Occasion

A few years ago I wrote Nova Democratia. It was an attempt to articulate something I missed at every layer of governance across Europe: a system that is democratic without being paralysed, that listens without getting stuck in listening, that decides without coercing. I believed in it. I still believe in its intention.

But I have, honestly, come to doubt its execution. Nova Democratia became, as I developed it further, a massive meeting-structure project. Councils, layers, consultation moments, feedback loops. It tried to solve paralysis by adding more deliberation, and that is precisely what causes paralysis. I only recognised it when I wrote it out and looked back at it. The medicine was the same prescription as the disease, only dressed differently.

Since then I have been working on something I have come to call VMB-ESG. It is not a variation on Nova Democratia. It is, in a sense, the opposite of it. Where Nova Democratia assumed more democracy = more deliberation, VMB-ESG assumes more democracy = faster ownership with visible accountability after the fact.

This piece is my attempt to explain what I am building, why I think it differs from what currently exists, and why I doubt whether we will make it — while I continue regardless. It is not a pamphlet. It is not a call to sign anything. It is an attempt to set out a thought as clearly as possible so that someone else, somewhere, someday, can take it up and actually implement it.

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What I did differently

The difference between Nova Democratia and VMB-ESG rests on one observation I already knew from my parents' family business, but only understood later.

Roughly 98% of what my father and mother decided, they decided alone. My father in his domain, my mother in hers. No meeting. No consultation. No signature from the other. Solo-decision, direct, done.

The difficult 2% went to the kitchen table. There everyone sat — we children, sometimes staff, sometimes a neighbour we trusted. Everyone could contribute. Everyone could put forward changes. But in the end my father decided, after having listened.

What I did not see then, and do now: this was a highly developed governance model, not old-fashioned family business. My parents had, without naming it as such, discovered what modern governance systems cannot manage to combine: extreme speed for the normal, shared attention for the exceptional, and clear final responsibility for both.

When I saw that, a large part of my earlier work fell apart. Much of what stood in Nova Democratia was an attempt to think through what my parents simply did. But because I had not seen it as one coherent system, I had spread it across councils and committees and layers. It could be simpler. Much simpler.

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The form of VMB-ESG

I will summarise it more briefly than it deserves, because at the end of this piece I refer to the full documentation. But the core must be here, otherwise I am talking about an empty word.

VMB-ESG consists of three components that operate at different scales:

The Table Model — for small groups, companies, institutions, municipalities. N persons together form N domains. Each domain-holder decides alone within their domain. In cases of doubt or overlap they call the table together — there the majority decides. Everything that has been decided goes onto the Track: a public, indelible decision-archive. Periodically, at the Open Hearth, the group reviews its own decisions in retrospect. Not to reverse them — a solo-decision is final — but to learn collectively. Whoever is systematically wrong receives markings. With enough markings they lose their sole authority. No meetings, no sanctions, no committees. The system corrects itself.

VMB-EGS — for large scale, where people no longer know each other personally. Ten layers, with three revolutionary additions: a Sortition Engine that draws anonymous controllers from the population, a Three-vote gate in which execution only takes place when rule, person, and sortitioned panel simultaneously give their agreement, and a Public Track that renders external auditors and internal oversight departments unnecessary.

The Growth Rule — which spans both systems. Each block receives a direction assignment: two to four measurable goals for the period. Together with it an envelope as means, and an economic frame as boundary. A block grows — receives more resources, more mandate, more freedom — when it meets its measurable quality goals in a sustainable way. Both conditions simultaneously. Whoever achieves quality through exhaustion gets not more but less. Whoever works sustainably without delivering quality likewise gets no more. Only whoever combines both grows.

And finally: one figure for control. The block above gives per decision two numbers — one for problem-recognition, one for solution-quality. The population gives a third set of numbers via an assessment list. The three numbers together form the diagnostic picture. No audits, no reports, no admissibility tests. Numbers.

That is it.

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Where this is fundamentally different

Three things distinguish this from nearly everything currently proposed as democratic renewal:

It is an anti-meeting system. Most contemporary proposals add deliberation. Citizens' assemblies, deliberative committees, citizen panels, councils of wise persons. All well-intentioned, all meeting-based. VMB-ESG drastically reduces meeting. Not by prohibiting it, but by placing 98% of decisions in the hands of people who may act directly.

It separates control from correction. In almost all modern systems, control automatically leads to correction, sanction, or revision — which is why people become defensive and secretive. In our system a solo-decision is final, so the domain-holder need not defend themselves. But it is shared, because learning poses no threat. The openness costs nothing, and the gain in learning is enormous.

It rewards sustainable realisation instead of consumption of resources. Most of what conventional budgeting systems do is train people to spend their budget, otherwise they get less the following year. VMB-ESG reverses this: whoever meets their direction assignment with fewer resources gets more freedom, not less. That is not a detail, it is a complete cultural shift.

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Why I think Europe needs this

My fear for Europe is concrete, not abstract. We have ended up in a world in which three powers impose themselves on us — China with its speed, the United States with its capital, India with its demography. None of these three has fundamentally bad intentions towards us. But none of these three has fundamentally good intentions either. They have their own interests, and those interests will at some point cut across ours.

By that time Europe must be able to stand on its own. And Europe cannot do that at present. Our decision-making is too slow. Our strategic execution is decoupled from our strategic plans. Our industrial base has eroded. Our risk tolerance has worn away. Our energy sovereignty has been surrendered. Our demography is running below replacement.

Not all of this can be solved by a governance system. Demography is what it is. Capital markets do not recover through a new decision-making model. But a substantial part of Europe's paralysis stems from the way in which we make decisions. What can be done in China within weeks costs Europe years. What in the United States is privately financed within months passes through ten years of committees here. Our slow decision-making is not cosmic bad luck. It is an organisational choice we have made, often with good intentions, but with dramatic consequences.

VMB-ESG is an attempt to repair that specific deficit. Not all deficits. This one.

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The problem that reinforces itself

Here I come to something I do not often hear named, but which has occupied me for years.

In a politics concerned exclusively with distribution, a dynamic arises in which each generation thins the productive layer in order to feed the consuming layer more broadly. Not because anyone wants that. Because in the short term it is politically the most stable path. Whoever has more to distribute wins votes. Whoever limits distribution to protect production loses votes. So distribution continues until what there was to distribute can no longer be produced.

The end point of this dynamic is that everyone is poor — not because the wealthy were too powerful, but because the productive substance of society has been consumed in order to maintain the illusion of fair distribution. We are already there in part, in many European welfare states. Politics is still about distribution, but there is ever less to distribute, so the struggle becomes fiercer and the outcome leaner.

What VMB-ESG could do — not as a miracle cure, but as an organisational precondition — is bring politics back to production. Not as a right-wing ideology, not as austerity, but as a straightforward answer to the question: how do we together produce more than we consume, so that distribution remains possible at all?

The direction assignment compels each block to make explicit what it wants to build. The Growth Rule measures whether it happens sustainably. The population assessment gives the ordinary person a voice, not over distribution alone, but over the direction in which things are built.

This is not an anti-democratic story. It is anti-passive-democratic. It is an attempt to involve the population in what is produced, not only in what is handed out.

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Why I doubt whether we will make it

I am not going to pretend I believe Europe will implement this within ten years. That is not realism, it is naivety. My doubt is concrete and has four layers.

The gravity of the existing. All our current systems have an interest in the system remaining as it is. Not from bad faith. Their right to exist lies within the existing system. Someone whose career has been built on writing EU directives has no advantage from a system that makes directives unnecessary. A municipal administrator who derives power from control over budgets loses power when those budgets go as envelopes to domain-holders. This is a fundamental problem and I do not underestimate it.

The voice of anger. Populist parties at both ends of the spectrum channel real frustration about real problems, but offer no workable alternatives. They win elections on opposition, not on building. What VMB-ESG requires is precisely building — patient, disciplined, generative work — and that is not what current politics rewards.

The fragmentation of attention. People today can no longer focus their attention on one thing for longer than a news cycle. A system like VMB-ESG requires commitment over decades. No political movement in Europe currently has that kind of sustained attention.

The negative selection of administrators. Who can still make it to the highest levels of governance today? Often not the most decisive, most entrepreneurial, most truth-speaking person, but the most media-friendly, conflict-avoiding, party-obedient. The system selects for qualities that are the opposite of what we need for implementation.

These four together mean I do not believe in a rapid, broad implementation of VMB-ESG in Europe. The negative currents are currently far too strong. Anyone who claims the contrary is selling hope. I do not want to sell hope.

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What I do believe is achievable

But doubt must not replace commitment. Here is what I realistically see:

Path one — One country or region as proof. Not the whole EU. One country, or even one Dutch province, that actually implements the Table Model and the Growth Rule. Proof of working is a hundred times more convincing than theoretical argument. Singapore, Estonia, and to a lesser extent Ireland were built on the choice to try something fundamentally different from their large neighbours. That is achievable within ten years, provided there is one administrative layer willing to take this risk.

Path two — One company or organisation as proof. Not the government. A large family business, a cooperative, a large civic organisation that actually implements the Table Model and demonstrates that it works at a non-trivial scale, a thousand to ten thousand people. This is much easier than a municipality, because private ownership can reform structurally in a way that public ownership cannot.

Path three — Leaving the idea itself well documented. The third, and perhaps deepest, path. Ensuring that the system is described so clearly, coherently, and operationally that it can be taken up by someone else in ten, twenty, thirty years when the time is ripe. Crisis forces change. When Europe enters a deeper crisis — financial, geopolitical, demographic — people will search for a workable alternative to what no longer functions. A well-documented system that lies ready can then be implemented within years, rather than everything having to be thought through from scratch.

This third path is, honestly, my own role. I am not the implementer. I am not the politician who is going to introduce this. I am not the administrator who is going to transform their company. I am the thinker and documentalist who ensures the idea is complete, clear, and operationally ready for whoever needs it, whenever that may be.

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What I leave behind, and for whom

My age compels me to honesty. I will almost certainly not live to see the implementation of VMB-ESG. Perhaps I will see a first experiment, somewhere, in a family business that has the courage to try it. Perhaps I will not even see that. What I can do is ensure that the idea remains standing.

That is why I write this piece, and why in recent weeks, together with my AI assistant, I have drawn up three extensive documents that describe the entire system:

• A document on VMB-EGS — the large, formal superstructure with sortition and three-vote gate, suitable for governments, large institutions, and supply chains that cannot rely on personal trust.

• A document on the Table Model (VMB-DGM) — the human, operational implementation for small groups, with domain-holders, two tracks, Track, Open Hearth, and marking system.

• A document in which both models are compared, with the hybrid application and guidance on when each model is appropriate.

These documents are not intended to impress political committees. They are intended to be usable for whoever wants to implement it someday. Concrete, with figures, with scenarios, with measurable parameters.

I leave them behind for:

The entrepreneur who in their own company or organisation wants something fundamentally different from the matrix structures and KPI stacks that are copied everywhere. The Table Model can transform a company without the outside world needing to understand it immediately.

The alderman or mayor who in their municipality is willing to experiment with something. One neighbourhood pilot. One domain. One year. As proof of working, a hundred times more convincing than any discussion.

The younger thinker who in twenty years will face the same problems as I do now, but with a Europe that is in an even worse state. What I write down now, they will not need to think up again. They can begin where I end.

The civil servant in Brussels or The Hague who works within the existing system, but also sees that the existing system is not holding. Here lies a workable alternative ready for when the courage is there to take it up.

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What I ask of the reader

Not to sign. Not to like. Not to share for the sake of sharing.

But: to read, to think it through, to criticise where it does not hold, and — if you are in a position to try something — to try it. One domain. One department. One neighbourhood. One decision moment. Start small. Test it. Report what worked and what did not. That is worth more than a thousand pamphlets.

And if you are not in such a position, but do find the idea important: preserve it. Pass it on. To someone younger, someone with more power, someone who will reuse it in ten years. An idea that lies ready at the moment when crisis compels is worth more than an idea that still has to be thought up during the crisis.

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The close

A few years ago I believed I had solved Nova Democratia well. Now I see it was too heavy. What I write down now may in a few years also prove too heavy, or incomplete at some other point. That is how thinking goes. What remains is that someone tries it, and that someone writes it down, so that the next person does not have to start from zero.

I do not know whether Europe will retain its independence. I do not know whether we can manage the negative currents. I do not know whether a workable alternative will arrive in time for the crisis that compels us.

What I do know: without people who try, it certainly will not happen. It costs me little to continue, and it would cost a great deal if I were to stop now.

So I continue. With these documents, with these pieces in The Open Visor, with this thinking that touches on physics, public administration, education, and economics simultaneously. Not because I believe I will make it. Because I know that without me — and without the people who read this and pass it on — it certainly will not be achieved.

What I leave behind is not an army. It is a direction. For anyone who wants to take up that direction, the system lies ready.

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Jacobus van Merksteijn
Malta, juni 2026