There are a number of people with vast resources who’d like to reduce the importance of money in elections. They haven’t been able to do it. They’ve tried all sorts of ways to limit campaign contributions. They tried to support candidates who’d do it.  They’ve spent at least tens of millions of dollars and so far have failed.

What they haven’t done is talk to me. I’ve tried all sorts of ways to contact them. One even gave me his business card. I called the number daily and left messages. I sent emails and even a few paper letters- nothing.

On the one hand, I don’t want to complain about “how life is”, about how we easily see from our own limited points of view. We easily accept reasonable societal standards without questioning, and unknowingly we accept how they limit possibilities. On the other, it’s been a long day/week/month and I promised to publish a blog…

I traded some emails with an angel investor who invested in a political startup. The two developers he provided a little funding to, in my opinion, are not marketing well. To have a decent chance of making a difference, they need some professional marketing, and a budget. I took a chance and wrote a longer email to him, since I don’t have his telephone number.

He replied that writing a long letter wasn’t going to change anything. Then he justified their efforts, “they’re doing what they can afford.”

He’s justified. He’s following “best practices” for startups- you put a little money in and the founders are supposed to try little things and market-test them until they find a niche that makes money. If it doesn’t work, it’s not his fault.

Never mind that politics has other forces at play. It’s a different arena that no one seems to understand. I think I do, but my understanding isn’t proven, and when others look at it from their points of view, without talking to me at least, it seems to them that I don’t understand what they think they do.

So far, only a handful of people have understood PeopleCount.org from reading about it. And some of them read a bunch of my blogs.

I sent a brief business plan to another investment group that’s very concerned about politics. I received an email that they were “unable to participate with the PeopleCount endeavor due to the demands of their existing commitments.  We wish you all the best.”

About 1% of people that read about PeopleCount.org understand it. They read looking for things that are normally possible. About 90% of people I talk to get it. Often not for long- when I see them again, the understanding was clouded by all the mythology we tell ourselves about politics. So I tell them again, and they get it newly.

So it’s not just political thinking that’s inside the box. It’s startups, investing, even being reachable by phone…