The Social Contract
Every claim this movement makes is a claim about misalignment — that what is happening differs from what was promised. A claim like that is worthless without a yardstick, and worse than worthless if the yardstick is our own opinion.
The standard
For a US citizen: the Constitution, and representative democracy actually working as promised.
Not our reading of what is good. Not a policy platform. The deal that already exists, the one nobody has to be persuaded to accept, and the one the people we are measuring swore an oath to.
Why that choice is doing so much work
Because it is not ours. We did not write it, we cannot amend it to win an argument, and it binds us exactly as tightly as it binds anyone else.
It also means people who disagree violently about policy can use the same instrument. Whether a duty was met, whether a check was removed, whether a vote was allowed to happen — these are structural questions, and their answers do not depend on what you think the tax rate should be.
It is per-country; the machinery is not
The reference standard plugs in per country. The loop — record, reason from first principles, decide, optionally publish — is universal. A citizen anywhere can run this with their own contract in place.
How the standard reaches the reasoning
Not as a slogan. The app assembles it as layers, from the most general to the most specific:
Earth -> country -> state / province -> community -> area -> decision
Two parallel libraries are built this way — facts (what we know) and metaphysics (what is real and what the reasoning may assume) — plus the relevant law. Each starts empty and concatenates only the layers that apply, every block headed with the file it came from.
Nothing enters the reasoning unless a layer explicitly put it there.
Pages in this area
- Why a yardstick — what goes wrong without one.
- The US social contract — what we actually measure against.
- Misalignment vs disagreement — the line, and how we hold it.
Where to go next
- Get Started — the area before this one.
- Problems — the area after this one.
- Open the app — do this for real, on your own seats.