The rule, exactly. Before an election each citizen chooses: to vote — or to take a payment and not vote in that election. The payment is a percentage of the median income, set by referendum; there is no fixed sum. One ballot is one vote, with no multiplier in the count; the vote is amplified only in that each ballot's share grows as others step out. The budget pays under law; a candidate never pays. Only a referendum of all citizens — simple majority, no quorum — introduces, changes or repeals the rule.
The protocol has been introduced nowhere and no pilot has been run: shares, turnout and outcome figures in the chapters are estimates, and the protocol promises nobody an election victory. If a chapter says otherwise, Exact Answers and the Charter are correct. For a candidate: ten questions and ten steps. For a citizen, a mayor, a finance officer, a donor, a journalist, a scholar, a lawyer: answers by role. Everything in force in one file: llms-full.txt.
Kant: A Nation of Devils, the Price of an Act, and the Despotism of Paternal Care¶
Chapter: 06 — Structural Hypocrisy and the Elites' Arsenal File: 06_040j · v1 · 29 September 2026 (session 28–29.09.26) Source: the architect's question "what would Kant say about AB-EXIT"; reconstruction from the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), What is Enlightenment? (1784), On the Common Saying… (1793), Perpetual Peace (1795), The Metaphysics of Morals (1797); three corrections by the architect. Kant did not appear in the repository before this section.
How to read this chapter (note of 02.10.2026). The text contains wording that is easy to misread: a "reversible" choice means "at the next election": within one election exit is final. The exact-answers sheet 1d and the charter 048m are in force.
1. Where Kant would recognise his own¶
A nation of devils. Perpetual Peace: the problem of establishing a state is soluble even for a nation of devils, provided they have understanding — their private inclinations must be arranged so that they check one another and public conduct comes out as if the evil inclinations did not exist. That is a definition of what the protocol does: not to correct the voter but to arrange his two greeds — for money and for weight (045.2) — so that the result is that of a reasonable man. Kant was the first to say that a good constitution does not require good people; AB-EXIT is a constitutional norm that follows this literally.
Right, not morality. Kant has two domains: ethics demands an act from duty; right demands only external lawfulness and may coerce and incentivise. The objection "virtue for money is not virtue" he would remove himself: voting is an act of right, and right makes no claim on motive. He would insist that the protocol not pose as an educator — and the repository does not (038b: management, not pedagogy).
The active and the passive citizen. Metaphysics of Morals, §46: the active citizen is independent, living by his own labour and property; the passive one — servant, day-labourer, dependant — has no vote, because his will is led by a master. That is the nurse at the district hospital brought in by her boss (056d §5) and the bussed voter (039). One difference, in the protocol's favour: with Kant the line was drawn by the state, by property, for ever and without asking; with the protocol the person draws it himself, for one cycle, reversibly and for a payment. Kant set autonomy above everything — self-determination into passivity is more honest than assignment to it.
Publicity. The appendix to Perpetual Peace: every action affecting the rights of others is wrong if its maxim is incompatible with publicity. The dividend formula stands in the law, the sum on the ballot. Orbán's maxim "we pay you so that you vote for us" cannot be public — it is spoken otherwise: "care for families" (029.4b). Kant would distinguish the two payments by exactly this mark, not by the amount.
2. Where he would strike — and how the blow is removed with his own weapon¶
Dignity and price. Groundwork: everything has either a price or a dignity; what has a price can be replaced by an equivalent. The vote is part of the citizen's dignity as a co-legislator; to set a price on it is to strip the dignity. This is the most serious objection, and the repository's answer under the "compare with the existing system" rule (029.7, 018) — that the vote already has a price: about a euro per vote in party financing, the 13th pension, the mobilisation industry, and the protocol merely makes it public and hands it to the person — would not satisfy Kant: that devils already trade does not make trading right.
Three corrections by the architect remove the objection, and all three come from Kant himself.
First: a ban is despotism. On the Common Saying… (1793): a government built on benevolence toward the people as a father toward children, where subjects must wait for the head to judge what their happiness consists in, is "the greatest despotism imaginable". To forbid a citizen to dispose of his vote for his own moral good is exactly that: the state decides for him what is dignified for him. The universal principle of right — the freedom of each compatible with the freedom of all under a universal law — and nothing beyond it; right may not prescribe virtue. The dignity objection Kant could hold only as a moralist; as a jurist he is obliged to withdraw it — his own principle forbids imposing dignity by force.
Second: the right and the act are different things. "Price or dignity" applies to the person, not to the deed. The right to vote is part of the person, inalienable, and under the protocol it is not alienated (029.3: button B is for one cycle, reversible). To sell the right is to strip dignity; not to perform the act in this cycle is to exercise freedom. In the Doctrine of Right the same line separates contract from slavery: one may not sell oneself, one may sell one's labour for a term. The opponent will say the transfer from labour to the vote is a stretch: the vote is closer to the person than to labour. The architect's answer closes this too: decompose voting as a process — listen to the debates, study the arguments, check the facts, think what would be good for oneself, travel to the polling station, tick the box, return. If the ballot is not war and peace, not life and death, but an election as a measure, then by the composition of actions it is a working day (045.1: the price of an hour). The vote that is "part of the person" is the vote in an existential choice; by the stake model (001b §3) nobody sells that vote: the person has a stake and stays in A. Where the vote is sold, it was labour. The objection annuls itself: where the vote is dignity it is not sold; where it is sold it was not dignity.
Third: to throw away without need is worse than to give with a decision. Today's non-voter does not sell his vote — he throws it away, and for nothing: others collect the price (029.7). For Kant an act without a maxim is not an act; a will that decided nothing stands below a will that decided "not this time". The protocol turns the throwing-away into an act of will with a number: for the first time the person decides not to vote and knows what it costs. What is Enlightenment?: immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance, self-incurred, out of laziness and cowardice. The objection "you pay for laziness" is inverted: for the first time the person is asked, and he answers himself — a step out of immaturity, not into it. The door outward is not shut (015c §7a: states, not types), and the number is the crudest and the most honest recognition of what immaturity costs this year.
3. What remains of Kant¶
One question, and it is juridical, not moral: may the state offer money for non-participation, if the state itself is the product of participation. Kant answers twice: through the nation of devils — it may, if the arrangement is such that the result is that of reasonable men; through publicity — it may, if the maxim is spoken aloud. The protocol passes both tests; Orbán's handout passes neither.
4. Verdict (reconstruction)¶
"You built right for a nation of devils and did not pass it off as ethics — that is correct. You let the passive citizen say himself that he is passive — that is more honest than mine. You did not touch the right, you put a price on the act, and to forbid that would be the despotism of paternal care. As a jurist I sign. As a moralist I shall keep silent — not because I agree, but because a morality imposed by law is, for me, no morality."
5. Weak point¶
A reconstruction, not a text: Kant did not write about non-turnout, and his passive citizen is a doctrine he partly retreats from in the same book (the passive must be able to become active), so §1 is a bridge, not a quotation. Decomposing voting into working actions removes the "closer to the person" argument for an election-as-measure but not for an election-as-fork; the protocol answers that with the stake model, not with Kant, and the opponent is entitled to say that the line between measure and fork is drawn after the vote, not before. 🟡
Related: 040h (Enlightenment: Robespierre, Beccaria, Bentham) · 040i (Linz: demobilisation) · 039 (Levitsky; the Orbán case) · 029.3 (the right to participate is not abolished) · 029.4b (the autocrat already pays) · 029.7 (where the money goes) · 045.1–045.2 (the price of an hour, two greeds) · 015c §7a (states, not types) · 001b §3 (the stake)