I’m bestselling indie writer Teague de La Plaine. This is my weekly newsletter, where I talk about writing and self-publishing in addition to my own life. I keep the newsletter free, because I prefer you spend your money on my books.
As I build the worlds for my sci-fi stories, I’ve found myself studying the real systems that shape this one—government, economy, religion, the military, education, and media. What began as research for future civilizations has turned into an audit of our own. This series of essays is part of that exploration: a search for what our systems actually do, and how we might start designing better ones—here, now, before fiction catches up with fact.
True Freedom
We’re told that government is the machinery of freedom. That ballots are the steering wheel, laws are the road, and citizens are the drivers. It’s a comforting story—one that every civics textbook repeats like gospel. But if we look through the lens of Stafford Beer’s idea that the purpose of a system is what it does, the story falls apart fast.
Because what government actually does, most of the time, isn’t empower people. It manages them.
The Myth of Representation
The founders of modern democracies sold the dream of self-rule: ordinary citizens sending delegates to act on their behalf. But representation was never meant to mean equality; it meant containment. The model was lifted from empires and aristocracies that needed to channel unrest without surrendering control. “Give them a vote,” history whispers, “but keep the purse strings and the pen.”
Today, power still concentrates upward. Legislators answer not to citizens but to donors, lobbies, and consulting firms that write the very laws they’ll profit from. Elections change faces, not fundamentals. The machinery hums regardless of who’s in the seat.
If we judge by output, not intention, the purpose of government is continuity for those already in power.
Managed Democracy
Modern politics works like a brand ecosystem. Parties are the logos; voters are the consumer segments. Campaigns are marketing exercises built on data mining and emotional manipulation. The spectacle substitutes for sovereignty.
Public anger, even when genuine, becomes part of the show—an energy source harvested by pollsters and pundits. Outrage sells ads. Conflict drives engagement. Consensus threatens the business model.
The average citizen’s role is to legitimize decisions already made elsewhere. We ratify, we don’t decide.
Bureaucracy as Armor
Inside the system, bureaucracy serves as both shield and glue. Layers of procedure blur accountability until no one’s truly responsible for failure or injustice. Each office points to another office, each committee to another committee. It’s a design pattern, not an accident.
In this architecture, morality gets replaced by process. “We followed procedure” becomes the secular absolution.
The Theater of Choice
Every few years we’re invited to choose between factions that largely agree on fundamentals: endless growth, private wealth, permanent militarization, and debt as discipline. The edges differ, but the core remains. It’s Coke vs Pepsi governance—different branding, same sugar.
The illusion is reinforced by ritual: flags, anthems, debates, inaugurations. These pageants remind us we belong, that our participation matters. But a vote every few years in a system financed by billionaires isn’t participation—it’s permission.
The Cost of Obedience
Civic myths are powerful because they trade on hope. Many who serve inside the system believe in its ideals. I’ve worked under that banner for two decades; I’ve met leaders who genuinely cared. But sincerity doesn’t change structure. When the incentive matrix rewards loyalty to donors and punishes moral dissent, even good people become instruments of inertia.
The tragedy isn’t corruption—it’s design.
Government’s True Output
Let’s run the POSIWID test:
Does the system distribute or concentrate power? — It concentrates.
Does it increase public autonomy? — It narrows it.
Does it stay accountable to citizens? — Only under scandal or revolt.
Does it protect planetary life? — Rarely; economics over ecology.
By these metrics, the government’s true function is management of populations for elite stability. Its product is order, not justice.
Toward Polisyn: Governance by Participation
Human UNity asks a harder question: what would government look like if its outcomes matched its promises?
Imagine a Polisyn system—synarchic governance built on open, participatory architecture rather than hierarchy. Decision power distributed across transparent digital councils. Citizens verified not by wealth or party but by contribution and competence.
Policies tracked on public ledgers visible to anyone, anytime. Budgets that can’t hide slush funds. Leadership as a rotating duty, not a career. Representation by randomized civic draft instead of permanent politicians—a government of temporary stewards.
This isn’t utopia; it’s engineering. POSIWID demands we design systems that produce accountability rather than simply proclaim it.
The Warrior’s View
From the field, you learn that command without feedback fails fast. The same is true for governance. When those who make decisions never bear the cost of them, the moral circuit stays open. Wars last decades; poverty becomes policy.
In the military, we call that mission failure.
Government should operate like a living network, constantly adjusting to feedback, pruning corruption like dead tissue. Instead, it calcifies. It becomes a monument to its own myth.
The Human UNity Principle
In a mature civilization, governance would not be the management of people but the coordination of shared stewardship. The state becomes less an authority and more an interface—a transparent platform for collective problem-solving.
Representation ends where participation begins.
Closing the Loop
The purpose of a system is what it does. Ours concentrates wealth and power, sells distraction as democracy, and punishes those who notice.
Human UNity doesn’t ask us to burn it down; it asks us to grow something else beside it—systems whose structure makes lying about purpose impossible.
A government that does representation will never need to say it does.
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