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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.

Venezuela: Oil without Maduro and the Thermostat Sine Wave

Chapter: 09 — Cases: Other Countries File: 09_057d · v1 · 15 September 2026 (Gemini dialogue, session 15-09-26) Source: a thought experiment "a country after the fall of the regime, with the largest oil reserves and destroyed institutions"; parallel with Alaska (§14) and Norway (024). Estimates are model-based.

How to read this chapter (note of 02.10.2026). The text contains wording that is easy to misread: sums and formulas with coefficients are worked examples: the size of the payment is set as a percentage of the median income approved by referendum. The exact-answers sheet 1d and the charter 048m are in force.

1. Why without the protocol there will be a Maduro-2

Colossal resources and completely destroyed institutions are a textbook trap: classical "by the book" democracy almost certainly slides into a new cycle of populism: a charismatic arrives, promises to hand out the oil money to the people, the people vote, everything repeats. The clientelism of the barrios — cheap food and promises in exchange for votes — does not disappear with a change of flag.

2. How the protocol reassembles the country

The oil dividend as the killing of clientelism. PDVSA revenue goes into a Norwegian-type sovereign fund; part of the fund forms the dividend (the protocol ties D to the median wage, §1, but for a resource economy the fund is the natural source of funding the payment). Millions of the poor from the slums receive real money directly, not promises; the populists have nothing to trade — the voter has already taken the money and left the market.

The oil technocracy. Who stays at the urns in Caracas and Maracaibo: the returning diaspora from the US and Europe, surviving entrepreneurs, oil engineers, doctors, students — those who need not $1,000 but the restoration of property rights, the return of Chevron and ExxonMobil, the restoration of production. A parliament of businessmen and technocrats with free hands: not flirting with the poor but pumping oil, rebuilding infrastructure and making sure the fund pays the dividend.

The thermostat against the resource curse. The trouble with all oil countries is that sooner or later the elite steals from the fund because society does not control it. Here, as soon as the technocrats keep too much for themselves and the dividend falls (or is eaten by inflation from bad macroeconomics), the slum dwellers see it in their wallets and, instead of guarimbas (the bloody street protests of the Maduro era), press the button, refuse the fallen dividend and sweep the elite away at the next election.

3. The sine wave

  1. Shock recovery: the technocrats open the markets, the oil flows, the nation grows richer — the poor are fed, the elite rebuilds its capital.
  2. Overheating and corruption: some ten years later the new elite bronzes over and carves up contracts; the fund's revenue falls.
  3. The thermostat's blow: the dividend declines, millions return to the polling stations, fire the government, hire hungrier managers.
  4. Diversification: the new managers understand that depending only on oil is dangerous (prices fall — the dividend collapses — they are fired) and invest in tourism, IT and agriculture to protect their seats from the thermostat.

Summary: Venezuela as a corporation where oil is the asset, the technocrats are the board of directors, the people are holders of preferred shares who can always fire the board if the dividends stop coming. The fastest road to a Latin American economic miracle — provided the regime has already fallen (see 048d on how it falls).

4. Weak point of the case

The scenario substitutes a resource fund for the protocol's formula (median wage); in an economy where the median wage has collapsed and the rent is enormous these two sources diverge radically — and precisely this divergence must be fixed in the country statute (§14 Alaska is the precedent of a fund, but without the electoral option). A thermostat through the fund is sensitive to the world oil price, not to the quality of governance — step 4 of the sine wave (diversification) treats this, but only from the second cycle. 🟡

Related: §14 (Alaska PFD) · 024 (Norway) · 048d (the forces) · 057c (Iran: resource rent and the IRGC) · §13.9 (thermostat) · 040f.5 ("Saudi Arabia without oil") · 033 (Henry George and rent)