1 — How do we remove the corrupting influence of entrenched power from the field of politics?
- How do we transform a realpolitik into a clearpolitik?
- How can politics refocus its aim toward illuminating the best path forward for everyone rather than perpetuating the status quo for the powerful few?
- How do we make decisions from an original position rather than our personal biases?
This discussion will include, but not be limited to:
- the role of money in politics (campaign finance and public officials’ pay);
- term limits (elected, appointed, and confirmed); and
- transparency in government.
2 — Why is political representation rarely reflective of the values and preferences of The People that are being represented?
- How do we transform a system of representative democracy into a system of generative democracy?
- How can we ensure that people are heard amidst hundreds of millions of voices within a democratic system that claims to represent them?
- Why do our electoral processes result in inefficient, ineffective, and unrepresentative outcomes?
This discussion will include, but not be limited to:
- efficiency gaps (gerrymandering and ranked voting);
- the structure of government (horizontally — the tripartite system, separation of powers, and bicameralism; and vertically — federalism and local/states’ rights’); and
- forms of representation (individual, communal, and intersectional — rural, urban, and suburban).
3 — What is the role of the corporation with respect to the rights of human beings and the natural world?
- How do we transform corporations from unencumbered sociopathic beings empowered with human rights into artifacts of a human-centered economy that can achieve all of their creative competitive potentials while still serving the best interests of The People they cater to and exist for?
- What are the duties of corporations to their members and related parties — founders, shareholders, workers, and customers?
- How do we hold corporations accountable to the externalities they export to The People, the economy, and the environment of the natural world?
This discussion will include, but not be limited to:
- fiduciary duties (internalities and externalities — food, pharma, the environment, and beyond);
- corporate governance (directors, shareholders, workers, and others); and
- the future of corporate personhood.
4 — What is the purpose of advertising in a society that aspires to be free of coercion and manipulation?
- How do we transform Madison Avenue and ad tech into Consumer Reports and ed tech?
- How can advertising rechannel itself toward its own self-justifying aim of empowering consumers with the information that allows us to make informed economic decisions — a more perfect market?
- How do we ensure that the economy we contribute to is working for us rather than working on us?
This discussion will include, but not be limited to:
- the use of personal data (privacy, curation, and manipulative targeting);
- the freedom of the press (freedom to report the news and freedom from undue economic influence); and
- the ecological role of advertising in a human-centered economy.
5 — How can we create an economy in which economic value reflects our social values?
- How can we transform the blindness of the all-powerful invisible hand into a cooperative force that not only furthers the shared ideals of a global mind but also empowers each of us to achieve our own individual self-actualized potentials?
- How do we properly compensate and incentivize people who pursue careers of greater social value (e.g., the emergency room nurses that save thousands of lives), and dismantle the financial incentives that push brilliant minds toward careers of lesser social value (e.g., the day trading gamblers of Wall Street)?
- Can we acknowledge and properly compensate the unpaid caregivers and good samaritans in our society — whether a mother that turns a child into a productive member of society, a grandchild that cares for an elderly family member who provided him with shoulders to stand upon, or a teacher that educates thousands of global citizens?
This discussion will include, but not be limited to:
- the use of economic incentives (taxation and subsidization);
- public expenditure (infrastructure, services, benefits, safety nets, and sovereign wealth redistribution); and
- the role of democracy in shaping the economy (democronomics).
6 — How does monetary theory transform when abundance becomes more prevalent than scarcity?
- How can we transform the absurd perpetuation of artificial scarcity into a system of distributive justice?
- What does an economy look like when the printing of money is not dependent on the creation of debt?
- How do we handle property that will forever remain scarce (e.g., waterfront property and invaluable pieces of original art), or that require temporary scarcity in order to generate ex-ante investment incentives (e.g., intellectual property)?
This discussion will include, but not be limited to:
- the future of employment (labor, automation, and artificial intelligence);
- human birthrights (natural resources, inherited wealth, shared capital); and
- a framework for trading goods and services.
7 — What do liberty, equality, security, and justice really mean to us as a society — especially in relation to one another?
- How can we transform the tensions and contradictions inherent in liberalism into reconstituted harmonic values?
- How can we ensure that equality of opportunity exists in a world where we are born with biological differences and into disparate circumstances?
- What roles should our predispositions (genetics, race, gender, sexual orientation, ability), and our dispositions (age, socioeconomics, education, circumstance, environment) play in the outcomes we achieve?
This discussion will include, but not be limited to:
- the role of rights (negative and positive);
- the importance of mobility (socioeconomic and geographic);
- the nature of due process.
8 — What circumstances, if any, justify asymmetrical limits on rights?
- How can we transform a system of retributive justice into one of restorative justice?
- How can we simultaneously deter people from violating the rule of law while also addressing the conditions that lead to those behaviors?
- How can we protect citizens from those who represent a continued danger to society through unremorseful acts of physical and economic violence?
This discussion will include, but not be limited to:
- the role of criminal law (deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, retribution, and restitution);
- penalties and punishments (tort liability, fines, and incarceration); and
- denormalizing the current criminal (in)justice system.
9 — When will we know that we have succeeded and that we can confidently speak from a stance of moral certitude?
- How can we transform this new paradigm from being a purely American worldview into one worthy of inspiring self-determined people throughout the world to follow in our self-determining footsteps?
- What is the role of state sovereignty, transnational, and international organizations in the world that emerges out of this momentary order of isolationist self-reflection?
- Will that global system require a new breakdown before it breaks through, or will it organically emerge all on its own?
This discussion will include, but not be limited to:
- globalization (economic interdependence, trade, and currency exchange);
- diplomacy (peacekeeping, amnesty, and humanitarian intervention); and
- the future of international law (institutions, organizations, and treaties).
10 — How will we preserve the iterative mechanisms of the Constitution and the aspirational preamble that it divinely elaborates?
- How can we transform our un-self-aware imperfect union into one that continually seeks to become more perfect?
- How do we prevent the law of the land from once again becoming stuck in the form of a fixed textual artifact that loses resonance and relevance over time?
- How can we ensure that The Reconstitution is a living, breathing, and unfolding document that continually mirrors the human aims, wants, and needs of the moment?
This discussion will include, but not be limited to:
- the future of the reconstitutive process (balancing the tension between change and stability inherent in liberal and conservative inclinations, respectively);
- the role of the judiciary (reasoned elaboration, empathic consideration, and purposive interpretation); and
- a formulation of recursive governance.
