Roger Rothenberger

Biography

About Me and the Writing of Beyond Plutocracy

I am a lifelong reader of several fields of study at a casual, layperson level: Metaphysics, religion, philosophy, history, particle physics, cosmology, biology, genetics, primatology, psychology... Surprisingly, given the subject of this book, economics and political science are not prominent among them. While far from best in show, I could be best described as a self-directed generalist who always seeks his highest purchase, largest view, and a grand synthesis. I am now sixty-eight years old. As I’ve aged, much, if not most, of what I’ve read and pondered has slipped beneath the waters. What is left is either essence or dregs, or perhaps a bit of both.

I have long treasured my favorite questions: What is reality? What are we? Since we are here together on this Earth, you and I, how do, might, and should we arrange our often conflicting ways that we may live in peace and intelligently husband our world? Beyond Plutocracy is my attempt to answer the question how we should be ... at the level of nations.

I am not a writer, that is, I do not earn my living by writing. For me, spelling, punctuation, and grammar are mysteries of the universe. Please forgive my shortcomings. It is my hope that you will find my message of sufficient value to bear them.

Nor am I a scholar. Beyond Plutocracy, the only book I've written and present here, is not a heavily footnoted or referenced work. It is a body of carefully considered opinion. I am an expert on only one thing: the content of my own mind.

I have been writing this book within my mind for most of my life. While not failing to also see our light, love, and good, as a child I could not help but see and be angered and saddened by the injustice, inequity, and dysfunction in our nation and in the world. Over the years my thoughts became more constructive and I turned to the questions: What is “the good society”? And what kind of government would best produce it? For decades I created, attacked, and destroyed political-economic systems in my mind. So frequently and fiercely did I focus on the problem of governance that it even became the content of my dreams.

Finally, in my early fifties, I had a series of major breakthroughs in my thinking. All that was obscure and complex suddenly became clear and surprisingly simple. Most of the breakthroughs came while I slept. I kept pen and paper at my bedside. Night after night I’d bolt out of fevered sleep to fully awake with major government design problems fully resolved. I’d scribble madly and collapse back to sleep. I wrote the first draft of Beyond over a period of ninety nearly sleepless days. My health was so adversely affected that I was certain it would be the death of me. I then spent the next ten years writing and polishing the book to the best of my admittedly limited ability.

One of the most important questions that one can ask oneself in life is this: Is the world a better place for my being in it? The best that one person can do is to be generally loving and helpful to others and to try to make some contribution toward the good in some larger sense. Beyond is my attempt to make a contribution toward the good.

Roger Rothenberger

Books

Beyond Plutocracy - True Democracy for America
Price: Free! Words: 113,820. Language: English. Published: November 27, 2012 . Categories: Nonfiction » Politics & Current Affairs » Democracy
(5.00 from 1 review)
Plutocracy is governance by the wealthy. America is not really a democracy but a plutocracy dominated by a powerful wealthy minority that serves itself first and best. This book offers a partial redesign of our government that really fixes in just the right way what’s really wrong with it, moving our nation beyond plutocracy to true democracy, honest government and a just society.

Roger Rothenberger's tag cloud