Socrates Properties
Philosophies and Intellectual Properties for Democratic Progress

The legendary hockey icon Wayne Gretzky was once said to have remarked: You don't skate to the puck; you skate to where the puck is going to be. Increasing disparities in wealth and the corresponding quality of life between the ownership class and the working class of western society are simply unsustainable. How might the landscape look after the rising populist tide reorders it? What might eventually result from movements like Occupy Wall Street? I think I have an idea of where the puck is going to be - please see my proposal thesis for the Political Point System of Democratic Governance as I've reconstructed it below!

I have contacted and referred you to this pro-democracy website because this idea needs your invaluavle assistance for its acceptance and proliferation, and because I’m tired of skating in slow motion or backwards behind those ruled by their greed.

Instead of just helping the rich get richer while remaining line items on budget sheets to be minimized, let's work for popular, universal progress and enrichment! PLEASE HELP ME BRING

VICTORY TO THE PEOPLE!

American Dreaming?

TIME TO WAKE UP!

Proven true all over again every day:

Never before have so few had so much while so many had so little!

ONLY GREATER OPPORTUNITY FOR REAL DEMOCRACY AND SPREADING EQUITY CAN FREE US FROM THIS INJUSTICE!

Therefore I promote the coming democratic revival of our western plutocratic republic (we are NOT a true democracy - don't let them fool you!) through my philosophical and political writing, and by endorsing movements such as Occupy Wall Street that stand for a more universally-considerate and enriching form of government and economics that benefits all the people while better guarding against collusion between the state and the rich.

Please help support my writing and my general mission through the creative projects promotion site Kickstarter.com:

"ANIMALS Party: This ISN'T Democracy, That's NOT Christ," the 1st in a planned 3-part novel series on the future of the West.

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The Political Point System of Democratic Governance

Proposing a Reset of the American Dream with Online Multi-Use Poly Points

Preamble

"The richest 20% of households own 85% of the wealth."

- From the 10/10/11 cover of TIME Magazine

Dictionary.com defines capitalism as an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth. Even a surface-level analysis of this definition will lead the critical thinker to an undeniable conclusion: if the means of wealth is maintained chiefly by private individuals or (their) corporations, and if wealth is the only real determinant of comfort, power and control in society, which is surely the case in the west, then the pursuit of wealth, or accumulated capital, will most certainly become the principal motive behind all decisions and actions made by the members of that society. The lesson that is taught by the system to those that work within it is, therefore, simple - as immortalized in the film Wall Street: Greed is good. And if greed is good, unquenchable greed must be better. Logically, the result is clear: greed triumphs over patriotism, morality, principle, communal and generally-humanistic considerations and all other ethical, honorable sources of motivation, and the richest households gradually end-up with more and more and more, continually investing in ever greater means by which to attain additional wealth all the while. And with the government and its members beholden to the wealthiest, greatest tax-revenue-providing citizens to pay for its policies and for ongoing campaigns to remain in office, and with their usually being little to no line standing between these two entwined clubs of upper-class society and high-ranking government officials, is it really any wonder that the U.S. Federal Government ends-up accomplishing very little for anyone living outside this club?! We dont just need a third party, we need a system that makes the number of parties merely representative of the fact that people possess a great multitude of differing opinions on all political matters, and which doesnt restrict those citizens to party loyalty or obedient allegiance of any kind, as they would all personally be the decision makers. Luckily there is hope provided by historical lesson and the prospects of hybridization.

Inflation adjusted percentage increase in after-tax household income for the top 1% and the four quintiles, between 1979 and 2005 (gains by top 1% are reflected by bottom bar; bottom quintile by top bar) [From Wikipedia Online]

The Scope of the Problem

"Our government was designed to be inefficient."

- John Fund, conservative author of Stealing Elections, on episode 228 (October 2011) of Real Time with Bill Mahr

Atrociously unproductive to the point of being mostly ineffectual, overly-complicated, bureaucratically-bloated and, above all, heavily biased in favor of the upper majority-ownership class, which isnt surprising considering it was designed and originally presided over by North Americas first aristocrats, the fathers that founded our republic, the premiere plutocrats of the United States. This is some of the language one might utilize to objectively describe the western worlds accepted version of democracy where, in reality, far too little oversight and control of the government is actually placed in the hands of the people as it would be in any genuinely pure democracy. One might add that this is due to our systems more accurately being categorized as a republic, or a plutocratic-republic, whose professional politicians, the buck-stops-here true operators of our outdated political machine, are forever indebted to financial and political patrons for their obligatory ongoing campaigns to remain representatives of the people. I implore every U.S. citizen to ask themselves just who or what these representatives are truly representing (answer: themselves; their careers and its supporters and principal beneficiaries), and why, and if that is any kind of basis for a government we can or should sincerely believe in and confidently commit ourselves to?! Its an incontrovertible fact that the most successful politicians, in terms of the number of terms of office theyve served, at least, usually arent (almost as a job requirement) those who are the forward thinkers with the strongest convictions built upon the true qualities of leadership such as highly-developed principles and an actual sense of duty to the people whose interests they are said to serve, but by those most adept at playing the game a la the Nucky Thompsons of old (Boardwalk Empire and Real Time are worth watching).

Successful politicians in every democracy or republic built upon capitalistic foundations, which are often perceived to be but are not necessarily mutually-interdependent structures (democracy and capitalism, that is), are made by their ability to remain ever cognizant of the undeniable connection between the decisions they make on Capital Hill (or their version thereof) and the language they utilize at the bully pulpit public podium and their chances of being re-elected to another four year term, in the case of our Legislative and Executive Branch members. Therefore when push finally does come to shove every move the prosperous elected official in the west makes must, by survivalist necessity, be primarily dedicated to bringing-in the money required to run a large and dramatically-persuasive campaign whilst not alienating them from the top one percent, their corporations and their lobbies that together make-up the most critical donors to their very necessary political war chests. It is a dishonest game of propagandist misleading and duplicitous closed-door negotiations shamelessly played by those who can stomach it and whose honor and philosophical principles are undeveloped to the degree where they are able to abide by its twisted rules in order to achieve political rank. The closer it is to their election date the more concrete this rule of conduct for the western official-elect becomes, generally speaking, but it is always requisite number one in his or her being able to enjoy a long and lucrative career, just as the production of profits is necessarily career requirement number one for the closely-affiliated western businessmen and women that stay atop long enough to fund the western officials ongoing campaign to stay in office. All of this makes for selfish, unprincipled and often unscrupulously-corrupted upper-class representatives of the majority of Americans. On the other hand, it makes for excellent representatives and proponents of their political and corporate professions: successful campaigns and maximized, always-growing profit levels. Little gets done in our built-to-be-divided two-party pandering parade for wealthy-party-member-sourced capital infusions and, at least in the most critical areas of the country when it comes to their relative significance in the determination of the end-results of the respective upcoming election, popular voting allegiance. And while some margin of profit must be permitted in order to compensate business owners, it is the level of profit and its horrendously-unequal distribution that is at the heart of almost all western immorality and its deleterious effects upon four-fifths of its people. The end result is that, among other things, progress loses to partisanship, principle is wiped out by profit, and most of the messages are made, like most of the income and wealth, by the major personal stakeholders in ever-growing, globalizing corporate conglomerates.

Only the easily-duped anti-intellectual could ever be convinced that anything but wealth (and the power and control it lends) is the most prevalent force driving the west and pushing for increasing globalization, which is mostly about the spread of the free market and the businesses that run it. To be fair, this system has some constructive things to offer us as well, such as the promotion of innovation through the fostering of open competition and the related ongoing improvement in the quality of the goods and services offered to the citizen consumer, which is why its inadvisable that capitalism be abandoned completely. But thanks to wealths increasing hold on the strings of politics, as exemplified by the fairly recent Citizens United Supreme Court decision further empowering the wealthy and their corporate bodies by scaling-up their treatment in Federal Law as actual persons, for example, the disparities of wealth, power and control between the classes will only continue to grow to greater levels of egregiousness. And therein lies the reason the western method of government and its interconnected socioeconomic structure are two halves in a whole scheme that was doomed from the start: it inexorably leads to an unsustainable socioeconomic system that undeniably favors a small club of society. It is entirely predicated on wealth and power rather than anything of principle, and those amongst its political, business and general societal leaders with actual morals and convictions and visions of any greater means through which the country might achieve a more universal prosperity, the real leaders, the game changers, are never long in positions of leadership before being deposed by the players.

Those in the west with real progressive principles and ideas that outweigh their need to satisfy the two primary needs of amassing stockpiles of cash and winning popular approval in order to sustain their ascending careers simply can not and do not last for long. The first lesson of the properly reading-between-the-lines university student studying western political science and/or business administration: if youre planning on making a run at a career in politics or big business you must first learn how best to play the game and exploit the loopholes in its rules in order to win it; reason, right and wrong, justice and progress be damned. The second lesson: it is the transfer of capital and the popular opinions (of the members of the board in the case of the businessman or woman) of polled and targeted constituents (that are themselves heavily molded by the various mostly billionaire owned and backed news outlets) that are the only two major forces propelling the rusting American political machines; machines that were intentionally designed to turn at very deliberate rates, rates that are becoming ever-more deliberate thanks to the increasing use of filibusters and other obstructionist tactics of today. Whats worse for the people this machine is supposed to serve, there are four of these lumbering contraptions, the four major branches of government, all checking on the work of the others in search of an unlikely unanimous approval, and all one-hundred-percent run by privileged, highly-beholden upper-class citizens claiming allegiance to one of two mostly evenly-divided parties that generally must come together and reach a consensus before anything is permitted to move forward. The anachronistic series of instruments that comprise the United States Federal Government were manufactured specifically so that they would, as an integrated whole, appear to the uncritical eye as mostly indistinguishable from an effective democracy whilst in reality remaining impotent in their ability to impinge upon the freedom of the states and especially their most wealthy residents and largest investors in the economy in any significant way. While this may sound cynical, a healthy degree of cynicism and skepticism are necessary in order for anyone to adequately judge any part of the western world, at least when it comes to judging the actions of its most powerful members. At the risk of being pegged an extreme cynic, it is apparent that the Founding Fathers set the whole system up so that, as the creators of South Park have cleverly noted, they could have their cake and eat it too. They could, in other words, appear to lead into creation a new government for the people, by the people while at the same time remaining dedicated to the maximization of their fortunes and, thus, to the cost-minimizing exploitation of the common laborer (the people) that would be required in order for them to maximize said capital accumulation. This is the ugly side of negative freedom, as defined by a lack of limits or restrictions, that everyone from the moderate conservative to the radicalized libertarian doesnt seem to understand or else wont admit to during their diatribes against too much government and the constraints that it places on upper-class-based wealth creation and the mostly-disproven trickle-down-effect that they claim comes-about as a result: nothing is free.

All freedom comes at a price and, like everything else, is relative to the type of freedom gained, how it is won and maintained, who precisely possess it and to what limits that possession is assured. For just as one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter (it is an easily and commonly dismissed perspective most are too afraid to mentally put themselves in, but if you yourself had lost friends and family members to bombs dropped by armies that your culture perceives as imperialist invaders and occupiers, and for good historical reason, you might see things differently), one mans freedom is another mans shackles. When the wealthy and their personal-risk-reducing corporations (because, again, corporations are legal persons unto themselves, removing their owners from most liabilities, financial and legal) are free to exploit the worlds human and other natural resources with little to no negative repercussions to be expected from their short-sighted, selfish maneuvering and with their economic system rewarding, and thus promoting and incentivising, only profit levels, this negative freedom, or lack of obstacles and protections, is the reason for the capitalized worlds soft slavery and its accompanying injustices, almost all of which are tied to the growing disparity of wealth amongst the families of its separate and ever more separated socioeconomic classes. Yes, the top one percent is responsible for creating much of the worlds wealth, but theyre also responsible for the means by which such wealth is made and for its being spread so liberally within their little club and, as a direct consequence, so thinly amongst working class families. How much credit does the upper class really deserve for enriching the people when theyre both creating and either consuming, investing or sitting on the vast majority of that enrichment. For the most part it is the holders of equity, the owners, whom end-up winners in any few-holds-barred capitalistic socio-economy. Wealth, despite the assertions of conservative leaders, is a zero-sum derivation. Meaning that, in the amassing of wealth (which is essentially disposable income not disposed of), if the wealthy are winning there must, by necessity, be a loser: members of the working class. And the rate at which theyre losing is increasing all the time (see chart below).

Wealth is accumulated through the selfish consolidation of profits, and every profit is derived not from investment and hard work, which are actually the causes of development, which doesnt require profits, but from producing something as cheaply as possible and then selling it for as much as possible; always for far more than its worth. And while Plato might argue that some level of profit is reasonable in any justly-compensating economy, its safe to say he was envisioning something other than the modern day United States when he wrote The Republic. For in this capitalistic free market equation there are three main participants, two of them net-losers so that the third can be the net-winner: they are, respectively, the worker, the consumer and the owner (of stock or in the company directly). Members of the final portion of this equation are rewarded for how little he or she can get away with paying the first and how much he or she can convince the second to pay for the marked-up, cheaply-made product or service offered. A fourth participant, the white-collared business administrators and financial brokers, are broken-off a bit larger piece so that they can play the go-between the haves and the have-nots during the maintenance of this equation. Which is why, barring mans evolution into a morally-righteous, self-regulating being, the implementation of the free, mostly unrestricted laisser-faire-style socioeconomic system, such as is in place in the U.S., will always lead to the have-nots being ever more exploited by the have-lots until a Marxist-style breaking point is eventually reached and the subjugated proletariat (the working class) is forced into street protests. Occupy Wall Street is just the beginning.

We are a nation, an entire region of the increasingly westernized (or globalized) world, as a matter of fact, beleaguered by a system designed not for the people, by the people, as is far too quickly believed, but for and by the first American Good Ol Boys: the original rulers of a wide-open new world filled with opportunity that saw the need for the semblance of democracy, or the existence of propagandized democracy, in order to bind the consciousness of the general populace to its promises of freedom and equality in order that they might remain distracted from their plight as the first soft slaves of the western power players: being relegated to remaining mere cogs grinding the gears in the capital-accumulating machines of their aristocratic masters. Parallel to chess and military strategy, the worker in the west is the pawn. Pure capitalism, or the totally free market, is essentially the systemic promotion of soft slavery, or socioeconomic exploitation. Socialistic theory is founded as an apparent response to the inevitable failure that power-consolidating societies, such as those in the west, are predestined to reach at some point: inspired by keen observations of the historical abuses of power and its gradual consolidation, the record of which will continue to consist of more and more free market backed political and business leaders (a blurred and continually blurring line in itself), and on the realization that a system must be devised ahead of time for those unavoidable points in history when the vast majority of the people, after being exploited as non-owners and minimal beneficiaries of their enterprises and non-influences in their government for as long and as to great a degree as they find tolerable, finally rise-up in one form or another and demand justice in the form of a revised arrangement of interlinked governance and socioeconomics. When workers see no ownership in the fruits of their labors and are instead locked to lives of toil as budget lines to be minimized on the CFOs Balance Sheet, when they possess no ownership in the enterprise in which theyre employed, it is to be expected, according to Marxist theory and, arguably, logical analysis, that an unconscionable divide of wealth, influence and general satisfaction with life will mount to the point where it can no longer be sustained. Look to the Arab Spring, a movement centered on the principle of disposing of corrupt, entrenched dictators, families and structures that constantly act to grow such an unconscionable divide, and the more recent Occupy Wall Street movement for crystal clear signs that the day of popular unity and progressive, populist backlash is approaching, and faster than the top one percent and its cronies would care to admit.

The difference between the idealist and the realist is that the idealist has the ideas, convictions and courage necessary to fight and improve upon reality, as opposed to simply giving-in to, accepting and profiting from it. Keepers of the status quo pretend to regard idealists as fool-hardy but, truthfully, no single group of individuals scares them more. For it is the idealist that knows that without a democratic revival of the plutocratic republic that controls the United States of America all of our shortfalls as a country and, arguably, as a race will continue to be tied to and exacerbated by the fact that far too much control of the income, capital and resources of the country remain in the hands of a very exclusive slice of the white collar class of the population, a select slice that grows ever more selective every year. So how might we go about correcting the injustices at the heart of our socioeconomic and political systems that have lead to these inexcusable imbalances of wealth and power in the U.S.? One possible technocratic, truly democratic solution to our countrys compromised foundation is an internet-based construct that reorders some of our political and fiscal incentives around means of universal progress.

Introducing a Potential Solution

Under the Political Point System as herein defined, every voting-eligible citizen is awarded a total number of political points, or poly pts, based on a simple summation of two numbers (explained in a moment). That sum, or political point value, they may either spend within the online-based system by placing official votes themselves or else investing those points or chosen fractions of points in a separate voting entity or entities of their choosing on a vote by vote, issue to issue basis, granting another(s) the authority to vote for them. Such a system immediately grants true political power to the citizen, both directly and in terms of the increased options and positive freedom it grants said citizen: the freedom of protection from the wrongful actions of one or more persons exercising some form of negative freedom. If the citizen wishes to dedicate his or her points to someone(s) elses point total that they believe best represents them because, as examples, they feel they havent the time or interest in politics or else arent fully up-to-date on the issues, or because they simply want someone(s) they perceive as an expert(s) in some matter to make a decision for them on a political matter related to said expertise, they are free to assign their poly pts to any other person or registered voting entity or entities that they wish, thus increasing the voting power of whomever was in receipt of said transfer. Every citizen is thus empowered to either personally utilize or else invest their poly pts in another voting entity or entities, which can include anyone and everyone from, as examples, another member of their own households to a trusted representative to a political action group duly registered and tracked as a voting entity in the system. Citizens may further choose to apply the passing of those political points to said entity or entities for one vote on one ballot, certain votes on certain ballots, all of one ballot but only part of successive ballots et all the innumerable combinations involving hundreds of millions of potential voting entities, at least in the case of the systems hypothetical implementation by large countries such as the U.S. Every legally-established citizen can invest their poly pts for any custom-selected portion of any ballot they wish, depending upon, as recently suggested possibilities, how generally well-informed, up-to-date and passionately they feel on or about any particular issue, person or initiative represented on the ballot(s) in question. A citizen might want to vote on three issues out of dozens, and leave the rest to his or her favorite legislator or Executive Branch member, or maybe just the wise young man living down the block. While their political roles in western society would clearly be overhauled under the Political Point System, the legislative branch would still play a vital role in the suggestion, construction and ongoing reevaluation of law, as their knowledge and experience in legal matters will be fundamental in crafting bills that dont contradict previously-established edicts before the people ultimately vote upon whether or not to make them legal decrees. This is for the people, by the people.

In the revised version of a much more legitimate, modern and technocratic democracy that the Political Point System would establish, our political representatives would post summarized versions, or takes, of or on the upcoming initiatives, bills and politician match-ups to be voted upon by the people whom would, depending upon their political predilections, go to that representative or another citizens personal page in the online-based system (think Facebook for politics) to garner the information they need in order to make informed, confident voting decisions. This would all be accomplished via the online system itself which, along with serving as the platform for the distribution, trading and investing of political power (points) itself, would serve as a vital hub of information for the people it is a system designed with the virtues of social networking and the forces of the universally-empowering communications age at its heart. Not only every elected representative but every registered voter would have a page and a profile on the political point website, whether they decided to actively use it or not, where their stances on and summations of the current issues and coming ballot initiatives could be made available to any like-minded individuals, organizations and other voting entities to access and refer to (or to those opposed that want to challenge their viewpoints or analyze the opposition). The judicial, executive and diplomatic branches of government would still be critical to the leading and supporting of the popular will of the people, but would no longer be, in most respects, the only pullers of the handles of politics nor the principal determinants of the fate of the newly-democratically-empowered people that they would thenceforth guide but no longer significantly benefit from placating and misleading. Under the Political Point System the people are to be truly politically empowered by fundamental design, a design inspired by the lessons of history, from ancient to modern.

We can learn from and gain the virtues of the societies that came before us, such as the originally-democratic ancient Athenians, the theoretically anti-caste socialist states of the east and the more recently built free market empires of the west without making the same missteps historically tied to each failed or failing use of those systems. That is, almost all political and socioeconomic theory has, like all theocratic attempts to circumscribe and religiously-monopolize spirituality, something valuable to offer. But just as it is irrational pride that leads people to believe any one religion possesses and rules over the spirit that unites us all, it is the same foolishness that leads anyone to believe that any one political tradition holds all the answers to the challenges of a constantly-evolving world and global citizenship. Whatever the best answer, surely it is something flexible and efficient in recognizing and actually acting upon the popular will of all of its citizens, and surely it must be made-up out of more than just one theoretical tradition. It must, therefore, be a political mutt of sorts: the enactment, by popular force, if necessary, of a non pure-bred theory that, because of its interbreeding, possesses a better diversified and thus stronger and healthier genetic structure, one that has empirically learned-from and adapted to the malignancies of the modern era and is thus superior to any pure political canine, if you will. While leaders of the sucking-on-the-tits-of-power conservative party would surely deny this, we must realize that just because a certain classifiable theory of governance didnt work when enacted in any one particular point in history, such as with socialism and the Soviets, as the one example conservative proponents of laissez-faire socioeconomics most love to refer to, doesnt mean that such a system has nothing of value to offer the people of a progressive nation. John Stuart Mill once observed that although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid, it is true that most stupid people are conservative. From the experience of this writer, this is mostly accurate. I would add to this that the conservative party, the party of Mine, Mine, Mine, as Mahr has said, is primarily made-up of two groups: the more intelligent but corrupted by greed wealthy upper-classmen and women and their representatives working to maintain the status-quo that keeps those upper-classmen and women in their absurdly selfish positions and, secondly, but by far more numerous, it is made-up of the not-so-bright that tend to be easily manipulated by loud voices, easy-to-remember slogans and the clever propaganda campaigns created by those in the much, much more select first group that leads the abundant second group around by leash and collar. This may sound harsh, but the leaders of the conservative party are devoted to precisely that: conserving the Grand Ol Party tradition of keeping as much wealth within the upper class as possible via manipulation of the fearful, the prideful, the ignorant and the credulous.

Only an ignorant, gullible fool or someone that is greedily covetous and in the beastly clutches of an uncontrollable addiction to wealth and power would deny that Marx was onto something important in his Communist Manifesto and connected socioeconomic dissertations. Our highest successes as a nation and, likely, as a race, will not be realized until such time as we learn to act outside the box of established status quo orthodoxy. Only by setting blaze to the fears that keep us shackled (and that are constantly tightened by the purveyors of propaganda that stand to profit from such fears) to outdated, stodgy, inflexible systems of economics and government can we hope to meet our greatest possibilities as individuals, as a unified nation and, ultimately, as a unified race and world. To begin to break ourselves from these shackles we must all remember, or begin to admit to ourselves for the first time, that the powerful have worked to consolidate and grow their power and wealth at sum-zero loss of the people since the very birth of religion and politics, among other subjects. Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned by the proponents of left-wing politics, socialism, true democracy and populist movements in general (like Occupy Wall Street) is one that can be traced back to the Machiavellian tactics of Caesars: the greatest means by which the powerful maintain and grow their power is by making sure the people stay divided.

History has clearly taught us and the most respected thinkers and writers have clearly warned us time and time again that, because a united populace is a powerful populace, because there is power in numbers, Caesars political and military stratagem known as Divide and Conquer will forever be the focal point of any successful campaign to consolidate wealth and power at the top of society. Todays power brokers know the strategy all too well, continuing to invest in and enhanced its methodology to meet the challenges of maintaining their absurd levels of wealth and influence in the face of modern challenges, continuing erecting ever-stronger barriers against the rising, unstoppable tide of populist backlash that is surely coming. Despite the building of these ever more formidable fortifications in protective positions around the status quo, we must come-together in order to summon the necessary force to break the barriers the Tea Baggers, as Mahr comically refers to them, of conservative and American Dream custom so vehemently support. These institutionalized barriers that assure the empowerment of the few at the loss of the many must be dismantled or rearranged so that a much more universally-considerate system hybridized from the more progressive aspects of socioeconomic and political theory has the opportunity to rise up with the popular tide and plant its seed. The initial blows in this revolution, after first crushing the anti-intellectualism and gluttony espoused by the right, wont be delivered by the people until the people come to the realization that an immoral degree of collusion exists between money and politics in a free market society such as the U.S. In mostly laissez-faire capitalistic societies such as those entrenched in western world, money truly makes the world go round, feeding and turning the wheels of politics, law, big business and society in general all the while. Our united progression will only come after weve acknowledged as inherently unjust the symbiotic relationship that currently stands in the west between economics and the funding and pulling of the strings of government. Only then will we collectively possess the courage and conviction necessary to act toward building a modern democratic system around a more honest, comprehensive understanding of the marriage between socioeconomics and politics. Only then will we be able to build the type of structure that can support the needs of everyone it shelters.

Proposal Specifics

Empower every citizen through the more democratic rewarding of Poly Pts!

Calculation of total Poly Pts per eligible (of age, of sound mind etc.) citizen:

1 point per citizen, the Citizen Point, + a fraction of a pt based upon their Total Contributions from the previous tax year

The calculation of Total Contributions is a basic summation of all of the citizens monetarily-valued contributions to the government, the country and society-at-large in the previous calendar year, including total taxations and donations, turned into a regional percentile. The total monetary sum of all eligible contributions is compared to a state, county or a regionally-based database of taxable citizens from the same year in order to derive a percentile, from 1, representing the first percentile, to 99, representing the highest possible percentile that any citizen may fall under. This percentile is then converted into a fraction from, respectively, .01 to .99, which is representative of that particular citizens total contributions quantity in terms of adding up their total Poly Pts, which is, in turn, a summation of their one Citizen Point plus their fractional Total Contributions Point. Every voter is thus assigned a Political Point score or value of anywhere from 1.01 to 1.99, which they then may assign to themselves, another citizen or a collective of other citizens registered as a voting entity, as previously mentioned. Citizens are, therefore, given incentive in the form of greater political influence to give more to the state and to the needy, and even more for moving to, residing and investing in areas that draw-in less wealth and resources than others (since it is a by-geographical-area regional computation). Under such a system people will also be more inclined to vote and follow the issues relevant to both their local lives and their nation, being newly-empowered to directly influence their government and its decisions. They would be able to vote when they want to and pass the buck (their pts) when they dont because, as also previously outlined, they arent updated, are unsure or want to defer to someone(s) they believe has a better grasp on the issue or candidate (or whatever their reason or reasons might be). The Political Point System thereby honors the pure democracy we all aspire to confidently call ourselves a part of over the plutocracy our nation has largely become by directly granting political influence through the assigning, on average, of twice the point value to Citizens Points as to Total Contributions points, with contributions nevertheless given their due respect as representing the relative level at which the citizen financially supports the nation. The peoples citizenship, the relative popularity of their political opinions and the quantifiable contributions they make to their country, state and region are all respectfully factored into the process of determining every citizen or voting entities level of authority in the upcoming vote(s) and/or election(s). Of course, such a system would stand against the imperial status quo bred into the west by the plutocrats, corporations and lobbyists (the top few percent) that not only historically tend to value adding to their vaults and political muscle far more than to taking-advantage of opportunities for a more universal progression, but whom have demonstrated an appalling ferocity and degree of determination in maintaining said status quo. Overcoming the puppets of the moneyed in politics, media and big business and forcing the institutionalization of anything even somewhat resembling the Political Point System will be extremely difficult to the point of nearly being Mission Impossible. Given the critical nature of this mission, however, it will nevertheless be at the very heart of the peoples coming war against the forces that bind them. If we the people are ever to establish and enforce a more considerate political and socioeconomic arrangement that more justly permits opportunities for a fairer, ethical division of earnings and the other fruits of labor among societys disparate segments, and that concurrently guards against the commingling of power, wealth and resources that is the source of almost all Western weakness and injustice, it is a war that we cannot afford to lose. With the addition of one more provision, the Political Point System, were it ever to be adopted by a forward-thinking nation, has the potential to cut down the disparity gap even faster.

There is no doubt that, like our political processes and system in general, the tax code doors a pathetic job of granting equal advantages to all classes of society. Every citizen should be recognized as being worthy of the perks and write-offs it has to offer, especially those citizens that need those perks just to acquire the basic necessities of life and keep their families in decent health, as opposed to those perks primarily being a set of means by which the already-affluent can further cut the basis upon which they are taxed. Our tax code in the U.S. is, by and large, made for those that can afford to pay experts to find and pass large amounts of capital through its hidden loopholes. The Political Point System offers an opportunity to address this issue by folding taxation into politics more directly via, say, a cap and trade system that tracks and consolidates in one source of information all related tax dues on all levels (county, state, national) every year for every citizen, and allows them, if they so desire, to trade their dues, or tax liability, for a capped level of political persuasion. This would form for the middle and lower classes a greater hedge against debt and the potential sufferings of poverty while simultaneously creating further incentive for all citizens to be involved in the political processes of their local and national government (more on why in a minute). And since the use of Total Contributions brings-up the issue of tax liability anyway, allowing for the addition of such a direct taxes-into-politics feature into Poly Pts seems prudent.

In addition to its obvious political roll, the Political Point System could be tasked with tracking and confidentially posting to the private portion of every citizens personal online page their total tax dues and payments to all levels of government the year prior, including property and business related taxes etc, and use that total taxation amount as a projected basis for their current years dues, encouraging the citizen to be more productive year to year (keep reading for why). Then open-up, likely via the same highly-secured website, a financially and morally-incentivized market geared towards encouraging upwards mobility and social justice by allowing every voting-eligible citizen the option of trading up to 100% of their tax dues for the current year to another citizen (solely or as part of a larger voting entity) for up to half, or 50%, of one of their political points. To prevent too much consolidation of power at the top (which would effectively render the anti-plutocratic point of the Political Point System moot), every citizen would be limited to buying up to one full political point and to selling up to half of their Citizens Point per year, with a suggested starting ratio, which itself would likely fluctuate depending upon the market, of no lower than 2 to 1. That is, for every percentage of one political point (the lowest sale amount would be 1% of 1 political point, or 0.01 Poly Points) a buyer attains from a seller, with the buyer capped at buying one political point per annum and with the seller capped at selling half of a political point per annum, the buyer agrees to take-on no less than two percent of the total tax dues to be owed by the seller in April of the current tax year. While this would mean that the buyer would necessarily be informed of precisely what the seller paid in taxes the prior year (or at least their tax bracket from the year prior) at the time of the purchase in order that said prospective buyer be permitted to properly assess the investment, all such transactions can and likely would remain mostly anonymous; the buyer and seller need not know any more about one-another than they wish, though the seller may at least want to know the prospective buyers political persuasions and affiliations (more on this in a minute). As an example of such a sale using the 2 to 1 ration mentioned above, if the seller of fifty percent of his or her tax liability for the current year, due in April, in exchange for 0.25 political points (25% of one political point, to be utilized on all elections and ballots for the upcoming tax year) to the buyer, paid or had paid for him or her total tax dues of thirty thousand dollars the year prior, that one-quarter of a political point would cost the buyer fifteen thousand dollars plus or minus the difference in whatever the selling citizen ends up owing to the IRS (and the local government) in April, within reasonable limits.

To protect the individual citizen buyers of up to one full political point per annum from ending-up paying more than they can or many times more that they were prepared to pay when the dues of the seller(s) come due in April, there would have to be a ceiling of, say, 50%, in terms of the maximum allowable increase in the tax liability that the buyer would be obligated to take-over from any seller experiencing a fortunate and substantial jump in their income from the year prior. If, for example, one well-off citizen purchased 100% of the tax liability from a middle class citizen (for half a Poly Point) that paid $15,000 in total taxes the year prior, the most that buyer would be obligated to pay and must show the ability to afford to pay at the time of point transfer is $22,500, with the value of his/her purchase (the 0.5 Poly Points) staying the same regardless of any such increase or decrease in dues owed such as, in the buyers favor, the seller ends up owing a lower amount of taxes than was anticipated or projected. Any tax dues representing a greater than 50% increase over the same total dues the tax year prior would remain the sole obligation of the seller. Of course, all such tax-dues-for-political-point-exchanges would be ineligible for inclusion in the accounting of the buyers total contributions, else the system would be self-defeating. Three clear benefits to the citizen of adding such a quid-pro-quo provision to the tax code of the governing nation:

(1) Those that can least afford to pay their taxes can trade their tax liability to those that can most afford to take it over and pay it for them, as the wealthy will have the incentive to pledge to purchase the tax liability of those most in need, since these purchases would represent the buyers greatest bang-for-their-investment-buck in their acquisition of greater political influence for themselves and/or their voting entity, when applicable. Disposable income thus can be, as opposed to being disposed of in the acquisition of extra luxuries, used to take away the very real burden that taxation places on the less fortunate via a pledge to pay-off that burden when it comes, adding to the Political Points Systems capacity to promote and incentivize humanistic, communal, democratic principles and actions in general. Incentivising such societal investments for the wealthy (another possible incentivized addition to be proposed a little later herein) is especially important in the Political Point Systems mission of addressing the worsening disparity of income and wealth between the general worker and the upper ownership class for another reason that the markets, bailouts and subsequent rescue spending by the Federal Government have all too aptly proven: there is a very clear evidentiary link between the consolidation of too much wealth and disposable income in too few hands and the financial markets becoming inundated by the type of high-risk, high-return speculative investments that excess degrees of disposable money all too often ends-up chasing (I dont really need it. I might as well go all out with it). The evidence is even clearer that speculative investments, think the bundling of bad mortgages by investment-bankers betting on continued twenty-percent-plus home equity value increases year over year back in 2007, that such I have nothing to lose high-risk speculation leads to the type of market bubbles that eventually cause calamitous, crashing financial markets. Crashing investment markets, in turn, end-up hurting the struggling rather than the speculators, since the subsequent damage to the general economy leaves the middle and lower classes are the ones left at-risk of losing their jobs or having their wages cut, leaving them unable to pay their mortgages. Floundering economies also tend to lead to inflation. And inflation, of course, has a much more adverse effect upon the income-stagnating consumer of necessary goods, like food and gas, than it does upon the buyer of thousand-dollar hand-bags and two hundred thousand dollar V-10 automobiles. Adding to these injustices dealt upon those that have little to nothing to do with the calamities in the first place is the new too big to fail phenomenon.

If a business can still make profitable bets without the possibility of loss from those bets, then its no longer a bet, but a certainty; and certainly wrong, as the elimination of risk from the risk-reward analysis essentially abolishes any truth there may once have been behind the notion that capitalism is even close to fair. When the wealthy risk-takers still see the same possibility of reward without the real possibility of risk, as a bail-out of the wealthy bankers and their investors accomplished, leaving us to pay them for their greed-inspired mistakes, the people are really getting screwed-over. Its no wonder the gargantuan bailouts of investment bankers using the peoples tax dollars and increasing debt load has caused so much popular resentment and anger. Diverting as much of our disposable income back into investments in society (another idea on this topic in a minute) as possible is therefore critical to any systems successful promotion of civic virtue and dedication to the common good. Clearly there are tremendous goods to be gained by our collectively not buying the things we can most definitely do without and, as an alternative, finding more meaningful things to invest in. There is a line between comfort, even reasonable luxury, and the type of ostentatious lifestyle that consumes more of the planets finite funds and resources (not to mention polluting and scarring that planet in the process) in a year than a rural village in the underdeveloped world is capable of consuming in an entire generation. We must always bear in mind that wealth and resources are finite; when any one group takes too much, everyone else loses. Greed consumes everything, including happiness. Why? Because greed cant be satisfied, and because there is only one way to guarantee having more of what you want: want less.

(2) Because the current years tax-liability-to-political-point-ratio is projected from the previous years tax dues, every citizen selling any part of their current years tax liability is encouraged to make more in the current year (for themselves, their families, their favorite charities/causes and for the local, state and national government) than in the previous, as any increase in tax dues up to 50% is passed along to the buyer as well. The selling citizen is not penalized by the tax system for making more (from moving into a higher tax bracket), and keeps more of what he or she earns for his or her family.

(3) Those that sell any or all of a political point to rid themselves of the burden of taxation would, nevertheless, maintain the incentive not just to use their remaining point(s) or fractions of a point to the greatest possible advantage in the promotion of those political measures and representatives they most care about in the upcoming vote(s)/election(s), but they would additionally possess the built-in incentive to sell that half a point (or less) to someone(s) that would use it in a way they agree with. Sellers, knowing that buyers are looking for the best possible deal in the acquisition of increased political influence, would be encouraged to consider precisely how any potential buyer(s) might use the political points that being offered for sale. In order to justly implement the Political Point System, however, added safeguards would have to be put in place.

Considering that the majority, if not all, of the Political Point System and, through that system, much of the countrys power and decision making, would exist and flow through the sometimes vulnerable, hackable territories of the world wide web, the most extraordinary, spare-no-expense electronic and human-based series of protocols, protections and oversights would have to be integrated from the start. Also, as a MoveOn.org colleague of mine has pointed out to me, implementation could prove difficult considering not everyone has a computer or uses the internet, though this issue might be addressed by simply providing such persons access to an online computer once a calendar quarter. Not to mention the fact that with the computer becoming more and more affordable and widely-available, many of those persons and families not currently using online computers likely will be shortly. A more critical potential issue would also need immediate attention: some very specific rules would have to be spelled-out in detail protecting the citizens operating under and subject to the rulings of that system from potentially wrongful decisions and subsequent actions being made and taken against them. The wealth disparity could not be addressed, for example, by the popular vote forcing the upper class to simply hand-over some of their wealth. As a more general example, no law may be proposed and voted upon under the Political Point System that would lead to any unconstitutional deprivation of another, or others, of their life, liberty, property or any other basic human right. The judicial branch of government at all levels would need to be expanded such that any and all propositions made under the system can first be judged by one or more of its members not to contradict or conflict with any of the established laws of the land before that proposition even makes it to the virtual ballot box. Also, heavy and ongoing scrutiny would need to be allocated to making certain that only funds passed to the government and to charitable organizations, i.e. donations or taxes, may be counted towards total contributions. A wealthy family would not be permitted to, as another example, give a large sum of money to a political organization that just happens to do some goodwill community clean-up work on the side and have it count as a contribution to society which is, of course, the principle behind Total Contributions: they are contributions to social well-being either directly or via government. Only taxes and donations made to specific types of non-profits would qualify as contributions, as should, as an idea I explore more in a moment, monies given to groups classifiable under a new class of business ownership that might be established (please ask to see my EnrichWe outline for a related concept): a class of enterprise primarily owned and operated by aspiring small business owners and entrepreneurs with dreams of upward mobility; an enterprise class created exclusively to help level the competitive playing field of free market business that currently leans heavily in favor of the wealthiest citizens of the globalizing world. Only ownership, or equity, for more workers in the enterprises of which they are a part can, without an inadvisable complete socioeconomic overhaul into outright socialism, adequately address the disparity of wealth and possession and the interconnected injustices continuing to further drive-apart the broadly-defined classes of people and families making-up the capitalistic world.

Some Relevant Information

(All of the following information was sourced from the October 31^st, 2011 edition of Newsweek Magazine)

From page 16:

Average Annual Income of the top 1% = $1,530,773

Average Annual Income of the remaining 99% = $54,792

The Average Annual Income of the top 1% is about 28 TIMES that of the average citizen

Global Statistics from page 23:

1 in 8 people is undernourished

1 in 3 people lacks a hygienic toilet

1 in 3 city dwellers lives in a slum

Per Capital Gross World Income: $10,290

From Fareed Zakarias article on page 27:

"Most Americans believe that the Federal Tax Code is highly complex and fundamentally corrupt. They are right. The federal code (plus IRS rulings) is now 72,536 pages in total. The code itself is 16,000 pages Special interests pay politicians vast amounts of cash for their campaigns, and in return they get favorable exemptions or credits in the tax code. In other countries, this sort of bribery takes place underneath bridges and with cash in brown envelopes. In America it is institutionalized and legal..."

A Related Concept

With the dream of an exponentially-expanded entrepreneurial and business ownership class held firmly in mind, I would propose that at least this one type of for-profit investment be classifiable as a contribution under the system as I have defined it: investments made in enterprises that are pulling people up from fraught, unhappy lives mired in paycheck-to-paycheck struggles. This new governmentally-affiliated collective type of business enterprise, lets call it a social collective, would, by legal dictate and defined limitation, be compelled to spread its ownership out amongst all of its owner-operators, each and every one of whom would have to make less than a certain amount of income per year in order to apply for membership in a social collective in the first place (such applicants, as but one additional potential requirement, would also have to possess valuable, applicable skills that they would pledge to provide to the enterprise a voting process involving already-accepted owner-operators would likely be a part of the approval process), say about sixty thousand dollars per-annum, and would be additionally forced to sell their stock in the social collective as soon as their annual income from said enterprise passed, say, one or two hundred thousand dollars. The share of ownership granted to each owner-operator would depend upon how much of their money (if any), time and energy they are able to invest in the enterprise, all of which might by analyzed before receiving a total valuation by an independent panel of public workers hired precisely for their ability to accurately and objectively make such valuations.

The introduction of such a class of upwards-mobility-promoting business entities would give all citizens the opportunity to invest in a class of business entity that would not only be potentially profitable for them but which would grant them the immeasurable emotional rewards of giving to those less fortunate as well. Additionally, social collectives could represent the only investment vehicle available (details subject to debate) through which the investor can not only profit and feel the immense rewards of giving to the more needy but would be able to garner additional political power as well. If so investments in social collectives would potentially offer so many advantages over the other additions to the citizens Total Contributions point sum that it is foreseeable that they could become a very popular investment vehicle, helping to propel more working class people and their families up the socioeconomic ladder in the process. Other advantages might be extended to the owners of the social collective as well in order to further promote the disparity-cutting purpose for which theyve been suggested herein, such as tax breaks, subsidies and low-interest-bearing government loans. Further limits would have to be placed on these entities as well in order that their advantages not be abused by the already wealthy and that they continue to serve the primary purposes for which they are intended to be founded: to provide a clearer uphill path for hard working families: the American Dream that has been ingrained in us but has become mere fantasy.

As a potential anti-corruption clause to be added to the formation documents of every individual enterprise, all social collectives would be limited in the amount of ownership that the non-business-operating investors (i.e. not the under-sixty-thousand-per-year in income or less to start owner-operators) would be able to keep for themselves, always up to a maximum of 49.99% (for the rather obvious purpose of assuring that the operators remain the actual controllers of the company), and could, as an additional proposition, be guided under a state-sponsored act creating a public organization similar to the Small Business Bureau that would be legally empowered to assist this class of semi-private businesses (mostly private, but enjoying special public considerations) in the complications of creating concrete business plans and competitive business models and then maintaining healthy business ventures. This same organization would likely be tasked with completing the recently mentioned valuations of applicants as well. There is, needless to say, much debate that would still need to be had in order to nail down all the specifics rules under which these entities would come into existence and be regulated.

Examples of Political Point Calculations

As a specific set of examples to illustrate the Political Point System and how it attempts to accomplish its objective, which might be described as the objective of reversing the momentum of the currently growing western disparity gap of wealth and political influence amongst the classes through a more considerate balancing of every citizens monetary contributions to society against democratic ideals centered around the promotion of the universal opportunity (it is important to reiterate at this point that only greater opportunity for upwards mobility would be promoted via this system as described herein, not a communist-style guarantee of upwards mobility or wealth and income equality which, again, is inadvisable because it would undermine the ethics behind the meritocracy and the incentivising of hard, innovative work), here is what the calculation of political power and the level of tax protection might look like in a typified household at the 3 socioeconomic levels of lower, middle and upper class society:

An extended family of seven, three of which are gainfully employed and five of which are voting-eligible citizens, rents a four bedroom home and had a combined household income of sixty thousand dollars the prior tax year, thirty-five thousand of which went to expenses classifiable under Total Contributions, giving the household their five citizen points plus approximated total contributions percentile scores of .05, .08 and.15, for a grand total of 5.28 Poly Pts for this household of five voting-eligible citizens, a full five of which can be sold for tax credits (the Citizen Points). With only three of the familys citizens working and five points available for sale, this family can sell-off all of their tax liability for the current year for 1.5 Poly Pts, leaving them a household total of 3.78 Poly Pts which they may use to affect upcoming political votes.

A typical middle class family of four, with the mom, dad and teenager all employed and voter-eligible, owe more than their home is worth on their two mortgages and had a combined household income of one-hundred-thousand dollars the prior tax year, twelve grand of which was from the teens part time job at the local deli. Approximating the families Total Contributions percentile scores at .67, .43 and .06 and adding their three Citizens Points, the grand Poly Pts total for this household of three voting-eligible citizens is 4.16, 2.66 of which must be utilized or invested in other voting entities, the remainder of which (1.5 Poly Pts: 3 workers times half a pt each) can be sold.

An upper class family of five with four voting-eligible citizens, including an unemployed full-time university student and a young adult part-time worker, are staying at their vacation home in South Beach, Miami. Dad is a big-time CEO and mom is a lawyer, giving them approximate contributions percentile scores of .93 and .81, respectively, which, when added to the young adult workers .09 Total Contributions score and the households four Citizen Points, gives this upper class family of four voting-eligible citizens 5.83 total poly pts, 1.5 pts of which can be sold for tax credits, though the relatively high price of those points would make such a sale unlikely.

These examples are not meant to be indicative of anything other than this political points systems striving to give due credit to both sides of the term socioeconomics; a modernized, purified democratic society bound to an accounting of the economically-quantifiable contributions of each one of that societys voting-eligible citizens. The objective is to strike a balance between the strengths of historys great political theories and experiments while acknowledging the drawbacks of being too strictly and inflexibly devoted to any one such system. The Political Point System was conjured as an attempt to capture the heart of the ancient Athenian democracy, to return to a previous example, without the hubris and lack of control measures that permitted its voters to too-often-than-not peer pressure one another into the forming of easily rallied and provoked mobs prone to hasty action and shortsighted decision making because of their tendency to follow by the most convincing, passionately-expressive and zealous speakers, not the most studiously analytical and clear-headed orator on that particular day of political contemplation and decision making. Analysis of the worlds first verifiable democracy has, in hindsight, revealed this fatal flaw in pure democratic theory that political science students now know as the mob mentality. But the crafting of the Political Point System is also an attempt to honor the more significant social considerations and the devotion to at least a greater opportunity for the sharing of wealth and resources found in the judiciously constructed and well-run socialistic system without the communist killing of economic incentive through the mandating of set-in-stone earnings and possession limits regardless of the initiative, effort and innovation of the citizen. And, of course, the Political Point System is an attempt to give due respect to the countless life-enhancing rewards of the free market while guarding against the no-holds-barred type of negative freedoms that continue to permit far too much wealth and power to be consolidated at the top of globalizing societys absurdly top-heavy pyramid; a crumbling, ancient structure that continues to tilt perilously closer to crashing down on all of our heads.

Concluding Remarks

Eventually the type of democratic empowerment of every citizen of the nation that the Political Point System would lead to would, in turn, theoretically lead to a natural increase in the exercising of socialistic policies that would come riding-in on the populist tide that has already begun with the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movement. If and when this rising populist tide were to foment into an all-out typhoon, the socioeconomic and political landscape of the western world could be remade via the theoretically-accompanying of a gradual redistribution of income, wealth and resources amongst all people not by some form of unconstitutional mandate, but by encouraging the creation of public ownership and private collectives both for the direct benefit of the citizens and the state and for the protection of those citizens during their necessary interactions and transactions within certain inelastic segments of the economy, like the health care, insurance and utilities industries. If not fully funding citizens education through the undergraduate level and up to a certain maximum amount, as certain select progressive nations in Northern Europe do, the government should at least supplement the scholastic careers of citizens whose households bring in up to a certain maximum income amount as well. Both of these two important qualities of socialistic socioeconomic theory (encouraging greater distribution of income and the protection of the consumer and student through limited nationalization), sorry to all of those readers frightened by the S word (thanks Republicans), would increase public revenues and take the burden off the all citizens in all the socioeconomic classes by protecting them during their transactions involving those most-necessary of products and services (why theyre termed inelastic commodities, because their level of market demand doesnt move much even with drastic changes in the market price of the commodity).

The benefits to be had from legalizing and taxing marijuana are a prime example of a missed opportunity for western government; such a decriminalization campaign would not only result in the bringing-in of substantially more revenue for public expenditures but would save the government and the people hundreds of millions to billions of dollars a year in related legal costs. Regarding those black market products and services in general, such as narcotics and prostitution, currently run by black market thugs and their rackets that put all citizens at risk, following Amsterdams lead of creating well-marked and fenced-off Red Light Districts where these products and services can instead be regulated and taxed is where things are headed, not just nationally but globally. The logic behind this movement is simple and irrefutable: if you make a part of the economy illegal, such as marijuana purchases, you dont remove those transactions from your economy, for the demand will still exist, but you effectively create crime and enrich criminals willing to risk supplying that demand. Ideally, in those areas of the economy the government would be prohibited from taking-over completely government-sponsored enterprises still might be permitted to compete, though under certain restrictions that would keep them from decimating healthy competition in said industries.

Theres nothing saying being more open to government ownership, or big government done the right way, in the best interests of the people as a whole, cant be the answer to the massive budget and debt dilemmas of the U.S., and even lead to an opportunity for actual dividends for every American household while keeping the streets cleaner and safer and someday guaranteeing higher-education for every high school graduate, among other invaluable boons of semi-socialized economics. In all the game itself wouldnt be changed, but the governors of the rules of the game would go from the few disproportionately-privileged to the people as a whole, under the lead, rather than being leashed-along for the ride, of government representatives that may or may not do a good job actually representing the people, and hence should not possess an exclusive hold on the levers of the state. Once more, this proposition for the enactment of the Political Point System is not an endorsement of enforced equality, as in the pure communist model, but an endorsement of a hybridized socioeconomic and political system that would lead to a greater equality of opportunity for the earning of income, ownership and certain types of personal freedom. Everyone should have a more than decent chance to own or share-in the actual fruits of their labors rather than just the scraps the owners leave behind in the form of set salaries or wages that are purposefully minimized. Every citizen should have a clear path laid out in front of them by which they may, within a reasonable frame of time, share in the profits of their business, whether that business is privately owned, publicly owned, or owned by a semi-private social collective of citizens initially, though never indefinitely and to too unfair of a degree, supported by certain government institutions that assist certain strictly-defined startups, as but one idea. With the writers of societys rules and the major media houses acting as their cameras and megaphones in their message proliferations, among other guarantees of continued plutocratic control by the super-rich members of our capitalistic republic, only a national constituency newly democratically-empowered under such a more purely democratic system such as Poly Pts could ever come to threaten the grip of power the kings and queens of capital have on this nation and on the globalizing world at large.

The citizens of the world are ready for the next stage in our evolution.