Overview
Research and evidence for a more accountable system.
Two hundred and fifty years after Thomas Paine used Common Sense to challenge inherited authority, this essay asks what a legitimacy audit would reveal about American public institutions today. It argues that declining public trust, fiscal opacity, institutional capture, and administrative complexity are not just political frustrations; they are design failures that become more dangerous as artificial intelligence enters the machinery of government.
The essay makes a case for AI as a civic accountability layer: not a tool merely for government to process, monitor, or enforce faster, but a tool citizens can use to see public power more clearly. Its central principle is simple: audit before automation, co-creation before deployment, and public purpose before institutional convenience.