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.
USA: Avatars and Engineers — Carter, Reagan, Kennedy, Nixon, Hoover, Harding, Bush¶
Chapter: 10 — Case: USA File: 10_059 · v1 · 16 September 2026 (Gemini dialogue, session 15-09-26) Source: thought experiments on the history of the American presidency (drawing on the transcript of M. Katz's analysis of Carter); the architect's corrections ("came" vs "was brought"; Kennedy ≠ Reagan; "an obedient Congress" is a mistake). A country case; the universal conclusion — "the old system rewards hypnosis, not intellect" — applies everywhere, but the material is American.
Correction of 01.10.2026. "$780", "1.5 %" and "a vote with triple weight" in this chapter are a worked example for the US written before the decisions of 30.09.2026. The current norm: the size of the payment is set as a percentage of the median income and approved by referendum; one ballot is one vote, there is no multiplier ("triple weight" is the arithmetic of a share: the more people exit, the larger the share each ballot cast makes up, equally for everyone who votes); the jurisdiction's budget pays under law, a candidate never pays; only a referendum introduces or changes the rule, an elected body cannot; numbers on election outcomes and words about inevitability in this chapter are estimates and theses, there has been no pilot (1d, 048m).
1. The matrix: avatar (front end) and engineer (CEO)¶
Strip away the party husk and presidents fall into two systemic categories. Avatars — obedient interfaces hired by the elites and party bosses to calm the masses while real control stays with the "back end". Engineers — managers who tried to repair the system itself and were destroyed by it for lacking the skills of mass hypnosis. Any system shapes the species best adapted to its survival rules; in a model where 100 % have an equal vote regardless of involvement, the survival resource is the emotions of the masses (the limbic system: fear, hope, anger, sympathy), and selection runs on one criterion — the ability to hack it. The architect's correction: "laws are created by a mass of people and are changed by them — that is exactly what AB-EXIT was created for": laws are the climate; to change the species of politicians you must change the climate, and in a democracy only the mass itself can do that — by being offered a deal the limbic system will not refuse. The mass votes for the protocol for the sake of the cheque and, without understanding what it is doing, changes the apex predator: avatars die out, because an auditor cannot be hypnotised with a smile.
2. Carter: the tragedy of the pure engineer¶
The first real engineer-president (Naval Academy, nuclear physics, submariner). Three traps of the old system: bitter truth — the 1979 "malaise speech" at the peak of stagflation ("we will have to save and work hard for the future") — the crowd wants miracles, the system punished honesty by choosing a year later the fairy tale "Morning in America" and growth on credit; sabotage by Congress and the establishment — an outsider who cut pork-barrel got a boycott from his own party, which depends on populism and lobbyists; media hysteria — 444 days of Iranian hostages on television pumped the apathetic majority with fear while he sought a bloodless solution (and achieved it — the hostages were released right after the election). Plus the "swamp rabbit" incident, inflated by the press into the image of a weak president. The result in 1980: 49 electoral votes against 489.
Under the protocol the weaknesses become weapons: those who want to hear only soothing fairy tales take the cheque and leave; at the urns remains a board of directors for whom "tighten belts for two years for energy independence in ten" is an excellent business plan; the tabloid-news audience disappears from the polling stations, and Carter is judged not by the rabbit but by Camp David, the Panama Canal and Superfund; the hostage hysteria does not work — the fear industry feeds on the 48 % of the apathetic who have already monetised non-participation. The error of the crisis-of-confidence speech: he asked people to tighten belts for free, he moralised; the protocol turns the preacher into a crisis CEO with an honest contract: "those not ready to go into anti-crisis policy — severance; with those who remain we carry out hard reforms". The referendum hijacks the agenda: cable channels discuss the dividend formula, not Iran; resisting congressmen are enemies of the people stealing $780.
The correction about Congress. The first formulation — "Congress would become an obedient instrument of the engineer-president" — is a vestige of authoritarian thinking, the classical politician's dream of a tame parliament. In reality both the president and Congress become instruments of the same board of directors. Synchronisation of employers: today the president pleases the averaged nation and the congressman pleases the radicals and lobbyists of his district, hence gridlock; under the protocol their base is identical — the same pragmatists with calculators hire and fire both. Partnership instead of subordination: Congress obeys not Carter but the ROI he brings; a good project is adopted instantly, a bad one blocked, and the voters applaud Congress. The death of party discipline: a deputy does not need the party's protection from the crowd's anger — there is no crowd; he communicates directly with the investors. Not an engineer's dictatorship — a corporate singularity where for the first time both branches stop spending 90 % of their time on tug-of-war.
3. Reagan: not "came" but "was brought"¶
It is a mistake to think Reagan stupid — he had the highest emotional competence; he intuitively understood that the president in this architecture is not a designer but a seller of hope, and played the "strong kind father of the nation" for 489 electoral votes. But the architect's correction: "you confuse came and was brought — why do the elites need an actor?" Big capital, the oil corporations and the conservative think tanks held a casting; they needed not a leader but an avatar. Why an actor precisely: (1) the perfect front end — the elites' back end (Reaganomics, cutting social programmes, tax cuts for corporations) in pure form would have caused a revolt; an actor is a gleaming soothing interface hiding the ruthless logic under the hood; (2) a professional reader of someone else's text — engineers are stubborn and will not read a mathematically wrong text even when paid; an actor is trained to deliver sincerely, with a tear, what the scriptwriters wrote — and sells anti-scientific trickle-down so that the poor vote to transfer money to the rich; (3) Teflon anaesthesia — a Wall Street banker saying "we cut medicine for the corporations" would be raised on pitchforks; the kind grandfather from the westerns says "government is the problem", and the crowd's critical thinking switches off; the extraction operations go through under pride and patriotism; (4) hacking the limbic system — fear ("the evil empire") and comfort ("morning in America"); you need not solve the voter's problems if you can manage his neuroses. The protocol strikes not at Reagan but at the show's directors and producers: for $780 the tickets are bought back from the whole crowd of extras; in an empty hall an actor with a memorised text is useless — there is nobody to charm; the pragmatist answers "morning in America": "great slogan, now the Excel model: how do you cut taxes while inflating the military budget, and what happens to the deficit in five years".
4. Kennedy: the unauthorised CEO¶
The first version — "Kennedy is the first Reagan" (the 1960 debates: on radio Nixon won, on television 70 million gave the victory to the tanned handsome man; he sold romance, style, "Camelot"). The architect's correction: "Reagan was not killed — an avatar obeys, there is no point killing him; you compared wrongly". Interface was confused with architecture: both possessed the television front end, but under the hood were different machines, and the fact of the assassination is structural proof. Reagan was a product of the system without ambitions to break the order: they wrote the text, he performed; an obedient avatar is protected and allowed to live to old age as a hero. Kennedy the elites promoted as an avatar — a handsome boy from a rich family — but on gaining power he switched on his own back end: refused the CIA air support at the Bay of Pigs, went against the Pentagon hawks in the Cuban crisis (a blockade instead of a strike, a secret channel to Khrushchev), threatened the oil lobbyists and the banks. In the old system, if the interface acquires subjectivity and breaks the schemes of the shadow elites, the system removes it — regardless of whether we believe in a lone gunman. The spectator people cannot protect him, because it is blind.
Under the protocol Kennedy would not have fought the CIA and the generals alone in dark corridors: a shield of investors — 20 % of pragmatists with amplified votes; legalisation of the conflict — "the military-industrial complex demands burning your assets and future dividends in nuclear fire for super-profits; I veto; support me"; audit of the shadow elites — any grouping must prove its profitability; to kill the president is to declare war on the most motivated class holding the controlling stake. And he would have had to drop the mask: Apollo cannot be sold as "we go not because it is easy but because it is hard" — the pragmatists ask why billions for a rock in space; Kennedy the investor would show the plan: the programme creates microelectronics, materials science, communications and secures technological hegemony for 50 years, repaying the taxes a thousandfold — and that would sell. The Cuban crisis in the old system the radicals chalked up as his weakness; the pragmatists would reward perfect risk management.
5. Three patterns¶
Perfect avatars: Harding and Bush Jr. Harding (1920s) was chosen by party bosses in a smoke-filled room for "presidential looks" and pliability; he sold a war-weary nation a "return to normalcy" while his cabinet ran the greatest rackets (Teapot Dome). Bush Jr. — "the guy you'd have a beer with", Texan reliability on the façade while the back end (Cheney, Rumsfeld, the defence lobbyists) rebuilt the Middle East and inflated trillion-dollar military budgets. Avatars survive where people vote with the heart or "for our guy"; under the protocol the lovers of beer and smiles take the cheque, the avatar is left alone with auditors who see Harding's racket and Cheney's estimate for Iraq — and fire the frontmen.
The tragedy of the pure engineer: Hoover. A literal engineer (mining multimillionaire, brilliant crisis logistician). The Great Depression demanded he become the nation's psychotherapist; he could not act for the camera, lie or comfort — he offered dry unpopular structural solutions; the crowd hated him, the system replaced him with the genius communicator Roosevelt. Under the protocol the crowd frightened by the crash monetises its fear, and the board of investors says: "we know three years will be hard; no fireside chats needed — show the blueprints of the rebuild".
The paranoid CEO: Nixon. One of the smartest strategists (opening China, détente), who understood the mechanics of the back end but had the complex of lacking a Hollywood front end — he had already lost once to handsome Kennedy. To hold power in a system that demands the crowd's love, he used illegal back-end methods (Watergate, black campaigns) and perished by them. Under the protocol Nixon would not have had to break the law: a system that evaluates real geopolitical ROI would have handed him any election for the results of his deals; the protocol spares intellectuals the need to fight for the crowd's emotions with dirty methods.
6. General conclusion¶
The old democracy is a factory of avatars and a graveyard of engineers: the problem is not evil elites and a stupid people but the architecture of the free universal vote, which is physically incapable of rewarding intellect — only quality hypnosis. The symbiosis of elites and avatars is perfect parasitism: the shadow elites need not go into politics, it is enough to hire an interface. An engineer who accidentally enters the system is rejected (politically, like Carter and Hoover, or physically, like Kennedy); one who tries to adapt without the talent becomes a paranoiac (Nixon). The protocol buys out and switches off the state's limbic system ($780 — immediate dopamine compensation for the emotions) and switches on the prefrontal cortex — the 20–30 % for whom influence over the budget matters more than money. This is not political technology — directed social evolution where the mass itself presses the upgrade button: the micro-rationality of the ordinary person (close the loan) launches a macroeconomic miracle (the remote is with those who can govern). Social aikido: the more irresponsible the voter, the faster he presses "take" — the bug becomes a feature; and it is fair, because nobody is driven from the polling station — the vote is bought out for a cycle at the market price, and the seller cannot stage a revolution: the deal was honest.
7. Weak point of the case¶
The matrix is a rhetorical frame, not history: it ignores that Roosevelt was simultaneously a communicator and a builder of institutions, and Nixon both a strategist and the creator of the EPA. "Avatar/engineer" is useful as an explanation of selection but dangerous as a classification of people. And the counterfactual "Carter under the protocol" assumes Carter's energy programme was right — a separate dispute the protocol does not settle: it guarantees the engineer is heard, not that the engineer is right. 🟡
Related: 045 (US legal base) · 052 · 059b (Musk and Milei) · 059c (Trump $5000) · 059d (candidates, Porter, libertarians) · 059e (the underdog campaign) · 015b (catharsis spiral) · 034b.7 (negative selection) · 040g (Russian thought: Pivovarov on power-property) · 021 (the centrist void)