You can’t say this book [affiliate link] lacks ambition. Jon Alexander describes the next phase of organising a society.

The challenge is that some of the definitions are quite subtle. They’re well argued in the text, but if you asked me to relay that information, I’m not sure I could. Or at least, it wouldn’t be concise or easy to digest.

He starts by defining what a Citizen is. It’s not about the country you live in, or voting or paying taxes. Rather, it’s what comes after the Subject Story (ruled by monarchs) and the Consumer Society (ruled by choice).

Perhaps counter-intuitively, voting is described as being part of the Consumer Story. We choose an option and expect someone else to actually do the work, as a service.

The Citizen story is where we all become involved in making the world a better place.

(It’s more nuanced than this, as you might imagine.)

I’m naturally inclined to like Citizen, I think. I’m not really a fan of top down hierarchies. The mesh-like, peer-to-peer structure is much more my preference.

How does this fit into the real world?

This is where my suspicions lie, and the book doesn’t completely allay them. It gives a number of examples and stories, which are convincing but I found difficult to apply to other walks of life.

There are some areas where it’s easy to see. Simple stuff like that Patreon or Substack model for podcasts or newsletters. In many cases, most content in free and a relatively small percentage of users contribute.

My day-job involves working with the open source community, and I see a lot of conflict with the “consumer” mindset. Many big companies with deep pockets see the project as free code with free support. But we all get the most out of it when we’re citizen, all contributing to the greater whole.

Despite my misgivings, or possible lack of imagination, the book presents an intriguing idea. Maybe a “long read” rather than a book length text would have been sufficient, but it’s certainly worth some of your time.