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.
Ethics and Philosophy¶
Dignity, rights, "selling citizenship", the moral side of the choice. General rules of the base — in the introduction.
How to read this chapter (note of 02.10.2026). The text contains wording that is easy to misread: a "reversible" choice means "at the next election": within one election exit is final. The exact-answers sheet 1d and the charter 048m are in force.
Q-ETH-001 · Can one sell at all what is not for sale — a civic right?¶
Status: 🔁 contested Who asks: philosophers, theologians, moralists — the deepest objection Source in the book: §33 "The philosophical manifesto", §29.4 Related: Q-LEG-001, Q-ETH-002
Answer. The right is not sold and does not pass to anyone else — it is suspended by its holder for one cycle, reversibly. Nobody receives another's vote; the vote is annihilated. This is closer to waiving a lawsuit than to selling property: by declining to sue, a person has not sold the right to a court.
Weak point of the answer. Sandel's objection ("what money can't buy") strikes not at the mechanics of transfer but at the very act of valuing in money: by putting a price on civic participation, a society changes the meaning of that participation, even if nothing is legally transferred. The book has as yet no answer at the level of the objection. This is probably the strongest point of criticism of AB-EXIT.
Q-ETH-002 · Doesn't it demean human dignity — paying a person for silence?¶
Status: ✅ answered Who asks: human-rights advocates, the public Source in the book: §11 "From duty to choice", §29.5 Related: Q-ETH-001, Q-SOC-001
Answer. Today's position is more demeaning: 48 % do not participate, and the state pretends they do not exist. AB-EXIT does not pay for silence — it recognises the choice and compensates it. And all other channels remain: protest, court, speech, petition. There is no silence here, only the refusal of one specific instrument.
If receiving state compensation is to be called demeaning, then the pension, the tax credit and free education will have to be called demeaning too.
Weak point of the answer. The analogy with the pension is incomplete: a pension is not conditional on refraining from political action. The conditionality of the payment is exactly what makes the case special, and the analogy walks around it.
Q-ETH-003 · Is this an elitist idea — "get the poor off the electoral roll" in pretty wrapping?¶
Status: ✅ answered Who asks: left-wing critics, journalists who know the idea's history Source in the book: README — "Why I Built This", §33 Related: Q-SOC-001, Q-META-002
Answer. The author does not hide it: the 2014 idea grew out of anger and sounded exactly like that. But the evolution is substantive, not cosmetic. "Remove the poor" is to take away a right by an external attribute. AB-EXIT is to add a right, the same for everyone, and let people sort themselves. A rich man too lazy to go to the precinct will take the dividend exactly the same way. There is no income attribute in the mechanism.
Weak point of the answer. Intention and effect are different things. If exit correlates statistically with income, the result may come close to a property qualification even with a flawlessly neutral mechanism. The honest formulation: the mechanism is not elitist, but its consequences may be — and that is tested only by a pilot.
Q-ETH-004 · What if a person takes the money not because he wants to but because of need?¶
Status: 🟡 open Who asks: ethicists, social workers Source in the book: tangentially §29.5 Related: Q-SOC-001, Q-ETH-001
Answer. There is no direct examination. The outline: any social payment is accepted under conditions of need, and that does not make it coercion. The sum is deliberately small (1.5 % of the median) so as not to be "an offer that cannot be refused".
Weak point of the answer. The objection of "coercion by circumstance" is standard in bioethics in discussions of paying donors and trial participants, and there it is treated as serious. The answer "the sum is small" is quantitative, and therefore vulnerable: in a crisis even a small sum becomes decisive. A section is needed.
Q-ETH-005 · Kant: the vote is part of dignity, and dignity has no price. Doesn't a payment for non-participation strip dignity?¶
Status: ✅ answered Who asks: philosophers, Kantians, legal theorists Source in the book: 040j "Kant", 029.4 Related: Q-ETH-001, Q-ETH-002, Q-LEG-001
Answer. The objection is removed with Kant's own weapon. To forbid a citizen to dispose of his vote for his own moral good is "the greatest despotism" of paternal care (1793); right may not prescribe virtue. "Price or dignity" applies to the person, not to the deed: the right to vote is not alienated, the price is put on the act for one cycle. And voting as a process — listen, study, travel, tick — is by composition of actions a working day, while the vote-as-dignity, in an existential choice, is by the stake model never sold. Kant would sign as a jurist and keep silent as a moralist.
Weak point of the answer. Kant applied the "right vs act" distinction to labour and property, not to voting; the transfer is ours, and it holds for an election-as-measure, not an election-as-fork, while the line between them is drawn after the vote.