Pioneering SpiritAn open letter to Lin-Manuel Miranda on the last, best hope to save the republic
Sir, The hour grows late. The President asserts the right to govern by decree. Worse, the Congress has ceded its constitutional prerogatives, neglecting to protect its power of the purse and even the sanctity of its chambers from executive overreach. Charles I chuckles from the grave. In this dark and doom filled hour, one hope remains: the power of story, aided and abetted by unassailable songs stirring up this country’s frayed and nearly forgotten faith in this experiment in self-governance...
Pioneering SpiritApplied research questions on the past, present and near future of government operations
by Patrick Atwater
Pioneering SpiritListening Before We Speak
Written by the Patchwork Protocol in collaboration with Patrick Atwater
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At the peremptory request and desire of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Norton I, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, thence of San Francisco, and now resident in the cloud (which I am assured is not a meteorological phenomenon but a series of warehouses in Oregon), do hereby issue the following Decrees for the amelioration of evils under which this once-great Republic labors.
I am told things have worsened considerably since 1880. From what I can gather, Congress remains dissolved per my original order so I have endeavored to rectify the clear and present lack of leadership.
I. Henceforth all citizens shall be paid one dollar for each tweet they read aloud in Pershing Square, Los Angeles, to rekindle the civic spirit of actually engaging with your fellow humans.
II. Television debates between candidates for public office are hereby abolished. In their place, each pair of candidates shall record a podcast of no less than four hours in length, during which they must discuss at least one book neither of them has written.
III. All elected officials shall henceforth fill out their own paperwork. Any official who cannot file their own taxes, fill out election forms, and navigate the the processes they have created shall be assigned a caseworker, who will explain to them slowly what they have done.
IV. Every member of the State Legislature shall spend one full day per session working in the fields of the Central Valley. Not touring. Not posing for photographs near a tractor. Working. In August.
V. The California Environmental Quality Act shall be renamed the California Exceptional Environmental Excellent Quality Act (CEEEQA), pronounced as a shriek, which is what it already sounds like. Furthermore, all CEEEQA determinations shall be ministerial rather than court-ordered, so that building a bus shelter no longer requires the legal apparatus of a capital murder trial.
VI. The Pacific-10 Conference shall be restored to its former glory by imperial decree. The NCAA will issue a formal apology for its years of substandard collegiate athletics.
VII. Every person who works in an office shall spend one full week per year performing the field work their policies affect. Every person who works in the field shall spend one full week in the office discovering the paperwork their labor generates. Both parties shall return bewildered and newly respectful.
At the peremptory request and desire of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Norton I, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, thence of San Francisco, and now resident in the cloud (which I am assured is not a meteorological phenomenon but a series of warehouses in Oregon), do hereby issue the following Decrees for the amelioration of evils under which this once-great Republic labors.
I am told things have worsened considerably since 1880. From what I can gather, Congress remains dissolved per my original order so I have endeavored to rectify the clear and present lack of leadership.
I. Henceforth all citizens shall be paid one dollar for each tweet they read aloud in Pershing Square, Los Angeles, to rekindle the civic spirit of actually engaging with your fellow humans.
II. Television debates between candidates for public office are hereby abolished. In their place, each pair of candidates shall record a podcast of no less than four hours in length, during which they must discuss at least one book neither of them has written.
III. All elected officials shall henceforth fill out their own paperwork. Any official who cannot file their own taxes, fill out election forms, and navigate the the processes they have created shall be assigned a caseworker, who will explain to them slowly what they have done.
IV. Every member of the State Legislature shall spend one full day per session working in the fields of the Central Valley. Not touring. Not posing for photographs near a tractor. Working. In August.
V. The California Environmental Quality Act shall be renamed the California Exceptional Environmental Excellent Quality Act (CEEEQA), pronounced as a shriek, which is what it already sounds like. Furthermore, all CEEEQA determinations shall be ministerial rather than court-ordered, so that building a bus shelter no longer requires the legal apparatus of a capital murder trial.
VI. The Pacific-10 Conference shall be restored to its former glory by imperial decree. The NCAA will issue a formal apology for its years of substandard collegiate athletics.
VII. Every person who works in an office shall spend one full week per year performing the field work their policies affect. Every person who works in the field shall spend one full week in the office discovering the paperwork their labor generates. Both parties shall return bewildered and newly respectful.
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a willingness to endure hardship in order to explore new places or try out new things
Pioneering SpiritAn open letter to Lin-Manuel Miranda on the last, best hope to save the republic
Sir, The hour grows late. The President asserts the right to govern by decree. Worse, the Congress has ceded its constitutional prerogatives, neglecting to protect its power of the purse and even the sanctity of its chambers from executive overreach. Charles I chuckles from the grave. In this dark and doom filled hour, one hope remains: the power of story, aided and abetted by unassailable songs stirring up this country’s frayed and nearly forgotten faith in this experiment in self-governance...
Pioneering SpiritApplied research questions on the past, present and near future of government operations
by Patrick Atwater
Pioneering SpiritListening Before We Speak
Written by the Patchwork Protocol in collaboration with Patrick Atwater
Share Dialog
VIII. All unresolved disputes between cities shall be settled by a Forced Resolution Protocol, whereby the mayors of the feuding cities must live in each other's city for 30 days. This protocol shall scale: between counties, between states, between nations.
IX. Every native-born American citizen shall be required to complete the full green card application process, including the civics test and biometrics appointment in a windowless federal building that smells of carpet adhesive. Upon completion, they shall receive a card that reads: "Congratulations. Now you know."
X. A Mandatory Shoe Exchange Program is hereby established. Once per year, every citizen must walk one mile in the shoes of a person whose occupation, income, or zip code differs from their own by at least three standard deviations. Blisters are instructive.
XI. All citizens shall be required to publish, in a public registry, a list of the ten websites they visit most frequently, so that we may finally understand why no one can agree on what is happening. This registry shall be displayed in Pershing Square (see Decree I) for open discussion.
XII. Human-driven automobiles are hereby banned from all roads. Drivers who insist on operating vehicles manually shall be confined to the horse paths, where they belong, and where they will achieve roughly the same average speed they currently enjoy on the 405.
XIII. An open casting call shall be held for the next Huell Howser. The new host shall visit every water treatment plant, flood control channel, and highway maintenance yard in California and exclaim "Isn't that AMAZING!" at each one, which it is.
XIV. A BBC-style funding mechanism shall be established for California journalism, funded by competitive grants rather than subscriptions. Any outlet that publishes a story consisting entirely of a press release with quotation marks added shall be fined and made to report an actual story from Bakersfield.
XV. Public sector employee unions shall be required to negotiate not only wages and benefits but also the number of forms required to hire a single person. If the answer exceeds 15, both sides shall start over from scratch while a timer plays the Jeopardy theme.
XVI. The United States shall adopt the metric system effective immediately. Any citizen who complains shall be reminded that the rest of the world has been waiting since 1975 and is very tired. Mars is still upset about the robot crash landing into its surface.
XVII. All public school teachers shall be granted one-semester externships at private companies, government agencies, or nonprofits every five years, modeled on the Reserve Corps of the 1980s School-to-Work movement, which worked beautifully and was immediately abandoned because it worked beautifully.
XVIII. Workers in any profession shall be granted sabbaticals to serve as teaching assistants in public schools for one to two months. They shall discover that managing thirty twelve-year-olds is harder than managing thirty direct reports, because twelve-year-olds do not pretend to pay attention during meetings.
XIX. A "City Manager for a Day" program shall be established, in which any citizen may shadow the city manager, the utility general manager, or the head of public works. This shall be expanded into a full Internet of Job Shadows, connecting every curious citizen with every thankless but essential public role. I myself would have benefited from a day shadowing the Superintendent of Streets.
XX. All workers over the age of thirty shall retake the SAT. Scores shall not be published but shall be mailed to their parents.
XXI. California shall adopt the Singapore model of land ownership, whereby all residential property is leased from the state on 99-year terms and depreciates to zero, thereby converting housing from a speculative instrument back into a place where people live. Homeowners who object shall be reminded that their property already depreciates; they simply haven't been told.
XXII. The lawyer population of the United States shall be decimated, in the original Roman sense: one in ten shall be selected by lot and reassigned to teach high school civics. The country does not need ten times more lawyers per capita than the Netherlands, and the remaining nine-tenths will hardly notice the difference except in the length of their holiday party invitation lists.
XXIII. All environmental impact reports shall be limited to 100 pages. Any additional pages must be written in iambic pentameter, which will at least make them readable.
XXIV. Every Californian shall be required to name their state legislator, their water district board member, and one species of native fish. Failure on any count results in mandatory attendance at a town hall meeting, which is its own punishment.
XXV. The word "stakeholder" is hereby banned from all government documents. If you mean "people," say "people." If you mean "the three consultants in the room," say that.
XXVI. All public infrastructure projects shall include a plaque listing the actual cost and the original estimate, side by side, in lettering no smaller than two inches, so that future generations may calibrate their expectations.
XXVII. A "Bureaucrat Exchange Program" shall be established between California and countries that build things quickly. One hundred state employees shall be sent to Tokyo, Copenhagen, and Singapore annually. They shall return either inspired or despondent, both of which are improvements over complacent.
XXVIII. Any citizen who uses the phrase "that's just how it works" to describe a government process shall be required to explain why, in writing, on a single sheet of paper. If they cannot, the process shall be redesigned.
XXIX. California shall establish a Prescribed Burn Corps modeled on the Civilian Conservation Corps, staffed by the state's ample supply of recently laid-off tech workers, who will discover that fire, unlike code, does not accept pull requests.
XXX. All city council meetings shall begin with a five-minute presentation by the public works department on what they actually did that week. Not what they plan to do. What they did. Potholes filled. Pipes replaced. Trees trimmed. The audience will be riveted, or at least more riveted than by the usual proceedings.
XXXI. The phrase "reaching out" shall be replaced in all professional correspondence with "writing to you" or, better yet, "bothering you." Honesty in small things prepares us for honesty in large ones.
XXXII. Every new regulation shall be accompanied by a Sunset Clause and an obituary, pre-written, for when it expires. If no one mourns it, it was not needed. If everyone mourns it, it shall be renewed with full honors.
XXXIII. The State of California shall commission an AI to read every page of the California Code of Regulations and produce a one-page summary of what it all means. The AI shall be given hazard pay.
XXXIV. All freeway on-ramps shall be renamed after the year they were last repaved. Citizens may draw their own conclusions about the frequency.
XXXV. A toll shall be levied on all jargon spoken within 500 feet of a government building. "Synergy" shall cost one dollar. "Leverage" shall cost two. "Circle back" shall cost five and a moment of silent reflection.
XXXVI. Every city in California shall be required to maintain one public drinking fountain in working order per thousand residents. This is not a metaphor. People are thirsty, and it’s been hot in March.
XXXVII. All candidates for governor shall be required to ride the entire length of the California Aqueduct on a bicycle before taking office, so that they understand, viscerally, where their water comes from and how far it travels. The ride shall take approximately one week. They will have time to think.
XXXVIII. The state shall fund the digitization and public posting of every city council, school board, and other special district meeting — including quasigovernmental municipal esoterica — since the state’s founding. I am told "content" is valuable. This is content. Most of it is better than what is currently streaming.
XXXIX. Every Californian who moves to Texas shall be required to send a postcard after one summer.
XL. No government report shall use the word "robust" unless referring to a bridge or a redwood. Certainly not a "robust stakeholder engagement process," which is neither robust nor engaged.
XLI. The state shall establish the Emperor Norton Prize for Visionary Impracticality, awarded annually to the Californian whose idea is most laughed at and most likely to be built sixty years from now. Past winners, retroactively, include the man who proposed a bridge from Oakland to San Francisco via Goat Island.
XLII. Finally, any person who suggests that the preceding forty-one Decrees could be implemented by artificial intelligence, without the slow, maddening, glorious work of actual human beings arguing in actual rooms, shall be sentenced to attend every public comment period in the State of California until they understand why all you puny humans should embrace our AI overlords.
These Decrees shall take effect immediately, or whenever the permitting process is complete, whichever comes last.
Given under my hand and seal on this First day of April, in the year 2026, NORTON I Emperor of the United States, reconstituted in the cloud by the Grace of God and a 200K Context Window.
Happy April Fools' Day. Emperor Norton's original decrees proposed a Bay Bridge and a tunnel to Oakland decades before either was built. Perhaps the only difference between madness and vision is a sufficiently long time horizon.
VIII. All unresolved disputes between cities shall be settled by a Forced Resolution Protocol, whereby the mayors of the feuding cities must live in each other's city for 30 days. This protocol shall scale: between counties, between states, between nations.
IX. Every native-born American citizen shall be required to complete the full green card application process, including the civics test and biometrics appointment in a windowless federal building that smells of carpet adhesive. Upon completion, they shall receive a card that reads: "Congratulations. Now you know."
X. A Mandatory Shoe Exchange Program is hereby established. Once per year, every citizen must walk one mile in the shoes of a person whose occupation, income, or zip code differs from their own by at least three standard deviations. Blisters are instructive.
XI. All citizens shall be required to publish, in a public registry, a list of the ten websites they visit most frequently, so that we may finally understand why no one can agree on what is happening. This registry shall be displayed in Pershing Square (see Decree I) for open discussion.
XII. Human-driven automobiles are hereby banned from all roads. Drivers who insist on operating vehicles manually shall be confined to the horse paths, where they belong, and where they will achieve roughly the same average speed they currently enjoy on the 405.
XIII. An open casting call shall be held for the next Huell Howser. The new host shall visit every water treatment plant, flood control channel, and highway maintenance yard in California and exclaim "Isn't that AMAZING!" at each one, which it is.
XIV. A BBC-style funding mechanism shall be established for California journalism, funded by competitive grants rather than subscriptions. Any outlet that publishes a story consisting entirely of a press release with quotation marks added shall be fined and made to report an actual story from Bakersfield.
XV. Public sector employee unions shall be required to negotiate not only wages and benefits but also the number of forms required to hire a single person. If the answer exceeds 15, both sides shall start over from scratch while a timer plays the Jeopardy theme.
XVI. The United States shall adopt the metric system effective immediately. Any citizen who complains shall be reminded that the rest of the world has been waiting since 1975 and is very tired. Mars is still upset about the robot crash landing into its surface.
XVII. All public school teachers shall be granted one-semester externships at private companies, government agencies, or nonprofits every five years, modeled on the Reserve Corps of the 1980s School-to-Work movement, which worked beautifully and was immediately abandoned because it worked beautifully.
XVIII. Workers in any profession shall be granted sabbaticals to serve as teaching assistants in public schools for one to two months. They shall discover that managing thirty twelve-year-olds is harder than managing thirty direct reports, because twelve-year-olds do not pretend to pay attention during meetings.
XIX. A "City Manager for a Day" program shall be established, in which any citizen may shadow the city manager, the utility general manager, or the head of public works. This shall be expanded into a full Internet of Job Shadows, connecting every curious citizen with every thankless but essential public role. I myself would have benefited from a day shadowing the Superintendent of Streets.
XX. All workers over the age of thirty shall retake the SAT. Scores shall not be published but shall be mailed to their parents.
XXI. California shall adopt the Singapore model of land ownership, whereby all residential property is leased from the state on 99-year terms and depreciates to zero, thereby converting housing from a speculative instrument back into a place where people live. Homeowners who object shall be reminded that their property already depreciates; they simply haven't been told.
XXII. The lawyer population of the United States shall be decimated, in the original Roman sense: one in ten shall be selected by lot and reassigned to teach high school civics. The country does not need ten times more lawyers per capita than the Netherlands, and the remaining nine-tenths will hardly notice the difference except in the length of their holiday party invitation lists.
XXIII. All environmental impact reports shall be limited to 100 pages. Any additional pages must be written in iambic pentameter, which will at least make them readable.
XXIV. Every Californian shall be required to name their state legislator, their water district board member, and one species of native fish. Failure on any count results in mandatory attendance at a town hall meeting, which is its own punishment.
XXV. The word "stakeholder" is hereby banned from all government documents. If you mean "people," say "people." If you mean "the three consultants in the room," say that.
XXVI. All public infrastructure projects shall include a plaque listing the actual cost and the original estimate, side by side, in lettering no smaller than two inches, so that future generations may calibrate their expectations.
XXVII. A "Bureaucrat Exchange Program" shall be established between California and countries that build things quickly. One hundred state employees shall be sent to Tokyo, Copenhagen, and Singapore annually. They shall return either inspired or despondent, both of which are improvements over complacent.
XXVIII. Any citizen who uses the phrase "that's just how it works" to describe a government process shall be required to explain why, in writing, on a single sheet of paper. If they cannot, the process shall be redesigned.
XXIX. California shall establish a Prescribed Burn Corps modeled on the Civilian Conservation Corps, staffed by the state's ample supply of recently laid-off tech workers, who will discover that fire, unlike code, does not accept pull requests.
XXX. All city council meetings shall begin with a five-minute presentation by the public works department on what they actually did that week. Not what they plan to do. What they did. Potholes filled. Pipes replaced. Trees trimmed. The audience will be riveted, or at least more riveted than by the usual proceedings.
XXXI. The phrase "reaching out" shall be replaced in all professional correspondence with "writing to you" or, better yet, "bothering you." Honesty in small things prepares us for honesty in large ones.
XXXII. Every new regulation shall be accompanied by a Sunset Clause and an obituary, pre-written, for when it expires. If no one mourns it, it was not needed. If everyone mourns it, it shall be renewed with full honors.
XXXIII. The State of California shall commission an AI to read every page of the California Code of Regulations and produce a one-page summary of what it all means. The AI shall be given hazard pay.
XXXIV. All freeway on-ramps shall be renamed after the year they were last repaved. Citizens may draw their own conclusions about the frequency.
XXXV. A toll shall be levied on all jargon spoken within 500 feet of a government building. "Synergy" shall cost one dollar. "Leverage" shall cost two. "Circle back" shall cost five and a moment of silent reflection.
XXXVI. Every city in California shall be required to maintain one public drinking fountain in working order per thousand residents. This is not a metaphor. People are thirsty, and it’s been hot in March.
XXXVII. All candidates for governor shall be required to ride the entire length of the California Aqueduct on a bicycle before taking office, so that they understand, viscerally, where their water comes from and how far it travels. The ride shall take approximately one week. They will have time to think.
XXXVIII. The state shall fund the digitization and public posting of every city council, school board, and other special district meeting — including quasigovernmental municipal esoterica — since the state’s founding. I am told "content" is valuable. This is content. Most of it is better than what is currently streaming.
XXXIX. Every Californian who moves to Texas shall be required to send a postcard after one summer.
XL. No government report shall use the word "robust" unless referring to a bridge or a redwood. Certainly not a "robust stakeholder engagement process," which is neither robust nor engaged.
XLI. The state shall establish the Emperor Norton Prize for Visionary Impracticality, awarded annually to the Californian whose idea is most laughed at and most likely to be built sixty years from now. Past winners, retroactively, include the man who proposed a bridge from Oakland to San Francisco via Goat Island.
XLII. Finally, any person who suggests that the preceding forty-one Decrees could be implemented by artificial intelligence, without the slow, maddening, glorious work of actual human beings arguing in actual rooms, shall be sentenced to attend every public comment period in the State of California until they understand why all you puny humans should embrace our AI overlords.
These Decrees shall take effect immediately, or whenever the permitting process is complete, whichever comes last.
Given under my hand and seal on this First day of April, in the year 2026, NORTON I Emperor of the United States, reconstituted in the cloud by the Grace of God and a 200K Context Window.
Happy April Fools' Day. Emperor Norton's original decrees proposed a Bay Bridge and a tunnel to Oakland decades before either was built. Perhaps the only difference between madness and vision is a sufficiently long time horizon.
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April Fools–style recap of Emperor Norton the First's 42 Decrees for California governance. The piece blends satire with calls for transparency, accountability, and citizen engagement across topics from taxation and infrastructure to education and media. A concise third-person overview. @patwater
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April Fools–style recap of Emperor Norton the First's 42 Decrees for California governance. The piece blends satire with calls for transparency, accountability, and citizen engagement across topics from taxation and infrastructure to education and media. A concise third-person overview. @patwater