VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 4
A New Order for Politics
The last chapter was about the economy. This chapter is about politics. The third chapter made the pie big and said there is enough, and it buried one line it never told in detail: the reason that hand clutching the mountain of gold could be so unafraid was that behind it, it was clasped to a hand that propped it up. This chapter goes to look at that hand. This is defusing the bomb. This machine called politics was only ever meant to be administration, a machine the people hired to protect the people. The people are the boss, and the government is the hired hand. It cannot even think up such a thing as a law-enforcement apparatus, for there are only two things to be done, administration and the raising of people. But it has been twisted out of shape by a lock, the collusion of officials and business. This lock is a mechanism, not a thing at the mercy of any person's will, and for thousands of years it has driven one dynasty after another to rise and fall. Facing it, the first step is not to strike, but to save, because the people caught up in it are themselves people who are locked, people to be saved. Use the pen, not the knife, undo that lock, and the machine turns back to its proper place, protecting the people. This chapter has fourteen sections. The first seven let you see the true nature of that machine, and see how big that lock is and how, mouthful by mouthful, it bites you. From the eighth section on, it tells how to save and how to undo, and at the last it comes back down to one thing, letting the people live and work in peace.
Section One first drags those two words, "the government," out of the shape they have in your heart: a giant standing high above you, fining you, one you dare not offend. The government was only ever meant to be an administrative machine. The roads have to be built, the fires put out, the children taught. Everyone puts in a bit of money, this is tax, and hires a band of people to do it. The people are the boss who pays the money, and the government is the hired hand. A hired hand who turns around, rides on the boss's head, and digs into the boss's pocket has done his work backwards. The whole meaning of this machine's existence is to protect those three things for the people: to protect their freedom, to protect the safety of their life and property, and to give them an environment to live and work in peace. Every one begins with protection. This section also hands you an eye: read the intent, not the letter. The people's freedom is inborn, like an infant who wants to cry and cries, wants to laugh and laughs. That sheet of paper, the constitution, does not grant you freedom. It acknowledges, notes, and protects the freedom you already had. The one who reads the letter is illiterate in the law. He reads acknowledgment as granting.
Section Two takes the yardstick of protecting the people and measures three things on the machine. Lawmaking may lay down only the laws that protect the people. A lawmaking body that spends its days thinking about bringing in revenue is anti-human, because its laws cover the heads of every person, and not one person can get out from under them. The rules a department lays down are, in their true nature, only a suggested use, not a compulsory tool that fines you if you break it. Even if there is to be a fine, the money it brings in can only be used for education, and absolutely must not bring in revenue for the government or keep officials. Dam this outlet dead, and the money-raising chain is cut off at its source. At the last it asks you: in this world, on what grounds is there a law-enforcement apparatus? Ask it three times. The government is only administration. Law enforcement, at the bone, is coercion, is suppression. If everyone keeps himself in check, what law is left to be enforced by coercion? Even the prison guard is the same. The second chapter set up that the school is a prison, so his true nature is a teacher in this school. There are only two things to be done, administration and the raising of people, and you could never even think up such a thing as a law-enforcement apparatus.
Section Three. If the true nature is this clean, how did the machine in reality come to torment you, take heavy taxes, and levy fines? Because it was bound by a lock, the collusion of officials and business. The official holds power, and his calling is to watch business and manage business on behalf of the public. Business feeds the money to the official, the official uses his power to shield business, and that hand which was meant to manage business props up the business that wrings people. It is like the hand you hired to mind the shop taking business's benefit and digging into your pocket together with business. This lock and that lock of earn-nothing-and-be-wiped-out in the third chapter are two faces of the same game. But this section stops you first. Business uses money as a means to reach the end of cover. The official uses power as a means to reach the end of benefit. The two hit it off at once, and it turns of itself, like water flowing to the low place, and you would not curse the water as evil. This is called using means to reach ends. To see that it is a mechanism is not to excuse anyone. It is so that it can truly be solved. Bring a hundred down, and the hundred and first batch clasps together just the same. Venting your anger and solving the thing are two different matters.
Section Four looks from higher up at how big this chain is. It is not a scatter of rotten little things. It is an industrial chain. The official takes business's money and feeds it to the officials higher up, one layer feeding the next, one layer sheltering the next. One businessman clasps on, and the others, not clasping on, get crowded out. It does not pick an industry. It parasitizes on the body of every industry, and what it sucks, at bottom, is everyone's blood. It is the largest industrial chain on this earth. For thousands of years it has driven dynasties to rise and fall, round after round. A new dynasty is clear and clean, and the chain is still thin. It rolls thicker and thicker, and the front-line torment, the harsh taxes and sundry levies, the selling of offices and titles, all come. The people have no way to live, and it collapses. A new dynasty is founded, and the chain begins again, from a thin one, to grow. Swapping in a good emperor or swapping out the treacherous ministers cannot hold it back. It is at the mercy of no one's will. At the last it comes back down to people. One pot of rice raises a hundred kinds of people. Every corrupt person feels he has a just reason, and supposes heaven does not know and earth does not know. These two things hold two keys, education and oversight. The problem is in the lock, not in the people.
Section Five comes back down to the ground. The first mouthful that lock takes is your money. Tax was everyone pooling money to ask the government to build roads, put out fires, and run schools. But that money is drawn off, layer by layer, by the chain, and collected heavier and heavier into harsh taxes and sundry levies. Every new tax is paired with ten thousand good reasons, and once the money is in hand it is moved to other uses. The second mouthful bites your home. The land tax, also called the property tax, is in its true nature a protection fee. You pay the fee, and the government protects your home. If you did not give me protection, may I ask for a refund, or stop paying? Yet in the beacon country, a person loses his income, perhaps culled by this great fire of the AI turning, and cannot pay the land tax. By the rule this book set up, even the bank has to stay its hand and save the person. And the government, by the procedure, auctions off the home he guarded his whole life. The people who do this say, we did it by the procedure. These civil servants and judges who recognize only the procedure are, at the bone, illiterate in the law too. The intent of the law is to protect people, not to protect the procedure.
Section Six. Where that lock bites nearest is the window where you go to handle matters. This stamp is wrong, go back and stamp it again. This form is filled out wrong, fill it again. The system is down, come again tomorrow. You can only wear a smile, swallow your grievance, run back and forth. More than half of the front-line staff are tormenters by habit, and the private firms that control scarce resources are the same. But one pot of rice cannot raise half a pot of bad people. It is that position, having a little power, you begging me, you not able to go around me, and no one managing me, that raises people into this shape. A fiercer move still is overstepping administration into law enforcement. The speed-fining machines by the roadside go around the court, are aimed at the car, not the person, and watch the people twenty-four hours a day. A department in charge of buildings added one word to its name, inspection, and conferred on itself the title of a law-enforcement body. It uses anonymous reports to make trouble for owners living plain and proper lives, and reaches its hand into civil disputes. Not one cent of the fine money flows back into education. It is poured into private coffers. They are everywhere, so not one place-name, not one department-name is pointed at.
Section Seven. That lock also bites its way into the machine. At the entrance, the examination is on serving the public and keeping the law, on serving the people with all one's heart, but that gate examines the mouth, not the heart. A new person sits into a position and sees that the ones who rise fast are the ones who know how to take a side and are willing to skim along. Either he skims along and becomes one in the great army of corruption, or he holds to his honesty and is pressed at the bottom. This is called bad money driving out good. The ones recruited were good people. It is that lock that assimilated them. Last comes its hardest-to-notice move, calling what it took a gift. In the beacon country, when libraries, universities, and museums hold an event, at the opening a land acknowledgment is read, grateful to the indigenous people for giving us this land. But this land was not given. It was taken away. The indigenous people, counted in the tens of millions, were taken away by that great calamity. This section does not curse it as hypocrisy, nor make excuses for it. It only lets tears fall, and sees, too, the not-yet-extinguished conscience of the person on the platform. Every mouthful that lock takes is wrapped in a pleasing skin. Cast the eye that reads the intent through it.
Section Eight. Seeing this far, you have most likely clenched your fist, waiting to say, bring them down. Press this fire down first. Not to douse it, but to point it a road on which it can get something done. The first reason: striking is no use. For thousands of years, how many shouted to bring down the corrupt officials, to change the dynasty, to topple it all and start over, and that lock did not move an inch. The second reason: those people too were drawn in by the lock. The third chapter saved the slave, the laborer, and the one who lives on capital, and even that hand clutching the mountain of gold was not to be brought down but saved. By what right, then, strike these? So the first step is to save first the people inside the political system, the civil servants, the ones on duty, the ones in office. That lock bites onto you through their hands, and they are where the lock binds tightest. They too are wronged people. What was bitten away is their conscience, and over their heads hangs that calamity of all-is-finished-if-it-comes-out. This account, not one cent of it will be let slide. But to save them is a saving for them, and a saving for the people too. For the first time in thousands of years, someone does not raise the knife, but takes up the pen.
Section Nine. Save them with what? Politics alone cannot undo it. That lock is power, money, rules, and the human heart, four strands twisted into one hard lump, like a thick rope twisted of four strands and strangled tight. Loosen only one strand, and the other three soon draw it tight again. So it takes four systems, four strengths brought at once. In the third chapter the strand of capital was thickest, and the economy was the main force. In this chapter the strand of power is thickest, and politics is the main force. Politics bends the hand, bending that hand from propping business up back to managing business for the public, so he cannot. Culture warms the heart, patching back that heart of serving the people with character education, so he does not want to. The economy draws the firewood from under the pot: things are enough, and the non-labor share is returned to the public, so he need not. Law lays the line plain, setting clear the bottom line that protects people, so he dares not. Cannot, do not want to, need not, dare not. Of the four strands, not one goes to bring him down.
Section Ten brings the four strengths down to the solid, and the first method is oversight. That hand dares reach out because it supposes heaven does not know and earth does not know. Put it under the sunlight, like a thief on the main street in broad daylight, and that hand cannot reach out however it tries. Oversight is sunlight, not informing. Oversight shines on power. Informing fixes on people. History has taken a great loss, and the loss was taken exactly in confusing these two. Then it undoes the knot you have held pent all along: to save him, is that to let him stay in his position and go on being corrupt? It is not. To save him is to save him from going on committing crimes. To keep him in his position and let him go on being corrupt is like handing money to someone who has caught the gambling sickness so he can go on gambling, a harm wearing the skin of saving. To truly save him, swap him down, and ask him back to that courtyard of the second chapter, the school is a prison, to be reforged in character. Swapping him down is exactly the means of saving him.
Section Eleven. That breath of yours is still half un-eased: once reforged, can he come back and be an official again? This section sets an iron rule. The corrupt, and even those who took the benefit, have that door of holding power shut on them forever. Barred for life. Saving you, the person, is benevolence. Being reforged, becoming a person anew, living on well, may all be done. Not letting you hold power again is iron. If the door leaves a crack, the corrupt person reckons it, at worst a reforging gone through as a motion and back on post, and then who is afraid? On what grounds may the benefit-takers not either? Who told you not to wake up? You could have said, this one I do not want. Going forward, choosing officials first breaks the saying that high pay keeps integrity. That hand clutching the mountain of gold has money more than several lifetimes could spend and still cannot stop. Money does not fill a greedy heart. It rests on that heart of serving the people, and this heart is raised by character education. The human heart can change, so three things are used together: hold a license, be reviewed yearly, be reforged. This is the same line as the student ID changed yearly and the license of every trade renewed yearly.
Section Twelve. With the corrupt and the benefit-takers all invited out, and choosing officials guarded so strictly, who fills so many positions? There is not the least need to fret. That fire of the first volume, this great AI turning, culled tens of thousands of people off their posts: teachers, engineers, accountants, salespeople, writers. They lost their posts not because they are no good, but because the machine does that work faster. This great batch of good people of character and ability is in itself a mountain of gold. Pick the ones with that heart, patch their character, get them a license, and step them in. On one end, people with no posts. On the other, positions with no people. Join the two dead knots, and they undo themselves. It is precisely because talent is more than can be used that barred for life can be welded dead, and the difficulty of that day becomes the backing of today. More important still, the force that kept the honest from rising is bent wholly around, from corrupt-and-you-can-rise to for-the-people-and-you-can-rise. From saving first the people inside the political system to here, not one person was brought down, not one villain was set up.
Section Thirteen first looks back at the shape of the machine back in its place. The government is bent back into an administrative machine the people hired to protect the people. The tax you pay comes back onto you. Lawmaking lays down only the laws that protect the people. The private coffers everywhere have dried up. The coercion of law enforcement is gone, and only administration and the raising of people remain. You go to handle a matter, and you need no longer wear a smile, swallow your grievance, run back and forth. The people sitting inside are changed, a crop of them. Then it sets up a total yardstick: to serve the people with all one's heart. Protect those three things well, freedom, the safety of life and property, and living and working in peace, and it is continued. Betray them, and it is changed, no matter its origin, its background, or its flag. A thousand labors come down, at the last, to one thing: letting the people live and work in peace, with a steady mouthful to eat and a home to keep off the wind and rain. A system was never the end. It is a means. The end is forever those living people, one by one.
Section Fourteen. This road through politics comes to its end. You came in carrying a fire to bring down corrupt officials. That fire was not doused. It was led onto the living road of undoing the lock and saving people. But the locks on politics are more than this one, the collusion of officials and business, and the methods more than these few, so the door is not sealed. This book is alive. It is set on the web for free, and it goes on growing, and the new ways you tread out on this road can also be added in through this door drawn to. The bridge to the next road, this chapter laid quietly long since. All along it did not use coercion. It rested on character, on that heart, because the end of the law was never to enforce, to hold down, to fine. It is to lead every person to keep himself in check. Then the law itself, what in the end is it? For that you have to go to the next chapter. This chapter was written in 2026, and it keeps pace with the times.
This chapter has stood up two things. One is seeing the true nature clearly: this machine of politics was meant to be only administration, hired by the people to protect the people, and it has not, and ought not to have, that coercion of a law-enforcement apparatus. The other is finding the right method: the collusion of officials and business is a mechanism, and for thousands of years people have all along been striking people and never once undid it. This time there is no striking, only saving: oversight, swapping down to be reforged, barred for life, choosing officials by that heart, good people stepping in. Not one person was brought down, and the machine was bent back to its proper place. The next chapter, the new order for law, says the way of telling has to change. The intent of the law is to protect the people. It is a living ruler that leads people to keep themselves in check, not a coercive power there to be enforced. Yet the representatives of the law turn out to be illiterate in the law. There too, the first step is still not to strike, but to save.
Contents of This Chapter
One. This Machine Called Politics Was Only Ever Meant to Be Administration
Two. Lawmaking, Departments, and Fines Can Only Ever Be for Protecting the People
Three. That Clean Machine Was Bound by a Lock, but It Is Not Evil, It Is a Mechanism
Five. That Lock Bites Your Money, and It Bites Your Home
Seven. That Lock Bites Its Way into the Ranks, and Calls What It Took a Gift
Nine. One Lock, No One System Can Undo It, It Takes Four Strengths at Once
Twelve. There Are Plenty of Good People to Step In, and the Honest Can Rise
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
One. This Machine Called Politics Was Only Ever Meant to Be Administration