American political apathy and ignorance aren’t the causes of our political problems.

Apathy isn’t a cause of our political problems. It’s a symptom.

If people who are apathetic about voting suddenly cared, what difference would that make? Would most of them vote conservative so Republicans could take over? Would most of them vote liberal so Democrats could take over? Would money stop determining elections? Would better people run for office? Would campaigns become less expensive? No.

Probably, if fewer people were apathetic, they’d vote in elections similarly to how people vote now. We’d have more people voting in elections. Probably the results wouldn’t change or wouldn’t change much.

Apathy isn’t a cause of our political problems. It’s a symptom.

Ignorance isn’t a cause of our political problems. It’s a symptom.

Similarly for ignorance. Why wouldn’t people learn about politics? Why would people ignore world events or history? Either because they don’t matter or when they care, it’s frustrating. People learn when there’s a reason to learn. Yes, some are curious and they satisfy that curiosity even if it’s uncomfortable. But not everyone’s like that.

Being uninformed isn’t a cause of our political problems. It’s a symptom.

Plus, apathy and ignorance support each other. If you don’t care, you don’t pay attention to the news. If you don’t pay attention, the news is boring. If you don’t know what’s happening, you don’t care.

Our political party system is frustrating.

Our political system is frustrating. Imagine someone is fiscally conservative but socially liberal. Which party would they join? Which party would they vote for? Imagine someone who likes socialism and equality, but thinks homosexuals and abortion are sinful. Who would they vote for?

In 2015, 42% of Americans identified themselves as independent. Only a quarter, 26% identified as Republican, 29% as Democratic. Maybe these are half of our citizens. So maybe 2/3 of them don’t vote. How can they care about elections when the Democrats and the Republicans won’t compromise?

And of the 55% who identify as affiliated with a major party, many must be near the edge or have at least some issues where they prefer the other party position or are more centrist.

We stick with the party system because it’s part of our culture. Because they’ve collected power and keep the system going, not because they’re good, right or fair. Not because there’s no better way.

There’s a better way.

A better way would be to have representatives and senators truly represent all their constituents, not just their parties. A better way would be to have a system where they’re accountable to us, the people, ALL the people. This is what PeopleCount.org is proposing. Please, join us.

Please, add your email to PeopleCount.org’s mailing list. We’ll start our beta in the next few months, and launch soon after. Try a new way of communicating. Help rejuvenate Democracy. Help end ignorance and apathy.

PeopleCount is a good idea, if you are willing to be responsible.

One guy, in his 30’s, was all set to join me in working on PeopleCount. But his friend argues that it’s a bad idea:

“If you get 10 elected officials on board and you get funding and it’s a non profit then it MIGHT be a decent idea.”

Let’s look at this. He wants to make it a non-profit, but it has to be funded. He wants to make sure we don’t make money, but he’s not willing for his friend to risk not making money for 5 months.

I talked with 3 congressional candidates, one of whom isn’t currently running, and a recent candidate for senator. The two current candidates said they will use the site and pay for its services. The other two said they would if they were running. But for this friend, 10 is the magic number. My plan is to have at least 20 by the end of February, but we’re not there yet.

And the whole “if X and Y and Z then it MIGHT be a decent idea” is wrong.

If it succeeds, then it was a good idea.
If it fails, but another effort succeeds, then it was still a good idea, creating the possibility that someone else can build atop.
If it fails and nothing comes of it, then either it wasn’t a good idea, or it wasn’t well enough executed, and people were too cynical to get past the failure.

PeopleCount is not a non-profit because, as I understand it, in California a non-profit requires an independent board. I don’t have that.

Right now, It’s too late for it to be a non-profit. We’re heading to market, low on time, lower on funds. Changing the form will just slow us down. Maybe in June. What I’ll need is some good people I trust to be on the board. I need to trust them to keep it non-partisan and to run it well. If it becomes a non-profit, I lose control. And no one else seems to get the vision yet. So I’ll need good people.

Basically, though, this guy is trying to judge “what PeopleCount is.” But PeopleCount is a work in progress. It’s nothing yet, except a possibility.

PeopleCount is what we say it is. It can work if we make it work. From what I’ve heard from politicians and citizens, it can work. People react to it like it’s impossible. But the ones that can listen and think for themselves change that idea. All the ingredients are available for it to work- users that want it, customers (politicians) that want it and are willing to pay for it, plus a population that’s crying out for it. It solves are most pressing problems.

The challenge is marketing- communicating the possibility.

This whole concept of whether PeopleCount is a good idea or not – it’s bogus. People can either make it into a good idea or not. You have that power. Take responsibility for your judgement. Take responsibility for your future. You can live a life of fear and worry and not doing what needs to be done, or you can step up and create the future you want.

If you haven’t already, please add your name to our announcement list. Or if you’re reading this after we’ve launched, become a user.

This question seems to arise on Quora in some form every few days: How can we make the world a better place? People ask me to answer. Of course, my answer is predictable.

An individual can communicate with another individual. A few people can communicate together. And we have broadcasting, where a single person, or a few people, can communicate to a lot of people.

What we need is a way for many people to all communicate with each other- thousands, millions, even billions. We try this with “representatives”, both in government, at the U.N., and at meetings like the recent climate talks. But it doesn’t work. I had no experience of being at the climate change talks, or being heard. Did you?

Do you remember Arab Spring in Egypt? They sent out the call for protests on social media and tens of thousands of people showed up. It was enough people that they felt strong, powerful, sharing their message of protest. Eventually, Mubarak stepped down.

But they had nothing to take his place. Their simple form of protest, plus their social media posts were insufficient to make a plan for their future. They did the usual thing, tried to find leaders and get them together. They, too, were insufficient and over the next weeks and months, the old order came back into power. What they lacked was a way for all the people to say what they wanted and choose a future together.

We have a similar situation in America. A minority rally behind the demagogue Donald Trump, unable to express themselves otherwise. Polls show that Bernie Sanders would beat Republicans much more easily than Hillary Clinton would, yet our primary system doesn’t express this well, with Clinton still way ahead of Sanders. Our system doesn’t even let us choose the most popular president. Is there some way we could all express what we want and design our future together?

PeopleCount.org proposes a solution. By voting on issues we could do exactly this- design our future together. By combining it with a way to hold Congress accountable, it’ll make a difference and be rewarding to use.

Imagine that PeopleCount were successful and adopted in other democracies. Imagine it were used by non-democracies, that dictators, and their populations, knew what the people wanted. Could changes be made peacefully? Imagine it were used in still-peaceful conflicts, like with Israel and the Palestinians- would it help for people to choose their future together?

How can we make the World a Better Place? Please add your email address to our mailing list and try out our prototype system of voting on issues. Expect us to launch by early Q2, 2016.

Can PeopleCount fix Democracy? Is it Possible? This question arose when Joshua Tauberer bravely, honestly and publicly proclaimed it is not.

Obviously I think it can. PeopleCount’s design, plus good product design, implementation, user testing, marketing and management will make Congress accountable to the people, increase competition in elections, and free politicians from being accountable to the wealthy and to party idealogues. 

Joshua’s post had a lot of assertions in it. As I write replies, I’ll add them to this page and replace the “TBD”, below.

“If there was an idea that could ‘fix” democracy, it would have been thought of already.”
This is complete nonsense. TBD

“Wasn’t GovTrack a good idea at the beginning?”
No, see my analysis of what Josh said the idea was.

“Let’s tell representatives what their constituents think. Then they HAVE to vote with us!”
This is just sloppy thinking. TBD

“Everyone should vote on the issues before Congress — Let the people decide!”
It’s presumptuous to say this can’t work. JT makes a straw-man argument. TBD

“Any method of delegating citizen votes is going to have the same sorts of problems…”
This is presumptuous. TBD

“Let’s make a social network for politics / civics.”
Something could work in this area, too.  TBD

“Until you’ve worked 5–10 years in government…you can’t see what needs change.”
This is called “mind-reading”, a common error.  TBD

“Individuals don’t hold power, groups do”
I agree. So how do individuals become groups?  TBD

 “Become an expert first and find your unique contribution to the world”
Typical advice, and much overrated. TBD

“Your idea has no value. It’s all about execution”
This is a trite phrase that investors recite. It ignores the quality of the idea. Great execution of a lousy idea also fails. Joshua, many of your ideas were decently executed, at least in some respects. TBD

tl;dr:

• “If you’re dedicated to fixing democracy, I can’t help you. Your ego is far too big.”
  Presumptuous. Personal judgements are always a logical error (ad hominem). TBD
• “Narrow your focus. The world is unbelievably complicated.
  Good advice, but not necessarily germane. “Big” doesn’t mean complex.  TBD
• “Make sure you’re solving a problem real people have”
  No argument
• “Governance is about power. Power is a social thing, not a technological thing.”
  True. And social happens through communication which can happen via the web.
• Find a problem.. Become an expert in it. Get a real job …”
  Just one of many ways.  TBD
• “Find the humility to say your idea might be total crap”
  There’s a difference between ideas and solutions. TBD
• “and demonstrate that you are willing to let your experiences guide you.”
  This is often a bad idea. Experiences usually validate your view. They’ll teach you that something’s impossible, when actually it’s just an unhelpful view. TBD

There’s a difference between a truism and truth. Truisms are true in a certain mindset, a certain perspective, usually the dominant cultural perspective. A truth is true in every known perspective and there have been many efforts to evaluate it from many different perspectives. This is why scientists are so careful to run many different experiments and have other groups replicate them as well.

When science deviates from this, they make mistakes about the truth. An example were the very few tests that seemed to show evidence that high fat diets made people fat and high cholesterol diets raised people’s cholesterol.

Arguing that things are impossible just means you’re stuck in a view.

And if you’re stuck, try a different view. It’s actually possible to create views, so create one that’s empowering.

In America, is fixing democracy possible? This article will look at the difference between whether PeopleCount’s approach to fixing democracy “can work” versus “will work”, and explore the “can” question. A lot of people mix these two together and in error, conclude it’s not possible.

To answer this, we’d have to analyze the political system and see what it would allow, and then analyze PeopleCount’s plans and the market. To be more certain, we’d have to do testing. While I’ve done all this, there’s always more testing to do.

Is this “Can” Question a Usual Question for a Startup?

For a lot of startups, confusing these questions is not a problem. A lot of startups tackle standard kinds of business or services, so it’s obvious that they can work if the execution is done well. The marketing especially must be done well, the market analysis and product positioning as well as the messaging and outreach. For these startups, this can all be thought of as execution. It can work, but execution will decide if it’ll work.

In fact, a lot of investors only evaluate the chance the company will execute well. They want to see the marketing analysis and tests, and they’ll check they’re sound, but these are just check-off items. Mostly, these just tell investors whether this first stage of the business has been executed well. Mostly, investors want a team that can execute.

But for a project like PeopleCount, the Can-it-work question looms large. PeopleCount proposes to fix problems that many think are intractable. Many people have tried to solve, or lessen, many of the problems that PeopleCount says it’ll solve, usually with little or no effect. Joshua Tauberer has been working in this field for 15 years and recently wrote an article in which he gave his perspective on why a solution is not possible. He’s very forthcoming in saying most of his efforts have failed.

Why does the “Is it Possible” question loom so large for PeopleCount?

Most people are negative about anything to do with our political system. And they are even more negative about our chances to fix it. It seems impossible. At the same time, many think we know what needs to be done to fix it.

Many people believe we can fix our democracy by changing some laws or by changing the Constitution. The laws people think need to be changed are mostly about money, such as campaign finance and corruption. Some think imposing term limits will help. Even if these could work, they require using the political system they’re trying to change. Most would require a political fight. In our current political system political divisiveness is a central cause of its dysfunction. Our political system is very resistant to political solutions. People know this, so oscillate between gearing up for a fight and being resigned to a broken system.

Think about this cycle of needing to use the system to change it. To get around this, we’d need some sort of outside-the-box solution, some sort of shift in the status quo to fix our democracy. We’d need a paradigm shift. But most people evaluate what’s possible by reasoning inside the status quo, where the change seems impossible. This is what makes the “can” question loom large.

In summary, for most people, the “Is it possible” question is a big one for PeopleCount. We’ll look more at this question in the next article.

This is a story about what it took for a friend to open up to this new political possibility. Three weeks ago, in early November, 2015, I travelled. In the beginning of the trip I visited a friend who has known about PeopleCount for a long time. I’ve talked to him about it many times. I had a new question for him:

Where are you on a zero-ten scale about PeopleCount, where zero is “it’ll never work” to a ten being “I’ll bet my life that it will work”?

That turned out to be a great question.

From 1 to 4 to 7!

He admitted that he had been a one. Just a one, for three years!

I’ve developed a new way of describing PeopleCount, so I gave him this new description. He was intrigued! He had a lot of questions and we talked for about two hours. At the end, he was a 4!

And then we worked at putting together the outline of a presentation. We worked together for about 3 more hours. At the end, I asked again- he said he was a 7!

He said the main things holding him back from being a ten was the risk that I won’t be able to form a team, build the product, or market it successfully.

My point: PeopleCount.org can work. Certainly if everyone’s a 7 it can work. It’s just about us believing government is accountable to us, and acting like it’s accountable using a system that allows us to act that way.

I have three questions for you:

1. Will you allow new political possibility to work?

IF PeopleCount can work, can we count on you? Will you be open-minded enough to give it a try? If so, try the prototype, and put your email address on our mailing list.

2. Will you become an advocate of this new political possibility?

To do this, you’d have to understand How it Works from a high level, as well as lots of details. To start, read my other blog articles. And then start telling people about it. If you have questions, or there are questions you can’t answer, ask me in an email or in a comment below.

3. Will you help make this new political possibility work?

You can become a user, or make a donation or offer assistance. We need help with writing, creating questions, and finding informative articles.

Mention PeopleCount.org in your blog or in comments on other websites, or write an article and get it published.

We need marketing help, including writing copy, short scripts and screen-plays.

We need help creating specs and mock-ups as well as with all sorts of coding.

And we need help with funding, honing a presentation and reaching philanthropists or investors who are open to possibility.

In the last article, we saw how a mother realized her grieving wasn’t serving anyone. Her drama of loss wasn’t serving herself, the world, or the what her daughter had stood for. So she took responsibility for creating her grief, completed her relationship with her daughter, and then created a new way of being for herself, one that celebrated her daughter and brought joy and love to the world.

This is a wonderful example of how someone can identify her own thoughts and meanings and see that she creates them. She saw the difference between the fact that her daughter was dead and all the meanings she had about it. Once she did that, she was able to accept that she now lived in a world where her daughter was gone.

Seeing that she created the meanings, she had the power and freedom to create meanings that were a contribution to herself and the world, meanings of joy and possibility befitting who her daughter was.

Similarly, we create our political system. Today we create that parties must fight for power and are at odds with each other. We create that our voices don’t matter and then we get frustrated and resigned. We create that we can’t do anything about it. And we behave in accordance with these truths that we created. We end up all dancing around a system where they’re all true.

We weren’t the first to create these meanings- they’re common in our culture, and many, many others also create this dance. But each time we believe them, we create them anew.

Instead, let’s create that Congress can be accountable to us, the people. Let’s create that politics can be us saying what we want our collective future to be, and government can be us working together. Let’s not just say that America is a country of the people, by the people, and for the people, let’s create it as being that, and build a political system consistent with that vision.

If she can do it, you can do it.

Please be my partner in creating PeopleCoun.org. You don’t have to put in all your time and money, as I’m doing. Spend just 15 minutes a week answering questions, and donate $100, or whatever you can afford. Then invite your friends.

A woman asked on Quora: How does a person live life after the death of an adult child?
My answer: After the death of a child, you accept the world the way it is, without your child, and design a new life. This article will tell you about a woman that did this.

My life is about transforming politics. Part of that is to blog daily. So I’ll answer the question and then tie it into politics in the next article.

I have a friend who lost her daughter to cancer, just as the daughter was finishing high school.

My friend did a lot of work to see how her despair was due to her expectations about life. She expected she’d share her daughter’s life as she navigate college and boyfriends, a career, marriage and a family. She missed her daughter, and yearned to be with her, to listen to her, to share with her. So she learned to relate to her thoughts and feelings as thoughts and feelings. She learned to experience her expectations and sadness as expectations and sadness.

And she realized she didn’t want to let her sadness go. Life seemed very unfair. Hanging onto the sadness showed the unfairness and her suffering. She saw that by living a life of sadness, she was moving far away from the life she had wanted, far away from the joy she had with her daughter. By being “real” about her emotions, she saw that she could be real about her daughter being gone. She then let her be gone, dead. She “completed” her relationship with her daughter. That is, she let it be the way it was, a whole, complete experience, now past. In the sense that God gives us the world, God was giving her a world without her daughter and she had been refusing it. She then had the freedom to accept it.

Her daughter’s physical body was gone, but her joy and hope and goodness and energy could be created in any moment. My friend could create it, others in her family could create it, the daughter’s friends could create it. The essence of her daughter could live on if they created it.

So she did. She accepted that her daughter had died, and that the community that knew her could keep her essence alive. She keeps in close touch with her daughter’s friends. She made the anniversary of the daughter’s death be a day of community celebration and donation to charity. She brings memories and thoughts of her daughter as joy and love everywhere she goes.

Her daughter is dead. And her daughter lives on in the world, an anchor for relationships, an inspiration for lives, a source of joy and love.

In the next article, we’ll summarize and tie it into politics.

Someone on Quora asked me, “Can orthodox thinking change the world?”

Yes and no. No: We’re probably not going to change the world with the thoughts we’ve already had. But yes, it will include orthodox thinking that will change the world.

But there’s more to thinking than just thoughts. Before 2017, PeopleCount.org will begin changing the world. It’ll start by making the US Congress accountable to the people. It has no new new technology in it. In fact, one might say there’s no new thinking in it at all. It contains a bunch of old thoughts, applied to the domain of politics.

But it’s a new context for politics. It’s a context of empowerment of voters, and responsibility for governing ourselves. It’s a context of politicians serving people and representing them in the problem-solving process of governing a country.

You could say none of this is new, as well. We’ve long had the notion of “public servants” and “representation”. The problem has been that they had conflicts of interest, so they were servants of wealthy interests, while trying to be public servants. They had the intention of representing us even though we couldn’t say what we wanted and they couldn’t hear it. So we had a fictional world of intention that didn’t match their real world, and it didn’t work. But occasionally it was close enough that we could maintain our mythology about it.

On the one hand, there has never been the possibility of a democracy that was truly representative. On the other hand, you could say that we’ve had these ideas all along. And though there’s nothing in the Bible about democracy, this new way of governing will make possible peace and prosperity, kindness to neighbors and the poor, treating others as we want to be treated.

While there is plenty of thinking about these virtues outside of orthodox Christianity and Judaism, yes, this kind of thinking will change the world. And, we’ve had this kind of virtuous thinking for years. It’s been changing the world for millennia.

In the first post of this trilogy, we saw that our pervasive political truth is that it is “office politics” writ large, about fighting each other. In the second, we saw that it’s not really true, it’s a context. Can we choose what political context we’re living in?

The poet Edna St. Vincent Millay said: “It is not true that life is one damn thing after another. It’s the same damn thing over and over.” It’s the bad kind of politics over and over because we mistakenly see it as true. Occasionally we doubt it, or see something else. But then something happens and we stop. We then refuse to see it’s a choice. So we keep choosing it. And then we say, “That’s life.” As if it’s true.

What if we become aware that it’s a choice? What if we see that we can make another choice. What if we invest a little bit of time, effort and even money into another choice, a new choice in which people count? If you invest in it, it’ll become a bit real, a bit true. Living into it and creating it will help make it real for all of us, truer and truer.

What if we build a structure that supports people counting in politics? We design the roles and responsibilities and rewards so it supports us continually creating a future where politics is simply how we work together constructively to guide government and hold it accountable? We’ll give it an organization and rules that support its success. We can make it empower citizens, elected officials and even candidates running for office, so it can grow and become stronger.

It’s really just a choice. But we choose. Until you choose a solution and act on it, you’re choosing to perpetuate it. I suggest you choose a solution that delivers real political accountability.

You’re either part of the solution, or part of the problem. Choose.