Policies In Harmony With Logic

Humans have now accumulated so many factual data points about almost every possible area of human study that it is now easier than ever for people to weave together a set of facts to construct a narrative that looks most convincing. With enough supporting details, even experts can be persuaded to believe a cause-and-effect explanation that may not be the most accurate or meaningful interpretation of the facts. It is essential that each human develop an intellectual framework upon which they can hang facts and minimize their becoming a “victim” to any of the plethora of “sub-optimal” or outright warped historical narratives or policy prescriptions circulating in society.

Among the many wonderful aspects of our universe, two of them that have a direct consequence for this discussion are that 1) truth itself never changes and 2) the universe operates under a consistent set of fundamental principles. Just as physics is governed by natural laws, human behavior and economics are also shaped by predictable patterns. The two categories of laws that really govern human activities are civil (or positive) law (i.e., laws instituted by legitimate governing authorities) and the laws of human nature (specifically the destructive human tendencies to seek out ways to minimize efforts, preserve self-interests, emphasizing short-term rewards at the expense of long term consequences). Greed and the lust for power and control is a pervasive force that always inappropriately influences human decision-making and any efforts to limit or control these natural human tendencies through the imposition and enforcement of civil/positive laws will seduce people to find ingenious ways around the laws.

Since humans have free-will, the destructive “laws” of human nature can be temporarily resisted, but not forever. Just as surely as water will eventually find its way to the lowest point, these destructive “laws” of human nature are accurate predictors of the ultimate tendency of human systems.

But human nature also exhibits powerful constructive tendencies. Proper policy-making (civil/positive laws, regulations, etc.) will effectively suppress the negative destructive human tendencies while not negatively affecting the positive constructive tendencies. All laws and regulations, regardless of how good, have the inevitable tendency to smother, even if just slightly, the positive constructive tendencies of humans, even if for the short term. However, it is obvious that laws need to be made for the greater good. Yet, it becomes subjective as to what “the greater good” is, and this is one of the major tensions inherent in politics. It is just as accurate to say that there are no easy answers as it is to say that no law will effectively solve a given problem. The destructive human tendencies are perpetually searching for and finding loopholes to seek their satisfaction, thus the social and regulatory environments are forever evolving.

The competition for attention in all types of media, and marketing in general, have resulted in the development of ever more “creative” and morally questionable techniques to exploit any possible advantage to gain the attention or support of potential consumers. This “finessing” of information to make it more appealing for whatever reason, inevitably causes the quality of that information (adherence to and conveyance of the raw truth) to be degraded.

As a result, interest groups, representing entities in academia, industry, government, and even the interests of the general public, are increasingly utilizing such unprincipled techniques to distort the truth to make their causes appear as important as possible. These efforts tend to attract attention, money and resources that contribute to a feedback loop that increasingly distorts the truth and increasingly warps public opinion. Since humans are so apt to sacrifice moral principles like honesty and fairness when competition gets heated, this trend of increasingly distorting truths results in an information environment with a progressively higher “noise to signal” ratio. This means that “noise” in the form of misinformation, exaggeration, lies, etc., increases relative to “signals” (truthful information). This dynamic is an underlying cause that fuels so much social animosity and certainly wastes all kinds of resources.

The end result of an information environment that is so distorted is one that is inevitably more destabilized, largely because secondary or tertiary problems are depicted as being issues of primary importance. This causes an unnatural—thus unstable and unsustainable—matching of supply and demand within an economy. Since all resources available to allocate toward discovering and implementing solutions are always finite, it is imperative that we better understand the genuine importance of each issue to more accurately apportion resources to address it.

Economics is arguably the most foundational and primal branch of the social sciences and operates as the universal “language” connecting and regulating human activities and is best suited to fulfill the role as the least biased negotiator that most reliably mediates to find the most natural and efficient, mutually beneficial transaction points so that the supply of resources can effectively satisfy the demand of needs. No parallel human organization will ever be able to match the efficiency of a properly regulated “free market” to make decisions about the supply and demand of goods and services and no better system exists to unleash the human creative potential that is fundamental to the creation of wealth. This free market efficiency of transactions and seemingly spontaneous incentivizing and enabling of innovation and the ordering of human productive activities is what is often referred to as the “invisible hand” or what I would metaphorically call “magic”.

The best way to organize a stable society is to enable individuals to pursue their own self interests, without harming others. A free market economy, best labeled laissez-faire capitalism (with minimal but essential regulations), with individuals making their own decisions within a minimal legal framework that ensures free speech, private property rights, fairness, and the rule of law, has been proven to successfully generate more wealth and general prosperity for the masses with less social tension and suffering than any other economic system devised by humans. Just for the record, the United States is not a laissez-faire capitalist country and can better be described as a mixed economy with significant undercurrents of socialism, corporate capitalism, crony capitalism, regulated capitalism, and state-influenced capitalism.

This curated list of audio podcasts, as well as all the policy proposals on this site, are a functional and sufficiently representative subset of all the information one would need to begin to gain an understanding of the proper principles to apply when attempting to govern human nature and economics. All the information presented here will help construct a stable, principled framework against which to assess the bits of information that constantly cross your path.

Listening to these “highly recommended” past episodes and incorporating these information sources (subscribing to these podcasts and substacks linked below) into your media consumption mix are a great start to ensuring that your development of opinions and policies are reasonably pragmatic and that will most fairly and efficiently allocate resources for the betterment of every human being as well as the environment.

Continually and progressively attempting to bend reality (i.e., to work at cross purposes to the established laws of human nature and economics) to fulfill a particular policy goal is a minefield fraught with danger. Obviously, we must have laws restricting the destructive tendencies of human nature, but we need to make sure that they are designed to be targeted and have the least amount of spillover effect that would contribute to the smothering of the constructive tendencies of human nature. Social interactions are so very complex and employing a plethora of nudges and covert methods inevitably lead to snags that snowball into problems that consistently pop up in surprising places, usually producing plentiful examples of unintended consequences and perverse incentives. After laws have been made to address the few categories of major destructive human tendencies like murder, theft, and lying, usually additional policymaking will thrust itself into the progressively less significant levels of destructive or undesirable human activities (commonly referred to as “getting into the weeds”) that the aforementioned warnings of “minefields” fraught with contradictions and unintended consequences become more consequential. It is at these policy levels that the collateral damage of these policies contribute to an ever increasing smothering of the constructive human tendencies. This has real-world negative consequences for human innovation, productivity, fulfillment and happiness.

Regulating human activities with layer upon layer of often well-intentions rules, eventually results in a high degree of regulatory overlap so that the end result is a society suffocating under intersecting regulations that essentially micromanage human activities. This leads to the natural irritation of the fundamental human desire to feel and remain autonomous and stifles the ability of humans to innovate and create wealth. This is at the root of so much social strife. In the final analysis, such policy interventions are usually more destabilizing than constructive. It is very important to understand that it is so often the case that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. When facing an issue on society’s endless “Problems to Fix” list, we must vigilantly guard against the impulse to just do something like passing another law, because it is surprisingly often the case that doing nothing (using the existing legal regulations) is the better option, especially when we are “in the weeds”.

The more natural way to improve things is to genuinely better educate people so they can properly handle information rather than to manipulate people through various forms of technocratic or expertocratic social engineering. Having clear penalties for violations of macro level principles like free speech and property rights, and having an efficient and trustworthy criminal justice system to effectively impart punishments, are absolutely essential for a healthy society.

A literate population that can think critically is the single best prescription for societal health.

It is every human being’s responsibility to be part of the solution. Since you are not God, the process starts with an open mind.

These are all of my recommendations. It’s a lot, but search for topics that you think are at the edges of your knowledge base to stimulate growth. All of these contain very important information:

Full List of Highly Recommended Podcasts

If you must limit yourself to only the best of the best (in my opinion), then select from this subset:

Subset from the Full List of Highly Recommended Podcasts

If you really don’t have any time, then listen to these which are the absolute top of the line (in my opinion) and contain information that would benefit everyone. However, please at least review the main, longer list of recommended podcasts because everyone has different knowledge gaps and the episodes I included in this really abbreviated list may not be the most optimal episodes for filling in your particular knowledge gaps:

Exceptionally Short List of Highly Recommended Podcasts

PolicyProposals.com is committed to share proposals for reasonable and logical solutions for virtually every area of society in which a problem can been identified. Many of these proposals are, admittedly, idealistic, but idealism and perfection must be the guide stars to which we must forever focus and strive, knowing that it will certainly never be possible to reach with human efforts, given the fallen nature of humanity.

Just like there are certain threads that are common to many different problems, there are certain principles that are common to many solutions. The identification of even just a few of these threads and principles will go a long way towards developing solid policies.

Once the really major problems in society have been largely solved (and if there is free speech, the rule of law, and a functional and trustworthy court and criminal justice system in existence, the major problems have been solved), everyone must guard against the human desire to tackle the next items on society’s “Things to Fix” list with the same fervor that the previous, larger problems may have required. This is because as we address issues that fall more into the “noise” of typical societal functioning, we run into the ever greater reality of negating at least some of the benefits of the previously implemented solutions that are responsible for managing the “larger” problems. It is virtually always the case that when humans develop policies to address concerns that have been thrusted to the forefront of discussion due to an over-analysis of clutter or due to a fixation on anomalies, then the prior benefits of policy making are blunted to various degrees. In other words, we cannot attempt to develop a specific policy to address each and every possible societal problem. Not only would that cause bureaucratic calcification throughout any society, it would also inevitably lead to exponentially increasing instances of logical contradictions in the outcomes of various human activities. Such conditions, without a doubt, would surely lead to increased unrest in the population.

In the menu at the top, you will find a list of perhaps the most important ‘keystone’ proposals that would have the largest “bang for the buck” in terms of solving problems.

The menu to the left is a list of all the policy proposals on this site organized by category. There is a blog at the end of each point to encourage your responses as to a point’s validity or usefulness.

These proposals are written in what I call a bullet point paragraph format, specifically devoid of peripheral background information on the subject. The assumption is for the reader to have a general familiarity with the status quo in the subject matter and these proposals should be viewed as being applied to the status quo. Of course, sometimes background explanations will be provided when necessary, but the tendency is to keep these as short as possible so as to maintain focus and save time for all of us.