This Is an Arrangement, Not Reality
We have been arguing about money and power since the beginning. AI may finally help us see the whole pattern clearly enough to change it.
Get Over It
I recently watched a financial commentator explain why taxing America’s billionaires will not solve our fiscal problems. It was not his math that irritated me. It was his get over it tone.
The message felt familiar: serious people understand the economics. The adults have done the arithmetic. If the rest of us would just grow up and accept reality, we would understand there simply is not enough money there.
I don’t need to be protected from arithmetic. I am questioning the arrangement being fed into it.
The tax code is not gravity. Corporations are not laws of nature. Neither are shareholder incentives, campaign finance systems, capital-gains rules, lobbying structures or the countless agreements governing the relationship between private wealth and government. We made these things.
This is not economic reality. It is an economic arrangement.
And arrangements can change.
Who Controls the Turf?
This week’s AMP session is Outlaw King, the story of Robert the Bruce and Scotland’s struggle to free itself from English rule.
On the surface, it is a story about kings, land, armies and sovereignty. Underneath it is a much older human pattern: one power controls the turf, another power wants it back, and domination is answered with opposing force.
That pattern did not disappear when kings stopped ruling most of the world. We still fight over who controls governments, companies, institutions, money and the rules themselves. We elect another party, overturn a regulation, break up a company, change a tax rate or defeat the people we believe are causing the problem. Sometimes those things are necessary. But the underlying struggle for control can remain almost untouched.
The Outlaw King AMP session eventually challenges that reflex. Its statements move away from winning at all costs, vengeance and political opportunism and toward compromise, coalition, collaboration and more representative systems.
That got me wondering whether we have been asking the wrong question about corporate power.
Instead of spending another generation fighting over who controls the turf, what if we changed the conditions that make controlling it so valuable?
United States Incorporated
United States Incorporated was one of the reasons I wrote It’s Just Commerce: Returning Balance to Business. in the first place. I had become fascinated by the lasting resonance of human patterns, how they continue shaping people and institutions long after the circumstances that created them have disappeared. Sue-Anne MacGregor and I had also learned something equally important through AMP: patterns can definitely change once they are recognized. That is the purpose of the work.
The relationship between American government and private economic power gave me a remarkable pattern to follow.
Alexander Hamilton inherited a young country carrying Revolutionary War debt and a federal government that had struggled to raise money. He believed America needed stronger financial institutions, commerce and manufacturing if the new republic was going to survive.
One of his answers was the First Bank of the United States. The federal government would own one-fifth of the Bank, while private investors would own the remaining four-fifths. Government and private capital would participate together.
And United States Incorporated was born, all the way back in the first administration.
Hamilton saw the productive possibilities. Thomas Jefferson saw another possibility and worried about concentrated financial power and increasingly artificial forms of wealth.
Four decades later, Andrew Jackson believed Jefferson’s fear had already come true.
Jackson was a complicated man and president, but on concentrated financial power he saw something clearly. In his 1832 veto of the national bank’s charter, he wrote:
“It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.”
He went on to argue that when government grants advantages that make the rich richer and the powerful more powerful, ordinary farmers, mechanics and laborers have every right to question the justice of their government.
If Jackson could see the relationship between concentrated money and government today, I believe he would be heartbroken first and angry second. The Union he fought so fiercely to preserve might be difficult for him to recognize. In some ways, we have seceded from some of the original aspirations of the Union itself.
Jackson was worried about one bank. I doubt he imagined the same resonance eventually moving through campaign finance, lobbying, Congress, the White House, tax policy and the revolving relationship between public office and private economic power.
The people changed and the institutions changed. The resonance continued.
The Other Transfer of Wealth
A few weeks ago I wrote about a national pattern I called After Us, Then You. The people nearest power receive the benefit first while the cost moves outward, downward or forward in time.
I also wrote that no billionaire and no corporation built the entire foundation beneath their success. Markets depend on laws, courts, public credit, infrastructure, research, educated workers, stability and trust. That foundation was accumulated over generations by millions of people whose names we will never know.
I think of that accumulated inheritance as the wealth of our country. Not merely the money in the Treasury, but the legal system, roads, universities, research, workforce, financial markets, intellectual property protections, public institutions and stability that make extraordinary private prosperity possible.
We hear the phrase transfer of wealth all the time. Usually it means government taxing someone who has accumulated substantial wealth and using some portion of that money for public purposes.
But what about the transfer going the other way?
A corporation can build enormous private value on top of the wealth of our country and then move profits, intellectual property, production or capital elsewhere in ways that reduce what it contributes back into the system that helped make its success possible.
I see that as another kind of Transfer of Wealth.
Global commerce itself is not the problem. American companies should compete all over the world. The question is whether enormous value created on top of our collective inheritance can continually move away while the public is still expected to maintain the foundation underneath it.
Maybe we’ve been sold one version of the wealth-transfer story for so long that we stopped noticing the transfer going the other way.
The Outlaw King session includes statements drawn from Lawrence Lessig’s They Don’t Represent Us. One says that big money is only one example of a deeper problem: unrepresentativeness. Another says the core principle of equality has been corrupted within the Republic while many of us cannot see the structural dysfunction.
That is bigger than a tax-rate argument. It is about whose interests the architecture itself increasingly serves.
Use the Greed
So what if we stopped expecting greed to disappear? What if instead we changed what greed is rewarded for?
Today, when a corporation finds another legal way to reduce its tax liability, shareholders generally benefit. Lower taxes can mean higher earnings, more cash, larger dividends, buybacks or a higher stock price. Inside the current arrangement, the behavior makes perfect sense.
Instead of fighting that motivation, why not redirect it?
Suppose the United States created a meaningful corporate reciprocity standard. A company meeting that standard would be demonstrating that it contributes substantially back into the country whose accumulated wealth helped make its prosperity possible.
Then make qualification enormously valuable to its owners.
If the corporation qualifies, shareholders could receive significant advantages on qualifying dividends and capital gains. If it does not qualify, those advantages disappear. Capital gains associated with nonqualifying periods might be taxed as ordinary income, and certain loans secured by highly appreciated stock might carry a larger Treasury charge.
The exact rates and mechanisms would require serious modeling, including effects on federal revenue, investment, capital movement and the inevitable attempts to get around the rules. I am not pretending I have already written the tax code.
The reversal of the incentive is what interests me.
Today, management may be rewarded for finding ways to contribute less. Under a reciprocity model, owners themselves could begin pushing management in the opposite direction:
Why the hell aren’t we qualifying?
The founder can still become enormously wealthy. The CEO still wants the stock to rise. Investors still want an extraordinary return, and corporations can still compete aggressively. We have not eliminated self-interest. We have changed what self-interest is rewarded for.
Corporation contributes. Owner benefits. Country benefits.
That is one application of Recipocracy. The idea is much larger than tax policy, but this is one place it gets teeth: redesign the incentives so private success and the wellbeing of the larger system no longer have to be opposing projects.
Recipocracy asks a simple question: What choices allow this relationship to keep flourishing? In this case, the relationship is between private enterprise and the country whose accumulated wealth helps make that enterprise possible.
One statement in the Outlaw King AMP session could almost serve as the policy brief:
“We repair the system of debilitating incentives.”
Instead of fighting endlessly over the turf, change the incentives that make controlling the turf so valuable.
Changing the Rules Isn’t Enough
There is still a problem.
I believe voting matters. Better laws matter. Better incentives matter. But changing external structures is not enough if the people inhabiting those structures continue carrying the same patterns.
I wrote previously that no community can become healthier than the people who inhabit it. The same principle applies to government, corporations and markets.
We bring ourselves into every system we create: our fear of losing what we have, our tribal loyalties, our desire for more, our need to win and our remarkable ability to justify behavior when our side benefits.
That is where AMP comes in. It is the reason for the work.
AMP is not here to tell anyone how to vote. It is intended to help us recognize the resonance we may still be carrying into the systems we say we want to change.
If we don’t see the pattern and change the resonance, we will continue repeating it.
Changing who controls the system without changing what we bring into it may simply give an old pattern new people through whom to express itself.
Spherical Thinking at Computational Scale
This is also where AI becomes interesting to me.
We hear plenty of warnings about what artificial intelligence may do to individual human beings, and some of those concerns deserve serious attention. But perhaps we should also pay attention to what AI might allow ordinary people to see.
The relationship between money and political power now runs through taxation, campaign finance, subsidies, lobbying, securities law, offshore structures, regulation, labor, procurement, banking and trade. No individual can easily hold all of that in mind at once.
AI could help us stress-test something like this reciprocity proposal before anyone tried to turn it into law. One of the first things I would ask it to look for is whether the incentive accidentally rewards financial engineering instead of genuine contribution, disadvantages smaller companies, drives capital elsewhere or creates a loophole we haven’t thought of. Change the assumptions and run it again.
That is what I mean by spherical thinking at computational scale.
For most of modern history, this kind of analytical capacity belonged disproportionately to governments, multinational corporations, investment banks, lobbying organizations and consulting firms. AI could begin putting a version of it in everyone’s hands.
That matters because complexity has helped protect Extractionocracy. AI may help us see more of the machine, including weaknesses in ideas we happen to like.
But AI cannot do the human work for us. A more powerful analytical tool operating through the same unrecognized patterns could simply make extraction more efficient.
We need both: better systems outside us and healthier resonance within us.
Don’t Tell Me to Get Over It
Which brings me back to the commentator who started all of this.
His arithmetic may be right inside the existing arrangement. That still leaves the question I care about unanswered:
What are we assuming cannot change?
Expertise should help us understand the choices available to us. It should not be used to talk down to people as though questioning an arrangement proves we do not understand it.
Hamilton helped create an arrangement. Jefferson worried about where it might lead. Jackson believed he was already seeing the consequences. Nearly two centuries later, the people and institutions have changed again while much of the underlying resonance remains recognizable.
Maybe we finally have tools capable of helping us see more of the pattern at once. But seeing it is only half the work.
AMP asks us to recognize what keeps repeating within ourselves. AI may help us see how those same patterns scale across institutions. Together they raise a more interesting question than who should win the next election:
What happens if we actually change the pattern?
Perhaps then we can stop fighting endlessly over who controls the turf and start changing what the turf rewards.
This AMP Is for You If…
Outlaw King may be useful now if:
You are tired of watching money, politics and power reinforce one another and want to understand the pattern without simply becoming angrier at the people involved.
You believe voting matters but sense that changing who is in office has not been enough to change many of the patterns you see repeating.
You want to recognize where the desire to win, control, protect your side or defeat someone else may be keeping an old pattern alive within you.
You are open to the possibility that lasting institutional change requires both better structures outside us and a change in the resonance we carry into them.
You want to strengthen your capacity for coalition, reciprocity, long-term thinking and solutions that serve more than the winning side.
The Outlaw King AMP session moves from struggles over power, representation and winning toward compromise, collaboration, repaired incentives and systems that can better serve the whole.
The essay can only take the idea so far. AMP asks you to experience the pattern rather than only understand it.
Why the Intention Session Matters
In AMP, the Intention Session is used once as a bridge. It asks the mind and body to allow resonance changes to process only in the person’s own timing, with grace and ease. The point is not to force an immediate breakthrough, but to let the film, statements and reflection work together over time.
Step One: The Intention Session
You only need to do this once before watching Outlaw King. If you have already completed an Intention Session with another AMP film, it carries over.
Speak these aloud:
I allow the changes in my own timing and only integrate what I am ready for.
I have faith that I will receive the benefits I desire.
I am patient with myself as I make these changes.
I let go of feeling I am too busy to take the time for this.
I let go of needing to understand how AMP works and allow myself to receive what is right for me.
Then engage three simple modalities:
Nod your head yes.
Drink some water.
Take several slow, rhythmic breaths through your nose.
Then watch Outlaw King all the way through. As you watch, notice what stirs around power, control, winning, representation, loyalty, conflict and the urge to force an outcome. You do not need to analyze the film or agree with every statement. Simply notice what feels familiar and allow the resonance to work in your own timing.
A Few Statements From the Session
These statements move from the patterns we may want to release toward the possibilities we may want to strengthen:
I let go of any unconscious heavy-handed tendencies that are harsh and create conflict within me and others.
I no longer use chaos as a winning formula to get my way.
I stop seeking vengeance on my enemies.
I no longer allow disagreement to ever cross into disunion with my fellow citizens.
I no longer look to use movements to force my will on my country.
I find ways to live with those I disagree with and always seek to discover win-win outcomes for the betterment of society as the primary intent.
I seek peaceful outcomes that bring our country together.
I shift from political opportunism to collaborative resolutions and life is better for all of us.
I vote for a system that tilts to the long-term interest of society and avoids capture by short-term factions.
We repair the system of debilitating incentives..
About David
David Barnes is the co-creator of the Alignment Movie Process (AMP) with Sue-Anne MacGregor and co-author of Taming Your Dragons: Making Peace With Your Emotions and It’s Just Commerce: Returning Balance to Business.His work explores emotional pattern recognition, human sovereignty, commerce, AI, and how stories can help people move beyond reactivity toward more mature, life-serving systems.
David also works with a framework that helps people and organizations identify the unseen emotional, cultural, and extraction-based patterns that shape what they build, what they optimize for, and what they miss.
To learn more about the Alignment Movie Process and explore how it works, visit AMP EXP.