Very, very impressive. But as you well know, this is only a beginning.
I’m a retired gig worker, subsisting on SS and family, but I have a way with words -I made my living as a writer (speeches, training/learning, educational entertainment). I live in a rural area of California and am looking for folks to work with (in my case, work = communication).
Using the labor Union experience as a model, I believe that before action there must be organization. Any ideas on how to engage, and with whom?
When I say short form messaging, I envision posts in social media that go something like:
"Why should people who work full time need government assistance to be able to afford a dignified life? - Check out USOS to find out how that can change. [LINK]"
"Why shouldn't people pay towards funding society proportional to how much they have taken from it? - Check out USOS to find out how we can make that happen. [LINK]"
Get a bunch of such questions that touch on people's common sense/basic values of fairness/responsibility/etc. Make these questions/solutions synonymous with USOS, and the attention should follow, and with it buy-in and support. Then at that point it becomes a matter of being properly organized/systemic/intentional the way the Powell network folks were, rather than being all-over the place the way that left leaning movements tend to end up.
As a general (communication) I would probably not so much ask “why” as “what would you do” - to really answer why is above most folks’ pay grade (complicated) and is pretty general. Making it personal is hopefully both more do-able and more specific, concrete.
As a general note, the more communications are tests - if you’re big enough to track responses/clicks to different approaches (headlines, key words, etc.) — the more likely you are to build the right messaging. Marketing whizzes are no better than anyone else at knowing how people will react to a specific message, they just have better testing and feedback strategies. That’s one advantage to building our own “discussions” group. (I started my writing career in direct response/catalog sales. The lessons stayed with me in all the writing I’ve done — know your audience,)
Thank you for the feedback. It was a real challenge to put together (I began working on the USOS concept several years ago) in a package that I think is a good balance of comprehensiveness and conciseness (even though it's fairly long as it is).
100% agree on it being only the beginning as well as the issue of organization. In fact, I think the union issue is a very apt analogy, because often times people have been taught to see unions as bad for their own interests despite the historical record strongly saying otherwise.
I think the hardest challenge is that while I think The Freedom Illusion provides a compelling argument for the underlying cause for the mess we're in today, and a compelling blueprint for the solution, it is not something your average person is going to read. I'm working on a much shorter version that gives the gist of it, but I think that it works precisely because it goes through the history/arguments so comprehensively as to shut the door on all the likely objections. So, I only really see 2 paths:
- (top down) Get it in front of enough people who are both willing to read it (and hopefully be convinced by it) who already have a large reach and who can incorporate its ideas in the information they put out there. The problem here is that there are a lot of people whose financial interests lie in maintaining the status quo when it comes to favoring single-issue solutions and divisions across race/religion/class, both of which guarantee victory for the extraction ideology. So, then this boils down to persuading them that they can lead on something that could be even more financially beneficial because it's innovative and could actually work. For those who don't have a financial stake on the status quo, it'd be just a matter of getting them to look at an idea that has no "pedigree" behind it, which can be challenging.
- (bottom up) Create precise, short form messaging that refers back to it to get people interested in the ideas behind it. The problem here is that there's so much information out there that it's very hard to compete for people's attention.
Whichever the case, it comes down to getting as many eyes as possible to look at the ideas and to try and persuade them. I think the key is going to be in leveraging personal connections AND social media.
Thanks for your reply. As I said, I’m in awe of what you’ve done, and not surprised it took years.
As to the top-down approach, my experience working with global organizations suggest it’s possible to make an appeal to basic shared values, and then encourage an honest self-evaluation of how consistently we apply those values to the world we live in. Reinforce the idea that they we actually contributing to our well-being by being honest about those values and how we manifest them, day-to day, action-by-action.
My understanding of history and culture is that the only meaningful changes are bottom-up, and may take generations to really materialize. I think they also start to gain traction in local environments — family, clan, tribe, city, state. This means, I think, breaking the central argument into bite size pieces, articulated as you would to a first grader. Easily remembered, easily passed, completely consistent with the facts AND with the emotions.
I make my peace with the slow pace of bottom-up by thinking about the Buddhist idea that right actions are not judged by their immediate outcome — do what’s right and let it go .Onward and upward.
Social media can be a powerful tool, and it looks like you have a good start. The challenge is getting beyond the algorithms. Are a part of any discussion group type of feedback system? That is what I am looking for, as a first step for an individual to organize and then act.
Not going to lie, I had not even thought of having/participating in a discussion group. As good as I might be at organizing/synthesizing ideas I'm equally bad at organizing/interacting with people (Asperger's here, my social skills are let's say, underdeveloped). So this is a great idea, and I'm sure there are a multitude of others I'm probably not going to think of.
On the bottom up vs top down I wasn't so much proposing a choice as much as saying we probably need to do both. I completely agree on the power of slow and steady bottom up, but my fear is that we're currently in close to what amounts to a free fall towards authoritarianism/fascism such that we don't have the luxury of time that a pure bottom up approach would require.
Back to ideas on how to propagate this though, any suggestions on discussion groups? How does one even find a discussion group for something like this? Do you think we should try to put one together? Any other ideas?
And please let me know if I start asking too many questions.
I would be happy to start a conversation, and hopefully pull others into it. I’m a big believer in heuristic progress, failure is a good thing if one learns from the experience, and more brains are better than one, IF there is agreement on the objectives. I have no idea on the best way to start this, but your sub stack may be a great place to find likely voices. Let’s keep talking.
The overarching objective I envision, as Part V says, is to create and spread a vision of how we understand ourselves that counterbalances and defeats the one the Powell Memo set out, very successfully, to build. One centered around these 5 values that seem to appear at the core of cultures that achieved any level of success over the last 5000 years, even if they may have eventually collapsed (typically as they began to deviate from these values and focusing on domination/extraction instead). Practically, that translates to a few things:
- Uniting all of our single-issue silos into one massive, cohesive, force with the understanding that unless we can build a full vision/story that becomes the new default (one where extraction isn't the acceptable norm) that delivers stability and dignity to people, that none of our single-issue priorities will ever really win. Build a vision, deliver to the people, and the single-issues will naturally follow once people see that our vision, which includes those issues, actually delivers for them.
- Refusing to fall into the neoliberal trap of fighting on its preferred divisions: race/religion/class. For instance, yes, we have extreme wealth inequality, but the answer isn't "eat the rich" mentality. There are plenty of wealthy people like Warren Buffet who recognize the problem who support a more just society. Wholesale painting all of them as the evil enemy to be destroyed only gives them reason to cluster together against us rather than split them up and bring some of that power to our side. The same is true of religion. There are too many who view religion as something to be attacked/destroyed, rather than as one path to the same values we're advocating for. I'd rather live in a world where I respect people's rights to believe in some myths while they recognize that science is how we should make decisions, than one where every religious person sees science/reason as the enemy. We should be empowering religious people who are against weaponizing religion for domination/extraction, again, split them up, bring the good ones to our side.
- We need organized, effective, efficient, expertise. Yes, the extraction machine thrives in hierarchy. But the real problem is how those hierarchies are built (often dynastic, entrenched, exclusive) and what they are for (maintaining and expanding extraction). I think we too often fall into the trap of then aiming towards being completely disorganized. I would hope to eventually see our side build entities that operate as effectively/efficiently/expertly as ALEC/Heritage/Federalist Society/etc. I find it sad that we can get so many millions of people out on the streets to protest, but that all the energy doesn't then materialize into substantive changes in how we organize society (what laws get passed, how we interpret law, what children get taught, what we see in the media, etc.).
- We need to actually accept the constraints of reality as it currently exists. This may sound absurd to say, but too often I hear folks aim for goals that we "must achieve now" that are supposedly pre-requisite for everything else to work. Getting rid of the electoral college, getting national rank choice voting or reversing Citizens United for example. These are all things that ought to happen, but they are also things that given our current general organization of society are essentially impossible to achieve, for now. This also means accepting that certain technologies exist and how communication flows, especially in terms of efficiency. Yes, X/Facebook/Instagram/TikTok/etc. are all highly problematic. But they are also where communication travels most efficiently and in greatest volume and reach whether we like it or not (I absolutely despise social media). Not using them guarantees we lose. AI has a lot of problems, but it's here, not going anywhere anytime soon, and used properly, is a force multiplier. The other side is already using it as a force multiplier on top of the disproportionate amount of power they already have. Refusing to use it guarantees we lose.
Personally, having spent years looking at all the different things that have worked/failed on both sides, I am confident that the first high impact thing we must build is almost like a mass deprogramming effort designed to create a wedge between the extraction machine and the people they convinced to vote against their own interests by showing them how much of the identities they've adopted were intentionally manufactured to exploit them (and to a large degree, right now would have been the perfect time for this push were we already prepared - see more below). To show them the direct connection between the pain they're experiencing today to the very machine they support, and how that same machine manufactured the issues they care so much about as a distraction. But for that, we need to get a critical mass of people on our own side who have a strong grasp on these things. And so, our primary objective would be to mass "educate" our side on how the machine works, how it was built, and how to break it.
Sorry, one more thing: there's a subtlety around simplicity. Though it's an important aspect of helping to ensure democracy and human flourishing (by preventing grifters and extractors from gaming the system, using legalese to find loopholes etc.) there's a sense in which this simplicity is embedded within a type of complexity that's good: of being part of a complex adaptive system. This concept is widely applicable in biology, economics, sociology and technology. For our purposes, we want to ensure that the system remains ADAPTIVE, and in a way that is responsive to the needs of human flourishing.
Adaptivity is they key role of the Oversight Pillar. Proactive review of implementations, transparent metrics, and responsiveness to the public. Simplicity at the institutional level. This is covered in the Institutional Pillars article.
Amazing stuff. I'll be sharing this in every way that I can. Just a thought: might the phrase "Unified Social Operating System" not inadvertently parlay into Musk and Thiel's views about everything as "software"?
I came up with the name several years ago before their ideas were as salient as they are today. On the flip side, it might help capture some of their audience.
I don't know if you saw the links at the bottom of Part V. But I have released more detailed articles for the different parts of USOS. They're easy to access in the main page of the American Manifesto on the right side if you scroll down.
Also, in depth parts of USOS are in part most for reference/definitions so that it can be clear how the different parts of the system are meant to interact and operate. They don't read like a narrative/philosophical argument like most of the other parts of my writing. Just figured I'd give a headsup.
All very true and very pertinent. I would like for you to have mentioned Bernie Sanders (as an example of an advocate of a counter narrative to extractionism), social democracy (as an ideology with an anchor and view of power that goes beyond mere commitment to procedural liberalism) and intersectionality (as the nucleus for how siloed narratives and struggles can animate one another), if only to differentiate your own views from them (or to clarify whether you see them as launching points/having significant overlap with your position).
In fact, I did speak about Bernie's movement, only not by name, back in part III in the Weight of the Default section (see below).
Also: while Bernie and other Social Democrats (by the way, I fully support them) are definitely much more USOS aligned than any other major part of the political spectrum in the US, I think that they still do not have an actual power-competitive ideology of human flourishing as I describe in part III:
- They are still playing/operating within the class warfare framing which is beneficial to neoliberalism, as explained in the section below.
- Finally, while their values are noble, especially as it relates to getting dignified wages/healthcare/education/childcare/affordability, this is just one dimension (economics) of what it takes to build a full power-competitive ideology.
Combined, these 3 factors will almost guarantee that they cannot win in the long run (as evidenced by the fact that Bernie has been saying the same things for decades now while struggling to gain traction).
Here's the key section so you don't have to go hunting for it:
---
"Which brings us to the hardest case: billionaires.
Everything in this book could be misread as class warfare—as saying the wealthy are the enemy and we need to defeat them. But getting this wrong leads to strategies that backfire.
Start with a distinction that matters: accumulation is not the same as extraction. The drive to accumulate wealth is part of human nature—one of the engines of progress when properly channeled. Extraction is something different: using leverage to take from others in ways that leave them worse off. The malignancy isn’t in human nature. It’s in the ideological environment that channels human nature toward predation rather than production.
The New Deal proves this. People were just as ambitious, just as hungry for success. And yet we got actual human flourishing—however flawed, however incomplete. The Powell Network didn’t change human nature. They just delivered an ideology that channeled accumulation toward extraction instead of shared prosperity.
You can’t blame a fish for not walking. And you can’t defeat someone into having a capacity they lack. Until a complete ideology of human flourishing exists, people will operate within the frameworks available to them—and right now, neoliberalism is the water they swim in.
The strategic response isn’t class warfare. It’s proportional responsibility: those who benefit most from the system have the greatest obligation to maintain it. This isn’t punishment; it’s reciprocity. Wealth doesn’t emerge from individual genius alone—it emerges from infrastructure, education, legal frameworks, and social stability that others built and maintain.
“Billionaires shouldn’t exist” and “eat the rich” are broad attacks on the drive for accumulation—part of human nature—that plays directly into neoliberalism’s framing of class warfare rather than focusing on the extraction that is the actual problem. “Success comes with proportional responsibility” reframes the conversation entirely: it’s grounded in fairness, in reciprocity, and it offers the wealthy an off-ramp to be on the right side of history.
Here’s the strategic upside: building an ideology that welcomes the wealthy as part of the solution will cause a split among them—between those who genuinely want to be seen as benefactors and those who just want to exploit society. This isn’t about letting billionaires have their way, or about mercy. It’s about strategy: this is how we take control of the framing. Neoliberalism’s power rests in part on keeping the wealthy consolidated into a single bloc. Playing into the class warfare framing only strengthens that consolidation. The constraints on extreme wealth will come, framed within an ideology supported by the wealthy, if done correctly. We’ll explore what this looks like in Part V, including a specific mechanism (The Meritocracy Tax) for operationalizing proportional responsibility in a way that honors achievement while ensuring it serves everyone.
And here’s the biggest trap in focusing on class warfare.
Framing the problem this way lets everyone else off the hook. As long as we’re not billionaires, we can cling to our own incomplete frameworks and tell ourselves we’re on the right side.
We’re not.
The liberal who defends procedures without realizing liberalism is the arena neoliberalism was designed to exploit—not a competitor that can challenge it. The socialist who frames solutions as redistribution or class warfare, playing directly into the division strategy that keeps the extraction machine’s beneficiaries consolidated. The atheist who attacks religion wholesale, ignoring that religious traditions contain genuine wisdom about caring for the poor and the stranger—and forcing potential allies into the arms of those who would weaponize faith against flourishing. The theocrat who insists their path is the only path, blind to the fact that secular and religious frameworks have both produced means to flourishing and means to destroy it."
The one thing that gives me hope every day is precisely the fact that almost everything we're living through today can be traced back one way or another to a very few minds like Powell, Weyrich, Falwell, Atwater, etc. Ten, fifteen people at most. They had ideas for how corporations could dominate America, the corporations decided to give their ideas a shot, and here we are now...
Honestly, I don't even think that I'm being that ambitious. They've been showing us for 40+ years now precisely how to win the game. And 40 years before that the New Deal showed us how to build prosperity and dignity. For the tens of thousands of words in this series, I think I'm saying something pretty simple: unless we accept the reality that this is an ideological conflict and play to win the same way the other side is doing, we'll lose our country to fascism.
I don't know if my ideas will ever have the impact that Powell's or Weyrich's did. But there's only one way to find out.
It's true, we do have history to guide us--if we pay attention & unnerstand how to relate it to the present. But as I say on one of my profiles: "What we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history."
At least some of us do, tho. And as long as we keep trying, there is hope. :)
The ideological argument is correct The electorate has bought into the need for the human flourishing ideology after the experience with the Nazi Republicans, technocrat bros, widening of the wealth gap, and the failure of the extraction system working for the governed people It's clear that the electorate wants a new approach to governance But this approach needs a political leader amongst the Democrats to make it happen
The missing aspect to this new ideological approach is the lack of recognition of the basic economic struggle of the fiat currency system which will implode in the coming years if not sooner See MacleodFinance substack channel The current economic advisors are all Keynesian in their approach and a new currency system must be established using a bimetallic standard as designated by Article 1 in the Constitution
Very, very impressive. But as you well know, this is only a beginning.
I’m a retired gig worker, subsisting on SS and family, but I have a way with words -I made my living as a writer (speeches, training/learning, educational entertainment). I live in a rural area of California and am looking for folks to work with (in my case, work = communication).
Using the labor Union experience as a model, I believe that before action there must be organization. Any ideas on how to engage, and with whom?
When I say short form messaging, I envision posts in social media that go something like:
"Why should people who work full time need government assistance to be able to afford a dignified life? - Check out USOS to find out how that can change. [LINK]"
"Why shouldn't people pay towards funding society proportional to how much they have taken from it? - Check out USOS to find out how we can make that happen. [LINK]"
Get a bunch of such questions that touch on people's common sense/basic values of fairness/responsibility/etc. Make these questions/solutions synonymous with USOS, and the attention should follow, and with it buy-in and support. Then at that point it becomes a matter of being properly organized/systemic/intentional the way the Powell network folks were, rather than being all-over the place the way that left leaning movements tend to end up.
As a general (communication) I would probably not so much ask “why” as “what would you do” - to really answer why is above most folks’ pay grade (complicated) and is pretty general. Making it personal is hopefully both more do-able and more specific, concrete.
As a general note, the more communications are tests - if you’re big enough to track responses/clicks to different approaches (headlines, key words, etc.) — the more likely you are to build the right messaging. Marketing whizzes are no better than anyone else at knowing how people will react to a specific message, they just have better testing and feedback strategies. That’s one advantage to building our own “discussions” group. (I started my writing career in direct response/catalog sales. The lessons stayed with me in all the writing I’ve done — know your audience,)
Thank you for the feedback. It was a real challenge to put together (I began working on the USOS concept several years ago) in a package that I think is a good balance of comprehensiveness and conciseness (even though it's fairly long as it is).
100% agree on it being only the beginning as well as the issue of organization. In fact, I think the union issue is a very apt analogy, because often times people have been taught to see unions as bad for their own interests despite the historical record strongly saying otherwise.
I think the hardest challenge is that while I think The Freedom Illusion provides a compelling argument for the underlying cause for the mess we're in today, and a compelling blueprint for the solution, it is not something your average person is going to read. I'm working on a much shorter version that gives the gist of it, but I think that it works precisely because it goes through the history/arguments so comprehensively as to shut the door on all the likely objections. So, I only really see 2 paths:
- (top down) Get it in front of enough people who are both willing to read it (and hopefully be convinced by it) who already have a large reach and who can incorporate its ideas in the information they put out there. The problem here is that there are a lot of people whose financial interests lie in maintaining the status quo when it comes to favoring single-issue solutions and divisions across race/religion/class, both of which guarantee victory for the extraction ideology. So, then this boils down to persuading them that they can lead on something that could be even more financially beneficial because it's innovative and could actually work. For those who don't have a financial stake on the status quo, it'd be just a matter of getting them to look at an idea that has no "pedigree" behind it, which can be challenging.
- (bottom up) Create precise, short form messaging that refers back to it to get people interested in the ideas behind it. The problem here is that there's so much information out there that it's very hard to compete for people's attention.
Whichever the case, it comes down to getting as many eyes as possible to look at the ideas and to try and persuade them. I think the key is going to be in leveraging personal connections AND social media.
What do you think?
Thanks for your reply. As I said, I’m in awe of what you’ve done, and not surprised it took years.
As to the top-down approach, my experience working with global organizations suggest it’s possible to make an appeal to basic shared values, and then encourage an honest self-evaluation of how consistently we apply those values to the world we live in. Reinforce the idea that they we actually contributing to our well-being by being honest about those values and how we manifest them, day-to day, action-by-action.
My understanding of history and culture is that the only meaningful changes are bottom-up, and may take generations to really materialize. I think they also start to gain traction in local environments — family, clan, tribe, city, state. This means, I think, breaking the central argument into bite size pieces, articulated as you would to a first grader. Easily remembered, easily passed, completely consistent with the facts AND with the emotions.
I make my peace with the slow pace of bottom-up by thinking about the Buddhist idea that right actions are not judged by their immediate outcome — do what’s right and let it go .Onward and upward.
Social media can be a powerful tool, and it looks like you have a good start. The challenge is getting beyond the algorithms. Are a part of any discussion group type of feedback system? That is what I am looking for, as a first step for an individual to organize and then act.
Not going to lie, I had not even thought of having/participating in a discussion group. As good as I might be at organizing/synthesizing ideas I'm equally bad at organizing/interacting with people (Asperger's here, my social skills are let's say, underdeveloped). So this is a great idea, and I'm sure there are a multitude of others I'm probably not going to think of.
On the bottom up vs top down I wasn't so much proposing a choice as much as saying we probably need to do both. I completely agree on the power of slow and steady bottom up, but my fear is that we're currently in close to what amounts to a free fall towards authoritarianism/fascism such that we don't have the luxury of time that a pure bottom up approach would require.
Back to ideas on how to propagate this though, any suggestions on discussion groups? How does one even find a discussion group for something like this? Do you think we should try to put one together? Any other ideas?
And please let me know if I start asking too many questions.
I would be happy to start a conversation, and hopefully pull others into it. I’m a big believer in heuristic progress, failure is a good thing if one learns from the experience, and more brains are better than one, IF there is agreement on the objectives. I have no idea on the best way to start this, but your sub stack may be a great place to find likely voices. Let’s keep talking.
The overarching objective I envision, as Part V says, is to create and spread a vision of how we understand ourselves that counterbalances and defeats the one the Powell Memo set out, very successfully, to build. One centered around these 5 values that seem to appear at the core of cultures that achieved any level of success over the last 5000 years, even if they may have eventually collapsed (typically as they began to deviate from these values and focusing on domination/extraction instead). Practically, that translates to a few things:
- Uniting all of our single-issue silos into one massive, cohesive, force with the understanding that unless we can build a full vision/story that becomes the new default (one where extraction isn't the acceptable norm) that delivers stability and dignity to people, that none of our single-issue priorities will ever really win. Build a vision, deliver to the people, and the single-issues will naturally follow once people see that our vision, which includes those issues, actually delivers for them.
- Refusing to fall into the neoliberal trap of fighting on its preferred divisions: race/religion/class. For instance, yes, we have extreme wealth inequality, but the answer isn't "eat the rich" mentality. There are plenty of wealthy people like Warren Buffet who recognize the problem who support a more just society. Wholesale painting all of them as the evil enemy to be destroyed only gives them reason to cluster together against us rather than split them up and bring some of that power to our side. The same is true of religion. There are too many who view religion as something to be attacked/destroyed, rather than as one path to the same values we're advocating for. I'd rather live in a world where I respect people's rights to believe in some myths while they recognize that science is how we should make decisions, than one where every religious person sees science/reason as the enemy. We should be empowering religious people who are against weaponizing religion for domination/extraction, again, split them up, bring the good ones to our side.
- We need organized, effective, efficient, expertise. Yes, the extraction machine thrives in hierarchy. But the real problem is how those hierarchies are built (often dynastic, entrenched, exclusive) and what they are for (maintaining and expanding extraction). I think we too often fall into the trap of then aiming towards being completely disorganized. I would hope to eventually see our side build entities that operate as effectively/efficiently/expertly as ALEC/Heritage/Federalist Society/etc. I find it sad that we can get so many millions of people out on the streets to protest, but that all the energy doesn't then materialize into substantive changes in how we organize society (what laws get passed, how we interpret law, what children get taught, what we see in the media, etc.).
- We need to actually accept the constraints of reality as it currently exists. This may sound absurd to say, but too often I hear folks aim for goals that we "must achieve now" that are supposedly pre-requisite for everything else to work. Getting rid of the electoral college, getting national rank choice voting or reversing Citizens United for example. These are all things that ought to happen, but they are also things that given our current general organization of society are essentially impossible to achieve, for now. This also means accepting that certain technologies exist and how communication flows, especially in terms of efficiency. Yes, X/Facebook/Instagram/TikTok/etc. are all highly problematic. But they are also where communication travels most efficiently and in greatest volume and reach whether we like it or not (I absolutely despise social media). Not using them guarantees we lose. AI has a lot of problems, but it's here, not going anywhere anytime soon, and used properly, is a force multiplier. The other side is already using it as a force multiplier on top of the disproportionate amount of power they already have. Refusing to use it guarantees we lose.
Personally, having spent years looking at all the different things that have worked/failed on both sides, I am confident that the first high impact thing we must build is almost like a mass deprogramming effort designed to create a wedge between the extraction machine and the people they convinced to vote against their own interests by showing them how much of the identities they've adopted were intentionally manufactured to exploit them (and to a large degree, right now would have been the perfect time for this push were we already prepared - see more below). To show them the direct connection between the pain they're experiencing today to the very machine they support, and how that same machine manufactured the issues they care so much about as a distraction. But for that, we need to get a critical mass of people on our own side who have a strong grasp on these things. And so, our primary objective would be to mass "educate" our side on how the machine works, how it was built, and how to break it.
Sorry, one more thing: there's a subtlety around simplicity. Though it's an important aspect of helping to ensure democracy and human flourishing (by preventing grifters and extractors from gaming the system, using legalese to find loopholes etc.) there's a sense in which this simplicity is embedded within a type of complexity that's good: of being part of a complex adaptive system. This concept is widely applicable in biology, economics, sociology and technology. For our purposes, we want to ensure that the system remains ADAPTIVE, and in a way that is responsive to the needs of human flourishing.
Adaptivity is they key role of the Oversight Pillar. Proactive review of implementations, transparent metrics, and responsiveness to the public. Simplicity at the institutional level. This is covered in the Institutional Pillars article.
A suggestion: put "The Freedom Illusion" series under "Major Works" on the homepage (though it's also featured prominently on the top left).
Thanks for pointing this out. I completely forgot to do that.
Btw, "USOS: Theory of Power" is repeated in points 5 and 6 at the end.
Not sure I follow.
Nvm. I must have been tripping.
Amazing stuff. I'll be sharing this in every way that I can. Just a thought: might the phrase "Unified Social Operating System" not inadvertently parlay into Musk and Thiel's views about everything as "software"?
I came up with the name several years ago before their ideas were as salient as they are today. On the flip side, it might help capture some of their audience.
I don't know if you saw the links at the bottom of Part V. But I have released more detailed articles for the different parts of USOS. They're easy to access in the main page of the American Manifesto on the right side if you scroll down.
Nice, thanks. I'm going to read those as well. Good point about capturing the techbro audience.
Also, in depth parts of USOS are in part most for reference/definitions so that it can be clear how the different parts of the system are meant to interact and operate. They don't read like a narrative/philosophical argument like most of the other parts of my writing. Just figured I'd give a headsup.
All very true and very pertinent. I would like for you to have mentioned Bernie Sanders (as an example of an advocate of a counter narrative to extractionism), social democracy (as an ideology with an anchor and view of power that goes beyond mere commitment to procedural liberalism) and intersectionality (as the nucleus for how siloed narratives and struggles can animate one another), if only to differentiate your own views from them (or to clarify whether you see them as launching points/having significant overlap with your position).
In fact, I did speak about Bernie's movement, only not by name, back in part III in the Weight of the Default section (see below).
Also: while Bernie and other Social Democrats (by the way, I fully support them) are definitely much more USOS aligned than any other major part of the political spectrum in the US, I think that they still do not have an actual power-competitive ideology of human flourishing as I describe in part III:
- They are still playing/operating within the class warfare framing which is beneficial to neoliberalism, as explained in the section below.
- Importantly, they clearly lack a Theory of Power (https://americanmanifesto.news/p/usos-theory-of-power) that gives them a structure and strategy to combat neoliberalism head on.
- Finally, while their values are noble, especially as it relates to getting dignified wages/healthcare/education/childcare/affordability, this is just one dimension (economics) of what it takes to build a full power-competitive ideology.
Combined, these 3 factors will almost guarantee that they cannot win in the long run (as evidenced by the fact that Bernie has been saying the same things for decades now while struggling to gain traction).
Here's the key section so you don't have to go hunting for it:
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"Which brings us to the hardest case: billionaires.
Everything in this book could be misread as class warfare—as saying the wealthy are the enemy and we need to defeat them. But getting this wrong leads to strategies that backfire.
Start with a distinction that matters: accumulation is not the same as extraction. The drive to accumulate wealth is part of human nature—one of the engines of progress when properly channeled. Extraction is something different: using leverage to take from others in ways that leave them worse off. The malignancy isn’t in human nature. It’s in the ideological environment that channels human nature toward predation rather than production.
The New Deal proves this. People were just as ambitious, just as hungry for success. And yet we got actual human flourishing—however flawed, however incomplete. The Powell Network didn’t change human nature. They just delivered an ideology that channeled accumulation toward extraction instead of shared prosperity.
You can’t blame a fish for not walking. And you can’t defeat someone into having a capacity they lack. Until a complete ideology of human flourishing exists, people will operate within the frameworks available to them—and right now, neoliberalism is the water they swim in.
The strategic response isn’t class warfare. It’s proportional responsibility: those who benefit most from the system have the greatest obligation to maintain it. This isn’t punishment; it’s reciprocity. Wealth doesn’t emerge from individual genius alone—it emerges from infrastructure, education, legal frameworks, and social stability that others built and maintain.
“Billionaires shouldn’t exist” and “eat the rich” are broad attacks on the drive for accumulation—part of human nature—that plays directly into neoliberalism’s framing of class warfare rather than focusing on the extraction that is the actual problem. “Success comes with proportional responsibility” reframes the conversation entirely: it’s grounded in fairness, in reciprocity, and it offers the wealthy an off-ramp to be on the right side of history.
Here’s the strategic upside: building an ideology that welcomes the wealthy as part of the solution will cause a split among them—between those who genuinely want to be seen as benefactors and those who just want to exploit society. This isn’t about letting billionaires have their way, or about mercy. It’s about strategy: this is how we take control of the framing. Neoliberalism’s power rests in part on keeping the wealthy consolidated into a single bloc. Playing into the class warfare framing only strengthens that consolidation. The constraints on extreme wealth will come, framed within an ideology supported by the wealthy, if done correctly. We’ll explore what this looks like in Part V, including a specific mechanism (The Meritocracy Tax) for operationalizing proportional responsibility in a way that honors achievement while ensuring it serves everyone.
And here’s the biggest trap in focusing on class warfare.
Framing the problem this way lets everyone else off the hook. As long as we’re not billionaires, we can cling to our own incomplete frameworks and tell ourselves we’re on the right side.
We’re not.
The liberal who defends procedures without realizing liberalism is the arena neoliberalism was designed to exploit—not a competitor that can challenge it. The socialist who frames solutions as redistribution or class warfare, playing directly into the division strategy that keeps the extraction machine’s beneficiaries consolidated. The atheist who attacks religion wholesale, ignoring that religious traditions contain genuine wisdom about caring for the poor and the stranger—and forcing potential allies into the arms of those who would weaponize faith against flourishing. The theocrat who insists their path is the only path, blind to the fact that secular and religious frameworks have both produced means to flourishing and means to destroy it."
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Well I've got to say you are ambitious. But as usual, your guidance really helps here.
The one thing that gives me hope every day is precisely the fact that almost everything we're living through today can be traced back one way or another to a very few minds like Powell, Weyrich, Falwell, Atwater, etc. Ten, fifteen people at most. They had ideas for how corporations could dominate America, the corporations decided to give their ideas a shot, and here we are now...
Honestly, I don't even think that I'm being that ambitious. They've been showing us for 40+ years now precisely how to win the game. And 40 years before that the New Deal showed us how to build prosperity and dignity. For the tens of thousands of words in this series, I think I'm saying something pretty simple: unless we accept the reality that this is an ideological conflict and play to win the same way the other side is doing, we'll lose our country to fascism.
I don't know if my ideas will ever have the impact that Powell's or Weyrich's did. But there's only one way to find out.
It's true, we do have history to guide us--if we pay attention & unnerstand how to relate it to the present. But as I say on one of my profiles: "What we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history."
At least some of us do, tho. And as long as we keep trying, there is hope. :)
The ideological argument is correct The electorate has bought into the need for the human flourishing ideology after the experience with the Nazi Republicans, technocrat bros, widening of the wealth gap, and the failure of the extraction system working for the governed people It's clear that the electorate wants a new approach to governance But this approach needs a political leader amongst the Democrats to make it happen
The missing aspect to this new ideological approach is the lack of recognition of the basic economic struggle of the fiat currency system which will implode in the coming years if not sooner See MacleodFinance substack channel The current economic advisors are all Keynesian in their approach and a new currency system must be established using a bimetallic standard as designated by Article 1 in the Constitution