What Kind of System Do We Want?

The first essay of The Revolution Will Be Televised series

In The Revolution Will Be Televised, my introductory essay in this series, I wrote that we need a nonviolent revolution in the U.S. to replace a broken system with one that is egalitarian, regenerative, sustainable, redistributive, and is a true, participatory democracy.

Since posting the essay, I have had people ask me if I am truly advocating a revolution, and if so, why. I said yes, I’m advocating a nonviolent revolution, because only a nonviolent revolution can create lasting change.

The reason I am advocating a nonviolent revolution is because the entire political and economic system is rigged: it locks out everyone but the gatekeepers and the monied class that subsidizes them.

The U.S. Constitution itself is no longer fully relevant; it is suffering from institutional hardening of the arteries, as it no longer serves contemporary society. Thomas Jefferson believed the Constitution should be renewed or amended by every generation, so we should pay heed to what Jefferson believed.

And with the two-party system, with each presidential election it’s the insurgent candidate that wins, although once voters see that the insurgent candidate is not going to do what they promised, in the next election voters elect the candidate from the opposing party, who portrays themselves as the true insurgent.

This has been the trend for many decades now, and because of this trend, along with the antiquated U.S. Constitution and the general rigged nature of American democracy, the entire system is collapsing under its own weight. For these and some other reasons, the U.S. is now rated a flawed democracy by the Democracy Index.

And that’s why we need a nonviolent revolution: to create a true, egalitarian, and participatory democracy that works for all.

Knowing the Destination Before the March Begins

Every revolution begins with anger and outrage. But anger and outrage alone doesn’t tell us where we’re going — it only tells us what we’re leaving behind.

History is littered with uprisings that knew exactly what they were against — and had only a hazy idea of what they were for. The result? They toppled the old order with righteous fury, only to watch the vacuum fill with something equally corrupt, equally oppressive, or simply chaotic enough to invite counter-revolution.

We can’t afford that mistake.

This series, The Revolution Will Be Televised, is about more than resistance — it’s about construction. It’s a roadmap for building a society that’s fundamentally different from the one we live in now: egalitarian, sustainable, compassionate, redistributive, and infused with real democratic power.

This essay lays out the destination — the vision of the world we’re trying to reach. In the weeks and months ahead, I’ll explore the strategies, tactics, and lessons — from history, from around the globe, and from movements here at home — that can take us there. I’ll dive into how we got here, humor as a weapon, the anatomy of nonviolent uprisings, the discipline required to sustain movements, and the crucial question of what comes after the fire.

Before we set out, we must name our North Star.

How Decisions Are Made

Naming the North Star starts with a deeper question: how are decisions made, and who gets to make them? At its core, any system we design must grapple not only with structures of ownership and distribution, but with the lived reality of democracy itself. Too often, we’ve been told that democracy begins and ends with voting every few years, handing power to representatives who vanish into distant halls of government. This is a hollowed-out version of democracy, one that leaves most people feeling powerless and apathetic, which leads to people feeling like their vote doesn’t count—and lo and behold, they choose not to vote, because they think voting is an exercise in futility.

But deciding what kind of system we want isn’t just about choosing between Democrat or Republican, capitalism ot socialism, reform or revolution. It’s also about who writes the rules — and who benefits from them. The reality is that today’s obscene levels of wealth inequality didn’t just appear out of nowhere. They are the product of deliberate choices by elites who have rewritten the rules in their favor: dismantling progressive taxation, deregulating industries, weakening unions, suppressing the vote, and hollowing out public protections.

Project 2025 is the latest iteration of this.

What kind of system is it, really, if the wealthy few can always tilt the playing field to ensure they win? A democracy in name only. If we are serious about imagining a system where everyone can flourish, then we must confront not only economic structures but also the democratic structures that allow a minority of elites to dictate terms to the majority.

But systemic choice isn’t only about economic structures or governance models. It’s also about something even more elemental — how money itself is created, and for whose benefit.

Show Me the Money

Another critical choice is how we treat money itself. Today, money is created not as a public good, but primarily through private bank lending and Federal Reserve mechanisms that overwhelmingly serve financial markets. This system pours credit into speculation — real estate bubbles, stock buybacks, and financial derivatives — while the public economy of schools, hospitals, and infrastructure is starved of resources.

But money is not a law of nature — it is a human-made system, and therefore a political choice. Organizations like Positive Money in the UK argue that money creation should be treated as a public utility: transparent, democratically accountable, and directed toward social priorities such as green investment, affordable housing, and community development.

So when we ask, what kind of system do we want, we must include this: do we want money to remain the private playground of financial elites, or do we want it to serve as the lifeblood of a democratic society? This is not a technical question, but a moral one — and the answer shapes whether democracy itself can flourish.

Participatory Democracy

Participatory democracy is the lifeblood of a true democracy: it ensures the rules are made by the many, not rewritten endlessly by the few.

Participatory democracy asks us to imagine something far richer. It is not merely about choosing rulers, but about people ruling together. This means creating processes where communities deliberate, weigh trade-offs, and make collective choices that affect their lives. It means treating democracy not as an event, but as a practice — one that shapes how societies govern themselves, how workplaces operate, how schools are run, how neighborhoods allocate resources, and more.

This vision is not abstract. Experiments in participatory budgeting, citizens’ assemblies, and digital platforms for collaborative decision-making are already reshaping how ordinary people engage with power. From the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s consensus councils to modern models emerging in places like Porto Alegre, Ireland, Iceland, Switzerland, and Taiwan, history shows that societies thrive when they distribute decision-making rather than hoard it.

So the real choice is whether we want a democracy that stops at the ballot box — or one that flows throughout society, through every institution, every workplace, every community. In the end, the system we want must be one that gives people not just rights, but voice — not just representation, but agency.

Egalitarian by Design, Not by Accident

An egalitarian society doesn’t mean everyone has exactly the same material circumstances; it means the vast chasms of wealth and power we see today operate at a manageable, human scale. It means no billionaire class can buy the laws it wants. It means no working poor forced to choose between rent and medicine.

We can look to countries like Norway, Denmark, and Finland for inspiration — where progressive taxation, strong labor protections, and universal public services have produced both high living standards and high social trust. These societies aren’t perfect, but they prove that you can dramatically narrow inequality without strangling innovation or personal freedom.

In the U.S., that could mean:

• Wealth taxes on fortunes so large they distort democracy itself

• Worker ownership incentives for businesses

• Breaking up monopolies that choke competition and political choice

• Putting restraints of Wall Street and the banking industry

Narrowing the wealth gap isn’t just an economic reform — it’s a democratic necessity.

Flourishing for All

A revolution is only worth it if the society it births allows everyone to flourish — not just survive, but thrive. Flourishing means universal access to healthcare, housing, education, clean water, and nutritious food. It means a cultural shift where human dignity is the baseline, not the reward for “earning” it in the marketplace.

This is the foundation of a healthy democracy. When people’s basic needs are met, they have the freedom — and the energy — to participate fully in civic life.

This could mean things like:

• A universal basic income to guarantee a floor no one can fall below

• Single-payer or universal healthcare, including mental health and dental care

• Free, high-quality public education through college or vocational training

• Housing as a right, with public investment in green, affordable homes

Later in the series, when I write about “The General Strike: Ultimate Nonviolent Weapon,” I will explore how withholding our labor can force these policies into reality.

Sustainable and Regenerative

Our current system is built on extraction — from workers, from nature, from the future itself. That’s not just morally bankrupt, it’s suicidal. A sustainable society stops depleting the resources it depends on. A regenerative society goes further, actively repairing the damage.

This means:

• Transitioning to 100% renewable energy as fast as technologically possible

• Restoring wetlands, forests, and ecosystems as a matter of public policy

• Redesigning cities for walkability, transit, and resilience against climate shocks

• Ending subsidies for fossil fuels and redirecting them to clean energy innovation

I’ll dive into the intersection of climate justice and democracy in a later essay, showing how ecological collapse and democratic collapse feed each other — and how to break the cycle.

Compassionate Governance

A compassionate society recognizes that justice isn’t vengeance. We replace a criminal justice system obsessed with punishment with one centered on restoration, rehabilitation, and prevention.

This could mean:

• Ending mass incarceration and replacing it with community-based alternatives

• Shifting funding from militarized policing to mental health and social services

• Truth and reconciliation processes to address systemic racial injustice

• Humane immigration policies that uphold asylum rights and family unity

Compassion in governance also means embedding empathy into how laws are made — asking not just “Is this efficient?” but “Is this humane?”

Redistributive Economics

Redistribution is not theft; it is democracy defending itself from oligarchy. Without it, wealth and power inevitably concentrate into the hands of a few — and democracy withers.

Redistributive policy could include:

• Progressive taxation, and a wealth tax, that funds public goods

• Public banks that invest in local communities rather than extract from them

• National Investment banks that invest in the public good nationwide

• Restraints on Wall Street and the banking industry

• Universal dividends from shared national resources (think Alaska’s oil dividend, but for clean energy)

• A national job guarantee for all who want to work in socially necessary sectors like care, infrastructure, and environmental restoration.

Direct Democracy in Practice

Representative democracy is necessary, but not sufficient. We need structures that let people make real decisions over the policies that affect their lives.

This means more than just voting every two or four years. It means:

• Participatory budgeting in cities, counties, and states — citizens directly allocating public funds

• Citizens’ assemblies on major national issues, selected by democratic lottery to reflect the country’s diversity

• Recall mechanisms for elected officials who betray their mandate

• Digital democracy platforms for transparent public consultation on legislation by way of crowdsourcing and other methods that allow the input of citizens to be taken into account

We can learn from Porto Alegre, Brazil, which pioneered participatory budgeting, from Ireland’s citizens’ assemblies that broke political deadlock on marriage equality and reproductive rights, and Taiwan’s digital democracy that allows citizens to have a direct voice in their governing structure.

Direct democracy is truly democracy in action, and gives every citizen a voice. Representative democracy, especially as now seen in the U.S., is no longer relevant: it has been corrupted by money, and especially since the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, dark money.

Why This Vision is Necessary Now

We are seeing now the consequences of decades of neoliberal policy that hollowed out public goods, deregulated capital, and treated democracy as a branding exercise rather than a lived reality. This decay has left fertile ground for authoritarianism — because when people lose faith that democracy can deliver, they’ll accept almost anything that promises order.

Donald Trump is the beneficiary of these decades of hollowing out. He didn’t create the antidemocratic nature of the U.S.; instead he stepped into the void created by all this and took advantage in order to seize power.

If we don’t replace our current system with something that works materially and morally better for the majority, the regressive and reactionary element of society will continue to hold sway — not in spite of society’s failures, but because of them.

We can’t simply “restore” the America of the past. The 1950s New Deal consensus left out huge swaths of the population — especially Black, Indigenous, and immigrant communities. Our vision must be bigger, more inclusive, and more just. A multiracial, multicultural society is the America of the future.

Core Principles for a Democratic Future

• Egalitarianism — Narrow wealth and power gaps to human scale

• Universal Flourishing — Guarantee the basics so everyone can participate fully in society and everyone has the capacity to realize their full human potential

• Sustainability & Regeneration — Heal the environment while meeting human needs

• Compassionate Justice — Prioritize restoration over punishment

• Redistribution — Keep wealth circulating for the common good

• Direct Democracy — Give people real decision-making power between elections

• Inclusivity — No community left behind in the new order

The Revolution’s North Star

We fight not just to remove the old system, but to birth a new one. This vision is our North Star — the thing we can navigate by when the struggle gets messy, when factions form, when the future feels uncertain.

Over the coming weeks and months in The Revolution Will Be Televised, I’ll explore the full arsenal of nonviolent resistance, the lessons from past uprisings, the power of humor, the discipline movements need to endure, and the hard truth of what happens after victory. We’ll also face the threats to democracy, along with the risks, the setbacks, and the moments when the temptation to compromise away the vision will be strongest.

If you read nothing else from this series, read this: We already have the tools, the numbers, and the creativity to win. What we need is the courage to imagine a future worth fighting for — and the discipline to build it together.

The cameras will be rolling. The streets will be full. The world will be watching.

And this time, we’ll know exactly where we’re going.

I’ll be back next week with the next installment, Why Revolutions Start Long Before They Begin.