Consent

CONSENTCopyright © 2023 by Ari H. Mendelson.All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations em- bodied in critical articles or reviews.This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organiza- tions, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.thekingmakerseries.comCover design by Richard SmothermanISBN: 9798395839077First Edition: Month 202310 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1Also by Ari H. Mendelson:Bias Incident: The World’s Most Politically Incorrect NovelThe Kingmaker TrilogyConsentDue ProcessJust Power ConsentBook One of the Kingmaker TrilogyAri H. Mendelson IntroductionCONSENT IS A TOPIC we hear a lot about these days.Or so you might think.But that’s just an illusion.A search through Google’s data reveals quite a different reality. American books that examined consent peaked sharply around the time our Constitution was written. Discussion of consent has declined steadily ever since.Studying Google’s data in more detail shows another interesting pattern: American authors are less and less interested in discussing our consent to who governs us and how we are governed. Consent to medical treatment or to sex, on the other hand, is discussed with increasing frequency. Focusing the issue of consent so narrowly onto our bodies is probably why we think we contemplate the meaning of consent more than we really do.This lack of focus on the nature of consent seems strange in a nation founded on the principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.What is consent, really? The dictionary defines “consent” as what occurs when “one person voluntarily agrees to the proposal or desires of another.”So far so good, but to truly give consent, voluntary agreement is not all we need, is it?For consent to be genuine, it must be given by a person who has a “clear appreciation and understanding of the facts, implications, and future consequences of the proposed action.”We start to see where the problems begin when it dawns on us just how complex a world we live in. Our appreciation of all the “implications and future consequences” of our decisions is never clear. To some extent, all of our decisions are guesses. We all have our regrets in life because sometimes we guess wrong.But that’s just the start.We are often asked for our consent by others who are concealing what we really need to know to choose wisely. This doesn’t just happen with sex or with medical care. It happens in our public life too: A politician or journalist keeping important information secret. A bureaucrat concealing the rules Americans are compelled to obey amid masses of impenetrable text. A snack food manufacturer hiding addictive or harmful ingredients in our food. A lawyer hiding critical information from the jury. A Supreme Court Justice concealing weak reasoning by tortuous logic and long strings of bogus precedents. A scientist publishing research that cannot be replicated. A teacher indoctrinating a naïve student. Then there’s the issue of persuasion. Persuaders often misdirect our attention until the facts we really need to consider are hidden in plain sight. They can do this because of influence techniques that have been sharpened for thousands of years. In modern times, these techniques have been developed into a science, allowing those who use them to sell more goods, get more votes, make more money or attract more lovers.As persuasion becomes more effective, the persuader can convince others to do, think, say, or buy ever more of what he wants us to do, think, say or buy. The will of the persuader counts for more and more. Our own will counts for less and less.What would happen if persuasion becomes nearly infinite in its effectiveness― able to convince almost anyone to do almost anything? If that were to become a reality, our own will would become negligible. Consent would become meaningless.That brings us to the two observations that are the basis of this novel:First, that persuasion has rules, much like a game.Second, in games with clear rules such as chess, checkers, or Go, computers have mastered the strategies that arise from the rules. Today’s game-playing machines are vastly more powerful than even the greatest human players.That invites a question: What happens when machines can master the persuasion game the way they’ve dominated chess?With that kind of mastery, how much power will the owners and operators of those machines gain? The answer supplied by logic and reason is this: nearly unlimited power.Given that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, how far would those who have that nearly-unlimited power push it? The answer supplied by a clear-eyed look at human history is this: as far as they can possibly push it.In this book, you are about to inhabit a world in which a technology with that kind of power has become a reality. Can those in pursuit of that power be stopped? That is the question that we will explore.BEFORE WE BEGIN, a bit of housekeeping.All of the corporations in this book are fictitious. All of the characters are fictitious. All of the politicians in this book are fictitious. The comic book heroes Raven and Lenore are characters in a fictitious comic book series. They are discussed but never really described in the narrative. The only resemblance that they have to the D.C. comic book character Raven is the name. Their only relevance to the plot is their effect on their actors and fans.All of the Federal laws specifically named in the book are real. I fudged it a bit with some of the state laws, election procedures, and the jobs of election officials. I was careful to limit myself to creating fictitious laws, procedures and jobs that sounded plausible, at least to me. Some geography is fudged a bit too.All the artworks described in this book are real (except for those made by