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Frequently Asked Questions


Table of Contents



Is PoliticalSheepdog.com legal?


Information from attorneys suggests that PoliticalSheepdog.com, in certain configurations, will be legal at a national level, certain states, and certain counties. Research will continue on its legality in other configurations and in specific states as appropriate policies become available. The biggest obstacles are laws forbidding contingency fees for lobbying in most states, but these laws appear unconstitutional and obstruct the stated intention of these same laws. In addition, the First Amendment should protect PoliticalSheepdog with the right to advocate and to assemble to protect consumers and to be paid by the government according to a fair, competitive, and contingent process.

While unconstitutional laws prohibiting contingency fees for lobbyist are one challenge in some jurisdictions, PoliticalSheepdog could probably function to pass laws in some counties, in states like Montana, where the Montana Supreme Court has ruled that prohibitions against contingency fees for lobbyists are unconstitutional, and states like West Virginia, and in Federal legislation, PoliticalSheepdog.

In addition, an obsolete 1910 Supreme Court precedent, Brooklyn Daily Eagle v. Voorhies, might make it difficult to operate during elections in order to fight moneyed special interest groups and to provide a clean for-profit incentive for constituents to give to the campaigns of candidates for their districts. These contributions would be clean, because no one would profit unless consumers benefited, because system is competitive, and because the system is constituent driven. The precedent might find that PoliticalSheepdog would be considered a lottery and not a market, even though candidates and not PoliticalSheepdog would receive money from constituents and even though PoliticalSheepdog would increase wealth of the public through greater efficiencies and not redistribute wealth. This precedent could be overturned in a state with a simple one sentence recognition from the governor’s office that PoliticalSheepdog is a market and not a lottery or in the Federal government by a similar sentence from the executive branch. Since PoliticalSheepdog.com in this format could be used to fight corruption, failure by the Federal or state executive branches to provide this sentence would be a tantamount to an endorsement of corruption by a governor or a President of the United States.


How is PoliticalSheepdog.com funded?


This is a good and necessary question. PoliticalSheepdog.com is a privately held company owned by Dr. James L. Gamble, III. The sole purpose of the company is to make good government profitable, and, thus, sustainable, whenever and where ever possible. Good government is one that optimizes resources for its citizens, which can be done best through improvement of market processes and which avoids the application of the violent resources against groups, based purely on race, origin, or religion. The funding has come from the private individuals. During the operational stage, funding will come from a share of the portion of savings or benefits for consumers, realized by the passage of effective, efficient public policies. This approach is necessary in order to avoid the conflicts of interest that advertising might create. While PoliticalSheepdog will initially use savings for consumers, including monetized savings of health and life, as a measure of success and compensation, other better parameters of good government could be used, it they became available and feasible.

Payments to successful policy innovators and citizen lobbyists will come from money saved by the public policies they support. Actual savings will be determined after the law has been enforced for a period of time. The means of collecting and the amount of compensation will be negotiated individually with the appropriate government agencies or through arbitration with that agency. Negotiations would be enforced with penalties for the most unreasonable party.

As an example of how PoliticalSheepdog, policy innovators, and citizen lobbyists could be compensated, connect the “Book length explanation link” and read chapter 2.

Negotiations will attempt to provide the innovators of good laws with pay equal to the equivalent of the fair market value (marginal revenue product) of the savings created by the good law. As a possible alternative to negotiations with legislators when sufficient support is lacking within a legislature, PoliticalSheepdog.com could use sponsorship auctions in addition to the citizen auctions to support the good law. The sponsorship auction would be necessary to protect a system that provides fair pay for those citizens who protect the national good.


How can we trust the PoliticalSheepdog.com process?


1.      PoliticalSheepdog.com must stand up to public scrutiny


2.     Citizens will have a new voice in supporting effective, efficient public policies.


3.      Empowering ordinary citizens helps defeat corruption.


4.     Legislators will have a new forum for hearing their constituents.


5.     Checks by legislators and constituents.


ACCOUNTABILITY - PoliticalSheepdog.com directors will be respected people who are known for their integrity, humanity, and contributions to social welfare. Policies proposed by innovators will be reviewed by economists and accountants (“bean counters”) to determine their value. Some complex policies may be shaped by citizens, using auction technology. Our long-term profitability depends on our integrity.


FREE MARKET DEMOCRACY - PoliticalSheepdog.com trusts the intelligence, concern, and creativity of individual citizens as guardians of social welfare as described in the book, The Wisdom of Crowds. The investment of trust in individual citizens is the great principle of democracy and a necessity for a free society. Prior to the year 2003, there was no free market for individuals, who create and support better laws. PoliticalSheepdog.com allows the public to take back control of the legislative process.

PoliticalSheepdog.com will be strictly nonpartisan. To avoid partisan squabbling, long-term savings, including savings in health and lives, for the consumer will be used to measure the success of a particular reform.


BALANCE - PoliticalSheepdog.com challenges the concentrated caches of special interest money. Special interest groups can corrupt the democratic system if they lobby legislators for laws that increase their profits and thinly spread the costs to individual consumers. In the past, for instance, common tools wound up costing the government dearly due to the laws that governed their purchase. Although $100 for a wrench might seem high, spread across millions of voters, it becomes too small a matter to elicit individual response, since the cost of challenging such a law is beyond the means of the average person who will pay taxes. Yet the commercial interests who benefit from such policies have large amounts of capital to convince legislators to enact laws that favor their corporate profits. Because individuals can more easily pay a few pennies in taxes than band together as consumers to fight against hidden waste, big special interest groups have held an advantage.


Special interest groups that “peddle influence” within our legislatures draw from their free market profits.  These commercially backed lobbies target a few key people in government with a large pool of money.  It is hard for individual citizens to counter that kind of influence.  This kind of influence also has a corrupting influence.  PolicitcalSheepDog.com will create a new type of citizen lobby that reward citizens for guarding the social welfare.  PoliticalSheepDog.com will give the citizen lobby a voice that can counter-balance interests of commercial lobby groups that threaten social welfare.  Special interest groups have monetary influence, but constituents lobbyists will hold their legislators accountable with their re-election votes.


The PoliticalSheepdog process will compensate innovators and citizen lobbyists out of large pools of savings that result from improved public policies.  Influence peddling tends to corrupt because it puts large sums of money in the hands of a powerful few.   On the other hand, paying citizens to lobby for better public policies will improve the democratic process without corrupting it.


NEW FORUM – PoliticalSheepdog.com will act as a real-time, interactive forum for participating in a democratic society.  PoliticalSheepdog.com will revitalize the relationship of legislators and their constituents.


CHECKS AND BALANCES – Legislators always have the right to reject the legislation associated with PoliticalSheepdog.com.  In the PoliticalSheepdog.com arrangement, constituents associated with PoliticalSheepdog.com act like sales persons for policy innovators and legislators act like purchasing agents for a large firm.  Constituents can also refuse to lobby for legislation supported by PoliticalSheepdog.com.  These actions of constituents and legislators can then check the actions of those associated with PoliticalSheepdog.com.


When is PoliticalSheepdog.com available?


While there was working version of PoliticalSheepdog, it could be available in approximately two months, whenever anyone brought an appropriate policy due to PoliticalSheepdog. The program is now inoperable due to the need to update its auction program to meet current internet conditions.

The present activities are principally attempts to promote the concept that markets and their incentives could correct imbalances of insight, incentives, and power created disasters like the 2008 banking collapse, like the Katrina disaster, and like the Federal deficits, when individuals with the insight, who could have prevented these problem, but did not have the power to prevent the problem, while those with the power did not have the insight, and neither had enough incentive. In addition, PoliticalSheepdog is probably the only available system that could correct these imbalances. Thus, the reality is that the United States really does not have an alternative to PoliticalSheepdog and must accept it before it is too late before the next disaster.


PoliticalSheepdog.com:


     NOW is the time…