2013 July
2013 July 31
First Take: Manning case redefines meaning of traitor
Military espionage should be treated very severely. In cases where the death of innocent people occurred as a result of a leak, the the perpetrator should be given the death penalty. I don’t think that the charge of aiding the enemy should stand because, as far as we know, he did not aid the enemy directly. He aided other parties, namely anti-war elements, but not the enemy per say.
2013 July 30
BP warns Gulf spill costs will exceed $42.4bn as compensation costs rise
Whatever the costs, they must be paid. Any fraudulent claims should be treated as theft and be given stiff penalties.
Businesses within an industry could purchase insurances for situations like this.
2013 July 29
80 Percent Of U.S. Adults Face Near-Poverty, Unemployment: Survey
This is obviously a multi-faceted issue that can only be properly addressed with a variety of proposals. Some of the more significant proposals would be to impose tariffs for all goods and services that cross political boundaries (this would increase the economic survivability for new entrants or existing participants in a market), to impose a progressive income tax on all businesses (making it more profitable for less efficient producers to maintain an existence), and we could simplify the tax code so that the larger players are not so effectively able to discover loopholes for both taxes and regulations.
Sone more proposals can be found in the chapter on Taxes.
2013 July 28
Pope bids farewell to Brazil
The following that Popes receive remind me of the fanatical following that many celebrities receive because I equate both groups as merely entertainers. Of course, Popes claim a supernatural legitimacy that celebrities do not. However, once it is understood that the Catholic church is so polluted by human doctrine (Papal infallibility), church tradition, and proclamations made by the Sacred Magisterium, (all of which have produced scientifically documented false statements), it is unfortunate that so many people dedicate huge amounts of time and resources towards activities that are essentially just forms of entertainment. Yes, most do believe that they are doing what God wants them to do, but unless they get the spiritual information only from the correct sources, it amounts to the ‘wrong answer’, thus, for all relevant purposes, it could be described as just a form of maladministered entertainment.
This proposal would perhaps be most helpful in this area because it addresses the basic issue of tending to increase the accuracy of disseminated information.
2013 July 27
German Protests Against U.S. Spying Draw Thousands
Every story like this makes it harder for the United States to gain legitimate authority throughout the world. Our ‘credit’ is being wasted on unnecessary clandestine espionage of foreign entities. The US should just be more honest and transparent in its relationships around the world. All these ‘behind the scenes’ activities are undermining our goodwill around the world and we are rapidly losing the ‘moral high ground’. That is far too high a price to pay for whatever benefits we are getting from these spying activities. We should have more of an attitude of letting things be. Only when there are direct (and significant) threats against the US is when the US should respond/intervene.
Even if we would be extremely effective in our preemptive activities, it would undoubtedly be the case that, over time, the general perception of the costs versus the benefits of such activities would not be worth the efforts. This is why it is unfortunate that, as a result of this back and forth pendulum swinging between greater and lesser security measures, disastrous attacks like Pearl Harbor and 9/11 occur.
What’s the single most important thing we could do to help eliminate the root of most of these problems? Give every distinct group of people on the planet their own, truly independent country.
2013 July 26
Halliburton admits destroying Gulf oil spill evidence
An assessment should be made as to the value of this destroyed information to the overall investigation, and an estimate should be done regarding the cost of reconstructing this evidence, if necessary. Then a multiple of this reconstruction figure should be applied to the reconstruction figure and an additional, subjective multiple should be applied related to this information’s value towards the overall investigation. This final figure should be the total penalty levied against Halliburton for this particular incident.
2013 July 25
House rejects plan to kill NSA data collection
The collection of metadata by the proper government agencies should be legal. Any analysis of such data should be reported to other agencies or representative governing authorities to provide a means of checks and balances.
Any improper use of such data, especially any more intrusive use, should be severely punished, even to the point of death. Law enforcement agencies should have access to the data with a court order, unless they are deemed a trustworthy agency in which case they may have progressively more access depending on the degree of their trustworthiness.
2013 July 24
Stock Market News for July 24, 2013 – Market News
Stock prices move every day. But when transaction costs are so low (often only fractions of a cent per trade for trades that could include thousands of dollars of stocks), it naturally results in an environment where many people could participate in day trading by taking advantage of even small movements in price. While most day traders lose money, most experienced traders profit.
The fundamental problem is that when such an artificial economic environment of trading for merely a few minutes, seconds or even fractions of a second, unintended consequences result. Especially since this economic market does not entail the production of anything with any intrinsic value (other than a minor increase in liquidity of the market being traded), this activity is rather parasitic on the economy as a whole. Money being siphoned off for an activity that does not necessarily benefit society.
If the buying and selling of stocks were treated the same as the buying and selling of other goods and services throughout the economy, namely by having sales taxes applied to such transactions, then it shouldn’t matter that people are able to make money off of such trades. It is only because their is an effective absence of any sales tax on these trades that makes them profitable, it is not hard to see that this sector has, in effect, and unfair advantage over all the others in which a sales tax is enforced.
Therefore, a certain group of people, namely brokers and people intimately familiar with the industry, are able to engage in profitable activities solely because the proper transaction costs (sales taxes) are not collected. People could argue that business often do not pay sales taxes on components of their products (I think they should be required to pay sales taxes on every purchase), but I would argue that they have other, more significant fixed costs that day traders do not have.
Furthermore, day trading unfortunately removes any emotional connection to the stock being traded. High frequency trading tends to be only concerned with the money-making potential of the trade rather than any fundamental agreement that the investor has with the company or product. Though money-making is not intrinsically bad, when that becomes the only objective, it leaves me with a sour taste that I can’t exactly pinpoint.
Basically, I’m saying that there should be a sales tax charged on all stock and commodity trading.
2013 July 23
Two more AstraZeneca workers detained in China
Even though these events essentially concern bribery to increase sales of medical drugs may still have occurred even if my proposes policies would have been implemented, the chances are that the pressure for such behavior would both be increased and decreased by different proposed policies.
First, such behavior might be increased because under a patent system in which anybody is allowed to produce a patented product, the competition among the various suppliers is more intense, thus such behavior may be more worthwhile. If this patent policy had been in existence for a long time before, perhaps such behavior may have been counteracted by the development of an enforcement infrastructure specifically tailored to monitor issues of improper patent financial attribution.
Second, this behavior may have been discouraged by the common knowledge of an informant compensation system in which people with knowledge of criminal behavior, and who inform the proper authorities concerning it, would get a reward for their information.
2013 July 22
Biden Arrives for Trade, Security Talks in India
In an ideal world, it should not be necessary for heads of state to travel to any country to discuss trade relations. Understandable India does have several unpopular trade practices, like high tariffs, an bureaucratic hurdles. But these issues are internal to India. Being a sovereign nation, India has the right to impose whatever tariffs it wants or enforce whatever rules governing its trade with the outside world. India will benefit or suffer as a result of its own policies. The outside world should just let India be.
However, having said this, the outside world is yearning for trade with India so that is why these trade meeting take place. I would just like to point out that increasing trade and the reduced cost for goods and services are one of the primary reasons for the depletion of global natural resources and the destruction of the environment.
2013 July 21
‘Justice For Trayvon’ Rallies Gather In 1,00 Cities
Video surveillance cameras cannot capture everything, but still I would argue that this case could potentially have been helped, one way or the other, if more public surveillance cameras existed to capture more of this story so that the public could better put together an accurate sequence of event, filled with more details. Maybe such cameras couldn’t have helped this particular case, but they definitely could help lots of other cases. If the general public was educated about a policy of paying informants a certain percentage of a criminal’s fines, I think people, in general, would be more willing to capture crime scene evidence by taking pictures or video of events as they happen.
2013 July 20
G-20 Seeks Stronger Economy With Bid to Control Spillover
As global financial/banker chiefs meet again in perpetual economic meeting to plan out the global ‘free market’, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that they do perceive, as this article states, that a significant problem is that an overly complex and non-uniform tax code across the nations is a fundamental cause of loophole evasion tactics that ‘unfairly’ shift the tax burden to others.
The bad news is that these top economic planners still either refuse to admit or are ignorant of the irony that our ‘free market’ is dependent on decisions of how much quantitative easing central planners decide to be appropriate. Yes, I understand that we do need such quantitative easing to keep our system stable, but that is the fundamental problem. Our ‘free market’ system is fundamentally flawed if it is dependent on such large amounts of central government infusions of cash to remain stable.
A true free market is one in which a set of policies results in an economic climate that is naturally stable. For example, eliminating subsidies for common goods like agricultural products, energy resources, etc., would go a long way towards reducing the demand for such products and, as a result, both consumers and producers would suffer less when threats or actual subsidy policy shifts take place regarding these industries.
Spending governing resources on enforcing accurate pricing practices among the providers of goods and services would be more beneficial than having government personnel find out how much market share is an allowable mount for one firm to possess.
2013 July 19
New Texas ‘fetal heartbeat’ bill would outlaw nearly all abortions
Abortions and euthanasia should be activities along the same continuum. Whether pre-birth or post-birth, decisions to terminate a biological unit after fertilization should be based upon a fixed set of criteria. Naturally, such decisions occurring closer to fertilization are easier to take due to the lack of such an emotional attachment as would occur later in life.
2013 July 18
Deal reached on student loans
Student debt needn’t be so high if our educational system is weeded for irrelevant or sub-relevant information that too often is a requirement for many of the various ‘checkpoints’ in this system. The weeding out of such relative time-wasting requirements would allow the newly freed time to be filled with more relevant information and skill building exercises, which would inevitably enable the speeding up of the educational process and produce students properly ready for the labor force with an equivalent of a 4-year degree perhaps two years faster (or even more) than the current system.
Obviously, several changes need to be made beginning with increasing the amount of time students spend in school up to about 200 days per year. The school day should also be increased significantly. Parental involvement should also be increased by imposing them with a vested interest by charging them tuition, requiring them to provide basic student supplies, provide grade-based and time-based course financial refunds, among other suggestions.
Perhaps the biggest time-savers would be the proposed massive simplification of the English language, cutting years off of the mastery of reading and spelling. Another would be the fact that students would be able to choose their own classes (within certain parameters) and tailor their own educational curriculum towards their own career interests beginning as early as 10 to 12 years old.
2013 July 17
Pirates hijack tanker off Gabon as shipping risks spread
This should be treated as conventional crimes. All the costs of the crime would be totaled up, and then distributed among the criminals to pay back to the government under who’s flag the vessels belong. Also, since the crew of the seized vessel are help captive, there should be a detention costs, equal to at least the minimum wage of the crew’s home country.
2013 July 16
Spain apologizes to Bolivia for presidential plane delay
This whole situation could be best dealt with by purely preventive measures. In other words, there is not much we could do now but promise to behave better in the future.
First, it is important that government/national secrets are kept to a minimum. Too many secrets will inevitably lead to a backlash against such a practice.
Furthermore, meddling in other countries internal affairs will also lead to resentment, which inevitable increases the potential of either domestic or foreign intelligence leaks.
Third, the requirements for people in positions that require classified knowledge should be much more stringent. Such people should agree to be under tight and secret observations. For example, all their financial transactions, their travels, their communications, etc., should be under surveillance.
Fourth, the penalty for leaking classified information should be much harsher, even up to the death penalty.
2013 July 15
IRS scandal becoming increasingly partisan
This whole thing could have been avoided by just eliminating the option of anybody applying for tax-exempt status. No organization should be classified as tax exempt, not charities, not political groups, not educational entities, nobody. The rule should be that everyone who engages in economic activity, should pay the regular sales tax and income tax rates on all its activities. This would both make life simpler and decrease the manipulations that take place to qualify for such tax exempt status.
2013 July 14
George Zimmerman and the Market Price of Fear
It is ridiculous and unfortunate that so many members of the general public have an actual or exaggerated fear of crime. The best way to reduce this fear is to ensure that there is an effective crime-fighting strategy put in place by governments. Currently, because there are no rewards for people to submit reports of crime and take active measures to document crimes in progress, it is very difficult to universally enforce the law in an effective, omnipotent way.
However, using the potential of crowd-sourced policing, that is, making every human being a potential police officer in the sense of empowering and incentivizing them to document crimes, would go a long way towards reducing the actual as well as perceived crime rate.
Having high resolution video cameras everywhere would also go a long ways towards calming the public and capturing criminals in the act.
2013 July 13
Teen sues parents for college money
Yes, she should be allowed to sue her parents, but she should probably not win. Anybody should be able to sue anybody. However, a prerequisite for all lawsuits to move forward should be a briefing and/or arbitration by experienced lawyers and/or judges to the prosecution (and/or defense, if they desire to attend) about the standards of proof, their general opinions about the case and their assessment as to the merits and final outcome of the case. They should also be reminded that the losing party would pay the winning party’s legal costs.
2013 July 12
Longtime Boston Strangler suspect Albert DeSalvo’s DNA tied to 1964 slaying, prosecutor says
Long dormant cases like this are far more likely to be solved far sooner if an incentive is offered for their solution. If any person with information about a case, including the criminals/murderers themselves offer that information, they should be compensated by getting a percentage of the fines imposed on the criminal. Any person could offer such information, even if it is lab technicians who feel like going after cold cases by reanalyzing the evidence. If they come up with enough proof for a conviction, they would be able to collect on such rewards.
2013 July 11
Daughter LIFTS 5,600-pound Jeep in an amazing feat of strength after it falls on her dad
The chances of something like this happening could have been lessened mainly by an increase in gasoline prices (Business Relationship to the Environment, Environmental Damage Penalty, Raise the Price of a Resource to Conserve It) and a more comprehensive mass transit system. All these proposals would have altered this woman’s calculus regarding the need for a car in the first place (thus her dad may never have been required to change the oil if she never had a car), or her relatively high use of the car because high use would result in a greater frequency of oil changes, while low use requires fewer oil changes, thus reducing that chances that her father would have been pinned under the car.
2013 July 10
Black caucus presses Obama on voting rights, immigration
Representative Marcia Fudge told the President that she wanted “to be sure that the people we represent, those who come from under-served countries, poorer countries, are included in the bill.” No doubt she honestly believes that her constituents should be given the same rights and benefits as would await the more conventional Hispanic illegal immigrants or children, but the idea that a representative is mainly advocating for her own kind is disheartening. Representatives should have the greater, general good as preeminent above all other goals.
An indirect way of addressing this warped sense of service would be to have elections in which election districts are eliminated and candidates are selected, instead, by a rounded percentage of all the votes cast by all the people of the larger political jurisdiction, like a state. This way, candidates are not so tightly tied to a particular subset of a jurisdiction, but feel as though they, in fact, do represent the larger political jurisdiction, thus potentially act for the greater good of that larger jurisdiction.
2013 July 9
Fortum Keeps Atomic Secrets That Nordic Power Rivals Make Public
While it is understandable that information generated by a producer (in this case, the amount of electricity produced) should be allowed to be kept private simply because the company chooses to do so, the overriding concern should be the potential for insider trading when such data is intentionally released with a delay. given the fact that the other producers do release it immediately. In this case, the integrity of the electricity trading market should take precedence over the narrow interests of the company.
On a related note, the immediate dissemination of this information from the company would contribute to accurate, real-time pricing information available to consumers.
2013 July 8
Fumbling Through the Fog Around Too Big to Fail
The notion that people (regulators) should determine when a company is too big (defined as if its sudden absence would cause a significant enough market disruption) is an overly subjective and quite frankly an outdated one, given the fact that a relatively simple tax structure could accomplish the same goal. Humans now know enough about economics and its effects on behavior that it should be a piece of cake to explain to someone that most fundamental of economic laws: the higher the cost, the lower the demand.
Modifying this principle slightly, we would understand that by simply charging companies a higher tax rate on their total revenues as their total market share increases, that will reduce the demand for striving for a higher market share and thus result in an effective form of resistance against higher market share. Not only do many companies want to become dominant in their markets for a variety of reasons ranging from bragging rights to the maintenance of proprietary dominance, but also because of the ‘economies of scale’ principle, companies have a natural incentive to grow large. Exponentially increasing tax rates as market share percentages increase would be an effective restraint on such dominance. Of course, the actual tax rates and curves need to be figured out so that the desired balance is achieved, but it is possible.
Another element to be considered in this too big to fail debate is how to limit the degree of nesting within organizations. Parent-daughter company ownership chains can be long, indeed. To keep a truly diverse marketplace not just in company names, but in actual ownership), it is necessary to also have a tax based on the total size of a company (total revenues), including all other smaller companies nested within the overarching parent company. This tax, if set correctly, would naturally result in an incentive for companies to not grow too large.
2013 July 7
Thousands call for Yemen to be broken up
Generally, distinct people groups should be entitled to their own independent country. It appears that North and South Yemen are similar enough to not justify separation into two countries. However, more study on the issue and developments on the ground could change this sentiment.
2013 July 6
Asiana Airlines Flight 214
This disaster could have potentially been minimized through the implementation of several policies.
First, all subsidies to the airline industry should be removed. If this were to occur, the actual ticket prices would reflect the true costs of the service. Therefore, less people would actually fly lessening the total number of crashes in the airline industry.
Second, video cameras should be installed in several different places like in the cockpit facing forward so that images of key instruments and the view outside the cockpit window would be captured. This information gathered over the years may have resulted in highlighting certain detrimental behaviors that could have been corrected, thus potentially averting this accident. Video cameras should also be installed at various location around all airports documenting planes on the ground as well as on approaching and departing glide paths.
Third,
2013 July 5
Relief as San Francisco transit strike ends; talks to resume next week
The BART workers are very well-paid, receiving above the average pay that transit employees receive in most other nearby communities. There has got to be a method of resolving labor disputes in situations like these in which there is not a valid reason for a strike. The unions were created to serve a valuable purpose, namely fight for safe work environments and adequate compensation. Increasingly, however, it appears that unions everywhere across the United States and the rest of the developed world have run out of valid things to fight about. It appears that in order to stay relevant, they need to rally their workers around issues that are framed as central to union relevance. So they fight for ever-increasing wages and benefits, way beyond the level of reason. It seems that their goal is just to fight for more and more and more. That’s not what their goals should be. Rather, it should be to fight for a safe work environment and decent wages. Perhaps many of these unions have done their jobs and should close up shop. Several government agencies have already been created and have long track records of ensuring safe working environments though they do not regulate wages beyond the minimum wage and overtime pay. Perhaps there should be a formula that current wages should be a certain percentage lower than the average for that industry or area in order to allow unions to call for a strike or some other action. This would effectively but a brake on outrageous union activities like this groundless BART strike action.
Part of the solution may also be to restrict the power of unions to recruit those who don’t want to join.
2013 July 4
Rising U.S. Oil Output Gives Policy Makers More Options
This is only a short-term benefit to the U.S. Increased domestic oil production now is actually setting us up for a steeper production fall in the future. Due to intrinsic oil limitations and to the eventual rapid increase in oil prices sometime within the next decade, it is likely that increasing oil production now, during a time when the prices are relatively low and stable (by comparison with what will happen when the peak is reached and beyond), will be seen as a foolish way to manage our domestic reserves. Instead, the more prudent approach would have been to increase taxes on domestic production so as to decrease the rate of extraction, increase export taxes on all forms of fossil fuels from the U.S. to conserve our domestic supplies or even to ban all such exports, and then to decrease such production taxes when the peak is reached to provide some measure of price stability to insulate the domestic (and perhaps the world) market from the price volatility that will surely exist at that time. The whole world should be engaged in similar efforts. This would allow, hopefully, enough of a time cushion (perhaps up to a few years) to allow the markets to deliver adequate alternative technologies to substitute for these fossil fuels without enduring price volatility as drastic and damaging as they would be without such policies.
2013 July 3
Obama administration delays major requirement of health law
Obama could have avoided this whole mess by just logically requiring that employers provide only wages to their employees and not be required to provide health insurance for them. Instead, it should be the responsibility of each employee to provide for their own coverage. In the end, except for perhaps the group bargaining advantage that large companies have to negotiate lower premiums, the amount of money paid in premiums is basically similar. This is because the money that the employer would have paid on the employees behalf for insurance, instead can now either be profit for the company or additional money to be paid out as wages. The free market will decide how companies spend this money and an equilibrium will be achieved. In other words, this average of $3,000 per worker per year that a company would have spent on their employees health plans will not forever add $3,000 per year per employee of profit. The company will inevitably invest this money back into the business, likely into higher wages for its workers. In essence, the profit margin of the company will go back to what it was before they stopped paying for their workers’ insurance.
2013 July 2
Jeb Bush pushes House Republicans to pass immigration reform
It is inevitable that as the current illegal immigrant population, plus the formerly illegal population, plus all their offspring become ever larger in both absolute numbers and as a percentage of the total population, that public and democratic demand for more lenient treatment of the illegal immigrant population become more intense. Legal immigration, within limits, is good, illegal immigration is not good at any level. This whole chapter is relevant to this discussion.
2013 July 1
Ginsburg, Thomas spar over race; court likely to get more affirmative-action cases
Race-based “affirmative action” (using the common definition in which race is used as a factor in admissions/qualification decisions) should not be a factor in any academic admissions formula because race is a quality of human existence that cannot be determined or altered by the individual. Any characteristic intrinsic to an individual should not be a factor (either for or against) within any qualification criteria. Only factors/characteristics intrinsically capable of modification by an individual should be allowable variables to use in such qualification formulas.
The initial thrust of affirmative action legislation was to ensure an equal playing field for all market participants. However, the time lag between when qualified market participants of the discriminated races appear and when such people are proportionally represented in the marketplace is long.
The ideal objective should always be to create a society in which all members are treated equally, regardless of their intrinsic attributes, such as race. However, arguments can be made that it is during this transition period between codified racism and a fully discrimination-free society, that certain policies must be in place to counter the very real tendency towards bias against the discriminated race. The only way to effectively counter this bias is to take “affirmative action” to ensure that such people are allowed to participate in whatever activity is at issue. Implementation often takes the form of racial quotas or benchmarks that are enforced by various authorities.
We have come a long way since the entrenched racism of the past. Yes, there are still pockets of racism in many places, but it is nowhere near the levels of several decades ago. As older generations die and cross-cultural exchanges continue, newer generations tend to be more racially fair, thus the world (especially countries with long racial histories) will tend to become more and more racially neutral and unbiased.
As this evolution continues, it will become less and less necessary to use racial quotas or benchmarks to advance the causes of the formerly discriminated racial groups. It will always be possible to slice up some sort of statistical slant and create an argument for the continued racial discrimination of a certain group engaged in some aspect of society. However, at some point it becomes necessary to remove such regulatory crutches and allow the properly designed and enforced free-market to guide the decisions of each market participant.
Factors other than race, sex, national origin, or other intrinsic, non-alterable values of an individual, could be used in place of race. And such factors could actually be more fair in terms of targeting ‘affirmative action’ to the actual individuals who are in the greatest need of such help.
For example, in this case of admissions to the University of Texas in which race is one of many factors taken into consideration for determining admissions for 25% of its student body, perhaps another consideration, such as family income or geographic location, could be used to more accurately target those more in need of such ‘affirmative action’.
It is understandable that the lingering effects of racism may remain evident in some aspects of the discriminated race’s social participation for decades or even centuries into the future. However, it is not right to apply policies to counter the long-term results of an infinite regress of historical discrimination because such policies themselves are inherently unfair. Rather, it is our responsibility, in the present, to assure a free and fair market for all participants, rectify the immediate wrongs of racism going back one, two or perhaps three generations (by direct compensation, preferential treatment of offspring, etc.) then, once a fair social structure is deemed created, do away with all race-based regulations.