FPF is a comparative democratic theory grounded in working constitutional systems, not utopian speculation or national revisionism.

I’m not a lawyer or a legal scholar, and since I’m not qualified to author a new constitution, I didn’t try.

However, I have been observing, thinking, listening, debating, writing, and evolving for several decades. The Freedom & Prosperity Framework (FPF) didn’t emerge from first principles, and I don’t pretend to have invented a new constitutional tradition. Instead, FPF is a deliberate, comparative synthesis, grounded in postwar democratic practice. While I have certainly mixed and matched, all of the individual concepts already exist, operate at national scale, and have been tested under real political pressure.

I say this plainly to clarify the intent of the project and the intellectual terrain it occupies.

FPF Influences

My single most important influence is the European Union’s postwar constitutional tradition. American constitutionalism has repeatedly treated democratic governance as subordinate to market primacy. This tack is grounded in the laissez-faire ideology that economic growth and market success will ultimately secure social well-being without sustained democratic intervention, an assumption for which there is no persuasive empirical support.

The European model begins with human dignity, which is foundational rather than rhetorical. Rights require material conditions to be meaningful. Economic power is viewed not as neutral, natural, or given, but as something that can threaten democratic equality and human well-being if left unconstrained.

This influence shows up most clearly in:

• the treatment of social and economic rights;
• the insistence that political legitimacy depends on more than formal access to the ballot; and
• the willingness to apply constitutional limits horizontally when private actors exercise governing power.

Markets are not illegitimate, but they must remain subordinate to democratic objectives. This perspective acknowledges that economic power, left unchecked, tends toward concentration and distortion under modern conditions, undermining both democratic equality and fair competition. Regulation, in this view, is not a departure from market order but a necessary condition for preventing domination, preserving genuine competition, and ensuring that market activity serves public rather than private governing power.

These are core premises of European social constitutionalism, and they shape the document by design.

Closely related is the influence of the EU’s proportionality culture. My emphasis on necessity and on limits applied “only to the extent required” reflects a broader balancing logic: power—public or private—must justify itself in relation to democratic purpose, rather than being entitled to deference by default.

Within the broader European frame, Germany is the strongest national influence. FPF reflects the German commitment to parliamentary democracy paired with constrained constitutional review, proportional representation with thresholds, and a strong public-law conception of democratic legitimacy. It insists constitutional limits be respected and defends democratic institutions against capture by concentrated private or technocratic power, including the delegation of democratic authority to private actors.

A familiar American example: Congress and federal regulators have allowed companies such as Facebook and Twitter/X to set and enforce rules governing public speech for billions of users, effectively outsourcing decisions that function as de facto public regulation despite being made by private corporations outside democratic control.

Economic order is treated as constitutionally relevant, including the recognition that competition policy and anti-monopoly authority must extend beyond consumer price effects alone.

France is a second heavy influence, particularly in its insistence on secularism, centralized sovereignty, and the sharp separation between public authority and private capture. The logic of public election financing, constitutional review that doesn’t collapse into policymaking, and the rejection of private power masquerading as public governance all reflect this lineage.

The Nordic countries, especially Sweden, also weigh heavily. Here the influence on FPF is less structural and more cultural: public service is a civic obligation, transparency is the default condition of administration, there’s low tolerance for conflicts of interest, and anti-corruption constraints are embedded in constitutional and administrative structures rather than treated as ethical expectations without enforcement. Social rights aren’t charitable add-ons, but are instead prerequisites for democratic participation.

Secondary influences refine FPF rather than define it. Norway’s approach to resource governance reinforces the application of public-interest logic to essential services. Denmark contributes a model of parliamentary accountability and labor rights treated as democratic stabilizers rather than sectoral preferences. Finland informs the treatment of digital and informational rights, particularly the understanding of privacy as a civic concern rather than a purely personal one.

The Netherlands provides a practical model of coalition governance that accommodates pluralism without allowing institutional structures to empower minority factions to hijack broadly supported democratic initiatives or permit narrow electoral victories to translate into unchecked power. This runs counter to American institutional design; from the Senate filibuster to the equal representation of vastly unequal populations in the Senate to the Electoral College to party superdelegate systems, U.S. constitutional structure reflects a deep fear of majority rule by the founders, who constructed a system that consistently grants a narrow political elite veto power over democratic initiatives, often frustrating outcomes that serve the broader public interest.

Naming these influences matters. It preempts bad-faith claims of radical novelty, explains where the document diverges from U.S. instincts, and positions it correctly—as comparative democratic theory grounded in working constitutional systems, not utopian speculation or national revisionism.

What, if Anything, is Novel About the Freedom & Prosperity Framework?

For starters, I never assume that things will work the way they ought to, and I absolutely never assume that people can be counted on to behave nobly or rationally.

While there isn’t any single concept here that’s new, I think I may have introduced some novelty in the combination, explicitness, and design stance of the framework as a whole, particularly in how it treats power, bad faith, and democratic survivability.

Most modern constitutions assume a baseline of good faith. They presume, for some obscure reason, that politicians will respect norms, that markets will self-correct, that courts can clean up abuses after the fact, and that anti-democratic behavior will be the exception instead of the rule.

The FPF makes none of these assumptions. It begins from a premise forged by basic attention to history: that concentrated power will attempt capture, that bad faith is inevitable, and that democracy must be designed to function under sustained pressure, not merely in quiet moments of consensus.

I asked ChatGPT to examine and overview the Framework versus its influences.

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Where the FPF Differs

First, the U.S. Freedom & Prosperity Framework explicitly rejects minority-veto democracy, while carefully preserving rights-based constraints. Some countries, the United States, tolerate cynical filibuster-style paralysis, judicial obstruction by delay, or procedural designs that allow narrow factions to hijack governance without responsibility. (FPF draws a sharp distinction between minority protection and minority veto, acknowledging that these are almost always different minorities: one at the top of the political-economic order, the other at the bottom).

Democratic legitimacy is treated as fundamentally majoritarian, constrained by explicitly protected rights, not by factional balance, elite filtering, or indefinite obstruction. This clarity is unusual. Most constitutions hedge.

Second, FPF constitutionalizes structural responsibility, not just outcomes. The clearest example is the non-delegability of essential human welfare. Rather than merely promising access to healthcare, food, housing, or education, the Framework explicitly prohibits organizing these systems around profit, price exclusion, or artificial scarcity. This rejects market logic as an acceptable governing principle in core welfare domains. Few constitutions state this directly, even when they operate as if it were true.

Third, FPF treats economic concentration itself as constitutionally suspect, not merely as a regulatory concern (or worse, a bright star by which to navigate). Antitrust is elevated from statutory policy to democratic safeguard. Enforcement is detached from narrow consumer-price tests or proof of completed abuse and is instead justified by risk: the danger that concentrated private power poses to democracy, labor, and self-government. Structural remedies—breakups, separation, divestiture—are treated as legitimate first-order tools. This is rare even in Europe.

Other elements are less novel individually but distinctive in how they’re combined: professional juries insulated from populist pressure; conflict-of-interest firewalls that are automatic and non-waivable; public service framed as civic participation rather than punishment; and courts that are strong on rights but explicitly barred from governing by delay or inertia.

The most original feature, however, is not any single provision. It’s the throughline:

Democracy is a public system that must be actively protected from capture, sabotage, and market domination, even at the cost of some pluralist romanticism.

Where many constitutions rely on norms, this one relies on structure. Where many assume restraint, this one assumes pressure.

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I’ve argued for years that most systems (economic, government, religious, whatever) ultimately fail because they’re built on the assumption that people will behave in a way they’ve never behaved—ever—in history. If you want a system that works, I’ve said, begin by assuming that what you see every day is reality.

I didn’t invent new ideas. I did make some implicit doctrines explicit, combine them in an unusual (more coherent, I think) way, and push anti-capture logic further than most democratic frameworks are willing to go. And I never kidded myself (or my readers) that democracy has any chance in the absence of hard work and eternal diligence.

This, for better or worse, is where FPF’s real novelty lies.

 

Summary

The Freedom & Prosperity Framework is a comparative constitutional model grounded in postwar European democratic practice, particularly the European Union, Germany, France, and the Nordic states. It synthesizes existing, real-world constitutional principles rather than inventing new doctrines. Its core premise is that democracy must subordinate market power to human dignity and democratic legitimacy. Economic rights are treated as materially necessary for meaningful political participation, and concentrated private power is viewed as a structural risk to democratic equality rather than a neutral byproduct of markets.

FPF differs from American constitutional design in:

• rejecting minority-veto governance while preserving explicit rights constraints;
• treating democratic legitimacy as fundamentally majoritarian rather than being filtered through elite or obstructionist mechanisms;
• constitutionalizing the non-delegability of essential human welfare, prohibiting the organization of healthcare, food, housing, and education around profit-driven exclusion;
• elevating anti-monopoly enforcement to a constitutional safeguard; and
• allowing structural remedies such as separation and divestiture based on systemic risk rather than narrow consumer-price tests.

The framework assumes persistent bad faith and power concentration, designing institutions to function under pressure rather than relying on norms or voluntary restraint. Its novelty lies in this explicit anti-capture architecture: democracy is treated as a system that must be structurally protected from concentrated economic and political power to remain legitimate and durable.