Preface How the title of this work is interpreted is important. It is certainly not a statement that any government should be controlled by the author! It is also not a statement that one or a few individuals should control or own the government. It is rather a statement that every person should look on government as something that they own and share with all other individuals. This idea of individual ownership and hence responsibility of the government to individuals is the revolution.The words in this work are only preliminary ideas. The core premise of this work is that, because a perfect government cannot be created, the best government arises when the fire of individual genius and the wisdom of the collective are used to continually improve the existing government. This government must maximize individual liberty and individual benefit while creating an environment where all can flourish. In this context, the ideas in this work are intended as a target to stimulate thought and conversation. Ongoing conversation must further identify problems, correct errors and generate new and better ideas. Repeating ideas allows for increased focus on critical issues.This leads to an important warning about the danger of any new political ideas. Directly adopting any set of political ideas will likely result in a disaster of unintended consequences. Only with the painful steps of testing, revising and refining not only the ideas but the structures which implement them can there be success. This process must optimize individual participation and is essential to making government from the best of individual virtues. As Horace said: “quid leges sine moribus vanae proficient”.This work is divided into four parts. In the first, some basic principles of government are discussed. The second part is a proposal as to how these principles might be formed into a governing document. The third provides some cautionary fables that might illuminate some important issues. The fourth illustrates some of the problems in maintaining a society through some simplistic and naïve mathematical models. Throughout the work, a theoretical issue regarding pet ownership is used to illuminate some possible problems with government function. There is no intent to take any position on this specific issue.This work is not completely novel. It liberally borrows ideas generated over the course of civilization by many great political philosophers and no effort has been made to provide citations for each of those ideas. I reiterate that this work is only to generate future ideas. Criticism and revisions are part of our journey toward optimizing government. The ideas here cannot be implemented without the input from large numbers of people. I can’t do it. You can’t do it. We can do it!! Let’s work together toward that goal!
Mark Menniti Stecker mygovernmentlives@gmail.com mark@mygovernmentlives.com