In the higher tiers, the responsibilities and time commitment for representatives increase. These people should expect reasonable remuneration from their society for their time and sacrifice.

Well, and this is what I’m talking about. Even if lower tiers are voluntary or just with small renumeration, it all becomes a game to climb to the higher levels were the money starts to be a factor (it works the same today).

Each jurisdiction will create its own responsibility, authority, and budget for each tier.

I was not able to find anything on taxes, their redistribution or lack thereof, etc. — in other words, how is the whole economy tied to TDG. I can imagine how neighborhood creates its own budget, but not the higher tiers, which are just virtual domains (if I understand it correctly). Also, I can imagine huge disparities in wealth of neighborhoods, solely by virtue of their location/lack of resources.

The Transition from an Oligarchy

And this is the crux of the problem I see with money and TDG. It would be more appropriate to say that what you call “western democracy” is an oligarchy, more precisely plutocracy. And when it comes to money, there is no way that “the few who rule” would willingly part with the influence their wealth provides in the form of influencing the politics (to implement policies that increase their wealth).

I like your idea, especially that variant where neighborhood representatives can advance up to “planetary council” (we had similar “power structures” in early stages after revolution — a representative of the basic collective was a member of higher tier and could advance all the way up while still remaining at the head of the basic collective from which he/she came from — it worked perfectly — sadly, then power games ensued and we went for parliamentary democracy >_<).

Now, that I went through your book, I’m firmly convinced that the steps must follow in this order:

1. Create sufficient traction for fundamental change by encouraging “enlightenment” of population. I have a crazy, and I mean really crazy, hunch that 4.6 million people could be enough to reach a threshold where it would snowball exponentially :D
2. Transition to gift economy as I’ve described it in one of the the previous post.
3. Implement TDG as a form of governance.

I guess that points 2. and 3. may be implemented simultaneously.

But still, current ruling elites are willing to kill to keep their wealth and power. Just something to keep in mind.