This blueprint is written in pencil, not ink. It is a rough draft, a starting point for discussing the mechanics and structure of our next government. This blueprint does not need blind obedience, it needs critical thought. It needs as many people as possible to stress-test it, to identify cracks and flaws, to help perfect the design.
Our fundamental goal is to design a society that maximizes the freedom of its citizens and empowers them to reach their potential. To achieve this goal, we must establish two non-negotiable pillars for our government: individual liberty and environmental sustainability. Everything in this movement, from taxation to elections, is changeable except for these two pillars, which are written in ink. These principles create tension with each other, as maximizing individual liberty while enforcing environmental sustainability requires careful balance. But both are essential: liberty without a habitable planet is meaningless, and a sustainable planet without liberty is a prison. We must meet the needs of 340 million Americans and our descendants while restoring the habitability of the Earth. So how do we do that?
Simplify our government into basic financial inputs and outputs. Money comes in through taxation and is spent in various ways. So: how do we decide what our taxes are? And then: how do we spend the money our taxes generate? These are simple questions to ask, but they are incredibly difficult to answer. This essay offers elementary responses to those two questions, which our foremost experts and the American People can refine or reject.
“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
Benjamin Franklin
Taxes
First, inputs. Our tax income should be centered on five separate sources:
(1) Land
(2) Pigouvian
(3) Value-added
(4) Corporate
(5) Income
The first of these, a land value tax (LVT), is generally considered to be the best form of taxation as it taxes land according to its value, rather than the value of the property built on top of it. Whether a lot is used for growing corn or used to house the headquarters of a multinational corporation is irrelevant, the tax on that plot of land is the same regardless. Critically, and unlike wealth, the amount of land is fixed and immovable. Taxing land also encourages its development and far better economists have made strong cases for adopting this kind of tax (including its champion Henry George). Nations like Estonia, Denmark, and Taiwan have implemented various forms of LVTs to great success, along with local experiments in the USA. These implementations should be examined as case studies when developing our own system. A LVT would be incredibly helpful in distributing investment according to population density and economic logic, so that population centers would build taller, denser developments and rural areas would experience much lower taxes. If we are to fully address the shortage of housing and if we are to house all Americans, a land value tax must be implemented.
Our second stream of taxation is for significant negative externalities, which are social costs that individuals and organizations create but do not pay for. Pigouvian taxes are helpful because they enable a government to transfer the unseen costs of a particular good or service to the organization producing it. Higher prices for consumers results in less consumption of that thing. At the same time, however, taxing the problematic thing also raises tax revenue for the government. Countries around the world, from Singapore to Mexico to the UK, have adopted this type of tax with great success. Putting these taxes on harmful goods and services would be immensely beneficial to actually addressing the structural issues they cause, reducing their consumption and the eventual harm they inflict on our society. Since these costs will be borne by us all at some point in the future, shifting those costs to the organizations and consumers that create them is necessary to reduce those costs and ensure the responsible parties pay their fair share. Pigouvian taxes are proportional to the harmful behavior an entity is exhibiting, so that the more one pollutes, the greater their tax burden. Taxing carbon is necessary to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and this type of tax allow us to do so efficiently. There are, of course, downsides to this form of taxation, with the calculation of these externalities and the producer-consumer burden allocation being primary ones, but they can be approximated. As this essay consistently argues, an imperfect solution is better than no solution.
Third, we have the value added tax (VAT), which has been adopted by every single developed nation in the world except for the US. A VAT is a tax placed on a product at each stage of production, and it is arguably the most efficient money-raising tool invented in the past century. Like a LVT, a VAT is incredibly efficient and hard to evade. If you spend money, you pay the tax. It pairs very well with a land value tax because while LVT taxes ownership, VAT taxes spending. There are plenty of studies and literature that examine the benefits and drawbacks of this form of taxation. While this tax is regressive (taxes poor more than rich) this injustice can be resolved by the other taxes on land, income, and externalities; all of which are progressive (tax the rich more than the poor). A VAT rate of 5-10%, similar to Canada and Australia, would be appropriate to improve the efficiency of our economy while raising revenue. While VAT increases consumer prices, most workers would see larger income tax reductions, resulting in greater overall purchasing power despite higher prices.
Corporate taxation, our fourth stream of income, would be substantially reformed. Currently, highly profitable corporations exploit loopholes to pay minimal effective rates despite high rates on paper. This blueprint establishes the principle that all organizations benefiting from government infrastructure, legal systems, and educated workforces must contribute fairly. Specific mechanisms, whether minimum effective rates, destination-based taxation, or other approaches, would be determined by tax policy experts during the Convention. Nonprofits providing genuine charitable services would maintain appropriate exemptions, while commercial activities would face taxation. Religious institutions' constitutional protections would be preserved.
Finally, while a progressive income tax would be necessary, the income tax rate would be much lower than it currently is for most Americans.
While precise revenue estimates require extensive economic modeling, we can learn from international experience. Developed nations with similar tax structures successfully fund comprehensive public services while maintaining economic growth. We should shift the tax burdens away from income and onto land, consumption, and externalities, creating a more efficient system that can reduce burdens on most wage earners. The general principle is clear: those who own valuable land, consume heavily, create negative externalities, or currently exploit loopholes would pay more. Conversely, wage earners and middle-class families would likely pay less overall as income tax rates drop and efficient revenue sources replace our current convoluted system.
This manifesto does not argue for higher taxes, it argues for better ones. We have an unjust tax system riddled with loopholes that is exploited by the wealthy, a tax system that overburdens everyone who cannot afford to hire specialized lawyers and accountants. Our tax system needs changing if we are to stabilize our nation and restore the integrity of our Union.
"The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities."
Abraham Lincoln
Government
Having analyzed tax revenue at a basic level, we must turn to the second question: What do we do with all this money?
Rather than specify every detail of our political offices (term length, campaign financing, term limits, etc.), this essay outlines a diagram of four interlocking, mutually reinforcing entities. A healthy tree does not have only three branches, it has many. Just so, our government should distribute power and resources across more branches than it currently does.
We propose structuring our government into five cornerstone roles:
(1) Federal Ministries
(2) County Administrators
(3) The National Council
(4) The Assembly
(5) Judicial Branch
Here is a quick summary. Citizens elect legislators and administrators. Legislators elect the members of the National Council, and the National Council appoints ministers to each Ministry and resolves disputes between Ministries. County administrators would work with the Ministries to allocate resources, goods, and services according to the needs of the citizens at a county level. This framework would balance democratic participation, expertise, and simplicity, allowing us to make better political decisions in the long run.
Each of these entities checks the others: the Assembly legislates but cannot execute; Ministries execute but cannot legislate; the Council coordinates but has no direct operational authority; Administrators customize implementation but must work within federal frameworks; and the Judiciary ensures all entities operate within constitutional bounds.
(1) Ministries
The first of these executive branches is our Ministries, which are organizations tasked with meeting a particular need of our People. These organizations would operate as state-owned enterprises that maximize economies of scale, offering us the goods and services we need at the lowest possible cost. Doing this should increase the disposable income, free time, and energy of individual citizens, enabling us to live fuller, richer lives and creating societal stability, safety, and shared success. Individuals would still need to specialize, work, and spend responsibly, but the cost of living would be as low as possible. There would need to be over a dozen Ministries, covering physical and psychological needs like healthcare, internet access, justice, energy, food, etc.
Our government would not just be a regulator; it would be a competitor. It would actively compete with private enterprises in delivering goods and services, ensuring a stable foundation for the entire population without suffering the known drawbacks of a purely planned economy. Private enterprises force the government to be efficient, while government forces corporations to be cheap. Ministries would operate as financially self-sustaining entities where feasible, competing on equal terms with private providers. In cases where public service requires subsidy (rural internet, healthcare for poor, etc), this would be explicit and transparent. Private enterprises remain free to compete, and consumers choose based on price and quality. The government option ensures a baseline is always available, while private competition drives innovation and efficiency in both sectors.
To continue on the topic of inefficiencies of scale, many of the industries that supply us with the basic goods and services necessary to live, industries like clean water, internet, and electricity, currently operate as monopolistic or oligopolistic markets. In telecommunications, three firms control 98% of the wireless market. In healthcare, the top five insurers control 70% nationally, and in most markets, one or two firms dominate. In agriculture, four meatpackers process 85% of beef. In technology, single firms hold near-monopolies in search, social media, and mobile operating systems. In two-thirds of industries, the top firms have increased their market share since 1997. These concentrated market structures ensure that corporations have low incentive to improve their product and high incentive to raise prices for consumers. The main risk of these Ministries, inefficiency and waste, already exists in our current socioeconomic system.
One fair objection is if our government is corrupt, why give it more power? The answer is structure and accountability. Our current system fails because power is concentrated, opaque, and insulated from democratic pressure. These Ministries would operate under fundamentally different constraints: (1) transparent operations with public oversight, (2) competition from private sector, (3) direct accountability through elected County Administrators who control distribution, (4) judicial review of all actions, and (5) most critically, the Constitutional Convention process itself. Corruption thrives in darkness and monopoly. These Ministries would have neither.
(2) Administration
To counteract the inefficiencies of national organizations as large as our Ministries, we have our Administrators. This is the second branch of the current executive branch. Elected by county by direct popular vote via a ranked choice voting system, these Administrators would be responsible for ensuring that all the needs of their citizens are met. These individuals would be responsible for the distribution of goods and services in their county; and like legislators, they would be directly accountable to their constituents. Administrators make government accountable at a local level, customizing the services of their county according to the needs of their constituents. Urban counties, for example, may choose to direct those resources towards government grocery stores or community kitchens, while rural counties may opt to create a food delivery system in order to deliver groceries more efficiently. The needs of the community are the same, but the mechanics of distribution are completely different.
Think of the relationship between Ministries and Administrators as a franchise system. The Ministries are the corporate headquarters responsible for setting the standards and developing the products. The Administrators are the franchise owners, who order the basic goods from HQ and ensure that the customers (citizens) in their neighborhood are happy. Consider our need for food. Our agriculture and livestock systems can produce enormous quantities of food, but a single massive entity cannot decide how to distribute it optimally to every doorstep in America. Administrators are necessary to ensure tailored decision making and efficient distribution.
(3) The National Council
The third branch of our executive branch would be the National Council. This idea is inspired by the Swiss, who have a Federal Council. This body is composed of seven elected members who discuss and resolve conflicts between branches. In Switzerland, the legislature elects these council members and each one serves as the head of one of seven federal executive departments. While this manifesto proposes a similar body, our National Council would be wholly independent of the Ministries themselves, ensuring a clear, clean separation of power between the active and reactive governance. This Council would possess zero executive authority to initiate policy or command operations; their role is to settle disputes between Ministries and appoint the Ministers themselves. Like a team of referees, these individuals do not play in the game, they regulate it. As the theory stands now, our seven Councilors would be elected by the legislature. Again, the details can be ironed out later, but the main idea is to create a body that is a mix between a board of directors, a President, and a Supreme Court, one capable of resolving disputes between Ministries and appointing competent ministers.
By looking at large organizations around the nation, we see that corporate management is determined by a board of directors, who act in the best interest of shareholders, while the heads of departments are appointed by the President, who (in theory) acts in the best interest of the American People. For both of these examples, a small, extremely well-informed entity makes decisions on the leadership of an organization for a much larger population. Given this extensively proven track record, we believe that our ministers should not be elected directly by our citizenry, but rather appointed by the Council. This format ensures that the individuals who take the helm of these enormous institutions are actually qualified professionals instead of career politicians. This system is meritocratic and grounded in historical reality. We know this process, a single entity making extremely well-informed decisions on behalf of a much larger group, works. Leaving the minister selection process up to the broader public risks eliminating leading experts in favor of charismatic career politicians.
(4) The Assembly
Our Congress is one of the most unpopular and unequal legislatures in the world, with approval ratings scraping single digits. As things stand now, we have a bicameral (two body) legislature, split between the Senate and the House. Each state gets two senators, which skews the balance of power heavily in favor of the less populous states. North Dakota, for example, has 400,000 people per senator while Texas has 15 million people per senator. This means that in the Senate, a North Dakotan’s opinion matters 37.5 times more than a Texan’s. This is blatantly unequal. Our legislature is extremely polarized, shuts down the government on a regular basis, fails to provide adequate political representation, and is thoroughly corrupt due to lobbying and political bribery. We must resolve these issues when redesigning our legislature.
Balancing between representation and efficiency is the core debate when designing our legislature. Under our current framework, we would implement a unicameral (single body) legislature and set representation at one million people per legislator, giving us roughly 320-340 legislators in total. This size is well within international and historic metrics, and would give us an Assembly that is somewhere between the Senate and the House.
In order to counteract the dilution in representation, we propose using open list voting, which is used in several of the world’s most democratic nations. Open list voting allows for ideological diversity and minority representation. Because voters can choose specific candidates within a party list, minority perspectives within each party gain voice. A party might win 5 seats; voters then choose which 5 candidates from that party serve, ensuring popular candidates rise to the top rather than being buried by party leadership. The opposite to this system is closed list voting, where political parties determine who will run and what their platform will be, open list voting gives citizens much greater influence on who represents them. So while each legislator represents a million people, those people have a much greater say over who that legislator is, resulting in a better representation overall.
The main drawback to this method of voting is that it creates large ballots, which can be overwhelming for voters. However, even this drawback has a simple remedy. In open list voting, voters can choose to ignore the individual candidates if they want, opting to vote for a political party only. The mechanics can be refined by political scientists and the American People, but the principle is non-negotiable: a smaller, more efficient legislature chosen by a more flexible, democratic vote.
(5) Judicial
Unlike the other branches of government, there is no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to the judiciary. Compared to the legislative and executive, the judicial branch works well. However, there are flaws, especially when it comes to the Supreme Court. For the next iteration of the judicial branch, we should aim for independence, accountability, accessibility, and efficiency. It is also important to clarify that the Ministry of Justice and the judicial branch of government are two separate entities, just like the current relationship between the Department of Justice and the judicial branch.
First, what stays the same. We maintain the three-tiered justice system: district, appellate, and supreme. It is also critical to etch judicial review into our next Constitution, ensuring that judicial interpretations are binding unless overturned by Constitutional amendment or subsequent judicial decision.
For the Supreme Court, we would restructure it so that it has term limits, binds the Justices to an ethics code, and provides greater transparency. We propose staggered, non-renewable terms of 18 years for 9 Justices, so that every two years, one Justice is replaced. This removes the randomness of death and retirement while maintaining judicial independence through substantial tenure. In the absence of a President, the National Council nominates Supreme Court Justices, who are then subject to confirmation by three-fifths of the Assembly. This ensures both expertise in selection (Council vetting) and democratic legitimacy (supermajority Assembly approval)."
All federal judges, including Supreme Court Justices, shall be bound by a comprehensive Code of Judicial Ethics. The code shall require financial disclosure, establish recusal standards, prohibit gifts beyond minimal value, and provide enforcement mechanisms. To further improve transparency, Supreme Court proceedings shall be open to public broadcast except where classified national security information is discussed. The Court shall publish all opinions, explain recusals, and limit use of the emergency docket to genuine emergencies. These reforms should ensure a Supreme Court that is much less partisan and much more consistent.
The lower courts would also see some tailoring. One of the core problems we face is that the National Council cannot staff 800+ positions by themselves. As such, District and Circuit Court judges would be nominated by the Minister of Justice and confirmed by simple majority of the Assembly. While Supreme Court nominations require a three-fifths supermajority to ensure broad consensus and reduce partisan extremism, lower court nominations require only a simple majority to enable efficient filling of the many positions.
Additional Notes
Foreign policy
States
Conclusion
In our current system, citizens are expected to research and vet dozens of politicians, from judges to sheriffs to Presidents. Our current system creates intense decision fatigue in citizens, leading inevitably to apathy and disengagement. The result is that most voters know nothing about political candidates other than their names and their party affiliation.
In this proposed system, American citizens only have two votes to focus on: legislators and administrators. This streamlining and simplification of the voting process would result in higher levels of political engagement and representative accountability. This proposed system respects the time and intelligence of the American citizen; by simplifying the input, we improve the output. These five roles, ministers, administrators, councilors, judges, and legislators, strike a necessary balance between democratic representation and technical expertise.
"I had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable Asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong."
George Washington
Immigration
To rejuvenate decaying small-towns around the nation, and in pursuit of enriching the lives of all Americans, this manifesto seeks to put forth the concept of transplant immigrants. This immigration pathway would not replace the entirety of the current immigration system, it would simply offer one more avenue. The idea of transplant immigrants is simple: what if we enabled skilled, hardworking immigrants to move directly to the decaying communities around the country? What if we made immigration hyper-local, so that the individuals of a community would be able to select exactly who to welcome into their towns? And what if these immigrants – like organ transplants that restore the health of a dying individual – commit to long term residence and integration into that community, injecting new life into these dying communities? What if we created a new wave of surgically precise settlers, building on our identity as a nation of immigrants, while adapting to the realities of the modern age and the preferences of local communities?
The key to this proposal, like with much of this movement and manifesto, is the ability to provide choices for the American People and empower them. If a town wants no immigrants whatsoever, they could ensure that none came. If a community wants to choose isolationism, they would have the freedom to choose that policy; but if they want to choose inclusion and diversity, if they want to choose more prosperous communities and richer lives, they could welcome these transplants. Local communities could choose to let in anyone from farm hands to cardiologists depending on what their community wanted and needed.
Immigrants ultimately drive economies forward because humans are the base of all economic productivity and immigrants are people. Immigrants need housing, shoes, dental care, and all sorts of goods and services, naturally accelerating demand and economic growth. A critical part of any successful immigration policy is the implicit agreement to assimilate, to adopt the norms and customs of the hosting community. While immigrants will never adopt all of the local norms and customs, they would adopt many of them because of their need for social acceptance. It is this mixture, the blending of foreign and local customs, that would enrich the lives of our citizens in impoverished towns around the nation. This proposal is a mechanism to revitalize the Union’s heartland while strictly controlling the flow of new arrivals.
Obviously the specifics of such a policy would need to be streamlined, debated, and continuously evaluated, but with modern technology, that is certainly possible. Besides being hyper-local, this manifesto suggests that transplant immigrants have four other specific features.
(1) Roots: transplants would commit to primary residence in the inviting communities for 10 years before receiving their full citizenship.
(2) Sponsorship: transplants would require a sponsorship from a citizen in that community, someone who helps them integrate.
(3) Selection: transplants would apply to the local community’s digital portal directly, allowing the community to discuss all facets of an application.
(4) Discrimination: Communities cannot discriminate based on race, religion, national origin, or any other physical characteristic, they can only discriminate based on the skillset, abilities, and character of the individual applicants
These four caveats ensure that this immigration pathway is controlled completely by the individuals who will live with any approved transplants. Transplants put power and possibility into the hands of local communities, giving them the freedom to welcome or reject new neighbors as they deem appropriate. (Another possibility is to have local communities elect 5 to 7 immigration officers who would approve or reject applicants based on the needs of their communities.)
“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.”
Edward O. Wilson
Technology
Modern technology influences our society and our lives enormously and we must consider how to incorporate it into our government. At a basic level, there are four facets to techno-governance: digital portals, social media, big data, and AI.
First, for digital portals, we must evaluate digital infrastructure around the world and use it as a model for our own. One key example is Estonia and their “only-once” principle. They have developed a centralized, sophisticated digital government website, whereby citizens can access hundreds of services from a single portal. India, Singapore, and others can also serve as case studies of successful developments of digital governance. In the age of data, information, and connectivity, we must utilize and structure our nation’s digital resources in a way that maximizes the benefits they can provide. Just imagine the money and stress we would save if we had a simple, free tax filing system – and that is just one of hundreds of potential benefits a centralized digital portal would create.
Social media, our second point, is a technology that has brought our nation closer together and farther apart. The core business model of these platforms is based on addiction. We know bad actors are using these platforms to increase polarization and erode the bonds that bind us together into a singular Union. Furthermore, there is no real discussion of meaningful regulation or oversight of big tech, because they are the wealthiest, most powerful corporations on the planet and they can fund legions of lobbyists and politicians. Social media is forcing us further and further apart and there seems to be no way to stop it from continuing to do so.
In order to maximize the benefits of social media while minimizing the harm it causes our citizenry, the state must develop its own social media platform (The Boston Project). Like with any other form of social media, participation would be entirely voluntary. Unlike almost any other social media, however, users would need to register with a valid form of identification, so that every account was linked to an individual citizen. The third significant characteristic of this platform would be transparency, whereby users would be able to adjust how content is displayed. These characteristics ensure that the platform remains free to use, free of bad actors, and holds individual citizens accountable for their speech in public. A publicly owned social media platform, one which is transparently created and allows its users direct control over the generative algorithms, would be a big step in reducing the harmful, toxic effects of contemporary social media. (Again, such a platform is politically impossible given our current political environment, as big tech would spend hundreds of billions of dollars to kill such a proposal.)
With the aid of this state-sanctioned social media platform, we must also look at data. As things stand now, our government’s digital interface is extremely siloed and inefficient, and so the wisdom and insights we can derive from that data are greatly reduced. Pooling our data under public, responsible stewardship would provide immense benefits to our citizenry as far as the efficiency and effectiveness of meeting our needs. The benefits we would derive from pooling our healthcare data alone would lead to massive strides in medical treatments. Big data analysis and state-led social media would synergize to create enormous benefits for our society, providing us with a much deeper understanding of the causes of human suffering and economic scarcity. It would also play an enormous role in helping logisticians and county administrators plan the distribution of public goods and services.
Artificial Intelligence. (AI) is the final piece in the technology quad. AI is a revolutionary technology, perhaps the most game-changing we have created. It has the capacity to streamline the lives and improve the communities of so many of our citizens by so much. Imagine a smartwatch that detects a heart attack and uses government-run AI to automatically dispatch an ambulance with your medical history already loaded. Imagine an AI that optimizes the national energy grid in real-time to lower costs and prevent blackouts. These are just two of a seemingly infinite number of potential uses of AI for the public’s benefit. AI, like any other technology, is a double-edged sword. It can be used to serve and benefit our citizens, and it can be used to oppress them. To optimize the use of these AIs we must connect experts and communities together so we can work together to develop the technology and ethical guidelines for this revolutionary technology.
Technology has become a defining part of our society, and if we are to design an optimal government, we must ensure that we incorporate our technology in a way that benefits our citizenry to the fullest. While integrating technology into our government so extensively may seem risky, the truth is that these immensely powerful technologies are already being used by predatory, virtually unregulated organizations. We must seize the initiative. We must move the conversation on data, privacy, and digital rights to the forefront of the national dialogue creating checks and guardrails against the enormous power of these irresponsible, virtually unregulated organizations.
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt
Conclusion
This manifesto is not an ultimatum or a proclamation; it is an invitation to pick up your own pencil, to bring your intelligence to bear on the biggest problem in the world. We must acknowledge hard, ugly truths about our nation before they finish destroying us; only then can we use those truths to right our wrongs and save ourselves. We must begin the trek up the mountaintop or continue sliding down into an abyss of despair, and from what I can see, no one is actually proposing a path out of the abyss. Yes, it will be difficult, borderline impossible, but the finish line justifies the marathon. We must remember what made our ancestors extraordinary: the courage to say no to tyranny, and yes to something far greater and more noble. It is up to each of us to follow their example, not just to critique our nation, but to take part in actively recreating it. The truth is that we can do so much better. So let’s do it.