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5. Enable redundancy/Distributed Risk/Hedging

6. Enable radical Self-Reliance

7. Enable reciprocity

8. Diffuse power and the means of wealth/income creation

9. Base Decisions on an Integrated Understanding

10. Leverage Existing Capital, Assets and Skills

11. ESSA: Eliminate, Simplify, Standardize and Automate

12. Generate Value and Surplus Capital

13. Secure/Produce/Innovate the FEW Resources (food, energy, water)

14. Think, Plan and Act with integrity

15. Pare complexity to simplicity

We as a nation need to construct a new understanding of government and governance, one which has not been poisoned by the current politics of experience.

Thus the tax code should be one page long: "A 2% fee will be levied and paid to the U.S. Treasury on all financial exchanges, sales and trades of real estate, financial instruments, real goods and services, without exception. No other taxes will be levied, though government agencies may levy modest fees for services provided."

This sort of radical simplicity is impossible in the current mindset and system, yet it not inherently impossible or even difficult. In proposing it and discussing it, we sow the intellectual seeds for an eventual integrated understanding of the perverse incentives of the current system and its corruption by Elites (special interests) and fiefdoms (in the case of taxes: corporations, the super-wealthy, accountants, tax attorneys, etc.)

Here are a few examples of common-sense good governance.

1. Restrict political donations to the residents and enterprises within a district; post every donation (the donor, their address, the board of directors of every group or enterprise and the size of the donation) prominently on the Web.

2. Limit districts to contiguous simple geometric boundaries which cannot be gerrymandered to protect the powers of incumbents or incumbent political parties.

3. Rescind all Federal drug laws. The Savior State is gone; it is no longer the mandate of the State to attempt to protect its citizens from themselves. The spectacularly ineffective "war on drugs" is no longer affordable. Drug laws, if any, are left to local jurisdictions.

The same can be said of all existing Federal laws pertaining to anything beyond the limited mandates of the Constitution: defense of the nation, regulate commerce, enforce the Bill of Rights, etc.

4. The government must live within the means provided by its limited tax on all financial transactions. It is no longer the State mandate to manipulate financial markets or the currency; the State's sole mandate is to insure transparent and open markets and eradicate "shadow" financial structures.

It is beyond the scope of this book to address every possible avenue of common-sense good governance; I have laid out the principles which I believe guide and underpin good governance, and have stated the first and foremost requirement: an engaged citizenry. Without that, then governance will soon slip back under the influence of various Power Elites.

Though I believe there is common ground for the citizenry not on the payroll of various self-interested Elites, there is also room for disagreement. It is not the agreement which is important at this point, but the dissemination of radically common-sense proposals which follow from the 15 principles outlined above, and a civil discussion/discourse on those good governance proposals which arise from them.

Just as further food for thought, I would like to share a few more examples of what I consider common-sense good governance of finance, provided by correspondent Zeus Yiamouyiannis.

Proposition one: It is high time we rigorously re-visit the notion of public charters for corporations. If corporations are chartered by the public, then they need to be both answerable to and regulated by that public. There should be no unregulated, quasi-regulated, or self-regulated publicly chartered companies. I don’t have a problem with unchartered privately chartered companies. If a hedge fund or private equity firm wants to take private funds (and that means