Optimal Politics

Results. Not persuasion

Optimal Politics is the independent voter's answer to the toxic politics of the duopoly.

Optimal Politics Vision

2. Solution: Optimal Politics

SCRIPT “We never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” These inspiring words from Buckminster Fuller guides us to create a new model of politics to make toxic and even standard politics as obsolete. Once you taste the results of being loved and meaningfully loving others, why would anyone go back to the pain of status quo politics? What if we could craft a politics that could accountably improve our lives by measurably resolving each other’s needs? What if we developed a win-win politics? What if we created a politics that nurtured human flourishing? What if we could inspire and spread more love, by incentivizing each other to honor the politicized needs of others as we would have them honor our own? We dare to dream the possibilities. Why now? Now is an ideal time to pivot to this new kind of politics. Independent voters will soon to be the majority in the electorate, who increasingly decide the general election. Meanwhile, many Trumpists and MAGA hardliners face growing disappointment over the Epstein files, the apparent forever war with Iran, loyalty to Israel’s interests over American First interests, and the bad economy under Trump. Their disappointment may soon mushroom into full-blown disillusionment as they feel the pain of political misalignment. Almost all voters see Democrat & Republican politicians more loyal to the donor class than to them. The Democrat establishment is mostly a centrist party, fighting its progressive and DSA flank. The Republican establishment bends to Trump and the populist MAGA movement under Trump’s arbitrary hold. This leaves many of us politically homeless. In short, dissatisfied voters are already the majority of the electorate and seek a better path to desired political outcomes. Optimal Politics pledges to do just that. Another timing in our favor is how AI can easily automate the work of holding political leaders accountable with Optimal Politics. With the process of what we call political parsing. Political parsing Political parsing assesses the quality of politicking of our elected officials, and of candidates running for office. It can also assess the politicking quality of political pundits and anyone influencing politics in the media, both legacy and independent media alike. We independently assess the quality of their public politicking, and correlate this with actual outcomes in the areas under their influence. And send them the findings in a helpful report. 1. Positive: Affirm their value We first give them credit for the targeted politico’s positive impacts. Optimal Politics replaces the norm of adversarialism with mutuality by applying the praise sandwich. Which sandwiches any negative news between two slices of positive news. We send them an AI produced message that first thanks them for their public service. 2. Negative: Breach room for improvement We then use carefully crafted AI prompts to identify incidents of the politicos’ poor-quality politicking. For example, when their public messaging reverts to fearmongering for their own political gain, or their message includes deceptive practices correlating with poor outcomes. Not to shame them, but to illuminate opportunity to improve their reach to independent and other disillusioned voters. 3. Positive: Continue to improve The third and final segment invites them to work with us to improve their identified shortcomings. We offer to help them raise their practices to a standard level, for free. We also invite them to go the extra mile and show them how to stand out as competitively responsive to their constituents, to all voters and not merely their base. This competitive level will cost them all that it’s worth. Why not? Quality matters. Now it will matter more than ever before. Not merely once every four or two years. But continually. Participatory democracy Imagine being able to vote every day. Political parsing provides voters with the means to give continual feedback to office seekers and office holders. Voters continually rate their political leaders’ political behavior and results. Not in an adversarial or confrontational manner, but to incentivize such leaders to outperform other politicos. What we monitor finds a way of mattering more than what we assume. Not merely the quality of their politicking, but of the measurable results in voters’ lives. Political parsing never judges the value of ideological stances or partisan backgrounds. Those sit along a lateral spectrum pointing to a different priority of needs. Everyone’s needs have equal weight. And get equally neglected by poor quality politics. Optimal Politics aims to improve the lives of all voters. And not at the expense of other voters. Our needs would never evolve if we constantly had to compete for scarce resources. Optimal Politics challenges poor quality politics like the zero-sum myth to improve the lives of all voters and all political leaders. To restore power to the people with the power of love. How it works 1. Volunteer assessors Optimal Politics relies on a growing team of volunteer assessors. They simply go online and use our nonprofit platform to evaluate their political leaders. The bulk of the assessing gets handled by artificial intelligence. Which scours the Internet for information on your leader’s political rhetoric and actions. As currently envisioned, the site then sends an automated message to the political leader to check their profile for an update. Something like, quote, you received some attention to your messaging which moves your political quality score. Click the link to see what changed and how you can improve your quality score to reach more voters. Unquote. We anticipate the value of its ideological neutrality could make this become a valuable tool for all voters to assess who they vote for—regardless of partisan labels. This also creates opportunity for paid auditors to help these political leaders earn their trustworthiness to potential and current supporters, to voters, to donors, and to constituents of all stripes. 2. Paid auditors Optimal Politics will train a team of auditors to follow-up on these assessors’ findings. Either they reach out to the evaluated politicos or wait for politicos to contact them. As such auditors earn a reputation to help political leaders improve their reach, these auditors will be in high enough demand that they can wait for national leaders to first contact them. Those just getting started will have to reach out to local political leaders to build up their professional reputation to help produce positive results. You can think of these auditors as a new kind of political consultant. Or as quote, anti-consultants, unquote. They deliberately will not help officer seekers or office holders try to win an election. No, instead they will help them earn the right to lead, not by persuasion but by measurably improving their constituents’ lives. Results matter. Raise political quality We trust their improved quality will convert to winning office. The more they can be credited for helping constituents resolve their politicized needs, who show signs of improved wellness, the further they naturally will rise to the top of voter’s appeal. To be transparent, Optimal Politics incentivizes voters and their political leaders to shift from the failed social contract standard of “manipulated consent of the governed” over to “measurably improved wellness outcomes”. Toxic politics corrupted the old standard, which now coerces us to submit to laws that serve oligarchs more than the average voter. Optimal Politics holds political leaders accountable to results. In ways the old standard fails to do. Such accountability starts when assessors spot incidents where these political leaders slip into selfish demanding, petty arguing, overgeneralizing, self-serving avoidance, and hostile adversarialism. Auditors then turn each into an opportunity to improve that political leader’s effectiveness. Either by returning to a standard level, or excelling to a competitive level of “optimal” politics that can measurably improve lives. Optimal Politics We lean on any political leader, any political influencer, and any politico identified with toxic political behavior. But in this environment of improving competitive reach, to appeal to demanding voters, we anticipate these targets will immediately see the value of quickly reaching for the stars. We then sit ready to help them pivot from toxic politics not to mere standard politics but to optimal politics. Focusing on these five areas. From selfish demands to selfless offer One. Optimal Politics guides the politico to shift from selfish demands to selfless offers. Instead of starting with what the politico ideologically wants, or what some constituent wants, we guide the politico to reframe a contentious exchange into what the opposition apparently needs. And what the political leader can generously give and the likely cost of that generosity. This gives no room for arguing. Instead, it puts the other side in the hot spot of personally recognizing how their demands likely impact others. For example, instead of arguing against genocide denial in Gaza, inviting the speaker to list what they see as why it cannot be called a genocide. Then offering to empathize with their point of view. Once the speaker’s trust is earned, ask them if the identified distinctions should matter to those who cherish all life. And to those who prefer Israeli lives not be exalted at the expense of their neighbors, or put Israelis at risk of violent resistance, or to suppress Arab lives at the expense of U.S. taxpayers largely against their will. In short, can’t we all be less selfish? Let selflessness incentivize selflessness. Let generosity inspire generosity. From petty arguing to emotional honesty Two. Optimal Politics guides the politico to shift from petty arguing to emotional honesty. Instead of countering a constituent trying to debate the politico, we guide the politico to use the situation as an opportunity to go deeper with all constituents. They model how to safely express their emotionally charged politicized needs, without framing it as something to agree or disagree. For example, listening to an opponent argue against expanding the surveillance state with a privately owned network of security cameras. Then counter with a narrative of a constituent or someone grateful for quickly finding a missing loved one with the fast help of such cameras. Debunk claims of bothsidesism by showing how that moral equivalence fallacy applies to “how” we address the need for security, and never to the need for security itself. Let emotional honesty directly identify the affected needs for which politics exist to serve. From rigid generalizing to relevant nuance Three. Optimal Politics redirects the politico from generalizing to relevant nuance. Instead of sticking to hyperbole or rewarding exaggerations, we guide the politico to use each generalizing as a starting point to gradually dig deeper toward the details necessary to properly resolve needs. This includes inviting feedback to assumptions, to checking any possible confirmation bias with overlooked disconfirming evidence, and graciously illuminating any blind spots. We turn what could be stumbling blocks into helpful stepping stones. For example, follow up on a general assertion that all data centers cause local electricity bills to spike by drilling down to specific exceptions. After affirming how immensely large data centers do drive up electricity bills where laws privilege passing along the costs to residential consumers, draw attention to emerging trends to reduce the center’s energy consumption. In short, affirm generalizations, then explore disconfirming specifics to carve a path to effectively address everyone’s needs. Let relevant nuance on all sides come to the fore to reach sustainable solutions. From discomfort avoidance to bold engagement Four. Optimal Politics redirects the politico from avoidance to bold engagement. Instead of habitually evading the uncomfortable stuff of a life in politics, we guide the politico to get through whatever can be painful. We help them internalize how pain itself is not the problem as much as the threats pain exists to warn us to remove. We encourage them to endure the discomfort to remove that threat, to get back to full functioning and free focus. For example, instead of trying to explain away an apparent conflict of interest if invested in a data center construction company, initially admit how there could be a conflict of interest. But then segue to how their investment portfolio could imply countless conflicts of interest, but has yet to bias them away from what the voters need. In short, turn the temptation to avoid into an opportunity to go the source of the pain and then remove cause for such pain. Let bold engagement remove cause for discomfort avoidance, or any lingering avoidance. From mutual defensiveness to mutual understanding Five. Optimal Politics redirects the politico from adversarialism to mutual understanding. Instead of simply opposing the opposition, we guide the politico to first understand where the other side is coming from. What inflexible need hides behind the veneer of their words. Lead not by how triggered into defensiveness but by how the politico can empathize and learn more than others. To resolve more needs that improves more lives. For example, respond to claims of being racist or accusations of being antisemitic into mutual awareness of each other’s needs. Instead of denying the charge, ask, quote, how do you see this as racist, or as antisemitic? Unquote. Turn such a conflict into a dialogue, to make it easier for the accuser to drill down to their need. They likely just want to be better understood, so first understand them. Then let mutual understanding lead to mutual respect for each other’s values and needs. Let mutual understanding negate squabbles, defuse premature fighting and avoid misunderstandings. There are more ways to convert poor quality politics into high-quality outcomes. Let these five examples illustrate how auditors can guide political leaders to improve their responsiveness to voters’ needs. Or, or… they can see how those who do hire auditors became more successful in reaching both their voter base and independents, without once compromising their core values. Impact parity model Before you dismiss this as too Pollyannaish or unrealistically idealistic, consider what’s at stake for each. Optimal Politics levels out the power differential between the relatively powerless voter and the relatively more powerful political leader, by incentivizing each to serve what the other needs. Anankelogy calls this the “impact parity model”. It labels the voter as the “impactee” because they are impacted by the power relation more than impacting it. It labels the political leader as the “impactor” since they impact the power relation more than impacted by it. Optimal Politics brings each side together to address what each requires of the other. As human equals. Leaders need the voter’s support and votes. More specifically, they need the voter’s trust, or legitimacy. Voters need the leader to enable more resolved needs. More specifically, they need to trust the leader to lead them to improved lives. Anankelogy has a label for those political leaders who use their power to negatively impact their voters. We call them “privileged offenders”. Under color of law of their ascribed, or coerced legitimacy, they can get away with all kinds of shi—stuff. Earning legitimacy replacing ascribed legitimacy Optimal Politics incentivizes leaders to let go of “ascribed legitimacy”, which relies on dubious persuasion. And replace it with “earned legitimacy”, as measured by improved outcomes in their constituents’ lives. At the same time, Optimal Politics incentivizes voters to vouch for the leader’s effectiveness in their lives. Each address what the other needs and cannot provide without the other. Win-win. You see how this incentivizes each to honor the need of the other as their own? Optimal Politics raises the politics to a higher standard of love. And does so with the incentivized discipline of getting it accountably done. Any politics that fails to effectively address voters’ needs will itself fail. Right now, it appears that only Optimal Politics is set to properly address voters’ needs. Everything else looks doomed to flame out. Only Optimal Politics prepares a path to successfully address all needs to improve all of our lives. For which democratic politics originally existed to serve. Now it’s simply a matter of putting it all into action.

Brief overview of the Optimal Politics vision

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1. Problem: poor political quality

SCRIPT Opener Your vote counts. Or does it? When was the last time you felt satisfied that your vote led to meaningful change? To a measurable democratic improvement in your life? Let’s face it. Our politics desperately needs an overhaul. We can do better. I’m here to show you a fundamentally new way to do politics. One anchored in the power of love. Politics defined First, let’s define politics. Politics is the art of generalizing how to agreeably address needs in different social situations. It packs three parts. First, it’s about generalizing. Second, it’s about needs. And third, it’s about different social situations. This helps us identify what has gone awry with politics. Credit this definition and observation to anankelogy, the study of need. That's our secret sauce. The new social science of anankelogy. Anankelogy. Behind the psychology and sociology of our politics is the objective fact of our needs. And the objectively existing priority of such needs. One may depend on government regulations to guard their needs while another cannot meet their needs under the suffocating yolk of such regulations. Both facts can be right. No politics can change that. We all must resolve our needs to properly function. Political opponents from a different social situation must resolve their needs to properly function. You see, it’s less about persuasion and more about honoring the needs of others as we would have them honor our own. It’s less about who is right or wrong, and more about giving the love we all need. Our needs sit equal before nature. No one's needs are more important than the needs of others. Left unresolved, we equally lose capacity to function. And equally suffer the resulting pain. Your needs, like security and self-determination, exist on par with others' needs for security and self-determination. Without full security or without proper self-determination, we objectively cannot fully function. Since these needs remain vulnerable to what others do, we count upon laws to compel others to respect such needs, as others rely on laws to compel our respect for their easily affected needs. And we count on politics to shape those laws. The less we recognize the inflexibility of our politicized needs, the more our politics pulls us needlessly into avoidable conflicts. No one can change what they need, so we easily trigger each other’s defensiveness. Mutual defensiveness traps both sides. Instead of cooperatively addressing each other’s affected needs, status quo politics ensures the politicized needs on both sides remain unresolved. Which benefits political elites who step in with soothing answers. They answer with favored policies, weak promises, and low-quality dispute resolution. Instead of helping us to resolve our needs, they put us on a treadmill to continually fight each other instead of fighting these exploitive practices. Which suits them fine. This comes down to two intersecting problems that only Optimal Politics effectively identifies and can effectively resolve. Problems identified You see, current politics reek of two intersecting problems, which inverts reality. First. Treating lateral differences along the political spectrum as vertical, as if one side was better than the other. They’re not. Hate to break it to ya, but immigration restrictions are ultimately no better than open borders, and open borders are practically no better than immigration restrictions. Each stance neglects an inflexible need championed by the other side, which ensures neither side can fully function and both sides suffer some pain. Addressing one’s need for national sovereignty by closing the border can never be fully resolved at the expense of others who inflexibly need to prioritize the human need for free movement over some arbitrary line on a map. Our politicized needs exist as lateral differences, not vertical ones. Second. Treating vertical differences of political quality as lateral, as if rudeness towards opponents counts the same as empathetic listening to all sides. Quality matters. The further our politics degrades into selfish demands, indulgent name-calling, and dehumanizing opposition, the less our needs can resolve. The more time and energy invested in denouncing the other side, the less time and energy we invest in cooperative resolving our inflexible needs. The more our political leaders go along with these low-bar behaviors, squandering our untapped human potential for love, the more we are all screwed! This ugly mix-up leads down a path to dysfunctional or toxic politics. Political quality Do you think we can solve our specific problems from the level of political generalizing that contributed to them? Or are the sweet promises of current politics not really the solution, but part of the problem? Let’s compare the quality between standard politics, as politics was designed to operate, to our current degraded state of politics—which we aptly label as “toxic politics”. We compare and contrast standard politics with toxic politics along five axes. Toxic politics From self-interest to selfish demands One. Standard politics assumes by declaring your self-interest along with others asserting their self-interest, all should work out. It’s based largely on rational choice theory. Which expects us to operate like some kind of free market of ideas. Each of us use politics to maximize our benefits at minimal costs. Such a generalization rarely plays out as written. Specifics often defy our political generalizations. Toxic politics tends to turn such self-interest into selfish demands. You insist upon your rights, your wants, your preferences. To hell with others. If that anger others, then so be it. That’s their problem. You gotta get what you’ve got coming, right? Listen to those on the left demand sweeping policies to protect the environment from the abusive exploitation of capitalism. Do you hear them listening to the family farmer who objects to a chunk of their farmland being classified as a protected wetland, and put off limits to grow crops, by some Washington bureaucrat? Now listen to those on the right demand carte blanche environmental deregulation with little if any regard for those depending on such regulation? Do these folks on the right treat the left as any easier target than the bureaucrats and lawyers making their lives miserable? Meanwhile, all sides then suffer. If this speaks to you, then you likely cope with more selfish demanding. From rational debate to petty arguing Two. Standard politics assumes you will disagree with others as they disagree with you, and debating them will persuade them to agree with you. On a good day. You are to set aside your messy emotions. They get cast as subjective, as irresponsibly biased, and unacceptably irrational. Yet, the more you suppress your emotions that report your unmet needs, the more your feelings hotly erupt beneath your cool surface like a volcano releasing pressure. Toxic politics tends to turn rational debates into petty arguing. You declare your opinions, as if they have the same weight as scientific evidence. You know in your gut that the other side is wrong. They must be terribly bad to not realize how right you are. Ever see one of those YouTube titles claiming to “destroy” a political opponent’s view on Israel with a clever argument? Does crushing an Israeli denying they benefit from an Apartheid system make it objectively so? If winning a political argument about the war in Iran merely means relieving your cognitive dissonance, has anything honestly changed? Could the identified genocide in Gaza remain unchecked if the unmet emotional needs of all sides remain unaddressed under the veneer of a political argument? Of course, if no one actually listens or learns from the other side and continues to suppress all the emotionally charged needs, each side ends up reinforcing each other’s suffering. From helpful generalizing to rigid generalizing Three. Standard politics uses generalizing to build coalitions. To build up an electoral majority. It avoids specifics which could risk fracturing such a fragile coalition. As soon as there are enough to count as a solid majority, held together by shared purpose, it can be safe enough to entertain some internal differences. But dissatisfaction and even disillusionment creeps in when vital details get too long neglected. Toxic politics tends to turn such pragmatic generalizing into rigid generalizations. No nuance. Sweeping declarations must be taken at face value. The enemy of the other political side is so terrible that internal specifics must be washed over. Picture yourself at a political rally to oppose building a data center in your area. You generalize all that is bad about it. The noise. The waste of water. The rising electric bills. By ignoring the specific benefits of AI, you leave room for the other side to weaken your opposition. Imagine supporting Flock cameras, as a helpful tool for fighting crime. If your stolen car was quickly found and returned to you with the help of a camera network, you’re understandably biased to generalize them as a good. However, the urgency of any ignored specific need could care less about anyone’s political generalizations. From necessary avoidance to discomfort avoidance Four. Standard politics allows for some sidestepping from some messy matters, for what can be called necessary avoidance. Like avoiding any potentially divisive details to hold a coalition together. Or reducing a political message for widespread digestion and hopeful adoption, to avoid cognitive overload. But if you’re not careful, whatever gets avoided likely sneaks up to bite you in the ass. Toxic politics tends to turn such practical avoidance into discomfort avoidance. We risk being coerced into depending on pain-relief, avoiding to resolve the needs that would remove cause for pain. We can get comfortable with simple yet bad choices. Bad choices beget bad choices. For most of us, our familiar pain is preferable to the pain we fear. Remember how you felt during the last news report of a mass shooting at a school? If leaning left, you likely got quickly onboard with calls for more gun control. You avoided defenders of gun rights. Perhaps you blamed them for the trauma you felt. If leaning right, you may have thought to yourself, “Oh no, here we go again with calls to limit my gun rights.” You listened for other 2nd Amendment advocates to push back the alarmist rhetoric, to avoid having to personally face these people’s angst. While busy avoiding uncomfortable politics, reality persists to warn us of the unmet needs with more and more pain. From mutual opposition to mutual defensiveness Five. Standard politics depends a lot on the myth of zero-sum thinking to fuel mutual opposition. Instead of appreciating how there’s enough resources to satisfy everyone’s needs, zero-sum assumes one side’s gain must come from the other side’s expense. Which prematurely pits us against each other, to assume we must fight each other instead of fighting the elites holding us down. Toxic politics easily turns this mutual opposition into mutual defensiveness. Instead of improving awareness of what each inflexibly needs, each side raises their guard. They oppose what others inflexibly need, causing each other to double down on their prioritized needs. Bias runs amok. What they politically resist they ironically reinforce. Pain persists. Most of us either adore Trump or despise him. Among his attributes is his proclivity to be intensely divisive. As if we needed his help to jump on any oppositional bandwagon. Will we someday look back on this era as that time we split into hostile factions? Or realize he was merely exploiting our differences for his own political gain? We collectively had 250 years of slipping into motivated reasoning to support our hostilities toward those with a different priority. We never had a politics that understands political bias as the outward expression of our inward prioritizing needs. We could soon find one. Meanwhile, any politics that fails to affirm the factual needs on all sides inevitably leads to conflict. And likely failure. Welcome to a politics that finally enables all sides to win. Welcome to Optimal Politics. Factual needs You listened long enough to appreciate this problem in a new light. Now let’s shift to the solution of Optimal Politics. Enough with our wasted human potential on politics as usual. It’s time we pivot to expanding our human potential to love each other more.