One Person, One Vote, and No Power of Some Over Others
Most communities that govern themselves online have ended the same way: whoever held the most tokens, or the most accounts, decided. That was not an accident of bad people. It was the design. A vote that can be bought is a market in votes, and markets clear in favour of the deepest pocket. A vote that can be cast from many accounts is a count of accounts, not of people. And rules that can all be changed by a vote are changed, once, by whoever first assembles a majority, and then there are no more votes.
The Earthlings people is built so that none of these three things can happen. The way it is built is a short list of principles that no one in the people, including a majority, can repeal.
No power of some over others
No one in the Earthlings people holds a position from which to command another person. Whatever powers exist are limited, distributed, revocable and verifiable; a mandate to carry out a task never becomes an office; no position places anyone above the collective will. Freedom, as the Declaration understands it, is the absence of domination: no one can hold power over another, whether by money, by merit or by position.
Everything else follows from this.
One person, one vote
The vote of every earthling is equal to that of every other. Its weight does not depend on length of participation, financial position, renown, merit, or any mandate held. It cannot be bought, sold, accumulated or transferred irrevocably. It cannot be taken away for a person's views, for how they voted, or for criticizing the people itself. Reputation and contribution may count in discussion; they never count in the tally.
A person may hand the casting of their vote to another on a particular question, and take it back at any moment without reasons. The vote remains theirs. There is no representation in the people: no one holds other people's votes as an office.
Money separated from the vote
The people has a treasury and a unit of account, because infrastructure has to be paid for. Neither gives anyone a vote, whatever the amount held. Economic weight and the right to decide are kept apart by construction, so that the first of the three ways communities are captured is closed.
Free exit, no expulsion
Belonging is inalienable. No one can be expelled on any ground. Anyone can leave at any time, without reasons, without permission and without anyone's consent. A community that cannot expel and cannot hold has no way to punish dissent, and that is the point.
The word instead of compulsion
The people speaks, appeals and objects, and never compels. It renounces violence without exception, creates no armed or security structures, takes no part in the contest for state power, and has no power to require any member to break the law of their own state. Its only means of influence is a position that can be verified.
Why the principles are unamendable
The core exists to protect every person from the power of the people itself. The principles can be reworded but not abolished, narrowed, suspended or circumvented: not by a majority, not by an assembly, not by any institution. The third way communities are captured, changing the rules of voting by a vote, is closed because the rules of voting are not on the ballot.
This is what makes the technology safe to use. A public ledger and on-chain votes guarantee nothing by themselves; earlier projects had both and became plutocracies. What they lacked was a confirmed person behind each vote, a vote disconnected from money, and a foundation outside the reach of the vote. The Earthlings people has all three, and it is the three together that matter.
Questions
Can a majority ever introduce weighted voting?
No. A change that narrows any principle of the core is outside what any vote can do.
Why have money in the system at all?
To pay for what the people decides to pay for. Money moves projects; it never moves votes.
Does equality mean bad decisions cannot be prevented?
It means that a majority of real people can decide wrongly, and the design accepts that, because the alternative is someone deciding for them. What it prevents is a majority deciding that it is no longer a majority that decides.
Where are these principles written?
In Part I of the Declaration, the only document put to the vote, and the one that every earthling signs.
The founding period is open
The founding period of the Earthlings people is open. The Declaration, including its unamendable core, is open to proposals from anyone before it is put to the vote. See The Founding Period.
Read the founding document
Part I of the Earthlings Declaration is the unamendable core: the principles no majority can repeal and the guarantees every earthling holds.