Preamble

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a people to update the political and social frameworks which have connected them to their past, and to assume among the powers of the earth a new station suited to the challenges of their age, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to this renewal.

Why Now?

The original Declaration and Constitution were masterworks of political engineering. They created a system that enabled unprecedented flourishing - transforming 4 million colonists into the world's most powerful and innovative nation.

But they were designed for a different world:

• Population: 4 million → 330 million (82x increase)
• Technology: Muskets and printing presses → Nuclear weapons and AI
• Economy: Agrarian and mercantile → Global and digital
• Information: Letters took weeks → Misinformation spreads in seconds
• Threats: Foreign kings → Climate collapse, pandemic, algorithmic manipulation

The Founders themselves anticipated this need. Jefferson wrote: "Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind... We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy."

The GRIN Diagnosis

Our current systems show the signature of extraction rather than generation:

• Low G: Innovation concentrated in narrow sectors while infrastructure crumbles
• Declining R: Single points of failure multiply; resilience erodes
• High Rc: Veto players block adaptation; the system cannot update itself
• Extraction dominates: Wealth concentrates while capacity degrades

This is not a partisan diagnosis. Both sides of the political divide have contributed to this decay. The system itself has become extractive - consuming the trust, capacity, and cohesion that previous generations built.

The Purpose of Declaration 2.0

We do not propose to discard the original. We propose to extend it - applying the same innovative spirit the Founders showed to the challenges of our age.

The goal is simple: Design institutions that maximize generativity (G) and resilience (R) while minimizing extraction pathways. Create systems that produce more than they consume, that grow stronger under stress, that serve the lightcone of all beings across time.

This is not revolution. It is renovation - preserving what works while patching the vulnerabilities that time has revealed.