For two decades we've been reading articles by journalists describing the need for new ideas and new institutions. This is it. But as with any new idea, it's only natural to fill in the blanks with assumptions based on previous experience.

Project 2029 is such a deviation from the status quo of both activism and business that we ask you to consider a few points before you evaluate our effort. The role of the media cannot be considered separate from how Americans view and address our problems. And if you are in the United States, you very much have a stake in this as well.

• How has donor influence and corporate consolidation effected your profession?
  
• Are you able to cover substantive issues, are does your organization demand sensationalism in order to stay in business?
• How is the rise of AI effecting the future of your occupation?
• What would you be reporting on if politics weren't interesting because things were running smoothly?
• Have you examined our strategy closely enough to see how these questions relate to Project 2029?

The system isn’t exactly broken. The incentive structure is backwards.

• Donor Interests have priced voter interests out of politics.
  
• Overturning Citizen United would be great, but entrenched resistance makes that nearly impossible.
  
• Policy proposals require the cooperation of a lawmakers that have already been disincentivized by donors and prolonged partisanship.
  
• Protests and petitions might get attention but rarely move the needle and often fuel division.
  
• Reform movements are often dull, require sacrifice from their participants, and concessions from their opponents.
  

How Project 2029 Is Different

The influence of money in politics is the common denominator in all of America's most pressing issues. Our system is providing citizens with tangible recourse to disrupt it like a business.

• Reframe and Restore — Donors apply leverage during the campaign process to become the beneficiaries of policy decision once representatives are elected. This has relegated citizens to a type of passive consumerism. We're providing citizens with the knowledge and tools to act as the fiduciaries of their own interests and take ownership of the entire process by leveraging the power of their vote to disrupt donor influence during the campaign process.
• We're Fighting Fire with Fire — Where other reforms efforts look to the process to fix itself, we're showing citizens how to utilize the overexposure of the business strategies that captured the political influence to neutralize them like a competing business.
  

• This Works Now — Political influence was captured in order to changes laws, and it worked. Hope won't change that back. Our strategy to restore the balance of power operates within existing legal parameters, instead of being contingent of policy change within a captured system.
  
• Flipping Incentives — Americas political process is currently subjected to an incentive structure that preserves problems for profit at the expense of voters. Our system turns that upside down. Instead of running on donations, we've incentivized citizens to protect their own interests, and in-turn, incentivize candidates to serve them as well.
• Gamified Growth — We're fully aware that fiduciary duty and incentive structures are not sensational enough to garner the participation needed to reach critical mass in an attention economy, so we're demonstrating the mechanics and value of our strategy by seizing on the go-to political move of our time, the blame game. We welcome blame in order to highlight and emphasize challenges that are shared by citizens across the entire political spectrum and provide them with tangible recourse.
• Long Term Stability — While comedy and satire are important and useful tools, the Civil Network platform is designed to balance, maintain and optimize how Americans view and address our problems long after the satire wears off.
  

Project 2029 is different. We're not complaining about how things should be and demanding that the world conforms to our values. We are embracing human nature and working with the pitfalls of a flawed political process in or to help citizens create a better future.

1. Hook through Satire & Blame
Founders engage citizens using humor and the universal instinct to point fingers. Satire lowers defenses; blame redirects frustration toward participation.

2. Introduce Mechanics
Citizens are prompted to list and prioritize grievances. This funnels them into a live demonstration of Civil Network mechanics.

3. Reveal Shared Concern
Simulated aggregation shows what’s real and current: “money in politics” consistently emerges as the top common issue.

4. Reframe the Problem
Demonstrations make it clear every major challenge is blocked or distorted by donor influence.

5. Teach Leverage
Citizens are shown how to act as fiduciaries of their own interests, using the logic of business to disrupt the leverage of donors.

6. Mobilize and Scale.
Citizens become Founders, incentivized to recruit and expand through gamified onboarding. Each new participant compounds collective leverage.

7. Beta Rollout 2026
Founders pressure candidates with a simple, unignorable question: “Who do you work for citizens or donors?”

8. Expansion 2027
Civil Network platform expands. Aggregation begins in earnest. Satirical onboarding continues until Founder cap is reached.

9. Leverage 2028
For the first time in modern history, voters wield organized, measurable leverage strong enough to force candidates to choose between donor money and citizen power.

10. Unlocked 2029
A public check on donor influence is a huge morale boost that takes the punch out of identity politics and opens the door to reasonable discourse and balanced policy on downstream issue