The Giving America Manifesto

“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” — David Graeber

What does America need most right now? Listening to Americans on the left and the right, of every race, religion, and social class; I have heard very different answers. Some say we need more abundance; others say we must learn moral restraint. Some say fewer wars abroad; others murmur, with a nervous chuckle, of the approach of a cleansing war within. Some say we need to balance our budget. Others say we must stop paying so much attention to budgets. And I have heard over and over again, with great urgency and even greater mystery, that something must be done—and quickly—about the Rule of Law.

But there is one thing—a very quiet thing—that I have heard in nearly every one of these conversations, which somehow conveys more than the whole collection of theories. It is almost never said outright; but it is almost always there. Sometimes it’s in the quiet space just after someone voices a real frustration or calls out one of the many hypocrisies of their political opponents. Other times, you hear it in their sighs or in their sarcasm. Often, it’s just a shared look in all of our eyes.

It’s our disillusionment; our world-weary cynicism. Americans used to believe that things would improve over time—the moral arc of the universe would bend towards justice; and if it didn’t on its own, that we would make it so. Now, we don’t really believe in anything, except perhaps the inevitability of crony capitalism. You can see it in our eyes.

Our pessimism should be very surprising to us. It is a genuinely new tone for America, one that was foreign to us even a couple of decades ago. Even the most oppressed Americans have always stubbornly believed in some vision of their future: whether it was MLK’s bending arc, or the Black Panther Party’s utopian vision built on mutual aid. But our turn towards cynicism has happened over time—a product of forces so slow, persistent, and methodical, that we have scarcely recognized the shift.

What I have noticed most, as I listen to Americans of all kinds, is that the discourse in America has grown very dark. We can no longer muster a positive vision of the future, much less a path to get there.

What America needs is hope.

The Giving America Series

When a people’s hope has been lost, it can’t be bought back cheaply. Cynicism is an immune response — an adaptive hostility to optimism that we learn over time, as a protective measure against false promises.

If we want to regain our optimism, to believe that there is a better world for our children, and perhaps even for ourselves, it is no longer enough to say good words like “Democracy,” “Equality,” “Hope,” and “Change.” We must instead have a real, concrete vision — a clear sightline to a beautiful future, a trustworthy roadmap with practical means and concrete ends.

This is the goal of the Giving America series. We believe that, over the course of this series, we will provide a vision of and towards the future that has enough clarity, rigor, and conviction to restore in you some hope. Not hope that the future will be good on its own, but hope that you and I can, and will, make it so.

The first phase of the Contributist Reader was focused on theory — on developing a robust understanding of what makes individuals, communities, economies, and societies flourish. We believe we have come to understand that theory well. Giving to one another is the humanizing and the generative act, and when we can give well (freely, actively, relationally, and effectively), both we and our communities thrive. The entirety of our theory is expressed in short form on the Core Ideas page of the Contributism website, and in longer form in the Intro to Contributism series on the Reader.

This next phase of the Reader will be about practice. It will unfold over the coming months, in the shape of a weekly series of practical proposals, aimed at all facets of our life and society, that will together describe what it looks like to get from here (today’s America) to there (a contributist society).

You will read about how we can build better relationships by restoring “good friction” to our lives. How the American business model can be restructured to ensure that companies behave better, rather than worse, over time. How we can use American capital as the engine to fund everything we need, even a Universal Basic Income. How we can restore civic belonging and responsibility; right-size the ballooning costs of healthcare and education; heal our broken systems (and mindsets) on immigration and citizenship; repair America’s atrophied democratic structures; even transform taxes into a true act of giving rather than one of taking.

Some of the proposals will be things we can adopt as individuals, and some will require broader social change. Some of the proposals will strike you as simply incremental; others as revolutionary. This is by design. We want to be painstakingly careful not to cast a vision that feels out-of-reach, nor one that feels milquetoast. To do this successfully requires a complex roadmap of ideas, some of which are feasible today, and others which will appear more and more feasible over time.

Not every proposal will speak to every reader, and that’s okay. But every proposal will be both boldly contributist and relentlessly pragmatic, and will fit into a broader story of an American future that we think you can honestly believe in, and we hope you will find honestly exciting.

The Giving America Roadmap

The proposals in the Giving America Series are not just articles; they are calls to action. We don’t just want you to read them, we want you to understand their impact (including their costs as well as their benefits), then advocate for the ones you believe in — in your own life, your community, and your politics.

We have a broad vision for how we will help you to do this, which we will roll out over time. The first step, which we are making available now, is the Giving America Roadmap.

The Roadmap is an interactive, customizable model of your vision of a contributist society. Every week, as a new proposal is released, it will be added to the roadmap, where you can visualize its costs and impact over time. Within the roadmap, you can stress-test our proposals, replace our assumptions for your own, and pick and choose the ideas that you want to see made real in the world. By spending time building out your vision, and sharing it with others, you are taking the first step to making it a reality.

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We are trying to build something genuinely new here. Stick around and we think you’ll like what you see over the next few weeks, but we haven’t thought of everything. So, as always, we want your input to help us become better givers. If you have something to say or would like to help with this project in any way, please leave a comment, contact us, or help us develop proposals.