Policies In Harmony With Logic

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.

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

Humans have now accumulated so many factual data points about almost every possible area of human interest 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 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. Greed and the lust for power and control will always tend to inappropriately influence human decision-making and any efforts to limit or control these forces usually seduce people to find ways around the rules.

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

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 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, 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 money and resources for their causes contributing to a feedback loop that warps public opinion. This dynamic is an underlying cause that fuels so much social animosity and certainly wastes all kinds of resources.

Since humans are so apt to sacrifice moral principles like honesty and fairness when competition gets heated, this trend of increasingly distorted truth 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).

The end result of an information environment that is so distorted is an environment that is more destabilized largely because secondary or tertiary problems are depicted as being issues of primary importance. This causes an unnatural—thus unstable—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 the branch of knowledge and is the universal “language” of human activities best suited to most naturally and efficiently mediate between the supply of resources with 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.

This curated list of audio podcasts will supply information and perspectives that will help provide 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) into your media consumption mix will help ensure your development of opinions and policies which 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. 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. In the final analysis, such interventions are usually more destabilizing rather than constructive.

Obviously, we need laws and regulations to control detrimental human behaviors, but it is the most detrimental behaviors that need to be directly addressed by policy makers. It is when policymaking dives into the progressively less significant levels of detrimental human behaviors (commonly referred to as “getting into the weeds”) that the aforementioned warnings of “minefields” fraught with contradictions and unintended consequences become more apparent.

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 to a healthy society.

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

It is your responsibility as a human being to be part of the solution.