The whole method on one page
How it works
No permission is required to start. A community writes down the life it wants, candidates earn the ticket by helping write it, and every policy they touch is tested in public by the same seven questions, with a fail-safe clause attached in advance.
The full cycle
A loop, not a ladder
Each election feeds the next context. The record is public, so the community audits its own representative instead of trusting a party office.
The context
The community writes three answers: the life wanted, what must be produced, the land in a hundred years.
The authors
Only people who helped write it may run. The community votes for one of its own authors.
The policies
Every bill the representative writes or votes on goes through the seven questions, in order, on the record.
The seven
Cause, weak link, marginal return, gross profit, energy and money, sustainability, society and culture.
The fail-safe
Confirmed harm voids the policy. It returns to public debate from scratch, not to a committee drawer.
In detail
The four moves
Write the context
A community answers three questions in writing: how do the people want their lives to be, what has to be produced to live such lives, and what must the land, water and soil look like hundreds of years from now. No candidates, no parties, no policies in this step.
This is the step most political projects skip. A platform written for you is a menu someone else chose. A context written by you is a sentence you can hold a candidate to.
Elect the author
People who helped write a community context may run on the IPA ticket. The community votes, and its elected representative carries that written word to the next table up: city, county, state, nation.
Authorship replaces the usual entry fees: wealth, family name, famous backers. It also means a candidate cannot arrive from outside with a platform and a checkbook.
Test every policy
Seven honest questions, run in order, judge every policy a candidate creates or votes on. Most proposed laws fail at question one, because they were aimed at a symptom while the cause kept its lobby.
The questions are public property. Any voter can run them, any editor can run them, which is what makes them inconvenient for the status quo.
Fail safe
Every policy carries a fail-safe clause written in advance: the moment an unintended negative consequence is confirmed, the policy is void and must be re-debated from scratch, in public.
The design assumes every law will cause harm somewhere. Planning for the surprise is the difference between governing and defending a mistake.
The testing process
The seven questions, in full
Asked in this order. The order matters: each question assumes the one before it was answered honestly.
Cause and effect
Does this action address the root cause of the problem?
A response to a symptom can be announced on Friday and forgotten by Monday. This question forces the debate one level down, to where the actual problem lives.
The weak link
Does this action strengthen the weakest link in the chain?
- Social form: does it create a weak link in the chain of actions toward the community's quality of life, given what people already believe?
- Biological form: does it address the weakest point in the life cycle of the organism?
- Financial form: does it strengthen the weakest link in the chain of production?
Strengthening a strong link does nothing. Money spent on the middle of a supply chain while the ends starve is money spent on the wrong link.
Marginal reaction
Of the time and money this action costs, which choice gives the greatest return toward quality of life?
Not the biggest total return. The return on the next dollar and the next hour, which is the only return anyone can actually spend.
Gross profit analysis
Which enterprise goes the most toward covering the overhead of the community?
Every community carries shared costs: roads, schools, water, the fire hall, the courthouse roof. Not every activity in the community covers its share of that load.
Energy and money, source and use
Where do the energy and the money come from, and where do they go? Will the action move the community toward its quality of life goals?
An action funded by money pulled out of the community is borrowing against the life it claims to serve. And the power it creates must not be addictive in use.
Sustainability
Does this move toward or away from the future resource base described in the community's context?
A decision can pass every other test and fail here, because the resource base does not argue back. It simply leaves.
Society and culture
How do you feel about this action now? Will it lead to the quality of life your community desires, and will it adversely affect the lives of others?
The gut check no spreadsheet can do, and the one that looks past the community's edge. An action that helps at home and damages lives somewhere else has not passed.
Who can run
Anyone who helped write it
No fee, no endorsement from a national office, no permission from a party headquarters. The qualification is authorship of the community's own written context.
What it costs
A tithe, not a donor
The party is funded by its own members, including a twenty percent tithe of party income to administration, rather than by outside money that expects a return.
Where it starts
One local office
School board, county commission, small city mayor. One honest officeholder with a public record is the only foundation a national party can actually stand on.
Read it in full
The book carries the method, the seven questions in their own chapter, the fail-safe design, and a fifty state ballot access annex with cited sources.