The rule, exactly. Before an election each citizen chooses: to vote — or to take a payment and not vote in that election. The payment is a percentage of the median income, set by referendum; there is no fixed sum. One ballot is one vote, with no multiplier in the count; the vote is amplified only in that each ballot's share grows as others step out. The budget pays under law; a candidate never pays. Only a referendum of all citizens — simple majority, no quorum — introduces, changes or repeals the rule.
The protocol has been introduced nowhere and no pilot has been run: shares, turnout and outcome figures in the chapters are estimates, and the protocol promises nobody an election victory. If a chapter says otherwise, Exact Answers and the Charter are correct. For a candidate: ten questions and ten steps. For a citizen, a mayor, a finance officer, a donor, a journalist, a scholar, a lawyer: answers by role. Everything in force in one file: llms-full.txt.
40bo. Michel de Montaigne: Ten Theses — "Unfamiliar" against "Wrong", the Inconstancy of Man, "On Loan, Not as a Gift", the Prince's Liberality with Other People's Money — and a Hall of Those Who Counted¶
Chapter: 06 — The Structural Hypocrisy of Criticism and the Arsenal of the Elites File: 06_040bo · v1 · 29 October 2026 Source: the architect's question of 29 October 2026 ("what would Montaigne say about AB-EXIT") and his move on the second blow (§3). Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), Essays: "Of Custom, and Not Easily Changing an Accepted Law" (I.23), "Of Cannibals" (I.31), "Of the Inequality amongst Us" (I.42), "Of the Inconstancy of Our Actions" (II.1), "Of Coaches" (III.6), "Of the Art of Conference" (III.8), "Of Vanity" (III.9), "Of Husbanding Your Will" (III.10), "Of Cripples" (III.11), "Of Experience" (III.13); mayor of Bordeaux 1581–1585. Before this chapter Montaigne was absent from the repository.
How to read. Montaigne is not a theorist of institutions but an observer of man: he knows that people are inconstant, that custom is stronger than reason, that the crowd judges by appearances, and he himself was a mayor for four years "without passion". He is therefore the one in the series who strikes not at the rule but at the people the rule counts on. Ten theses by one yardstick and three blows; the second blow is turned into an argument by the architect's move.
1. Ten theses¶
| No. | Thesis (source) | What is true today | What the protocol does |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice" (I.31) | Paying for non-participation looks like sacrilege — because it is unfamiliar, not because it is proven harmful (040as §3) | The protocol separates "unfamiliar" from "wrong": the three locks of 006b §3c are custom, not argument |
| 2 | Laws keep their credit not because they are just but because they are laws (III.13) | The present turnout rules are honoured for being rules; nobody has tested their justice | Once adopted by referendum, the protocol gets the same credit — Ireland 1928: the door removed when touched (006b §3c) |
| 3 | Man is inconstant: we are patchwork, so motley that each piece plays its own game at every moment (II.1) | Institutions are built on types: "the responsible voter", "the apathetic" | The protocol is built on states: the choice anew each cycle (048m art. 5); inconstancy is built into the rule rather than breaking it (1h) |
| 4 | Judge a man by himself, not by his clothes and his retinue (I.42) | The voter is counted by category: pensioner, public employee, youth | The only thing the protocol sees is the personal stake: is the vote worth more than D; there are no categories (art. 4) |
| 5 | A prince's liberality is no virtue: he gives away not his own but what is taken from his subjects, and buys their favour with it (III.6) | Targeted pre-election packages (057h §2.6) are the same liberality with other people's money | D is not the prince's grace but the citizen's share of his own taxes, with a ceiling and a receipt (1g); the prince has nothing to give away |
| 6 | One should give oneself to public affairs on loan, not as a gift; "the mayor and Montaigne have always been two" (III.10) | The citizen is asked for a gift: turnout is a duty, abstention a vice (040bk §2) | The protocol is a loan by measure: each decides himself how much of himself to give this cycle; the taker is not vicious, he has husbanded his will |
| 7 | The most common opinions are not the truest; the crowd judges by appearance and noise (III.9) | The demagogue's base is a hall gathered by airtime (057h §2.4) | The protocol's hall is neither a crowd nor sages but people with a stake; appearance stops being cheap when refusing it costs D |
| 8 | I prefer the man who contradicts me: dispute is exercise, flattery is poison (III.8) | A campaign is flattery of the apathetic; there is no dispute | Those who stay are the ones who need not be persuaded long but must be persuaded on the merits (057h §2.1); contradiction returns as a value |
| 9 | It is putting a very high price on one's conjectures to roast a man alive for them (III.11) | Reforms roast people for conjectures: compulsory voting, bans, deprivations | The protocol coerces nobody and punishes nobody for a choice (art. 8); the only sanction is the loss of money one agreed to oneself |
| 10 | France has more laws than the rest of the world together; interpreting interpretations is harder than interpreting things (III.13) | Electoral codes run to volumes; the citizen does not understand the rules he lives under | One formula, two buttons, fourteen articles (001: "the complexity lives not in the rule but in people") |
2. The first blow: custom is stronger than reason — do not touch an accepted law¶
Montaigne saw the wars of religion and wrote (I.23) that every novelty in laws brings more harm than good, even when it is better than the old. The answer: the protocol does not change the voting system (048k, decision 9) and takes nothing away — it adds a right; it is reversible and is tested in a courtyard before a country (048g, 048l); it is adopted by the same lawful procedure as everything else (art. 14). And his own thesis 2 works for the protocol: a new rule holds as soon as it has become a rule — Montaigne explained why in Ireland in 1928 nobody came out to defend the door that was removed.
3. The second blow: the stayers are no better than the takers — merely more stubborn and more vain. The architect's move¶
Montaigne trusted neither the crowd nor the learned, and he would say: you take the stayers for the better men, while they are merely more stubborn and more vain than the rest.
The architect's move (29 October 2026). "They counted, and the benefit of the elections turned out greater. That may not be wisdom, but it is certainly better than those who counted nothing. And yes, they are more stubborn and self-assured (vain): they are passionate men, ready to act for their convictions and their calculations. Is that not what all the thinkers wanted from voters?"
What this does to the blow. The protocol does not claim the hall has become wiser (040bn, thesis 10: no pretence of knowledge). It claims less and more checkably: everyone in the hall compared two numbers, D and the worth of the vote to himself, and the vote came out higher. That is neither virtue nor intelligence, it is a calculation. The taker counted too and chose the money. The only one who did not count is the one who was brought — and he is no longer in the hall. A hall of those who counted against a hall of those who did not: the only comparison the protocol offers.
Stubbornness and self-assurance are, in Montaigne, vices of a private man. In a voter they are another name for readiness to act on one's conviction and one's calculation. That is exactly what everyone who wrote about the republic demanded of the citizen: Aristotle — the active citizen; Machiavelli — virtù (040bj); Mill — the active character; Tocqueville — participation as exercise; Ostrom — the conditional co-operator willing to punish (040bl, thesis 10). All wanted a hall of such people and had no instrument to separate them from those brought in. Under the protocol they separate themselves, by one price: nobody selects anybody, everyone chooses for himself.
The fork (proof by contradiction): either Montaigne is right, the stayers are more stubborn and self-assured — and then the hall consists of those every thinker wanted to see as voters; or he is wrong, and the hall is no different from today's — and then the protocol spoils nothing and gives people their money back. The blow leaves no third option. What remains to Montaigne is vanity as display; but display now costs D for the first time (040b §5, the Veblen reversal): the vain man pays for it like everyone, and his vanity works for the hall, not for the airwaves.
4. The third blow: Bordeaux, 1585¶
Plague; mayor Montaigne did not return to the city and handed over his duties from outside the walls. He was reproached for centuries: who stays when leaving is allowed? The answer is in him (III.10): the state needs nobody's sacrifice, it needs performance by measure; the one who leaves without passion is more honest than the one who stays for show. The protocol makes exactly this the norm: the one who leaves the hall is no traitor — he took what is his and freed the place for one to whom the place is worth more; the one who stays is no hero — he paid the price and received weight. Not a single kamikaze (059l §8b); Montaigne would have signed it first.
5. What Montaigne gives the protocol¶
The shortest answer to "this is immoral": this is unfamiliar. The psychology the rule is built for: man is inconstant, so the rule must ask him every time (states, not types). The formula "on loan, not as a gift" as a name for the whole idea: the citizen does not owe the state the whole of himself. The exposure of the prince's liberality with other people's money — against targeted packages four hundred years before Serbia. And, through the architect's move, an exact description of the protocol's hall: not sages, but those who counted and are ready to act on their calculation.
6. Summary¶
| Thesis | What is true | Protocol | What remains |
|---|---|---|---|
| "unfamiliar" ≠ "wrong" | yes | the three locks are custom, not argument | — |
| laws hold because they are laws | yes | the same credit after a referendum | — |
| the inconstancy of man | yes | the choice anew each cycle | — |
| a man by himself | yes | only the personal stake, no categories | — |
| the prince's liberality with others' money | yes | a share with a ceiling and a receipt | — |
| on loan, not as a gift | yes | a loan by measure, not a duty | — |
| the crowd judges by appearance | yes | appearance costs D | — |
| the value of contradiction | yes | persuasion on the merits | — |
| do not roast for conjectures | yes | nobody coerced, nobody punished | — |
| more laws than things | yes | one formula, fourteen articles | — |
| do not touch an accepted law | an honest position | addition, reversibility, courtyard before country | Montaigne would call this novelty too |
| the stayers are merely more stubborn | accepted in full | a hall of those who counted; the fork | the share of the "showy" among the stayers — a measurement of 048l §4 |
Weak point¶
Montaigne did not write about elections: the mayor of Bordeaux was chosen by the jurats, not the people, and his view of popular voting is a reconstruction from the Essays, not a position. Quotations are paraphrased. The conservatism of the first blow is an honest position that the protocol does not refute but goes round: by addition instead of replacement and a courtyard instead of a country. "Passionate men" in the architect's move is Gumilev's word taken in its everyday sense ("ready to act for convictions"), not as a theory of ethnogenesis; the analysis of Gumilev himself and the operational definition of passionarity — 040bp. Readiness to act and calculation are attributed to the stayers logically; their share and composition are a pilot measurement.
Related: 040as §3 · 040bk §2 · 040bj · 040bl · 040bn · 040b §5 · 006b §3c · 001 · 1g · 1h · 048m arts. 4, 5, 8, 14 · 048k, decision 9 · 048g · 048l · 057h §2.1, 2.4, 2.6 · 059l §8b