "We find the best people, give them the most resources, and then get out of their way." Our constitution itself was made in a similar way: states selected trusted Delegates and then charged them with the responsibility to build a better form of government at a Constitutional Convention. Trust and Responsibility is the winning combination, not Limitation and Litigation. History has shown time and again that the extraordinary becomes commonplace when the right people are entrusted with the responsibilty to enact change.

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

The final problem with our modern government is almost an insult to injury. When our politicians behave counter to what we want, there isn't much we can do about it in our current system. The president is free to launch a war on a sovereign nation against immense popular sentiment to the contrary. Forget for a moment whether you were for or against the war in Iraq: neither side had any choice in the matter. There is no accountability to citizens like you and me, no matter what our feelings are.

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

There have been many proposals as to the nature of this accountability and recourse. Californians have already implemented and employed a recall election scheme. The idea is that if a high-level official starts seriously messing up, then citizens can call a new election at any time and replace them with someone new. The large-scale implementation has some practical difficulties, but the essential idea is sound. An official who knows they can be removed at any time will be more inclined to actually act in the best interests of their constituency. This is a type of punitive threat that goes well with the mindset of adversariality that is common when thinking about politics.

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

Representatives are supposed to be people like us, whom we know and trust, whom we have a relationship with, and who share our concerns because they lead similar lives. So, let's begin with a small human-scale community: say, a group of ten friends. These Citizens gather together and form a Citizen Assembly, meeting for one hour per week at someone's house on a Monday or Tuesday evening. This group elects one of its own members as a Representative of their interests. That person becomes a Level 1 Representative and speaks with the voice of ten people, the Citizen Assembly that they represent. Now, any ten Level 1 Representatives can gather together and form a First Level Assembly, meeting for one hour per week on a Wednesday or Thursday night. This group elects one of the Level 1 Representatives to also be a Level 2 Representative, speaking with the voice of one hundred people. Note that as a Representative becomes higher level, they become part of more Assemblies. The highest level assembly in which they are a member is their peer assembly; the assemblies they represent are collectively called their support assemblies. To illustrate, a Level 1 Representative has one support assembly (the Citizen Assembly they represent) and one peer assembly (the First Level one they are part of). A Level 2 Representative has two support assemblies (Citizen and First Level) and is peered with their Second Level Assembly. In general, a Level N Representative has N support assemblies and their peer assembly is Nth Level. Because a high level representative will be a member of many assemblies, the Assemblies have to be held at different times so that they can attend all of them every week.

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 
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Citizen  Citizens  Level 1  Feb  1 yr  Every  10  Mon/Tue eve 
First  Level 1  Level 2  Mar  2 yrs  Even  100  Wed/Thu eve 
Second  Level 2  Level 3  Apr  3 yrs  Third  1000 = 1T  Fri eve 
Third  Level 3  Level 4  May  4 yrs  Fourth  10T  Sat any  16 
Fourth  Level 4  Level 5  Jun  5 yrs  0, 5  100T  Sun any  32 
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Fifth  Level 5  Level 6  Jul  5 yrs  1, 6  1000T = 1M  Mon day  12  FT 
Sixth  Level 6  Level 7  Aug  5 yrs  2, 7  10M  Tue day  14  FT 
Seventh  Level 7  Level 8  Sep  5 yrs  3, 8  100M  Wed day  15  FT 
Eighth  Level 8  Level 9  Oct  5 yrs  4, 9  1000M = 1B  Thu day  16  FT 
Ninth  Level 9  Level 10  Nov  5 yrs  0, 5  10B  Fri day  17  FT 

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

Within our capitalist economy every system of organization must be financially self-sufficient in order to be sustainable. Our personal community network must be funded, else it won't survive. However, we specifically want to avoid the downfall of our current political system, namely the susceptibility to large sources of wealth.

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
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Citizen  Citizens  Level 1  10  $10  $5  $5 
First  Level 1  Level 2  100  $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 
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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 really is a new and different thing. Most organizations today work off the principle "appointment from above", namely, the guy at the top has the power to create a subordinate organization underneath him. We see this principle everywhere: in the military, at the office, and in religions. Moreover, in organizations predicated on appointment from above, advancement comes from the higher tiers. Generals promote officers below them, company managers promote their employees, and bishops promote priests. Very frequently in these organizations higher tiers are immune to the lower tiers. Privates don't tell generals what to do, employees don't gaff off their bosses (however much we'd like to), and pastors don't dictate to the Pope. All the cards are stacked in favor of the higher tiers, and once people are in place they sustain their power and influence by continually manipulating the system. Specifically, they kiss up to the higher ranks (from which their advancement flows) and then exploit the lower ranks (to which they are immune).

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

Now, let's try to imagine what this new situation will be like. We will have a regular weekly gathering with friends where we all hang out and talk about things going on in our lives. One of us will be a link to the society at large, specifically looking out for things relevant to our Citizen Assembly. And every so often, our Level 1 Rep will also be elected a Level 2 Rep, or even higher. That person is still our friend, and we talk to them all the time. These high level representatives genuinely listen to their constituency. They won't need gallop polls or market analysts; they'll be talking to people every day of every week. Dude, your representative is your friend. They know your real concerns because they know you.

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

Let's return to the specific features of how the Human Assembly would work. In addition to a Level Rep every Assembly would also elect a Vice Representative. This Vice serves many of the same functions that a current Vice does; in the case of debilitation they assume the role of the Level Rep. Note that they assume only the level of the Assembly that elected them Vice. For example, suppose we were the Vice Rep in a Second Level Assembly to a Level 3 Rep. However, that Level 3 Rep was well respected and had earned a Level 5 total. If tragedy befell them, we would become a Level 3 Rep of the Second Level Assembly we were appointed by. All the other support assemblies (of higher and lower level) would have their own Vice that assumed the next level responsibilities. Vice Representatives also have specific duties apart from this (hopefully rare) case. In particular, they act as the Treasurer in handling monetary transactions within the group and to the next level. Lastly, an Assembly may also want to choose someone to be a Secretary and basically keep track of what the real concerns are. The secretary can be anyone, Citizen, Representative, or Vice Representative; you'll probably want to choose one according to who is the most organized or has the best memory. Each assembly chooses their own level of recording as they desire: some might prefer detailed minutes, while others would be happy with notes scrawled on napkins.

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
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

The Human Assembly employs several forms of checks and balances in order to ensure that it continues to operate in the Public Good. In the previous section we talked about an important check, namely a recall system to hold our leaders accountable. However, an even more fundamental check and balance for our leaders is the oversight of other humans with good sense and fine judgment. A Level 4 Representative is a member of five Assemblies. Each group is watching the activities of their Representative and exercising their own discretion as to whether they are sincerely acting in the Public Good. People can disagree yet still it is clear that all parties are trying to act according to their best judgment; this is distinctly different than someone trying to work the system for their own benefit, and the difference is apparent over time. Recall that our election process is also a selection process: a global representative has increasingly sharp crowds looking over their shoulder the higher level they attain, which is exactly the way we want it. We are employing the keen perception of other humans to keep our Representatives in check, rather than procedural rules that can be circumvented. Human oversight allows us to empower our representatives to assume personal responsibility for getting things done.

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 Human Assembly is intended primarily to rectify the myriad problems with mass election and to restore a healthy human relationship between the representers and the represented. It is not intended to replace the well-designed and time-tested governmental structure we already have in the United States. In current political terms, Assemblies operates as miniature voting blocks of self-assembling micro-parties. Parties leverage their power by voting in unison, and Assemblies would be wise to follow their example. Citizens in the Human Assembly should vote according to the leadership of their highest level representative. Most often this will mean voting that rep into an office, but because of districting and other craziness in our current system we might have to elect a lesser level representative. Remember that our current political climate is one of voter apathy. Even Second Level Assemblies can profoundly alter the course of local elections. Our initial focus should be concentrated on reclaiming legislative bodies, specifically city, state, and national congresses.

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

The very first thing that you need to do is to talk to your friends about the Human Assembly. That means that you somehow need to:
  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
Let's take each part in turn: we'll talk about friends in this section and the forum in the next.

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.]
Okay, now we know who we want to talk to. How are we going to go about doing that?

3b: Create a Forum for Quality Conversations

The forum is a lost art in America today. It is, quite simply, a time and place to talk about something freely. We lead very busy time-starved lives nowadays, and forums have fallen by the wayside; recreating public forums is the key way that we'll guarantee that every voice is heard. Your Citizen Assembly will become the personal forum of you and your friends once it's formed, but to do that you'll need to create a forum for the specific purpose of forming an Assembly. Whew!

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:

There are many paths to publicity, and we would like our word-of-mouth to be by quality human conversations, preferably with people you already know. A forum is personal, and comfortable. Please do not go canvassing door to door, or spam people en masse, or hand out flyers outside of subways. Remember that quantity of numbers is how our current system works, the one that we feel so disenfranchised from. Quality of relationship is how we want the Human Assembly to work, so let's get it started on the right foot straight from the start. What I have discovered with my own friends is that they are unanimously in support of the Human Assembly, so if you start with your close friends the likelihood is that you'll receive similar agreement. Eventually you'll be talking to your casual acquaintances, and then maybe even new people that you meet. At that point, we'll have to ride a fine line between sincere promotion and annoying advertisement. A good way to tell the difference is the "do unto others" test. If someone were to do what you are intending, would you appreciate it or be annoyed by it? Try to favor the former.

3c: Form Citizen Assemblies

The lifeblood of the Human Assembly are the Citizen Assemblies. So, the next major step is to form one with your friends. Do you and your friends already know someone wise, capable, and benevolent that you would want to be your Level 1 Rep? Create an Assembly around them. Specifically, you'll want to:
  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!
Now, let's set our expectations realistically. First, it will be very difficult to convince nine people all at once to create a Citizen Assembly. So, grow it a few people at a time. In the initial stages there will be many small partial assemblies with less than requisite ten to elect a Representative. Slow growth is also more assured: it's much easier to convince the sixth person to join if five people are already meeting regularly. Remember, all everyone needs to do is introduce one new person a week, doubling the size of your partial assembly. If you started today and had 2 people at the end of the first week, 4 at the end of the second, 8 at the end of the third, and formed a full Citizen Assembly in a month, well, that is spectacular progress. If you can do it faster, so much the better. Second, the practical reality of life makes it unlikely that everyone can go to every single meeting. Once the Assembly is in motion a quorum of 7 out of 10 would be pretty good attendance. There should be a pretty high expectation that the Level 1 Rep and Vice Rep make it every assembly, though; otherwise, it starts to defeat the point.

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:

3d: Meet with Local Groups sized 5-150

Now, promoting the Human Assembly is an essential component of our overall campaign. Let me reiterate: mass spamming is annoying, and we want our word-of-mouth to be by high quality human interaction. What is most effective is talking things over with your friends, especially those friends who you know would be receptive to these ideas to begin with. In the initial stages when you have a partial assembly, your full focus should be on talking to your close friends. A community network of friends is, after all, precisely what we are trying to build. After you have created a full Citizen Assembly, you may want to slowly shift your focus onto local groups. The best groups to focus on are ones that meet one or more of the following criteria: So, what would you do with these groups? There are many possibilities; let me offer some suggestions. Something that could be very effective would be for your entire Citizen Assembly to go to one of the local group meetings. You don't even have to go out of your way: you could make that night your Assembly gathering for the week (even if it doesn't fall on a Monday or Tuesday). Your Level 1 Representative could give a presentation on the Human Assembly to everyone there, and you could all talk to people afterwards and share with them what it is like participating in the Human Assembly. We don't need anything fancy, just mingling and talking with others. Now, for those of you who don't have any experience with public speaking, an excellent book is "The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking" by Dale Carnegie. Carnegie points out that the most effective public speaking is on a topic that you really believe in and are passionate about; people respond better to someone genuine than someone polished. The rest of public speaking is just a set of technical skills; what's essential is being involved with your topic.

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

Congratulations! Your peers have now made you a Level 1 Representative of the Human Assembly! That means that they trust you to be part of the 10% of our society actually actively leading things. Your very first task is the creation of even stronger, more trustworthy leaders. That means you'll want to
  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)
Now, there are several distinct differences between Citizen Assemblies and Level Assemblies. Citizen Assemblies will most often be formed by groups of friends; even First Level Assemblies might span neighborhoods and everyone may not know each other to begin with. That makes the selection of the best representative somewhat difficult. Now, in some cases you will get lucky and it will be clear just by talking to your Level 1 peers who should be the Level 2 Representative. In other cases, it might not be so clear, at which point you may simply want to use a random ballot. This technique would be used for the first election only, and really just to get things moving. Remember, you'll be meeting weekly with your fellow Level 1 Reps; within a few months it will become easier to identify who the best qualified leader is. At that point, you can ask the initial rep to step down, or simply wait until the next customary election to replace them. Of course, this problem of people not knowing each other only exists for the initial "pioneer" period where we create the Human Assembly from scratch; ten years from now, everyone will already belong to stable assemblies where everyone knows one another.

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

Recall that the tactical goal is to get as many of our personal representatives elected to Congress as possible. Along the way, we'd also like reclaim our representation within the existing political institutions, in particular our city, state, and national legislatures. In the ideal world, we'd have Level 3s on city councils, Level 4s in state legislatures, Level 5s in the House, and Level 6s in the Senate. However, this is only a broad-sweeping general guideline. Every district is different, and a Level 4 might be a viable Congressional candidate in Rhode Island but not even viable as a Los Angeles city councilman. In each case, you and your leaders should tailor your strategy for election to your locale. That is, after all, part and parcel of being locally responsive. My personal advice is that slow and steady wins the race: elect your highest level representatives to the most guaranteed office. In the tentative early stages of the Human Assembly, just one election won makes a huge difference. Once that first Rep is elected, then the success of the Human Assembly from that point forward becomes much more assured. If people see that the new model gets results somewhere once, they will want to bring that same intimacy of relationship to their own communities.

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

Here is a collection of additional suggestions related to the Human Assembly, in no particular order:

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

I believe that many readers are by this point already convinced that the Human Assembly is a better system of organization than we currently have. You are convinced because all I'm doing is stating plainly what you already know. You've known for quite some time now that there's something wrong with our elections, because you've seen it with your own two eyes. It's obvious that we need a government designed to act more in the Public Good instead of being hostage to the wealthy: you knew that. The question in your heart right now is: Can it be done? Or is this just another good idea destined to be crushed, ground underfoot by the heavy inertia of "well, that's just the way things work"?

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

Right off the bat we have to retain our sense of perspective about what participation in the Human Assembly actually means. The first and most important step is the formation of Citizen Assemblies. That means getting together with nine friends at someone's house once a week, with everyone contributing $1 to the Assembly fund (you'll probably end up spending more on food and entertainment than your Human Assembly donation). Citizen Assemblies are not commitment-sucking breeding grounds of political zealism; dude, they're a weekly get-together with your friends. Most people I know, busy with their lives and focused on work, are already on the lookout for the flimsiest of excuses to hang out. What I'm proposing is a specific means to have fun and stay in close touch with your friends, which is something we want to do anyway! One tenth of us will be called upon for an additional "duty": namely, to meet nine other people like them, make new friends, and hang out with them every week, too. That's the essence of the Human Assembly: making, keeping, and spending time with friends. In fact, forget all the political connotations of the Human Assembly altogether, and focus on just the personal community aspect. A Citizen Assembly is a fun weekly gathering 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

Now that we've allayed your concerns about commitment, let's turn to another meaty concern: Can it work? There has been a unmistakable trend in the last century toward the fast spread of distributed cooperative peering networks. Perhaps the best examples are internet-related: the internet itself took about twenty years to spread across the planet. The web took about a decade to reach critical usable mass. Napster lit on fire after a couple years and has ignited a huge battle between centralized music labels and peer-to-peer networks. (The moral implications of music sharing networks like Napster et al aside, the relevant thing for us is that they are superior distribution networks that self-assemble quickly.) If you look at the dramatic history of the Open Directory Project, it took less that seven months for it to surpass Yahoo and become the best human-edited directory on the web. This peer-to-peer power isn't limited to technologies alone; no small part of the success of Howard Dean in the political realm has been the grass roots community of online supporters. So, the question isn't whether it could work, since the Human Assembly is guaranteed to work; there is nothing that can stop you from getting together with your friends. The question is: How fast will it spread?

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

There is another compelling reason why many people steer clear of all things political, namely, taking a political stand is a prelude to adversity and zealotry in our society. Democrats argue with Republicans, conservatives are at odds with liberals, the left can't stand the right, the list goes on and on. Conflict seems to be the lifeblood of politics. Moreover, the friends we see become politically involved get an odd gleam in their eyes after awhile. It seems to be a small step between taking a stand and becoming a zealous (and annoying) promoter of whatever ideology we happen to support. In fact, many people I know ban talking about politics altogether, putting it into a hotspot box like religion or capital punishment. After all, who wants to become a raving missionary that argues with everyone all the time?

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:

People on both sides of divisive political fences can agree with these statements, because they represent human needs instead of political stances. The issues the Human Assembly addresses are deeper than politics, and thus have a much wider appeal than any particular partisan position. Remember, the Human Assembly is not about politics (that thing involving competition and manipulation) nor about rulership (that thing involving power and command). The Human Assembly is about personal community, living relationships, trust, participation, activism, and leadership. We might whimsically call it humanics, but the key point is that it is a human pursuit distinctly different than politics.

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

There is another insidious thought that inhibits us from getting involved, namely: What difference would I make, anyway? We take a look at these big issues, and we compare it to what we can do, and the former seems so much larger than the latter. Will getting together with our friends really make any difference? The answer is a resounding YES! This isn't a platitude: there are specific compelling reasons why. According to Malcolm Gladwell in his book "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference", successful trends follow non-intuitive rules that don't jibe with our natural instincts: in particular, very small effects can "tip" a population over into a very large result. It helps to think of social movements in terms of epidemics instead of as effort. Epidemics are governed by contagiousness, stickiness, and context, and proliferate quickly if they have a network to propagate through. (Epidemics aren't necessarily bad things, by the way; Sesame Street was an epidemic of literacy among our children.) Our natural intuition uses effort-based proportions to come up with estimates: you put in so much effort, you get so much result. If you want to do something big, then well, our intuition tells us that it will take a huge amoung of effort and sacrifice.

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

The Human Assembly produces fairer representation than our system of mass election does. The disproportionate majority of our politicians today are wealthy WASP males. A sore point for many minorities has been their glaring lack of representation in modern government; the majority of our population is female, and we have a sobering lack of female representation, too. From the perspective of minorities, the essential problem is that minority candidates can't win a mass election. By definition, a minority is only a segment of a large popular vote, and therefore not a viable position. In our current system, minorities get shafted, and they have been understandably outraged by that for a long time.

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

How many people do we need to vote on in our current government? The number has become daunting. There are hundreds of people in local elections, dozens of candidates for congress, and quite a few during presidential caucases. A good friend of mine told me in complete candor: Even if we wanted to be politically conscious the current system requires too large an investment of our time to keep track of all these different people. Political apathy in the United States is often bemoaned and usually blamed on the voters. Well, I blame the system. We've got lives to lead, and we can't be expected to spend 20 hours a week just to stay politically aware. We need a new system that works better with only reasonable requirements of its Citizens. Now take a look at what the Human Assembly is asking. All it requires to work is that you as a Citizen keep track of just one representative, the one you personally chose with a group of your friends. [If a Citizen wanted to be incredibly active, then keeping track of just eight representatives would suffice: their Level 1 Rep, the Level 2 Rep of their Level 1 Rep, the Level 3 Rep of that Level 2 Rep, and so forth up the chain of representation.] The time commitment is just 2 hours per week, spent in developing friendly relationships you already had. It doesn't matter how busy your schedule is, 2 hours a week spent with your friends is a fair exchange in return for personal representation.

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

By restoring the vital relationship with our leaders, The Human Assembly is creating representation with participation. From the day you become an Assembly member until the day you die you will be an active participant in shaping your future, in shaping all our futures. This is the type of activism that we need most: citizens like you and me taking the initiative to improve our collective situation. Participatory activism is totally different than political activism; it is a highly desirable state that gets things accomplished, instead of a undesirable waste of time.

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

Now, there is another important way that the Human Assembly is measurably better than our other options within our current system. Any time that we spend in the Human Assembly is wisely invested in renewable infrastructure instead of being wasted in one-shot transient movements. Consider petitioning. Each petition movement needs to spend a tremendous amount of time reduplicating the wheel, gaining attention, and drumming up support. And then, at the end... all that time and energy goes away. Irrespective of whether the petition had any effect (most don't), all the effort that went into organizing people is then essentially wasted. There is no residual infrastructure left over that makes it easier to do the next petition, or any organization at all. The options offered to citizens today are primarily flashy, bursty expenditures of effort with little or no guarantee of success. Once you start looking for the trend, you can see it everywhere, like in those e-mails about how we can "bring the gas companies to their knees." So what? Even if it did work (which it won't), it was a one shot effort that doesn't enable us to do things easier in the future. Moreover, our mass elections themselves fit this same pattern: a lot of hoopla that gives no continuing benefit after it's over.

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

Our Founding Fathers were concerned with the propensity of dueling factions to arise in a confederacy. It was a theme in many of the Federalist Papers, and specifically addressed by Hamilton in "The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection". There are many reasons why factions were looked upon with suspicion. The top two were that factions follow their own agenda irrespective of whether it is in the Public Good, and that factions foster needless conflict among one another. Now, Hamilton was speaking specifically about Confederations of States as factions, but his words apply equally to any large-scale political system. His insights are hauntingly prophetic with respect to our two party system today. Both Democrats and Republicans take steps to further the interests of their own party... irrespective of whether it actually benefits the public at large. And Democrats spend a lot of their time bashing Republicans, and vice versa. It is a sad fact of our current party system that the diminishing of one party often leads to the increase of another. A political system promotes factioning, which ends up diverting attention away from the real issues that need to be solved.

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

Let's begin with a simple premise. People want to be happy, and one of the contributors to happiness is when their lives are filled with human quality. Now, this quality is deucedly difficult to formally define... but every single one of us knows it when we experience it. Human quality is in the bonding of family, the fun antics with friends, and the belonging of community. It's apparent when people gather and move together with a purpose that they all believe in. Having the leisure to play with your children and watch them grow is an exemplar of the quality that we mean. Unfortunately, in modern western societies, human happiness is becoming scarcer because it has been marginalized in favor of profit and efficiency. Let's talk about some places that's it's rare to find human quality. Cashiers at McDonalds don't have a human quality job; their time is so efficiently used in the pursuit of quality service that it leaves no room left over for human interaction. Workers on isolated parts of assembly lines have a similar experience.

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

How did this happen? We'll need to dig deep into history to explain how this all began. Let's take a look at the influential ideas during the Industrial Revolution; to do that, we'll first need to put ourselves back in the mindset of the time. All of history up until our modern times was dominated by scarcity. There wasn't enough food or enough stuff to go around, and jobs, markets, and free trade as we understand it didn't exist. Wealth in those times meant possessing property and commanding labor, which is one of the reasons why pillaging and slavery were such lucrative economic pursuits of the time. Then the Industrial Revolution caused a major shift. Suddenly it was possible to build products en masse, and useful items became cheap enough that they were affordable to a much larger market than before. Scarcity turned into abundance, and there were major social upheavals because of it. Prior to then, competition was a minor force in the economy: if you were the only blacksmith in town that could make something, then you got all the work. But now it was possible for many different companies to build many different things, and bloodthirsty competition arose over the emerging markets.

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

Okay, now let's look at the same problem but from a totally different perspective. We can conveniently refer to these collections of measurables as Non-Human Entities (NHEs). A corporation, government, and our economy are all fine examples of NHEs. What's happening today is that decisions are being made by NHEs, or more accurately, that decisions are being made in order to further optimize NHEs according to the measurable quantities that it employs. Corporations act to increase their profit, government acts to improve the law, and the economy acts to improve productivity. Every system is becoming clearly more efficient, hey, just look at the numbers, right? But what is missing is the input of the Public Good, namely, the ultimate effect that it has on our lives. Non-Human Entities don't even consider the quality of human life in their decisions, because currently, they aren't built that way.

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

The astute reader will notice that even the very modest sum of $1 per week is outside the price range of some. Does that mean that very poor people don't get representation in the Human Assembly? This question has plagued me ever since the realization that citizen funding was the lesser of two evils. Either we citizens fund our government... or wealthy special interests groups will do it for us. (If you have a solution to the funding conundrum, I would be interested in hearing it; inexpensive citizen funding was the best I could come up with.)

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

Several friends of mine are helping me edit and refine the Human Assembly. Almost every single one of them has brought up what they felt to be a serious problem, namely, that we no longer directly vote for our president. Many felt that this was a tantamount to disenfranchisement; after all, we've been trained since birth to believe that the vote is our primary power as citizens. If we lose that direct voting, then doesn't that mean that we have given up some of our power? These are very serious questions that need to be addressed, and to answer them properly will require much subtle thinking.

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

Let's address other concerns readers have voiced about the Human Assembly; in particular some have viewed the small size and personal relations as being a potential drawback. A couple readers have said that something doesn't sit quite right with them that ten citizens should have the ear of the president. Others leapt to the conclusion that it would be easy for a high level representative to secure their position by giving preferential treatment to the people in their support assemblies. In both cases, the essential concern is that the president would no longer be impartial because they would have to cater to such a small number of people in order to retain their position.

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

The international reader is no doubt conscious that the presentation of the Human Assembly is completely tailored toward the American public from the very first line. The reason for this is simple: I grew up in the United States, I have my finger on the pulse of public concerns here, and I understand the American mentality. The main reason why I haven't enlarged the scope of the Human Assembly to be more global off the bat is because I haven't lived in other countries, so I can only speculate on the real concerns there, and have only secondhand insight. Let me assure you, my focus on the Union isn't because I'm an American hegemonist: it's because I feel confident speaking about things that I know, and don't want to presume about things that I don't.

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