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THE FOUNDING STAKE

A Two-Dollar Civic Compact

How We the People Establish Ownership

of the Institutions That Belong to Us

A Companion Document to the We The People Platform

Jason Robertson

Ohio · 2026

v1.0 · Created April 2026 · Updated May 3, 2026

The Proposition

At the launch of the platform described in the We The People manifesto, every American is invited to contribute two dollars as a Founding Stake in the institutions that the platform creates. The contribution is collected through the existing federal tax system as a single line item on annual tax returns the year the platform is enacted. The total raised — approximately $680 million — is deposited into the Sovereign Fund as its initial seed.

The two dollars is not a fundraising mechanism. The mathematics of the platform do not require it. The Sovereign Fund’s long-term scale will be determined entirely by the payroll contribution structure described in the Community Contribution Plan, against which $680 million is mathematical rounding error within five years of operation.

What the two dollars accomplishes is something more important than money. It establishes that every American who contributes is a founding stakeholder in the institutions that follow. It converts citizens from observers of national policy into owners of a national project. It creates the political relationship between person and institution that makes the broader architecture defensible across generations of future political pressure.

This document explains why the universal seed contribution matters, what it does that conventional fundraising cannot do, and how it should be structured at the moment of platform enactment. It is offered as a specific proposal for how the platform’s launch event itself should be designed.

The Underlying Principle

Political institutions that endure are institutions that people own. Institutions that people own are institutions that people contributed to. The mechanism by which citizens become stakeholders is contribution, not consumption.

The endurance of Social Security across nine decades of political pressure is not explained by the program’s design. The program has serious actuarial problems that have been visible for forty years. What protects Social Security politically is the relationship every American worker has with it. Every working American has paid into the system. Every working American has a personal record of those contributions. The system belongs to them in a way that no program funded purely by general taxation can belong to anyone.

This relationship is what political theorists call constitutive participation. The act of contribution is not merely instrumental — it does not just provide funding. It is constitutive of the relationship between citizen and institution. To have contributed is to be a founding member. To be a founding member is to have standing. To have standing is to defend the institution against future attacks because attacks on the institution are attacks on something the citizen helped build.

The American Revolution was funded partly by per-capita assessments levied on the colonies. The framers of the Continental Congress understood that the revolution would only succeed if every colonist had skin in it. The Mayflower Compact established the political relationship between settler and settlement through signature — an act that produced no money but established universal participation. The original Social Security Act preserved this principle by making contribution universal rather than means-tested. In each case, the mechanism is the same: small acts of universal participation create durable political ownership.

“The two dollars is not what funds the institution. The two dollars is what makes the institution belong to everyone who contributed.”

Why This Particular Mechanism

Several alternative approaches to launching the platform are possible. Each has merits, and each fails the constitutive participation test in different ways.

A foundation grant from major donors would launch the fund with substantially more capital and would be administratively simpler. It would also produce an institution that belongs to those donors, not to the broader public. The political defense of such an institution would depend on continued elite support rather than on broad public ownership.

A purely voluntary donation campaign during the platform’s launch would reach only those Americans who actively support the platform. The fund would belong to its supporters, not to all Americans. Opponents would have grounds to argue the institution serves only one political faction.

A general tax dedicated to launching the fund would raise the necessary capital through normal federal mechanisms. It would also feel to ordinary Americans like any other tax — something the government takes, not something they participate in. The constitutive moment would be lost in the routine of tax administration.

The universal two-dollar stake threads through these problems. The amount is small enough that no American can credibly claim it imposes hardship. The collection mechanism is universal enough that every American who files taxes participates. The framing is explicit enough that participation is a chosen civic act rather than an invisible administrative deduction. The result is an institution founded by all of its citizens, owned by all of its citizens, defended by all of its citizens.

How It Works

The Launch Event

In the year the platform is enacted by Congress, the authorizing legislation includes a provision establishing the Founding Stake. Every American who files a federal tax return that year is asked to contribute two dollars to the Sovereign Fund as part of the platform’s establishment. The contribution appears as a single line item on Form 1040, distinguished from any other tax obligation, with a specific name (“Founding Stake — Sovereign Fund of the United States” or similar) and an explicit purpose statement.

Filers may opt out by leaving the line blank. The expectation is that opt-outs will be a small minority, both because the amount is trivial and because the framing of the contribution invites participation rather than compelling it. The contribution is not deductible — deduction would defeat the purpose, since the contribution is made for civic reasons rather than financial ones.

The Collection

The Internal Revenue Service collects the contributions through normal tax administration during the filing year. Funds are aggregated and transferred to the Sovereign Fund’s custodian within thirty days of collection. Total collection is published publicly on the day the transfer is complete, including the number of contributors. Both numbers become part of the historical record of the platform’s establishment.

The Record

Every American who contributes is added to the Founding Stakeholder Roll, a permanent public record of those who participated in the platform’s establishment. The Roll is searchable by name, organized chronologically, and preserved permanently as part of the National Archives. A century from now, descendants of founding stakeholders can look up their ancestors’ names and see their participation in the founding act.

The Roll has no material privileges associated with it. Founding stakeholders receive no benefits beyond what every American receives under the platform’s programs. What they receive is the historical fact of their participation — the right to say, and to have their descendants say, that their family was part of establishing this.

The Custody

The $680 million collected becomes the Sovereign Fund’s initial balance. It is invested under exactly the rules that govern the fund in perpetuity — passive global index investing, no individual U.S. equities, mechanical proxy voting, transparent quarterly reporting. The fund’s investment performance from this initial balance becomes public record. Every founding stakeholder can verify the use of their contribution by looking at quarterly reports.

“The contribution becomes the seed. The seed becomes the fund. The fund becomes the architecture. The architecture belongs to those who founded it.”

What This Mechanism Accomplishes

Political Legitimacy at Scale

Most major reform proposals fail because they lack the political coalition to defend them after enactment. Even programs that pass through Congress face decades of attempted rollback if they were enacted without broad public investment. The most durable American programs — Social Security, Medicare, the Interstate Highway System — share a feature that less durable programs lack: people feel personally connected to them.

The Founding Stake creates this personal connection at the moment of platform launch. An American who contributed two dollars to the Sovereign Fund’s establishment has a different relationship to the fund than an American who watched the fund being established from the sidelines. The former will defend the fund against political attacks because attacks on the fund are attacks on something they helped create. The latter has no particular reason to defend it.

Universal Participation Across Political Lines

The platform’s policy proposals will face opposition from various political coalitions. The Founding Stake mechanism is structured to be accessible to opponents as well as supporters. An American who disagrees with parts of the platform can still participate in the Founding Stake, because participation does not require agreement with every policy detail. It requires only the willingness to be a founding stakeholder in an institution that will exist regardless of one’s personal views about specific policies.

This is intentional. The Founding Stake should be designed to maximize participation across political coalitions, not to filter for ideological agreement. An America in which 95% of citizens participated in establishing the Sovereign Fund will defend that fund more durably than an America in which only the platform’s supporters participated.

Multigenerational Anchor

Programs that succeed across generations succeed because each generation has a relationship with them. The Founding Stake mechanism extends the founding moment beyond a single generation by creating a permanent record that subsequent generations inherit. A child born in 2050 whose grandparents are on the Founding Stakeholder Roll has a personal connection to the institution that no policy education program could replicate. The institution becomes part of the family’s history.

This is not a small matter. American institutions that have endured longest — the Constitution, the National Park System, the public university system — are institutions that subsequent generations relate to as inherited rather than as imposed. The Founding Stake mechanism deliberately constructs this inheritance relationship for the platform’s institutions.

A Statement of National Capacity

There is a final, less measurable accomplishment that deserves explicit naming. The act of 340 million Americans simultaneously participating in the founding of a national institution would itself be an event of historical importance. It would demonstrate that the country is still capable of acting collectively at scale. It would produce a moment of common participation across political, geographic, and demographic divides that the country has not produced in many decades.

The platform’s broader proposition is that Americans can still build institutions together. The Founding Stake is the first proof of that proposition. If the country can collectively contribute two dollars each to establish a Sovereign Fund, the country can collectively contribute the substantially larger commitments that the platform’s full architecture requires. If it cannot, the platform itself is unlikely to succeed regardless of how the Founding Stake question is resolved.

“The two-dollar question is also a larger question: are we still capable of doing things together as a country? The platform’s entire premise depends on the answer being yes.”

How This Integrates with the Broader Platform

The Founding Stake is a launch mechanism, not an ongoing program. It happens once, at the moment of platform enactment, and then concludes. The institutions it establishes operate in perpetuity under the architecture described in the platform document and white papers.

Phase One: Launch Year

In the calendar year the platform is enacted, the Founding Stake collection occurs as part of normal tax filing. Total collection is published. The Sovereign Fund’s initial balance is established. The Founding Stakeholder Roll is published. The platform’s primary pillars (retirement reform, wage floors, education fund) begin operations under their respective enabling legislation.

Phase Two: Years Two Through Five

The Sovereign Fund operates from its $680 million initial balance, supplemented by the payroll contributions that begin in Year One under the Community Contribution Plan. The fund crosses one billion dollars in total balance during Year One itself, primarily from payroll contributions rather than the seed. It crosses one trillion dollars by approximately Year Three. The Founding Stake’s contribution to total fund size becomes mathematically negligible within months. Its political contribution endures.

Phase Three: The Long Future

The fund continues operations under its statutory mandate for as long as the platform endures. Every quarterly report references the original $680 million seed alongside current balance. Every public discussion of the fund’s legitimacy can reference the 340 million Americans who contributed to its founding. The fund’s political defense rests on universal ownership rather than on elite endorsement.

If the Platform Is Not Enacted

Honesty about implementation requires addressing a less optimistic possibility. If the platform is not enacted by Congress, the Founding Stake does not occur. The mechanism is part of the platform’s authorizing legislation, not a separate proposal. There is no Founding Stake without platform enactment, and no platform enactment without Congressional action.

This is intentional. The Founding Stake is the launch ceremony for the platform’s institutions, not a substitute for them. Proposing a voluntary fundraising campaign that mimics the Founding Stake without the legislative architecture would produce something that looks similar but accomplishes nothing similar. Universal participation requires universal access, which requires the federal tax system, which requires Congressional action. The pieces are connected by design.

Before platform enactment, supporter contributions can fund the platform’s advocacy organization through normal nonprofit channels. After platform enactment, the Founding Stake mechanism establishes the Sovereign Fund as a national institution. These are different mechanisms serving different purposes and should not be confused.

Closing

The Founding Stake mechanism rests on a small idea about how political institutions endure. People defend what they helped build. People help build what they were invited to participate in. The invitation has to be universal enough that everyone can accept it and small enough that nobody can credibly refuse on grounds of cost.

Two dollars per American satisfies both conditions. The mechanism is simple. The collection is administratively straightforward. The result is an institution founded by 340 million people — an institution that 340 million people have personal reasons to defend.

The math says the dollars do not matter much. The history says the contribution matters greatly. Both are true. The platform’s long-term success will be determined by the larger architecture of pooled retirement contributions, empirical wage floors, sovereign-funded education, and universal access to healthcare, childcare, and mental health services. None of those programs depend on the Founding Stake for their funding.

What they depend on is the political legitimacy that allows them to endure across the inevitable future moments when political coalitions try to dismantle them. The Founding Stake is the mechanism by which that legitimacy is established at the moment of platform launch. It is offered as a specific proposal for how that moment should be designed.

“We all contribute. We all own. We all defend what we built together. The mechanism is small. The principle is everything.”

Comments, refinements, and engagement are welcomed. This document captures the mechanism as currently conceived. It will be revised as the broader platform develops and as conversations about implementation produce specific improvements.

Jason Robertson

Ohio, 2026