I agree with part of this in principle, democracy does require real institutions with capacity, continuity, and checks, and the false binary of “no institutions” vs “captured institutions” is unhelpful (and false!). But accountability and transparency alone arent sufficient for democracy, especially at scales as vast as the USA is. Democracy also requires genuine access to decision-making, not just oversight after the fact. In a vast, heterogeneous society, that means redundancy, legal and regulatory variability, policy experimentation, and diffusion of access to capital and resources, so people can meaningfully shape outcomes where they live rather than just petition a distant center and have the right to file a grievance after something happens if they dont like it. Some large national bureaucracies can exist, but without distributed authority and locally actionable power, theyd just convert accountability into ritual and participation into spectatorship, formally democratic buts substantively hollow.
The United States once had genuinely democratic governance structures, however imperfect and limited, fundamentally based around decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties. The Democratic Party, as a small "d" democratic institution, and the Republican Party, as a small "r" republican institution, were honest in their naming and functioned within a politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically decentralized and pluralized system. These parties, while far from flawless, allowed for real representation, genuinely participatory governance structures even for very serious policy matters with real participation, and a level of public accountability in political, economic, governmental, financial, and scientific decision making.
However, after WW2 a long multi decadal transformation began due to the dirty deeds of a convergence of several interests and an assortment of powerful special interest groups, and then our parties were transformed into centralized, exclusionary membership organizations. The so called Democratic Party has become a technocracy party, and the so called Republican Party became a conservative party. Neither really represents their original principles of democracy or republicanism, and they dont offer meaningful access or representation to the public. This transformation of the parties has been accompanied by a broader centralization of political, economic, and scientific decision making, which has caused the effective loss of most democratic governance structures.
Mike, you're absolutely right about the importance of distributed authority and genuine access to decision-making. This is a crucial addition to the framework.
I think we're actually describing complementary pieces of the same puzzle. Understanding money reality - that government creates money constrained by capacity, not budgets - is what makes your vision of distributed democratic power actionable. When local councils say "we can't afford it," when state legislatures invoke budget constraints, when federal politicians claim fiscal limits, they're all exploiting the same mythology. Once citizens understand that capacity constraints are real but monetary constraints are mythology, demanding becomes possible at every governance level.
You've articulated something I should emphasize more: demanding isn't petitioning distant centers. It's demanding your city council explain how federal block grants get used, demanding your state legislature resource proper oversight, demanding distributed authority backed by capacity to function. It's building networks of people doing this across communities.
This essay touched on federal-to-local implementation: federal monetary capacity enables state and local implementation tailored to community needs. Your point helps me see I need to be clearer that this means distributed authority, not centralized bureaucracy. What's needed in Clarksdale, Mississippi differs from Billings, Montana - local administration ensures community accountability.
Your historical analysis about party transformation is really valuable context. Those captured, technocratic structures are exactly why demanding falls to citizens now at every governance level, and why understanding money reality becomes essential for making those demands effectively.
I appreciate you pushing on this - it helps sharpen what democracy deepening means in practice: sustained demanding at the scale where decisions affect you, informed by understanding what's actually possible. That's how you get genuine access to decision-making, not just ritual accountability. Thank you for engaging with this.
I have to agree with most of this article. Its intentions are needed and sound.
The problem I see is the political parties. For reasons discussed in this article, they really cannot look past the next election. If they are trying, they will not be rewarded for their vision in the next election. So, yes, we get too many programs that fail for either poor vision or insufficient time frame.
I am an inventor of a new democracy called "Tiered Democratic Governance" (TDG). In brief, the TDG has:
1) Tiered indirect elections
2) Voting for good character and capacity for governance
3) A consultative decision-making style
4) An advisory board.
As well, the TDG has no political parties and no election campaigns.
The TDG will be better able to implement the changes you are suggesting.
Hi Dave, thanks for engaging and I'm really glad Dr. Giles connected us.
You're absolutely right that political parties optimizing for next-election thinking is a core problem preventing generational commitment. But I point the finger deeper: at citizens themselves. Not only is more engagement needed, but more strategic engagement is needed. This is a big ask, maybe an impossible one, but I think there's still an opportunity.
I appreciate you sharing TDG - the focus on character/capacity and consultative decision-making resonates strongly with the stewardship framework. I'll check out your work.
I think your approach and mine could be complementary. The good news is that mechanisms for capacity stewardship already exist operationally - OMB, GAO, federal-to-local implementation. What's missing is citizens demanding they function for people. If TDG can make that demanding easier through structural reforms that address short-term thinking while maintaining democratic accountability, that's exactly the kind of innovation we need.
I'm working on figuring out how to connect these various ideas and efforts into something that can actually activate change. Your contribution looks like an important piece of that puzzle. Looking forward to learning more.
After I responded, I thought your article was a pretty good manifesto for progressive politics. Right now, I see nothing guiding the left wing——except to acquire power from the right wing.
I’m glad you are interested in the TDG. I’ve been working on this project since 1997. Unfortunately, my only qualification is being a disgruntled volunteer in a Canadian political party. No Ph.D. or anything like that.
If I could see someone with more creds than I championing this idea, I could yield the floor to that person. But it seems I am the only one. The political scientists are totally lost as to what is wrong. I shall plod on.
My real-life friends and family think I’m insane. The TDG has made a few lukewarm fans on Medium, but they can’t take this idea to the next step and make a TDG post or two on their social media.
These days, I write one article a week. Medium is the primary target, but I also post on Substack. I get a little response on Substack. I cannot afford the subscriptions to give me more credence with the SS algos. So I consider SS mostly as another place to archive my work.
I also promote my new articles on LinkedIn. I have a much bigger following than SS. But less response.
I have moved all my Medium articles to my blog. Right now there are 521. About another 25 will move into the blog soon.
I post about 6-8 times a day to Mastodon, effectively recycling those 521 articles. I have a handful of followers occasionally reposting my work.
But no TDG builders yet.
Basically, I have not been able to move the TDG through the first step of the Overton Window.
———————-
Anyways, let me know of your plans. There may be more people like us with crazy ideas.
Let's keep chatting. Where you said in your previous post that you see the parties as the problem, to me they are the symptom of the people are the problem - "what to do" is framed through the party lenses when the parties need to reflect the people. How do we do that? Shrug. But I do think putting ideas, like TDG, out there is key. I've added your content to my list and I will get to it. In the meanwhile let's keep the lines of communication open - there is a lot of good work being done but ultimately it needs to turn into action.
Chevan: Over the years, I have gotten similar comments. We need to enlighten ourselves first, then we can enlighten others, then we will elect politicians that serve the people.
Some of us have gone on this life journey. But for every citizen that goes this way, the system is convincing at least five others to go the opposite direction. So which side is winning?
I think you are aware that 30% of Americans are supportive of the USA moving to an oligarchy. We have more than a few Trump fans in Canada, and it is almost impossible to talk any sense to them. And this demographic is also fairly united politically, whereas their opponents are not.
In other words, the system is altering the psyche of the population in a wrong way. All the happy thoughts and wishes and folk songs about peace are not working.
We need a system that can lead the people to a better place, not reflect where they are today.
Thanks for sending the invitation to read this. There is a lot to like here, especially the UBA concept, and I like how you repurpose and recombine some existing ideas.
I'm confused by your use of "both extremes" by which you seem to frame all of this. I'm not seeing these "extremes." Let me ask you this: what are your definitions of "left wing" and "right wing?"
Thanks for engaging, Douglas. I appreciate your kind words and you're right this is mostly a synthesis and integration of ideas that are "out there" but a bit disconnected. My goal is to try and connect some operational realities, theories and policy ideas into a framework for action and mobilization: capacity stewardship.
This essay is part 3 of a 3-part series. Parts 1 and 2 define these terms specifically:
Far right (Part 1): Weaponizes libertarian philosophy to attack the legitimacy of collective action. 'Taxation is theft' becomes the frame that eliminates democratic accountability over markets.
Far left (Part 2): Weaponizes revolutionary purity to attack the effectiveness of reform. 'Capitalism can't be reformed' becomes the frame that fragments coalitions and abandons institutions.
The key isn't left/right as ideological positions, but the extremes that prevent democratic action - the right by claiming it's illegitimate, the left by claiming it's futile. Both keep citizens passive through different rhetoric.
Part 3 (this essay) assumes that framework and shows what becomes possible when you reject both extremes: capacity stewardship through demanding institutional quality. If you're interested in the full argument for why these qualify as 'extremes' that serve oligarchy despite opposing each other, Parts 1 & 2 work through that systematically.
Exceptional synthesis of capacity stewardship as the actual work of citizenship. The shift from "can we afford it" to "do we have capacity to build it" cuts through decades of fiscal mythology instantly. What resonated was how job guarantees create labor market floors without the rent-capture problem UBI faces when injected into broken housing markets. I've seen similiar dynamics where cash transfers get absorbed by landlords before recipients benifit, but direct provision of assets changes the power dynamic entirely.
I agree with part of this in principle, democracy does require real institutions with capacity, continuity, and checks, and the false binary of “no institutions” vs “captured institutions” is unhelpful (and false!). But accountability and transparency alone arent sufficient for democracy, especially at scales as vast as the USA is. Democracy also requires genuine access to decision-making, not just oversight after the fact. In a vast, heterogeneous society, that means redundancy, legal and regulatory variability, policy experimentation, and diffusion of access to capital and resources, so people can meaningfully shape outcomes where they live rather than just petition a distant center and have the right to file a grievance after something happens if they dont like it. Some large national bureaucracies can exist, but without distributed authority and locally actionable power, theyd just convert accountability into ritual and participation into spectatorship, formally democratic buts substantively hollow.
The United States once had genuinely democratic governance structures, however imperfect and limited, fundamentally based around decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties. The Democratic Party, as a small "d" democratic institution, and the Republican Party, as a small "r" republican institution, were honest in their naming and functioned within a politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically decentralized and pluralized system. These parties, while far from flawless, allowed for real representation, genuinely participatory governance structures even for very serious policy matters with real participation, and a level of public accountability in political, economic, governmental, financial, and scientific decision making.
However, after WW2 a long multi decadal transformation began due to the dirty deeds of a convergence of several interests and an assortment of powerful special interest groups, and then our parties were transformed into centralized, exclusionary membership organizations. The so called Democratic Party has become a technocracy party, and the so called Republican Party became a conservative party. Neither really represents their original principles of democracy or republicanism, and they dont offer meaningful access or representation to the public. This transformation of the parties has been accompanied by a broader centralization of political, economic, and scientific decision making, which has caused the effective loss of most democratic governance structures.
This nails the learned helplessness problem in a way I haven't seen articulated elsewhere. The connectoin between epistemic corruption in economics and inability to steward democratically makes so much sense when you lay it out like this. I've been trying to explain to people why "can we afford it" is the wrong question but kept hitting walls becasue they've internalized fiscal mythology so deeply. That framing about capacity constraints versus budget constraints gives a much clearer way to think about resource allocation.
I write because I want to giveaway what I've learned to whoever would find it valuable and to help "unstick" the U.S. It means so much to me that you find my packaging of these ideas valuable and you think it will help you articulate "why we are stuck" to others. This is the "Red Alert" that exists in the U.S. right now, and I am trying to do all that I can to make it easier for people to have conversations about the "whys" and "hows" of what we are experiencing politically because diagnostically I see it as primarily an economic mythology problem but after gaining that awareness it becomes a governing stewardship problem.
It sounds like you've had the same experiences as me: explaining this stuff is.... hard. If you believe this content helps you have clearer, more productive conversations, honestly that is more than I could have hoped and asked for... and is everything I want.
Thank you for dropping me a note, you made my year.. so far ;-).
Excellent essay, Chevan. This is a brilliant articulation of capacity stewardship and the learned helplessness trap that keeps people passive.
The connection to what I'm building at The Statecraft Blueprint is striking - we're attacking the same problem from complementary angles. You're showing what enlightened governance would enable (public housing, healthcare systems, genuine market competition). I'm designing how we get institutions capable of making those decisions well - the Federal Governance Agency as the meta-solution that enables professional capacity stewardship at scale.
A few specific resonances:
On epistemic failure: Your point about corrupted economics preventing effective stewardship maps directly to why we need professional governance architecture. You write: "When knowledge production itself is corrupted, stewardship becomes impossible." This is exactly why the GDA model insulates technical governance design from the political manipulation that captured economics. We need the same kind of professional standards for governance architecture that we expect from structural engineers.
On the OMB/GAO infrastructure: You note these capacity management systems already exist but operate without citizen visibility. The GDA would be the governance architecture layer that makes these systems legible and accountable to citizens-as-stewards. Not replacing them, but creating the interface and accountability mechanisms that let people actually steward.
On demanding vs. giving up: Your closing about sustained demanding IS stewardship hits exactly what I mean by consciousness-raising. People can't demand better governance if they don't understand what good governance architecture looks like. The GDA gives them something concrete to demand - not abstract "reform" but specific institutional redesign with measurable mechanisms.
On generational commitment: The "cathedral building" framing I use captures this same reality. Americans built the Interstate Highway System knowing their grandchildren would benefit more than they would. We can do that again for governance infrastructure, but only if we understand we're building systems, not passing bills.
The brilliance of your framework is showing that capacity stewardship isn't just about government programs - it's about managing the market-public boundary based on evidence. This is what professional governance architecture enables: making those tradeoff decisions well, with transparency and democratic accountability, rather than through corporate capture or ideological purity.
What you're calling capacity stewardship, I'd say requires governance architecture as the institutional foundation. We need professional systems for designing the mechanisms you're describing. Not politicians making ad-hoc decisions about housing policy, but governance architects designing systems that let communities implement proven templates adapted to local needs.
Would love to explore more how the capacity stewardship framework and the governance architecture framework fit together. They seem like two sides of the same solution - the citizen role (steward) and the institutional infrastructure (professional design) that makes effective stewardship possible.
Also, this is desperately needed both as a process/architecture and implemented into user experiences and technology: Not replacing them, but creating the interface and accountability mechanisms that let people actually steward.
Glad this resonates, Chevan. You’re right - nobody is coming to save us. I’ve been saying the same thing for a while now.
On “managing the market-public boundary based on evidence” - I’m reading this as using evidence to decide what should be handled by markets vs. what needs public provision, then designing how government institutions and regulatory frameworks interact with both. Is that what you meant?
I’m still wrapping my head around “capacity stewardship” as a framework. Are you talking about citizens making informed decisions about how to allocate productive capacity (workers, resources, materials) between public and private mechanisms? Or am I missing something?
And completely agree on the UX/technology point. Much of making government legible and accountable to citizens will depend on building interfaces that let people actually see and interact with how these systems work.
1. Understanding we have options about how services can be provided, sourced from private AND public sectors
2. Making evidence-based decisions about which mechanism (markets vs. public provision) best serves which needs
3. Demanding both mechanisms work for people - demanding markets compete genuinely, demanding public programs operate with quality
4. Recognizing that whether services are provided privately or publicly, the real constraint is productive capacity (workers, materials, infrastructure), not money
5. Actively ensuring capacity exists or gets built - demanding training systems produce skilled workers, supply chains deliver materials, infrastructure gets developed, and trade-offs between competing needs are made transparently
The key shift: from 'can we afford it?' to 'do we have capacity to build it, and which mechanism should direct that capacity?'
Most critically: you can't steward what you don't demand quality from.
Demanding institutional transparency, accountability, and effectiveness IS the steward role.
Thank you Jason for this robust and thoughtful reflection. As this essay was coming together I was thinking that it aligns with discussions we've exchanged in the past so I was hoping it would resonate with you.
Regarding: The brilliance of your framework is showing that capacity stewardship isn't just about government programs - it's about managing the market-public boundary based on evidence.
Yes, this is the central thesis and I'm glad that came through. I'm trying to outline the contemporary problem and I think you've got a solution path. Driving to implementation and the politics is what's next so I think that there is work for us to do together... and it is "us" because as I mentioned, nobody is coming to save us.
I agree with part of this in principle, democracy does require real institutions with capacity, continuity, and checks, and the false binary of “no institutions” vs “captured institutions” is unhelpful (and false!). But accountability and transparency alone arent sufficient for democracy, especially at scales as vast as the USA is. Democracy also requires genuine access to decision-making, not just oversight after the fact. In a vast, heterogeneous society, that means redundancy, legal and regulatory variability, policy experimentation, and diffusion of access to capital and resources, so people can meaningfully shape outcomes where they live rather than just petition a distant center and have the right to file a grievance after something happens if they dont like it. Some large national bureaucracies can exist, but without distributed authority and locally actionable power, theyd just convert accountability into ritual and participation into spectatorship, formally democratic buts substantively hollow.
The United States once had genuinely democratic governance structures, however imperfect and limited, fundamentally based around decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties. The Democratic Party, as a small "d" democratic institution, and the Republican Party, as a small "r" republican institution, were honest in their naming and functioned within a politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically decentralized and pluralized system. These parties, while far from flawless, allowed for real representation, genuinely participatory governance structures even for very serious policy matters with real participation, and a level of public accountability in political, economic, governmental, financial, and scientific decision making.
However, after WW2 a long multi decadal transformation began due to the dirty deeds of a convergence of several interests and an assortment of powerful special interest groups, and then our parties were transformed into centralized, exclusionary membership organizations. The so called Democratic Party has become a technocracy party, and the so called Republican Party became a conservative party. Neither really represents their original principles of democracy or republicanism, and they dont offer meaningful access or representation to the public. This transformation of the parties has been accompanied by a broader centralization of political, economic, and scientific decision making, which has caused the effective loss of most democratic governance structures.
Mike, you're absolutely right about the importance of distributed authority and genuine access to decision-making. This is a crucial addition to the framework.
I think we're actually describing complementary pieces of the same puzzle. Understanding money reality - that government creates money constrained by capacity, not budgets - is what makes your vision of distributed democratic power actionable. When local councils say "we can't afford it," when state legislatures invoke budget constraints, when federal politicians claim fiscal limits, they're all exploiting the same mythology. Once citizens understand that capacity constraints are real but monetary constraints are mythology, demanding becomes possible at every governance level.
You've articulated something I should emphasize more: demanding isn't petitioning distant centers. It's demanding your city council explain how federal block grants get used, demanding your state legislature resource proper oversight, demanding distributed authority backed by capacity to function. It's building networks of people doing this across communities.
This essay touched on federal-to-local implementation: federal monetary capacity enables state and local implementation tailored to community needs. Your point helps me see I need to be clearer that this means distributed authority, not centralized bureaucracy. What's needed in Clarksdale, Mississippi differs from Billings, Montana - local administration ensures community accountability.
Your historical analysis about party transformation is really valuable context. Those captured, technocratic structures are exactly why demanding falls to citizens now at every governance level, and why understanding money reality becomes essential for making those demands effectively.
I appreciate you pushing on this - it helps sharpen what democracy deepening means in practice: sustained demanding at the scale where decisions affect you, informed by understanding what's actually possible. That's how you get genuine access to decision-making, not just ritual accountability. Thank you for engaging with this.
I have to agree with most of this article. Its intentions are needed and sound.
The problem I see is the political parties. For reasons discussed in this article, they really cannot look past the next election. If they are trying, they will not be rewarded for their vision in the next election. So, yes, we get too many programs that fail for either poor vision or insufficient time frame.
I am an inventor of a new democracy called "Tiered Democratic Governance" (TDG). In brief, the TDG has:
1) Tiered indirect elections
2) Voting for good character and capacity for governance
3) A consultative decision-making style
4) An advisory board.
As well, the TDG has no political parties and no election campaigns.
The TDG will be better able to implement the changes you are suggesting.
I have about 100 articles on Substack and 650 on Medium. My website is https://tiereddemocraticgovernance.org/home.php
BTW, Dr. Douglas Giles connected us.
Hi Dave, thanks for engaging and I'm really glad Dr. Giles connected us.
You're absolutely right that political parties optimizing for next-election thinking is a core problem preventing generational commitment. But I point the finger deeper: at citizens themselves. Not only is more engagement needed, but more strategic engagement is needed. This is a big ask, maybe an impossible one, but I think there's still an opportunity.
I appreciate you sharing TDG - the focus on character/capacity and consultative decision-making resonates strongly with the stewardship framework. I'll check out your work.
I think your approach and mine could be complementary. The good news is that mechanisms for capacity stewardship already exist operationally - OMB, GAO, federal-to-local implementation. What's missing is citizens demanding they function for people. If TDG can make that demanding easier through structural reforms that address short-term thinking while maintaining democratic accountability, that's exactly the kind of innovation we need.
I'm working on figuring out how to connect these various ideas and efforts into something that can actually activate change. Your contribution looks like an important piece of that puzzle. Looking forward to learning more.
Hello Chevan
After I responded, I thought your article was a pretty good manifesto for progressive politics. Right now, I see nothing guiding the left wing——except to acquire power from the right wing.
I’m glad you are interested in the TDG. I’ve been working on this project since 1997. Unfortunately, my only qualification is being a disgruntled volunteer in a Canadian political party. No Ph.D. or anything like that.
If I could see someone with more creds than I championing this idea, I could yield the floor to that person. But it seems I am the only one. The political scientists are totally lost as to what is wrong. I shall plod on.
My real-life friends and family think I’m insane. The TDG has made a few lukewarm fans on Medium, but they can’t take this idea to the next step and make a TDG post or two on their social media.
These days, I write one article a week. Medium is the primary target, but I also post on Substack. I get a little response on Substack. I cannot afford the subscriptions to give me more credence with the SS algos. So I consider SS mostly as another place to archive my work.
I also promote my new articles on LinkedIn. I have a much bigger following than SS. But less response.
I have moved all my Medium articles to my blog. Right now there are 521. About another 25 will move into the blog soon.
I post about 6-8 times a day to Mastodon, effectively recycling those 521 articles. I have a handful of followers occasionally reposting my work.
But no TDG builders yet.
Basically, I have not been able to move the TDG through the first step of the Overton Window.
———————-
Anyways, let me know of your plans. There may be more people like us with crazy ideas.
Dave
Let's keep chatting. Where you said in your previous post that you see the parties as the problem, to me they are the symptom of the people are the problem - "what to do" is framed through the party lenses when the parties need to reflect the people. How do we do that? Shrug. But I do think putting ideas, like TDG, out there is key. I've added your content to my list and I will get to it. In the meanwhile let's keep the lines of communication open - there is a lot of good work being done but ultimately it needs to turn into action.
Chevan: Over the years, I have gotten similar comments. We need to enlighten ourselves first, then we can enlighten others, then we will elect politicians that serve the people.
Some of us have gone on this life journey. But for every citizen that goes this way, the system is convincing at least five others to go the opposite direction. So which side is winning?
I think you are aware that 30% of Americans are supportive of the USA moving to an oligarchy. We have more than a few Trump fans in Canada, and it is almost impossible to talk any sense to them. And this demographic is also fairly united politically, whereas their opponents are not.
In other words, the system is altering the psyche of the population in a wrong way. All the happy thoughts and wishes and folk songs about peace are not working.
We need a system that can lead the people to a better place, not reflect where they are today.
Thanks for sending the invitation to read this. There is a lot to like here, especially the UBA concept, and I like how you repurpose and recombine some existing ideas.
I'm confused by your use of "both extremes" by which you seem to frame all of this. I'm not seeing these "extremes." Let me ask you this: what are your definitions of "left wing" and "right wing?"
Thanks for engaging, Douglas. I appreciate your kind words and you're right this is mostly a synthesis and integration of ideas that are "out there" but a bit disconnected. My goal is to try and connect some operational realities, theories and policy ideas into a framework for action and mobilization: capacity stewardship.
This essay is part 3 of a 3-part series. Parts 1 and 2 define these terms specifically:
Far right (Part 1): Weaponizes libertarian philosophy to attack the legitimacy of collective action. 'Taxation is theft' becomes the frame that eliminates democratic accountability over markets.
https://chevan.substack.com/p/defending-democratic-capitalism-from?r=33jv1
Far left (Part 2): Weaponizes revolutionary purity to attack the effectiveness of reform. 'Capitalism can't be reformed' becomes the frame that fragments coalitions and abandons institutions.
https://chevan.substack.com/p/defending-democratic-capitalism-from-4fe?r=33jv1
The key isn't left/right as ideological positions, but the extremes that prevent democratic action - the right by claiming it's illegitimate, the left by claiming it's futile. Both keep citizens passive through different rhetoric.
Part 3 (this essay) assumes that framework and shows what becomes possible when you reject both extremes: capacity stewardship through demanding institutional quality. If you're interested in the full argument for why these qualify as 'extremes' that serve oligarchy despite opposing each other, Parts 1 & 2 work through that systematically.
Exceptional synthesis of capacity stewardship as the actual work of citizenship. The shift from "can we afford it" to "do we have capacity to build it" cuts through decades of fiscal mythology instantly. What resonated was how job guarantees create labor market floors without the rent-capture problem UBI faces when injected into broken housing markets. I've seen similiar dynamics where cash transfers get absorbed by landlords before recipients benifit, but direct provision of assets changes the power dynamic entirely.
I agree with part of this in principle, democracy does require real institutions with capacity, continuity, and checks, and the false binary of “no institutions” vs “captured institutions” is unhelpful (and false!). But accountability and transparency alone arent sufficient for democracy, especially at scales as vast as the USA is. Democracy also requires genuine access to decision-making, not just oversight after the fact. In a vast, heterogeneous society, that means redundancy, legal and regulatory variability, policy experimentation, and diffusion of access to capital and resources, so people can meaningfully shape outcomes where they live rather than just petition a distant center and have the right to file a grievance after something happens if they dont like it. Some large national bureaucracies can exist, but without distributed authority and locally actionable power, theyd just convert accountability into ritual and participation into spectatorship, formally democratic buts substantively hollow.
The United States once had genuinely democratic governance structures, however imperfect and limited, fundamentally based around decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties. The Democratic Party, as a small "d" democratic institution, and the Republican Party, as a small "r" republican institution, were honest in their naming and functioned within a politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically decentralized and pluralized system. These parties, while far from flawless, allowed for real representation, genuinely participatory governance structures even for very serious policy matters with real participation, and a level of public accountability in political, economic, governmental, financial, and scientific decision making.
However, after WW2 a long multi decadal transformation began due to the dirty deeds of a convergence of several interests and an assortment of powerful special interest groups, and then our parties were transformed into centralized, exclusionary membership organizations. The so called Democratic Party has become a technocracy party, and the so called Republican Party became a conservative party. Neither really represents their original principles of democracy or republicanism, and they dont offer meaningful access or representation to the public. This transformation of the parties has been accompanied by a broader centralization of political, economic, and scientific decision making, which has caused the effective loss of most democratic governance structures.
This nails the learned helplessness problem in a way I haven't seen articulated elsewhere. The connectoin between epistemic corruption in economics and inability to steward democratically makes so much sense when you lay it out like this. I've been trying to explain to people why "can we afford it" is the wrong question but kept hitting walls becasue they've internalized fiscal mythology so deeply. That framing about capacity constraints versus budget constraints gives a much clearer way to think about resource allocation.
This comment is so humbling for me.
I write because I want to giveaway what I've learned to whoever would find it valuable and to help "unstick" the U.S. It means so much to me that you find my packaging of these ideas valuable and you think it will help you articulate "why we are stuck" to others. This is the "Red Alert" that exists in the U.S. right now, and I am trying to do all that I can to make it easier for people to have conversations about the "whys" and "hows" of what we are experiencing politically because diagnostically I see it as primarily an economic mythology problem but after gaining that awareness it becomes a governing stewardship problem.
It sounds like you've had the same experiences as me: explaining this stuff is.... hard. If you believe this content helps you have clearer, more productive conversations, honestly that is more than I could have hoped and asked for... and is everything I want.
Thank you for dropping me a note, you made my year.. so far ;-).
Excellent essay, Chevan. This is a brilliant articulation of capacity stewardship and the learned helplessness trap that keeps people passive.
The connection to what I'm building at The Statecraft Blueprint is striking - we're attacking the same problem from complementary angles. You're showing what enlightened governance would enable (public housing, healthcare systems, genuine market competition). I'm designing how we get institutions capable of making those decisions well - the Federal Governance Agency as the meta-solution that enables professional capacity stewardship at scale.
A few specific resonances:
On epistemic failure: Your point about corrupted economics preventing effective stewardship maps directly to why we need professional governance architecture. You write: "When knowledge production itself is corrupted, stewardship becomes impossible." This is exactly why the GDA model insulates technical governance design from the political manipulation that captured economics. We need the same kind of professional standards for governance architecture that we expect from structural engineers.
On the OMB/GAO infrastructure: You note these capacity management systems already exist but operate without citizen visibility. The GDA would be the governance architecture layer that makes these systems legible and accountable to citizens-as-stewards. Not replacing them, but creating the interface and accountability mechanisms that let people actually steward.
On demanding vs. giving up: Your closing about sustained demanding IS stewardship hits exactly what I mean by consciousness-raising. People can't demand better governance if they don't understand what good governance architecture looks like. The GDA gives them something concrete to demand - not abstract "reform" but specific institutional redesign with measurable mechanisms.
On generational commitment: The "cathedral building" framing I use captures this same reality. Americans built the Interstate Highway System knowing their grandchildren would benefit more than they would. We can do that again for governance infrastructure, but only if we understand we're building systems, not passing bills.
The brilliance of your framework is showing that capacity stewardship isn't just about government programs - it's about managing the market-public boundary based on evidence. This is what professional governance architecture enables: making those tradeoff decisions well, with transparency and democratic accountability, rather than through corporate capture or ideological purity.
What you're calling capacity stewardship, I'd say requires governance architecture as the institutional foundation. We need professional systems for designing the mechanisms you're describing. Not politicians making ad-hoc decisions about housing policy, but governance architects designing systems that let communities implement proven templates adapted to local needs.
Would love to explore more how the capacity stewardship framework and the governance architecture framework fit together. They seem like two sides of the same solution - the citizen role (steward) and the institutional infrastructure (professional design) that makes effective stewardship possible.
Thanks for this. Sharing widely.
Also, this is desperately needed both as a process/architecture and implemented into user experiences and technology: Not replacing them, but creating the interface and accountability mechanisms that let people actually steward.
Glad this resonates, Chevan. You’re right - nobody is coming to save us. I’ve been saying the same thing for a while now.
On “managing the market-public boundary based on evidence” - I’m reading this as using evidence to decide what should be handled by markets vs. what needs public provision, then designing how government institutions and regulatory frameworks interact with both. Is that what you meant?
I’m still wrapping my head around “capacity stewardship” as a framework. Are you talking about citizens making informed decisions about how to allocate productive capacity (workers, resources, materials) between public and private mechanisms? Or am I missing something?
And completely agree on the UX/technology point. Much of making government legible and accountable to citizens will depend on building interfaces that let people actually see and interact with how these systems work.
You've got it-
Capacity stewardship means:
1. Understanding we have options about how services can be provided, sourced from private AND public sectors
2. Making evidence-based decisions about which mechanism (markets vs. public provision) best serves which needs
3. Demanding both mechanisms work for people - demanding markets compete genuinely, demanding public programs operate with quality
4. Recognizing that whether services are provided privately or publicly, the real constraint is productive capacity (workers, materials, infrastructure), not money
5. Actively ensuring capacity exists or gets built - demanding training systems produce skilled workers, supply chains deliver materials, infrastructure gets developed, and trade-offs between competing needs are made transparently
The key shift: from 'can we afford it?' to 'do we have capacity to build it, and which mechanism should direct that capacity?'
Most critically: you can't steward what you don't demand quality from.
Demanding institutional transparency, accountability, and effectiveness IS the steward role.
Thank you Jason for this robust and thoughtful reflection. As this essay was coming together I was thinking that it aligns with discussions we've exchanged in the past so I was hoping it would resonate with you.
Regarding: The brilliance of your framework is showing that capacity stewardship isn't just about government programs - it's about managing the market-public boundary based on evidence.
Yes, this is the central thesis and I'm glad that came through. I'm trying to outline the contemporary problem and I think you've got a solution path. Driving to implementation and the politics is what's next so I think that there is work for us to do together... and it is "us" because as I mentioned, nobody is coming to save us.