I doubt many will show up here. Part One and Part Two were “tl;dr”… as well as jarring! Still, shall we get to the MEATY PART?
HERE IN PART THREE IS THE BIG SUMMARY of all 35+ proposals.
DRAFTING A NEWER DEMOCRATIC
DEAL WITH THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
Part One and Part Two aimed to study an old - though successful - political tactic that was concocted and executed with great skill by a rather different version of Republicans. A tactic that later dissolved into a swill of broken promises, after achieving Power.
So, shall we wind this up with a shopping list of our own? What follows is a set of promises – a contract of our own, aiming for the spirit of FDR's New Deal – with the citizens of America.
Hoping you will find it LBWR... long but worth reading.
Still, I propose to ponder what a "Democratic Newest Deal for America" might look like!
- Exposing hypocrisy and satirizing the failure of that earlier "contract" … while using its best parts to appeal sincere moderates and conservatives …
- while firmly clarifying the best consensus liberal proposals…
- while offering firm methods to ensure that any reforms actually take effect and don’t just drift away.
Remember that this alternative "contract" – or List of Democratic Intents – will propose reforms that are of real value… but also repeatedly highlight GOP betrayals.
Might it be worth testing before some focus groups?
A Draft: Democratic Deal for America
As Democratic Members of the House of Representatives and as citizens seeking to join that body, we propose both to change its practices and to restore bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives.
We offer these proposals in sincere humility, aware that so many past promises were broken. We shall foremost, emphasize restoration of a citizen's right to know, and to hold the mighty accountable.
Especially, we will emphasize placing tools of democracy, openness and trust back into the hands of the People. We will also seek to ensure that government re-learns its basic function, to be the efficient, honest and effective tool of the People.
Toward this end, we’ll incorporate lessons of the past and goals for the future, promises that were betrayed and promises that need to be renewed, ideas from left, right and center. But above all, the guiding principle that America is an open society of bold and free citizens. Citizens who are empowered to remind their political servants who is boss.
PART I. REFORM CONGRESS
In the first month of the new Congress, our new Democratic majority will pass the following major reforms of Congress itself, aimed at restoring the faith and trust of the American people:
FIRST: We shall see to it that the best parts of the 1994 Republican “Contract With America” - parts the GOP betrayed, ignored and forgot - are finally implemented, both in letter and in spirit.
Among the good ideas the GOP betrayed are these:
• Require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply to Congress;
• Arrange regular audits of Congress for waste or abuse;
• Limit the terms of all committee chairs and party leadership posts;
• Ban the casting of proxy votes in committee and law-writing by lobbyists;
• Require that committee meetings be open to the public;
• Guarantee honest accounting of our Federal Budget.
…and in the same spirit…
• Members of Congress shall report openly all stock and other trades by members or their families, especially those trades which might be affected by the member’s inside knowledge.
By finally implementing these good ideas – some of which originated with decent Republicans - we show our openness to learn and to reach out, re-establishing a spirit of optimistic bipartisanship with sincere members of the opposing party, hopefully ending an era of unwarranted and vicious political war.
But restoring those broken promises will only be the beginning.
SECOND: We shall establish rules in both House and Senate permanently allowing the minority party one hundred subpoenas per year, plus the time and staff needed to question their witnesses before open subcommittee hearings, ensuring that Congress will never again betray its Constitutional duty of investigation and oversight, even when the same party holds both Congress and the Executive.
As a possibly better alternative – to be negotiated – we shall establish a permanent rule and tradition that each member of Congress will get one peremptory subpoena per year, plus adequate funding to compel a witness to appear and testify for up to five hours before a subcommittee in which she or he is a member. In this way, each member will be encouraged to investigate as a sovereign representative and not just as a party member.
THIRD: While continuing ongoing public debate over the Senate’s practice of filibuster, we shall use our next majority in the Senate to restore the original practice: that senators invoking a filibuster must speak on the chamber floor the entire time.
FOURTH: We shall create the office of Inspector General of the United States, or IGUS, who will head the U.S. Inspectorate, a uniformed agency akin to the Public Health Service, charged with protecting the ethical and law-abiding health of government. Henceforth, the inspectors-general in all government agencies, including military judge-advocates general (JAGs) will be appointed by and report to IGUS, instead of serving at the whim of the cabinet or other officers that they are supposed to inspect. IGUS will advise the President and Congress concerning potential breaches of the law. IGUS will provide protection for whistle-blowers and safety for officials refusing to obey unlawful orders.
In order to ensure independence, the Inspectorate shall be funded by an account to pay for operations that is filled by Congress, or else by some other means, a decade in advance. IGUS will be appointed to six-year terms by a 60% vote of a commission consisting of all past presidents and current state governors. IGUS will create a corps of trusted citizen observers, akin to grand juries, cleared to go anywhere and assure the American people that the government is still theirs, to own and control.
FIFTH: Independent congressional advisory offices for science, technology and other areas of skilled, fact-based analysis will be restored in order to counsel Congress on matters of fact without bias or dogma-driven pressure. Rules shall ensure that technical reports may not be re-written by politicians, changing their meaning to bend to political desires.
Every member of Congress shall be encouraged and funded to appoint from their home district a science-and-fact advisor who may interrogate the advisory panels and/or answer questions of fact on the member’s behalf.
SIXTH: New rules shall limit “pork” earmarking of tax dollars to benefit special interests or specific districts. Exceptions must come from a single pool, totaling no more than one half of a percent of the discretionary budget. These exceptions must be placed in clearly marked and severable portions of a bill, at least two weeks before the bill is voted upon. Earmarks may not be inserted into conference reports. Further, limits shall be placed on no-bid, crony, or noncompetitive contracts, where the latter must have firm expiration dates. Conflict of interest rules will be strengthened.
SEVENTH: Create an office that is tasked to translate and describe all legislation in easily understandable language, for public posting at least three days before any bill is voted upon, clearly tracking changes or insertions, so that the public (and even members of Congress) may know what is at stake. This office may recommend division of any bill that inserts or combines unrelated or “stealth” provisions.
EIGHTH: Return the legislative branch of government to the people, by finding a solution to the cheat of gerrymandering, that enabled politicians to choose voters, instead of the other way around. We shall encourage and insist that states do this in an evenhanded manner, either by using independent redistricting commissions or by minimizing overlap between state legislature districts and those for Congress.
NINTH: Newly elected members of Congress with credentials from their states shall be sworn in by impartial clerks of either the House or Senate, without partisan bias, and at the new member’s convenience. The House may be called into session, with or without action by the Speaker, at any time that a petition is submitted to the Chief Clerk that was signed by 40% of the members.
TENTH: One time in any week, the losing side in a House vote may demand and get an immediate non-binding secret polling of the members who just took part in that vote, using technology to ensure reliable anonymity. While this secret ballot will be non-binding legislatively, the poll will reveal whether some members felt coerced or compelled to vote against their conscience. Members who refuse to be polled anonymously will be presumed to have been so compelled or coerced.
II. REFORM AMERICA
Thereafter, within the first 100 days of the new Congress, we shall bring to the House Floor the following bills, each to be given full and open debate, each to be given a clear and fair vote and each to be immediately available for public inspection and scrutiny.
DB Note: The following proposed bills are my own particular priorities, chosen because I believe they are both vitally important and under-appreciated! (indeed, some of them you’ll see nowhere else.)
Their common trait – until you get to #20 – is that they have some possibility of appealing to reasonable people across party lines… the “60%+ rule” that worked so persuasively in 1994.
#20 will be a catch-all that includes a wide swathe of reforms sought by many Democrats – and, likely, by many of you -- but may entail more dispute, facing strong opposition from the other major party.
In other words… as much as you may want the items in #20 – (and I do too: most of them!) -- you are going to have to work hard for them separately from a ‘contract’ like this one, that aims to swiftly take advantage of 60%+ consensus, to get at least an initial tranche of major reforms done.
1. THE SECURITY FOR AMERICA ACT will ensure that top priority goes to America’s military and security readiness, especially our nation's ability to respond to surprise threats, including natural disasters or other emergencies. FEMA and the CDC and other contingency agencies will be restored and enhanced, their agile effectiveness audited. Reserves will be augmented and modernized. Reserves shall not be sent overseas without submitting for a Congressionally certified state of urgency that must be renewed at six-month intervals.
All previous Congressional approvals for foreign military intervention or declared states of urgency will be explicitly canceled, so that future force resolutions by Congress to fulfill its Constitutional War Powers will be fresh and germane to each particular event, with explicit expiration dates.
The Insurrection Act shall be unambiguously cancelled. Any urgent federalization and deployment of National Guard or other troops to American cities, on the excuse of civil disorder, shall be supervised by a plenary of the nation’s state governors, who may veto any such deployment by a 40% vote or a signed declaration by twenty governors.
The Commander-in-Chief may not suspend any American law, or the rights of American citizens, without submitting the brief and temporary suspension to Congress for approval in session.
2. THE PROFESSIONALISM ACT will protect the apolitical independence of our intelligence agencies, the FBI, the scientific and technical staff in executive departments, and the United States Military Officer Corps. All shall be given safe ways to report attempts at political coercion or meddling in their ability to give unbiased advice. Any passive refusal to obey a putatively illegal order shall be immediately audited by a random board of quickly available flag officers who by secret ballot may either confirm the refusal or correct the officer's error, or else refer the matter for inquiry.
Whistle-blower protections will be strengthened within the U.S. government.
The federal Inspectorate will gather and empower all agency Inspectors General and Judges Advocate General under the independent and empowered Inspector General of the United States (IGUS).
3. THE SECRECY ACT will ensure that the recent, skyrocketing use of secrecy – far exceeding anything seen during the Cold War - shall reverse course. Independent commissions of trusted Americans shall approve, or set time limits to, all but the most sensitive classifications, which cannot exceed a certain number. These commissions will include some members who are chosen (after clearance) from a random pool of common citizens. Secrecy will not be used as a convenient way to evade accountability.
4. THE SUSTAINABILITY ACT will make it America’s priority to pioneer technological paths toward energy independence, emphasizing economic health that also conserves both national and world resources. Ambitious efficiency and conservation standards may be accompanied by compromise free market solutions that emphasize a wide variety of participants, with the goal of achieving more with less, while safeguarding the planet for our children.
5. THE POLITCAL REFORM ACT will ensure that the nation’s elections take place in a manner that citizens can trust and verify. Political interference in elections will be a federal crime. Strong auditing procedures and transparency will be augmented by whistleblower protections. New measures will distance government officials from lobbyists. Campaign finance reform will reduce the influence of Big Money over politicians. The definition of a ‘corporation’ shall be clarified: so that corporations are neither ‘persons’ nor entitled to use money or other means to meddle in politics, nor to coerce their employees to act politically.
Gerrymandering will be forbidden by national law.
The Voting Rights Act will be reinforced, overcoming all recent Court rationalizations to neuter it.
6. THE TAX REFORM ACT will simplify the tax code, while ensuring that everybody pays their fair share. Floors for the Inheritance Tax and Alternative Tax will be raised to ensure they only affect the truly wealthy, while loopholes used to evade those taxes will be closed. Modernization of the IRS and funding for auditors seeking illicitly hidden wealth shall be ensured by IRS draw upon major penalties that have been imposed by citizen juries.
All tax breaks for the wealthy will be suspended during time of war, so that the burdens of any conflict or emergency are shared by all.[1]
7. THE AMERICAN EXCELLENCE ACT will provide incentives for American students to excel at a range of important fields. This nation must especially maintain its leadership, by training more experts and innovators in science and technology. Education must be a tool to help millions of students and adults adapt, to achieve and keep high-paying 21st Century jobs.
8. THE HEALTHY CHILDREN ACT will provide basic coverage for all of the nation's children to receive preventive care and needed medical attention. Whether or not adults should get insurance using market methods can be argued separately.
But under this act, all U.S. citizens under the age of 25 shall immediately qualify as “seniors” under Medicare, an affordable step that will relieve the nation’s parents of stressful worry. A great nation should see to it that the young reach adulthood without being handicapped by preventable sickness.
9. THE CYBER HYGIENE ACT: Adjusting liability laws for a new and perilous era, citizens and small companies whose computers are infested and used by ‘botnets’ to commit crimes shall be deemed immune from liability for resulting damages, providing that they download and operate a security program from one of a dozen companies that have been vetted and approved for effectiveness by the US Department of Commerce. Likewise, companies that release artificial intelligence programs shall face lessened liability if those programs persistently declare their provenance and artificiality and potential dangers.
10. THE TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION ACT: Without interfering in the president's constitutional right to issue pardons for federal offenses, Congress will pass a law defining the pardon process, so that all persons who are excused for either convictions or possible crimes must at least explain those crimes, under oath, before an open congressional committee, before walking away from them with a presidential pass.
If the crime is not described in detail, then a pardon cannot apply to any excluded portion. Further, we shall issue a challenge that no president shall ever issue more pardons than both of the previous administrations, combined.
If it is determined that a pardon was given on quid pro quo for some bribe, emolument, gift or favor, then this act clarifies that such pardons are null and void. Moreover, this applies retroactively for any such pardons in the past.
We will further reverse the current principle of federal supremacy in criminal cases that forbids states from prosecuting for the same crime. Instead, one state with grievance in a federal case may separately try the culprit for a state offense, which - upon conviction by jury - cannot be excused by presidential pardon.
Congress shall act to limit the effect of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs)that squelch public scrutiny of officials and the powerful. With arrangements to exchange truth for clemency, both current and future NDAs shall decay over a reasonable period of time.
Incentives such as clemency will draw victims of blackmail to come forward and expose their blackmailers.
11. THE IMMUNITY LIMITATION ACT: The Supreme Court has ruled that presidents should be free to do their jobs without undue distraction by legal procedures and jeopardies. Taking that into account, we shall nevertheless – by legislation – firmly reject the artificial and made-up notion of blanket Presidential Immunity or that presidents are inherently above the law.
Instead, the Inspector General of the United States (IGUS) shall supervise legal cases that are brought against the president so that they may be handled by the president’s chosen counsel in order of importance or severity, in such a way that the sum of all such external legal matters will take up no more than ten hours a week of a president’s time. While this may slow such processes, the wheels of law will not be fully stopped.
Civil or criminal cases against a serving president may be brought to trial by a simple majority consent of both houses of Congress, though no criminal or civil punishment may be exacted until after the president leaves office, either by end-of-term or impeachment and Senate conviction.
In the event that Congress is thwarted from acting on impeachment or trial, e.g. by some crime that prevents certain members from voting, their proxies may be voted in such matters by their party caucus, until their states complete election of replacements.
12. THE FACT ACT: The Fact Act will begin by restoring the media Rebuttal Rule, prying open "echo chamber" propaganda mills. Any channel, or station, or Internet podcast, or meme distributor that accepts advertising or reaches more than 10,000 followers will be required to offer five minutes per day during prime time and ten minutes at other times to reputable and vigorous adversaries. Until other methods are negotiated, each member of Congress shall get to choose one such vigorous adversary, ensuring that all perspectives may be involved.
The Fact Act will further fund experimental Fact-Challenges, where major public disagreements may be openly and systematically and reciprocally confronted with demands for specific evidence.
The Fact Act will restore full funding and staffing to both the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the executive Office of Science and Technology Policy (OTSP). Every member of Congress shall be funded to hire a science and fact advisor from their home district, who may interrogate the advisory bodies – an advisor who may also answer questions of fact on the member’s behalf.
This bill further requires that the President must fill, by law, the position of White House Science Adviser from a diverse and bipartisan slate of qualified candidates offered by the Academy of Science. The Science Adviser shall have uninterrupted access to the President for at least two one-hour sessions per month.4
13. THE VOTER ID ACT: Under the 13th and 14th Amendments, this act requires that states mandating Voter ID requirements must offer substantial and effective compliance assistance, helping affected citizens to acquire their entitled legal ID and register to vote.
Any state that fails to provide such assistance, substantially reducing the fraction of eligible citizens turned away at the polls, shall be assumed in violation of equal protection and engaged in illegal voter suppression. If such compliance assistance has been vigorous and effective for ten years, then that state may institute requirements for Voter ID.
In all states, registration for citizens to vote shall be automatic with a driver’s license or passport or state-issued ID, unless the citizen opts-out.
14. THE WYOMING RULE: Congress shall end the arrangement (under the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929) for perpetually limiting the House of Representatives to 435 members. Instead, it will institute the Wyoming Rule, that the least-populated state shall get one representative and all other states will be apportioned representatives according to their population by full-integer multiples of the smallest state. The Senate’s inherent bias favoring small states should be enough. In the House, all citizens should get votes of equal value. https://thearp.org/blog/the-wyoming-rule/
15: IMMIGRATION REFORM: There are already proposed immigration law reforms on the table, worked out by sincere Democrats and sincere Republicans, back when the latter were a thing. These bipartisan reforms will be revisited, debated, updated and then brought to a vote.
In addition, if a foreign nation is among the top five sources of refugees seeking U.S. asylum from persecution in their homelands, then by law it shall be incumbent upon the political and social elites in that nation to help solve the problem, or else take responsibility for causing their citizens to flee.
Upon verification that their regime is among those top five, that nation’s elites will be billed, enforceably, for U.S. expenses in giving refuge to that nation’s citizens. Further, all trade and other advantages of said elites will be suspended and access to the United States banned, except for the purpose of negotiating ways that the U.S. can help in that nation’s rise to both liberty and prosperity, thus reducing refugee flows in the best possible way.
16: THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE MANAGER: By law we shall establish under IGUS (the Inspectorate) a civil service position of White House Manager, whose function is to supervise all non-political functions and staff. This would include the Executive Mansion’s physical structure and publicly-owned contents, but also policy-neutral services such as the switchboard, kitchens, Travel Office, medical office, and Secret Service protection details, since there are no justifications for the President or political staff to have whim authority over such apolitical employees.
With due allowance and leeway for needs of the Office of President, public property shall be accounted-for. The manager will allocate which portions of any trip expense should be deemed private and thereupon – above a basic allowance – shall be billed to the president or his/her party.
This office shall supervise annual physical and mental examination by external experts for all senior office holders including the President, Vice President, Cabinet members and leaders of Congress.
Any group of twenty senators or House members or state governors may choose one periodical, network or other news source to get credentialed to the White House Press Pool, spreading inquiry across all party lines and ensuring that all rational points of view get access.
17: EMOLUMENTS AND GIFTS ACT: Emoluments and gifts and other forms of valuable beneficence bestowed upon the president, or members of Congress, or judges, or their families or staffs, shall be more strictly defined and transparently controlled. All existing and future presidential libraries or museums or any kind of shrine shall strictly limit the holding, display or lending of gifts to, from, or by a president or ex-president, which shall instead be owned and held (except for facsimiles) by the Smithsonian and/or sold at public auction.
Donations by corporations or wealthy individuals to pet projects of a president or other members of government, including inauguration events, shall be presumed to be illegal bribery unless they are approved by a nonpartisan ethical commission.
18: BUDGETS: If Congress fails to fulfill its budgetary obligations or to raise the debt ceiling, the result will not be a ‘government shutdown.’ Rather, all pay and benefits will cease going to any Senator or Representative whose annual income is above the national average, until appropriate legislation has passed, at which point only 50% of any backlog arrears may be made-up.
19: THE RURAL AMERICA AND HOUSING ACT: Giant corporations and cartels are using predatory practices to unfairly corner, control or force-out family farms and small rural businesses. We shall upgrade FDR-era laws that saved the American heartland for the people who live and work there, producing the nation’s food. Subsidies and price supports shall only go to family farms or co-ops. Monopolies in fertilizer, seeds and other supplies will be broken up and replaced by competition. Living and working and legal conditions for farm workers and food processing workers will be improved by steady public and private investments.
Cartels that buy-up America’s stock of homes and home-builders will be investigated for collusion to limit construction and/or drive up rents and home prices and appropriate legislation will follow.
20: THE INTENT OF CONGRESS ACT: We shall pass an act preventing the Supreme Court from canceling laws based on contorted interpretations of Congressional will or intent. For example, the Civil Rights Bill shall not be interpreted as having “completed” the work assigned to it by Congress, when it clearly has not done so. In many cases, this act will either clarify Congressional purpose and intent or else amend certain laws to ensure that Congressional intent is crystal clear, removing that contorted rationalization. This will not interfere in Supreme Court decisions based on Constitutionality. But interpretations of Congressional intent should at least consult with Congress, itself.
21: THE LIBERAL AGENDA: Okay. Your turn. Our turn. Beyond the 60% rule.
· Protect women’s autonomy, credibility and command over their own bodies,
· Ease housing costs: stop private corps buying up large tracts of homes, colluding on prices. (See #19.)
· Help working families with child care and elder care.
· Consumer protection, empower the Consumer Financial Protection Board.
· At least allow student debt refinancing, which the GOP dastardly disallowed.
· Restore the postal savings bank for the un-banked,
· Basic, efficient, universal background checks for gun purchases, with possible exceptions.
· A national Election Day holiday, for those who actually vote.
· Carefully revive the special prosecutor law.
· Expand and re-emphasize protections under the Civil Service Act.
· Anti-trust breakup of monopoly/duopolies.
·
….AND SO ON… I do not leave those huge items as afterthoughts! They are important. But they will entail huge political fights and restoration of the ability to legislate through negotiation and compromise (now explicitly forbidden int the Republican Congressional caucuses).
Can we learn from the mistakes of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama? Who tried to shoot for the moon in the one Congressional session when each of them had a Congress? And hence failed to accomplish a thing? In contrast Joe Bien's session from 2021-22 was a miracle year when Pelosi+Schumer+Bernie/Liz/AOC together pushed for the achievable... and succeeded!
Do I wish they also passed some of the 35+ proposals listed here? Sure. We'd be in better shape, even if only protecting the JAGs and IGs and such!
Indeed, by going for the achievable, we might GAIN power to do the harder stuff.
III. Conclusion
All right. I know this proposal – that we do a major riff off of the 1994 Republican Contract with America – will garner one top complaint: We don't want to look like copycats!
And yet, by satirizing that totally-betrayed “contract,” we poke GOP hypocrisy… while openly reaching out to the wing of conservatism that truly believed the promises, back in 94, perhaps winning some of them over, by offering deliverable metrics to get it right this time…
…while boldly outlining reasonable liberal measures that the nation desperately needs.
I do not insist that the measures I posed -- in my rough draft "Democratic Deal" -- are the only ones possible! (Some might even seem crackpot… till you think them over.) New proposals would be added or changed.
Still, this list seems reasonable enough to debate, refine, and possibly offer to focus groups. Test marketing (the way Gingrich did!) should tell us whether Americans would see this as "copycat"…
...or else a clever way to turn the tables, in an era when agility must be an attribute of political survival.
[1] Elites who send our sons and daughters to war, but not their own, will have to choose whether to keep their overseas adventures or their tax cuts. This will elucidate a poorly known fact. That all previous generations of the rich were at least willing to tax themselves during times of urgency, to help pay for wars they would not fight. This provision is not so much an anti-war measure as one that is anti-hypocrisy… one of the most devastating areas to attack another political side.
92 comments:
Wonderfull - Go for it
NDAs
Congress shall act to limit the effect of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs)that squelch public scrutiny of officials - and the powerful. - With arrangements to exchange truth for clemency, both current and future NDAs shall decay over a reasonable period of time. Incentives will draw victims of blackmail to come forward and expose their blackmailers.
and the powerful!!! - absolutely KEY
I would extend and change that slightly
All NDAs must include a sunset time and the information being kept secret must be sent to an "NDA Board" who will publish that information after the sunset period
This would mean that the information would always be made public eventually -
Possibly with a scale of "charges" for an NDA depending on the time period - low cost for a year or two to protect a commercial secret
Very Very high cost for a 20 year or longer period
Duncan I'd love - as Mr. Transparency - to take the NDA sunset provision as far as you would! But there is an art to incremental legislation. (That impatient idiots on the left refuse to understand.) Get SOMETHING that moves things to a higher plateau and doesn't scare the mighty into panic... yet. Then from that plateau you push for more.
David - then make the NDA sunset shortening incremental but defined from the outset. If it is to be introduced later, they will pull every trick in the book to stop it ever happening.
I miss Daniel Dennett. His explanation of incrementalism (ratchets) and plateaus was crystal clear and easy to teach. Earlier expressed by Thomas Huxley (Darwin's bulldog), and before that, Newton (shoulders of giants).
A similar, yet even more powerful form of incrementalism is 'bootstrapping', found in concatenative processes like DNA (see what I did there?) and...
FORTH (ditto).
I like this version far more than your 2006 version, which was pretty good for its time. There are some great ideas in this.
However, it will be picked to pieces by our current SCOTUS if implemented. John Robert's project to vastly expand Executive powers (undefined mostly, except case-by-case, which John Roberts gets to define as the majority sees fit) runs head long into this Contract.
Before a theoretical 60 vote majority in the Senate brings this Contract to the floor, SCOTUS must be expanded and the ideological makeup of the Court shifted, or these proposals will end up being used against transparency and equality before the laws of the US. Too many of these ideas could be used by the GOP to lock in their power.
Powerful ideas, yes, but deadly in the hands of the GOP jurists.
The Judiciary must be cured before trying most of this.
The #1 item on your Contract should be to restore the integrity of Federal Courts by expanding SCOTUS and eliminating lifetime appointments.
But, please take this criticism as helpful and not scornful of your efforts. This is a worthy document that needs to bend to judicial circumstances to be less of a danger to our nation.
...expanding SCOTUS and eliminating lifetime appointments.
In the olden days, I would have pointed out that the Constitution requires lifetime appointments. At this point, though, I say "Fuck it." President Mamdani should expand the court to 13 by executive order, nominate four flaming liberals, and then let the expanded court rule on its constitutionality.
In my Summer Daydream at least.
Matthew, how DARE you be so... on target and reasonable! Indeed, in this particular round, more so than LarryHart whose fan appreciation of Mayor Mamdami is silly. Among the VERY top criteria for the next Dem Prez is that it be a governor. We have zero time for inexperience.
Matthew is correct that the John Roberts = Roger Taney problem is topmost. And that is a major reason why I slipped in the "clemency for truth" offer to victims of blackmail. I really see no better chance for us all than for that vesuvius of kompromat to take out our tritor caste.
...more so than LarryHart whose fan appreciation of Mayor Mamdami is silly
It isn't meant to be taken lit'rally; it refers to any Democrat who becomes president.
LH I knew that! ;-)
They will pull every trick in the book to delay and push out the limit anyway. *
Any number NOW is a start.
* (Isn't that what happened with copyright durations?)
In addition, if a foreign nation is among the top five sources of refugees seeking U.S. asylum from persecution in their homelands, then by law it shall be incumbent upon the political and social elites in that nation to help solve the problem, or else take responsibility for causing their citizens to flee.
Your War on Terror and Obamas botched "Line in the Sand" policies in Syria did cost us south of 300 billion in taxpayer money.
.
Do you pay in cash or by credit card?
Some additional ideas:
1) Install a strong public, independent non-profit broadcasting company with an adherent social nessenger service.
2) Make public school teachers and librarians a protected class of state employees.
3) Use the budget for law enforcement to create improved training academies; students train at least for three years and gain a bachelors degree. Only absolvents from those academies shall be considered for recruitment by federal agencies.
4)Whenever a prosecutor seeks the death penalty in a trial, or the death penalty is the only allowed outcome on a guilty verdict, the original trial is halted and a federal investigation into the prosecutor and law enforcement is launched automatically; assumption of innocence is reversed in this case.
5) Legalize prostitution, tax it,, but build in protections against human trafficking and exploitation of minors as well as exit counseling.Failing that, make blackmailing in these cases five times as unattractive as the actual felony, and ten times if it involved political offices.
6) Adjust sales taxes to influence consumer behaviour. For example, lower it on groceries and child care products, but increase it on alcohol, tobacco, guns and luxury items.
7) Tax the hell out of private prison companies and Moral Entrepreneurs to make their business models unprofitable.
That's a nice wish list.
Now g back through that list a see how much of it will be allowed by the economic elites that actually run the country.
Oh, I'm sorry, did you all actually think we lived in a democracy which expressed the will of the people?
The 2014 research by political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, concluded that the U.S. government primarily reflects the preferences of economic elites and organized interest groups, while the average citizen has "little or no independent influence" on policymaking.
The study, titled "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" and published in the academic journal Perspectives on Politics, analyzed data from nearly 1,800 U.S. policy issues enacted between 1981 and 2002.
Average Citizens' Influence: The preferences of average Americans had a "minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy". When policies favored by the majority of citizens were enacted, it was typically because those policies also aligned with the desires of the economic elite.
Elite Influence: Economic elites (defined as those at the 90th income percentile) and business-oriented interest groups had a substantial independent impact on government policy.
Oligarchy, Not Democracy: The researchers concluded that if policymaking is dominated by a small number of affluent Americans and powerful business organizations, America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened. Many commentators and scholars have interpreted the findings as evidence that the U.S. operates more like an oligarchy (a system of government where a small, elite group rules) or a plutocracy (rule by the wealthy).
The economic elites are addicted to wealth and power and will gladly allow the planet to burn, our democracy to die and our civilization to crumble in order to maintain control.
Another great SF writer illustrated this in her greatest work.
Recommend the following article from the Atlantic Monthly about SF writer Octavia Butler's prophetic book, "The Parable of the Sower":
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2025/12/trump-climate-change-acceleration/684632/?gift=O0f4lPqn98q9hZUuPSFO4BfS59MPSOvQvKIbUS06_lk
What Climate Change Will Do to America by Mid-Century
Many places may become uninhabitable. Many people may be on their own.
Some excerpts:
n that dystopian novel, published in 1993 and set in the mid-2020s, the United States still exists but has been warped by global warming, and its authoritarian government has ceded most of the administration of day-to-day matters to corrupt companies. In Butler’s neo-feudal vision, states and cities erect strict borders to deter migrants, the gap between rich and poor has widened, and massive wildfires in Southern California drive the state’s decline.
It has become commonplace to label Butler a prophet. She didn’t get everything right about the United States today. But even in the things that haven’t happened, exactly, one can see analogs to real life.
What will our “full-fledged disasters” be in three decades, as the planet continues to warm? The year 2024 was the hottest on record. Yet 2025 has been perhaps the single most devastating year in the fight for a livable planet. An authoritarian American president has pressed what can only be described as a policy of climate-change acceleration—destroying commitments to clean energy and pushing for more oil production. It doesn’t require an oracle to see where this trajectory might lead.
Taking our cue from Butler, we would do well today to study the ways that climate change has already reshaped the American landscape, and how disasters are hollowing out neighborhoods like the one where Butler is buried. We should understand how catastrophe works in a landscape of inequality.
Over the next 30 years or so, the changes to American life might be short of apocalyptic. But miles of heartbreak lie between here and the apocalypse, and the future toward which we are heading will mean heartbreak for millions. Many people will go in search of new homes in cooler, more predictable places. Those travelers will leave behind growing portions of America where services and comforts will be in short supply—let’s call them “dead zones.” Should the demolition of America’s rule of law continue, authoritarianism and climate change will reinforce each other, a vicious spiral from which it will be difficult to exit.
How do we know this? As ever, all it takes is looking around.
In 2023, high temperatures in the Pacific had helped incubate Hurricane Hilary, which led to the first-ever tropical-storm warning in Southern California.
Six months after the fires, the federal aid received by victims, relative to their property damage, was less than a third of that provided after previous fires in California and Hawaii. FEMA declined to perform its customary soil testing after cleanups, and now independent tests indicate high levels of lead in several lots.
(cont.)
Private firefighting outfits defended companies, utilities, and ultrarich enclaves while other parts of the city burned. The county’s defenses were overmatched. Its fleet of fire trucks was hobbled by ongoing consolidation in the fire-engine industry, where giant companies have been delaying maintenance orders and raising prices for new trucks. Hundreds of incarcerated people, making at most $10 a day, worked as firefighters for the state. All of these things at least partly reflect the increasing regularity, intensity, and cost of fires.
Seven of the 12 largest home insurers in California—including State Farm, the very largest—have already limited their coverage or stopped taking new policies there.
Insurers lost more than $100 billion in underwriting in 2024, and “insurance deserts,” where policies are becoming impossible to find or prohibitively expensive, are growing in the South and the West—more than half a million Florida residents are down to just one state-established “insurer of last resort,” for example.
yet without insurance, people cannot get mortgages, and so most cannot buy houses.
Private-equity firms are deeply embedded in the disaster-recovery industry, sometimes relying on the low-wage labor of immigrants and incarcerated people in order to provide reconstruction services at cut rates. Investors often come into distressed real-estate markets and transform them, buying up land on the cheap and flipping residential homes into rental units.
2 degrees Celsius of warming—a threshold whose crossing would likely spur a mass drought in the Southwest and West, disrupt agriculture in the South, and bring deluges to Miami, Sacramento, and New York City.
Zeldin is now leading an effort to kill the EPA’s “endangerment finding,” a 2009 declaration that greenhouse gases are harmful to human health. Without that finding, the federal government would no longer have the authority to regulate carbon pollution.
Trump scrapped a program dedicated to funding flood mitigation in low-income communities. He axed rules that required public housing and critical infrastructure rebuilt with federal money to be elevated in order to account for new flood risks. The National Weather Service is a shadow of its former self
(cont.)
There are few places in America where climate change is made more obvious to the senses than in Miami. On some eroded beaches, you can wade or even swim out to where the land once reached.
Weather patterns in South Florida have changed, and extreme rainfall has become more frequent, exacerbating the rising sea level. Last year, a “rain bomb” system dumped more than a foot of water on Miami in just two days. Until very recently, that was considered a once-in-200-years (or rarer)event—but it has now happened in the city four times in as many years. Salt water from the encroaching ocean threatens the drinking-water supply
The most dangerous change might be the spike in overnight temperatures, which robs resting bodies of the chance to recover from daytime heat, thus contributing to as many as 600 excess deaths from heat each year.
Within the U.S. today, people are again moving because of disasters, and because of the slow-grind attrition of heat, flooding, and rising insurance rates. Earlier this year, the nonprofit Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre found that disasters had caused 11 million evacuations or relocations in the previous 12 months.
Houston faces potentially extreme damage if struck by a Category 4 or 5 hurricane, and might struggle to rebuild without substantial federal aid. Even absent another disaster, New Orleans has been the fastest-shrinking major metro area in the country in recent years, as more people have sought high ground or been priced out of the market by rising insurance rates. The populations of several cities and counties in California’s fire country are shrinking, and domestic migration to Miami is now outpaced by people leaving
Migration to the southern border, perhaps the most powerful current in American politics today, is already being driven partly by ecological collapses in Central American farm economies.
Xenophobia and racism are already pillars of this movement, and they would be strengthened by mass migration.
(I have seen the future, and Olivia Butler is its prophet.)
A raft of good ideas, but as Mathew points out, judicial reform is a necessary but insufficient pre-condition. To that I would add that several of the ideas run counter to existing Consitutional law precedents. Until the Roberts’ court, that meant something…
Now it probably means that several of these ideas would need to be constitutional amendments and that is a much tougher nut to crack.
(I have seen the future, and Olivia Butler is its prophet.)
God is Change.
Perfect poem for our times:
The Second Coming
By William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction (aka Democrats),
While the worst Are full of passionate intensity (aka Republicans)....
...And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
That passage reminds me of Captain Ahab's soliloquy that begins, "By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike".
Great literature may be the last gasp of human intelligence as its dominance fades. Or not. The game's not over yet.
So what's the deal with Twitter revealing (for a few seconds) that so many accounts driving political division in the US are foreign born?
An own goal? Or a shot across the bow to keep DJT in line?
Maybe an Act of resistance within Twitter?
I now see Robert Reich suppots this one: THE POLITCAL REFORM ACT will ensure that the nation’s elections take place in a manner that citizens can trust and verify. Political interference in elections will be a federal crime. Strong auditing procedures and transparency will be augmented by whistleblower protections. New measures will distance government officials from lobbyists. Campaign finance reform will reduce the influence of Big Money over politicians. The definition of a ‘corporation’ shall be clarified: so that corporations are neither ‘persons’ nor entitled to use money or other means to meddle in politics, nor to coerce their employees to act politically.
While we are changing company - do it properly - a company may not own voting shares in another company so that we restore human control of companies and transparency as to ownership. The arguments used for supporting hostile takeovers never rang true to me. If a company can be improved - out compete them, don't remove them from competition. Mergers would be allowed but not hostile takeovers.
Well, the biggest reform would be my Universal declared Ownership world treaty. "If you own something, state publicly that you own it" And no shell companies more than 2 layers deep to living humans or foundations.
The amount of abandoned, illicit 'property' could likely erase all nations' public debts.
David Packman speculates that Gavin Newsom may have (via Prop 50) outmaneuvered the GOP to a prodigious degree, since Texas's extra 5 GOP seats have been thrown out by courts but CA's stay. It will not end up this way in 11 months time. But still...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrHMdI76_Qc
A very cogent video about LLMs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPZh9BOjkQs
There is increasing talk that this method may be approaching some limits.
a company may not own voting shares in another company so that we restore human control of companies and transparency as to ownership. The arguments used for supporting hostile takeovers never rang true to me.
Ironically, the path to that is to double down on the notion that corporations are people.
Since 1868 or so, people aren't allowed to own other people.
That may not be a positive step - the thing about Gerrymandering is that it works by diluting your "advantage" so you win more seats with the voters you do have
By extending the extra 5 seats the GOP diluted their advantage even more - which meant that a swing in the voter preferences would cost them more seats
LBWR, indeed! This proposal put fire in my belly, as it will from any other Democrats I know. I will be forwarding to my representative Maxwell Frost, the youngest member of Congress who I think is going to love it. this is achievable. Thank you for the blueprint. Dr. Brin. it is powerful enough on its own that even those like representative Frost who are too young to remember 1994 will find significant inspiration in it. it's practical and achievable. thank you sir
I should know better than to use speech to text, I meant to say " as it will for many other Democrats I know."
Terrific MondoJ. Hope someone somewhere will read it who is anywhere near being able to champion some of the ideas. Thrive. And persevere!
The trick now will be, of course, to make some high Democrat mucky-muck believe that he was the one to come up with this idea... :D
YES! - I learned that in industry - the best approach was to say to your boss
"Remember that idea you had and I pooh hooed it - I have thought again and you were right ......"
The responce would be which idea? - then you introduce it
Worked most of the time
A version of that is what Hal Sparks refers to as the "Macron handshake". Foreign leaders have learned how to play DJT at a press conference following a private meeting. They shake his hand and profusely thank him for being so wonderful as to agree to...whatever (trade deal, selling missiles, etc) whether he actually agreed to such a thing or not, because he won't remember what he agreed to, and he won't contradict such obsequiousness.
Fair; Just;
Reasonable; and
Egalitarian.
These are just some of the words that I'd use to describe Dr Brin's "Contract for America" as this is one of the most beautiful, well-intentioned and inspirational documents that I've ever seen, and this is why this approach is a total non-starter:
Human beings do not desire any of these things.
What human beings actually desire is UNFAIR preference, UNREASONABLE advantage and UNEQUAL justice -- insomuch as they desire unchecked & unbridled dominance -- and this is what idealists who idealize human behaviours never seem to understand.
Human beings are base, and they want what they want with negligible effort, and all those words like 'fairness', 'justice' and 'equity' are just fine-sounding word spells to get others to 'hand over' the items that the word-users desire.
This is Communism in a nutshell, the forced taking from one to benefit another, and it amounts to little more than organized theft & murder.
And, the shining egalitarian Star_Trek future??
It is a hierarchical & non-egalitarian Military Command Structure complete with an entrenched technocratic aristocracy and disposable plebeian red-shirts, proving yet again that one man's paradise is easily another man's hell.
Best
Vance has said that he is disinterested in Ukraine’s fate. What nations is he interested in? Poland? The Baltics?
How far west?
https://www.businessinsider.com/gop-candidate-jd-vance-i-dont-care-what-happens-ukraine-2022-2
@mondojohnson:
Were you referring to Maxwell Frost from 'Wild in the Streets' (in which case
I thought it was a "Gas-s-s-s" because youth rebellions are notoriously failure-prone) or the 'real' candidate from Florida's 10th District?
Either way, the funny is much appreciated.
Best
How far west?
He might consider Russia to be "liberating" Europe.
Locoweed wrote:
<<
Fair; Just;
Reasonable; and
Egalitarian.
...
Human beings do not desire any of these things.
>>
That last comment is clearly false, as evidenced by the continued existence of human society. Human beings do desire those things; but we also desire other things, in conflict with those things. We have contradictory drives, which should come as no surprise to anyone other than ideologues and idiots - but I repeat myself.
These contradictions come up sharply in family life. Locoweed has mentioned a personal history of romantic failure. Perhaps this correlates with his cynicism; but correlation is not causation. Did his romantic failure cause his cynicism? Or did his cynicism cause his romantic failure? Or did a third factor, perhaps neuromedical, cause both?
I do agree with him that Starfleet was no paradise.
Human beings do desire those things; but we also desire other things, in conflict with those things.
In situations such as the George Floyd torture-murder, there are (apparently) two types of people: Those who are enraged at the injustice of it all, even when not personally affected and those who can't conceive that the first type of person exists.
That aside, injustice inevitably leads to unrest and ultimately revolt. Selfishly, I'd prefer to live in a just and equal society so as not to be perceived by a large swath of neighbors as their enemy. Or as a German businessman on Thom Hartmann's show once defended his country's tax-supported safety nets, "I don't want to be a rich man in a poor country."
I do agree with him that Starfleet was no paradise.
The idea that it is one is a retcon. TOS rarely if ever referred to socio-economic conditions on Earth, or even elsewhere on Federation worlds.
See now this is why I skim him... allocationg a couple of seconds... to see igf he's taken his meds and isn't fulminating masturbatory hallucinations at regions of the horizon where he imagines we are... and none of us has ever been.
In this case, the meds are high! Which meant I read it and was rewarded! Oh, his actual assertions are false. But they are consistently packaged and based upon real things. For example:
1. YES Many rapacious systems used appeals to fairness and empathy as ways to maintain power over lower orders. L mentions communism, sure, and Leninism/Stalinism Preached such words to help the New Lords in the nomenklatura to keep the rabble controlled. AS DID the priests in all past feudal systems! A fact that L conveniently left out, sich he is on his knees daily, servicing the New Lords his cult iis trying to install.
Today's Russia is ruled by the VERY SAME GUYS who ran the USSR, using the same tools of power to enforce the same aristocracy... only with those fairness catechisms removed. That removal of fairness etc dogma is the ONLY difference, since every other aspect of the USSR remained in place, thanks to the Bush family. And now the pretenses are dropping! As Putin's 5000 "ex" commissars re-nationalize all private companies and put hammer-sickles back onto their towers and walls and buildings!
And yet, L and his fellow Foxite cultists yammer that their Kremlin run GOP is anti-communist while WE are the commies? No doofus. The Republican Party has NEVER led in anti-Stalinism. That was the AFL-CIO. And you are the commies.
2. But that departs from the issue of fairness as a scam. Yes, LH. Locum made again clear his mental cauterization, unable to imagine the fact that most humans DO have the evolutionary trait of empathy. Most - unlike him and his fellow predators - would prefer positive sum games. And with Locke and Adam Smith and the US Founders, we began a process of developing positive sum systems that are better at governance than ALL feudal regimes, combined.
And that is what we face now. A world attempted -putch by 2-dimernsional, colorblind negative-summers who intrinsically cannot comprehend the very notion of 3 dimensions, of color, of empathy, or shared win-win through fair competition and cooperation. And they KNOW they are blind! And it terrifies and infuriates them.
There are two versions in circulation: The borders of 1989 or "Russia ends in Portugal (Medwedjew).
Their tank production currently is at 5000/year, which exceeds their losses in Ukraine, and a portion is redirected to the Northwestern Military district, building the anticipated invasion force for the Baltics and Poland .
We are expected to outpace them in terms of rearmament in 28/29, so there you have the time window anytime between "now" and 2028 (with a few weeks of build up prior to the attack).
The original plan included nuclear strikes against each European capital (including our state capitals) except London and Paris, and then sending their troops through the radioactive areas, if necessary. Maybe their plan spares US Bases.
But that would be the terminal phase of the war we are already in. The Russian attempts to conquer what is left of the west has already begun, with drone attacks and other"shaping" operations.
So I've been looking at Alfred Differ's work on github, mostly over my head but possibly useful in computational psychohistory, which I'll mostly leave to my disciples and plagiarizers. Just too difficult for me now, although I do still solder away on some SELDON I processor stuff.
I've found a few other pearls on github, such as this 'card computer' that comes close to what I had in mind in our WJCC discussion a few years back. Still too corpulent, but on the right track. The screen and battery are the key features. The ability to tether to a bigger PC is certainly interesting, but not essential.
https://github.com/ryu10/M5CardForth/blob/main/readme.md
Sorry for the interruption, y'all know I'm dumb at polemics.
"Russia ends in Portugal (Medwedjew).
Heh. In English, we spell that name "Medvedev", so the "jew" at the end in your spelling was a little unnerving, but also funny.
LH:
TOS rarely said anything at all about any conditions on Earth. Starfleet was a society-within-a-society, as is any military. But in DS9, Sisko said bitterly that it's easy to be a saint in Paradise.
That's the trouble with Paradise: it makes people go soft. If you want tough people, then hire from Hell.
Reason,
If a company can be improved - out compete them, don't remove them from competition. Mergers would be allowed but not hostile
I’d have to object to this. Competition evolves the markets… and death is a big part of it. Hostile takeovers are as natural to the process as prey and predator.
The protections you are seeking can be written into corporate charters. Many of us know the term ‘poison pill’ in that context. Don’t want your baby to be bought out from under you when the stock price dips a bit low… write one.
Competition isn’t pretty. Neither is it just tooth and claw. We can adopt rules for what is allowed, but I’m strongly opposed to preventing hostile takeovers. They have a purpose for clearing weak prey from the field.
The stuff I'm actively coding right now involves representing geometry in an algebraic manner. The 'clados' package is supposed to make it easier for developers to know little about the internal details, but WRITING it requires all the nit-picky stuff. (Jury is on vacation whether I'm succeeding at my goal. Probably not even deliberating on it. 8). )
If you want to check out a community of like minded (and younger) folks, drop by the bivector.net site and their associated discord server. I hang out there too.
Alfred -
When a vulture capitalist can borrow a ton of money -
Use it to buy a moderately successful company -
Then add that debt to the company they bought!!!
Then rape and pillage that company for short term gain
Then there needs to be some control
Also
If a large company is suddenly faced with a much smaller company that is eating into "their market" then there does need to be some way of preventing them from simply buying that company and shutting it down
But in DS9, Sisko said bitterly that it's easy to be a saint in Paradise.
I acknowledge that TNG and DS9 attempt to portray its current-day Earth and the Federation as a kind of socialist paradise. I only maintain that that is something the later series grafted onto the concept. The only thing of that sort promoted by TOS was that crewpersons were not segregated along racial and gender lines.*
Fans of the original series were not fans because we loved socialism, but because we loved adventure stories which did not talk down to us in terms of science or human complexity. And cool aliens and space battles. And miniskirts.
* Even so, TOS couldn't escape all of the prejudices of its time. There was that ridiculous episode in which no woman could be a starship captain. And doctors were men and nurses were women. That sort of thing.
,,,And cool aliens and space battles.
Expanding on this a bit. I've said before that a modern-day audience can't possibly appreciate how much the novel use of color was partly responsible for the appeal of the 1960s Batman tv show.
In the same vein, an audience for whom Star Wars and its imitators have been around for almost 50 years can't easily appreciate how much suspension of disbelief earlier sci-fi fare like "Flash Gordon" was required to get past the cheesy sets and costumes. TOS didn't have quite the special effects repertoire that Star Wars brought to the big screen, but the viewer could immerse himself in the story and feel like he was really watching a functioning starship or an alien landscape or a phaser battle instead of a child's puppet show.
there does need to be some way of preventing them from simply buying that company and shutting it down
"Who's going to use your 'freeway' when they can take the Red Car for a nickel?"
"I bought the Red Car in order to dismantle it!"
"Then Cloverleaf Industries..."
"You're looking at the sole stockholder."
Thanks Alfred. I also liked your riff here in CB about LLMs being surprisingly useful. Here's my own example:
Previously I've described the sine wave version of "Flowers for Algernon" I'm living in. Instead of Charlie's one-time meteoric rise and fall, my cognitive cycle never ends*. The sine wave's amplitude is lessening with age. The good news is that I no longer stutter (much) when ordering coffee during a trough. The bad news is that I have fewer flashes of insight during a peak. I have trouble now grasping some of the computational psychohistory stuff I wrote years ago. Enter research using LLMs.
Dwight Yoakam made some of my favourite music**. Didn't know why I found it so compelling (barely even heard of him until a year ago). Was I going Country? Did I need some rhinestones and a big Stetson??
Recently, I learned from an LLM that way back in his formative years, Yoakam once played Charlie in a high school production of "Flowers for Algernon".
Cue the Twilight Zone motif.
* This is certainly not a unique pattern, it happens in a lot of recoveries. I just happen to have the training to recognize a sine wave when I see one. BTW, I also liked Alfred Differ's thoughts on vector algebra, as I toy (struggle) with Symbolic Regression as part of my GOFAI bent.
** Here's a cover of his poignant "A Thousand Miles From Nowhere" by the Lexington Lab Band
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9Lexw6jPAs
PS I don't know enough about Yoakam to be a fan-boy or detractor. Gossip doesn't interest me, and Boltzmann did convince me to ignore individual 'molecules', at least in the first- or second-order approximation. It's in the third-order approximation that things get interesting. A single Mule can rewrite the entire script.
Before falling asleep tonight, I want to wish my American compatriots a happy Thanksgiving Day tomorrow. As far as I'm concerned, Thanksgiving is the most wonderful time of the year. A big part of that is that the holiday is neither political nor sectarian.
I just happen to be re-reading Kurt Vonnegut's last published novel, Timequake, in which he says of his three natural children and three adopted nephews/nieces:
All six are OK.
Then again, all six have had countless opportunities to be OK. If you can believe what you read in the papers, or what you hear and see on TV or on the Information Superhighway, most people don't.
I'm not sure if "most people don't" is accurate, or maybe just "a whole lot of people don't", but in either case, I feel thankful that, in spite of the current threats, both foreign and domestic, I and my wife and our daughter and our siblings and living parents are among those who have had countless opportunities to be OK. Who could ask for anything more?
whichever interpretation makes me seem more clever is the one I intended LOL. thanks for the feedback
Glad to see conversation resuming, even if OT. I was getting worried you all had drifted away... ;-)
Happy Thanksgiving to Yanks and may we prove worthy... next year and beyond.
I shall do both, good sir. thank you for the inspiration
I was getting worried you all had drifted away... ;-)
Internet conversation tends to do that as a holiday approaches. I've learned not to be overly concerned.
I'm willing to consider anti-competition restrictions, but buying out competitors is part of the evolutionary process. I would be biased against eliminating it, but wiling to consider constraints.
...then there does need to be some way of preventing them from simply buying that company and shutting it down
No. If the owners of that small company want to sell, I'm inclined to let them sell. The employees get a say if they are also owners. Shutting off this path destroys one of the primary means for initial investors to exit with a profit and for the big companies to possibly pick up a useful solution with skilled people that they couldn't innovate on their own. I'm mostly concerned with the chill it would cause on investments, though. There is NO way I would have drawn any attention to my start-ups back in the Stone Age without easy exit ramps for my investors.
Anyone thinking a market segment is "theirs" needs the occasional smack upside the head a small competitor can provide. It ain't pretty.
David,
Heh. Real Life has demands... and my coding effort continues.
Sabine has a video discussing a recent paper on the Fermi Paradox. The paper covers a mathematical demonstration for implausible hypotheses. I was going to link to it, but didn't want to go OT after all your work on the contract.
I don't have anything useful to add to the contract discussion except that as a polemic exercise it is worth trying even if the details are changed around. Gingrich proved this, so I'm just nodding my head and saying the lesson should already be considered 'learned'... though it obviously hasn't been.
Copilot stepped up in a way I wasn't expecting the other day. I was trying to simplify about 40 lines of spaghetti code into a single lambda. Couldn't make it work. IDE kept pointing out type errors. Figured I'd spend a few days with the docs or give up. Instead... I asked Copilot what was going wrong... and it figured out what I was trying to do even with my piss-poor lambda. So... whack! My old pasta is in the trash and I have a way to protect against future threaded apps mutating the some of objects before I'm done with the calculation. Color me happier.
Drop by over there if you like. We have a range of people from beginners to researchers. Most a polite. 8)
I'll be going through my 30 or so variant or wholly original proposals a few at a time. Most of you know my plea for IGUS... and subpoena power for each congressctitter... and much else. It stretches credibility that NONE of them have gained the slightest traction across 20 years...
Meanwhile, Avi Loeb is back at it again! Asserting that interstellar comet 3i/Atlas is so anomalous that it's highly plausibly some kind of alien-sent recon probe or ship! Um... https://futurism.com/space/professor-interstellar-object-releasing-satellites-jupiter
For starters: Nickel was detected in the coma of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, far more of it than in our own, home-grown comets, plus several other oddities that offer clues to a different formation process, near a different star, though it still acts generally like a comet.
Indeed, alas, not one of Avi's claimed "suspiciously anomalous traits" of 3i/Atlas is all that unlike what one might expect from a cometary ball of ices and grit that had been born in a different star system, one whose condensing formation-cloud had higher metalicity than ours and a higher nickel to iron ratio. One whose whose metal-rich dust is kind of clumpy. That's all you need in order to explain the sunward tail AND this comet's 'non-gravitational accleration'... a term that sounds grand, but has amounted to teensy, minuscule fractions of the comet's hyperbolic trajectory. Huh. Some 'ship.'
Only now Avi is claiming that 3i/Atlas's path - grazing near the outer fringes of Jupiter's zone of g-influence (which is gigantic) - means it must be an alien ship! One that's swinging by to drop off probes to orbit Jupiter. Never mind that 3i/A is streaking away from the sun by at hyperbolic escape velocities and that any such probe or satellite would have to shed all of the prodigious speed in an incredibly short amount of time, in order to pull off that feat.
In broad terms, it's not a new concept. In EXISTENCE I portray such an interstellar probe entering the Solar system and using a tight swing past Jupiter to alter course and shed speed, then begin further passes to finally arrive at Earth. It might be done! But 3i/A is doing none of the things it would take. None, zero, zilch.
Only then there is the kicker. Aliens are using a friggng COMET to do it all? Blaring "Hey lookit me!" to all and sundry? Seriously? That is your skulking interstellar spy?
In fact, it rouses in me some sci fi whatifs! Like... whatif 3i/A is meant to distract us from the real sneaker? By drawing all our telescopes to look that way and pulling in the gullible... so that a dark visitor might sidle on in, unnoticed? (I taught our kids: if you are ever around a whole bunch of people, all of whom are staring at some garish event, TURN AROUND and be the one who looks the other way!)
Ooh, ooh! Jumping Jehosephat, here's another another sci fi scenario. (See? I am openminded!) If 3i/A were sweeping in and dropping something off toward Jupiter, what if it is something that doesn't need to decelerate, in order to do its work? Like a bomb or black hole or those eater things in Clarke's "2010"?
And then there's this other possibility. That my ET and Ai clients want me to pooh-pooh Av's bold work! And hence, I've just done what I'm hired to... what? What'd you say, boss? I should shut up about that? Yes, boss. Look, no one believes me, anyway.
I wish you a happy Thanksgiving!
As it is often said that the love-struck may be blinded by their own overly optimistic expectations, it is also known that "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned", resulting in a syllogism which fully explains the discontinuity between our fine host's affection-tainted perspective & my disillusioned one.
Hellerstein then argues that human beings do desire all that is fair, just & egalitarian, excepting that they also desire the opposite, a concession that makes his entire argument meaningless, as the many still prefer unfairness, injustice & inequality in the service of their own self-interests over those of some ill-defined 'greater good'.
I say again that this western infatuation with the 'fair', 'just', 'reasonable' and 'egalitarian' is a statistically aberrant behaviour, an exceptionally WEIRD one which reflects the involuted perceptions of less than 12% of the global human population, as compared to the 88% majority who disagree.
It is an extreme form of SELF-INFATUATION defined by the following:
(1) Excessive self-admiration in a silly and/or harmful way;
(2) Narcissism, a need for validation & an aversion to criticism;
(3) Self-absorption with one's own desires, interests & worldview;
(4) Lack of empathy for the inclinations & opinions of the other;
(5) A tendency to engage in emotionally manipulative behaviours; and
(6) A distorted & self-referential sense of reality.
Goggle 'Self-Infatuation', why don't you?
But, these are just the ravings of an irrelevant deplorable majority.
Best
_______
In regard to Comet 3i/Atlas, Avi Loeb is simply engaging in Confirmation Bias, as he processes information in a way that confirms his pre-existing beliefs, hypotheses & ideals, while ignoring any & all contradictory evidence as do we all when we embrace the most recent scientific consensus (and/or worldview) that confirms our other preconceptions about whatever, and so we fool ourselves.
More likely Red Dwarf than 2010.
"It's a garbage pod."
Alfred, they can merge! Then their shareholders get shares in the joint company - but it avoids the ever increasing misuse of limited to dump responsibility for liabilities and declare bankrupcy.
The problem is: Your theory is only valid if you separate economic and political power, and install strong guardrails against monopols.
We have had neither in all of history. At the very least, the Jobs provided by an employer are a bargaining chip in negotiating tax rates and other special benefits.
Likewise, if those jobs are lost, then the consequences immediately become political, with or without social safety nets: higher crimes rates, migration and decay of former societies, vulnerability to social unrest and populism.
This is how you lost the Rust Belt states to Trump, and we lost East Germany to the AfD.
Innovation needs people who can innovate, which requires a certain amount of education. Mindless little worker drones living paycheck to paycheck do not innovate, at best they copy, steal and enshittify. Of course, you could import those minds you need, but we are currently self-defeating ourselves with our psychopathic focus on immigration.
Which are a direct consequence in how we treat other markets and states, from United Fruit and the "post-colonial" order France imposed on "their" half of Africa to our fossile fuel addiction, a proposal to invade Greenland and China's Road and Belt initiative.
Let"s not forget union busting and the constant demands for higher returns, stagnating wages, product inflation, unaffordable housing and the sheer political power the investor class has, and one can clearly see them not as the sturdy horse who pulls the cart, but predators who need to be shot.(Churchill), a ghoul or vampire, only capable of creating a Zombie-like caricature of a society devoid of life energy.
Hence, I call it necroliberalism.
I wish I could find a bigger image of this promo for season 2 of "A Man On The Inside". It keeps flashing by when I've got Netflix on.
https://www.nexuspointnews.com/post/review-a-man-on-the-inside-season-2
Anyway, for some reason, Google searches refuse to corroborate this, and Google's AI actively denies it (so vehemently that I expect it to threaten me), but that background is the quad at the University of Illinois at Urbana.
https://fightingillini.com/sports/2015/11/10/traditions_thequad.aspx
I would bet good money, but the referees seem to be bought.
Alfred Differ:
Competition evolves the markets… and death is a big part of it. Hostile takeovers are as natural to the process as prey and predator.
The same could be said for rape and murder as competitive strategies. Only at some point, civilized society has insisted that such "natural" tactics must not be tolerated let alone rewarded, lest we exist in a permanent state of war with our neighbors.
If the fiction that "corporations are people" is to be maintained, then there's something to the argument that both predator and prey are members of society and worthy of protection from each other.
NDA's in a legal settlement context, are one thing - and certainly, an NDA that has the two parties commit to not discussing a crime or potential should be treated as a conspiracy to abet that crime / conspiracy to obstruct justice, and should be not just unenforceable, but criminal.
However, NDAs in an employment context or an enterprise partnership context are very normal, add to economic efficiency, and should arounse absolutely no suspicion.
e.g. I have signed an NDA with both my employer (a consulting company) and many of the clients directly - these are needed for my employer to allow me to participate in confidential discussions, and are needed for my company to have confidential discussions with our partners, clients, etc.
I'm exposed to confidential, in a few cases even SPI data, as part of my everyday job. If I disclosed that information there would be serious consequences. Things I know about solutions I've designed would be helpful for criminals to break into commercial banking systems.
Things I know about my clients would be damaging to them if I released them.
Things I know about partnerships my company has been involved in would be deleterious to my company's relationship with competitors of those partners for example.
Things I know about people I've managed would expose my company to severe consequences re. privacy legislation, if I shared those secrets.
Those NDAs are usually permanent, i.e. I'm promising to not release sensitive personal information about my colleagues or passwords for systems, or security designs, or client secrets, or company business plans on a more-or-less permanent basis, and my company needs me to be able to sign those agreements. I think I'm a valuable employee but I'm certain that if my company can't enforce an NDA in my locality, they'd move my job to a locality where NDAs can be legally enforced.
The security of those NDAs is not something that Corporate America can afford to have politicians F! around with.
And no, I don't really buy notions like "we'd store all the information protected by NDAs in a system controlled by the government, which we pinky-promise no one will get access to, and we'll protect it like say the social security system, and we'll definitely not give Elon Musk access to it. Pinky promise."
While we are changing company - do it properly - a company may not own voting shares in another company so that we restore human control of companies and transparency as to ownership.
The arguments used for supporting hostile takeovers never rang true to me. If a company can be improved - out compete them, don't remove them from competition. Mergers would be allowed but not hostile takeovers.
I think you're barking up the wrong tree. The kinds of abuses you're worried about can happen after a hostile takeover. Or after a friendly takeover. Or even just due to greedy management/ownership that has nothing to do with a takeover.
The only difference between a hostile takeover vs a friendly takeover of a company is whether management of the target company agrees to the takeover. There are already too many avenues for CEOs to self-enrich and put their own interests ahead of shareholders (and employees, and every other stakeholder in the company). Adding one more (we'll only agree to a takeover if you bribe us) is solving a problem that I don't agree exists, and exacerbating one that clearly is a problem in corporate America.
Now if you want to argue that leveraged buyouts should be harder to do / require more of your own money, maybe there's a case to be made.
If you want to argue that corporate debt and mortgages (i.e. money borrowed explicitly from people that consciously made a decision "lets invest in GE", must always be classified as a less secure dept than pension funds, or accounts payable for suppliers, or consumer protection/ environmental lawsuits ... I'm VERY ready to be convinced.
If you want to go a step further and say that the corporate veil does NOT cover debts owned to pensions, or liabilities for environmental damage, I'm all in (i.e. if you as an executive raid the pension plan one year because it has "a surplus" and then cut benefits three years later because the pension is in deficit ... then the answer to the company is "too bad" and if that means the company is insolvent, the executives should be personally liable for the difference, and if that pension raid was paid out as dividends, then shareholders should be liable to repay that money.
Note - this is not corporate raider, but the company itself that has been F!ing with the pension plan ...
https://psc-cuny.org/clarion/2012/march-2/how-business-elites-looted-private-sector-pensions/
One must not forget that the decisions that make a company die or survive are usually made by a very few number of people.
Also, those people tend to fall on very soft pillows if the company dies, while everyone else lands on hard rocks.
Competition evolves the markets… and death is a big part of it. Hostile takeovers are as natural to the process as prey and predator.
Alfred raises an important point about differing types of 'Competition' -- a difference that is often glossed over here -- for which he deserves recognition.
'In Competition AGAINST' vs 'In Competition With':
'In Competition WITH' is what Dr Brin considers positive-sum as it occurs on a Equal-Fair-Level playing field, in accordance with a fixed rule set, in a manner which allows all participants to improve their game, largely in the absence of any real-world consequences of winning & losing...
To be contrasted with 'In Competition AGAINST' which is a negative-sum contest, consisting of a no-holds-barred tooth & claw battle in the absence of well-defined rule set, in conjunction with severe often life-threatening consequences for both the potential winner & the potential loser...
Wherein the positive-sum 'In Competition WITH' is competition as academic exercise (and/or sport) in the style of Nancy Kerrigan, and the negative-sum 'In Competition AGAINST' is in the winner-takes-all & kill-or-be-killed style of Tonya Harding, the problem being that the positive-sum form of competition almost always degenerates into its lawless negative-sum form when the game is played in deadly earnest...
A form change that bodes extremely ill for the EU, the US & western civilisation in general, and one that also suggests that Dr Brin's new contract for a 'Rule Obedient America' will likewise end in tragedy when the game players decide to abandon light-hearted play in favour of sudden death.
Best
Locum makes a serious attempt at reason here. (His previous one was just a cowardly and unsapient doubling down on assertions I had disproved.)
What he ignores is that his cult is the one conspiring against what he calls 'competition-with.' His masters are the ones complicit with the world's noble families, inheritance brats, nomenklatura "ex" commissars, hedge cheaters and cheaters of every kind, aiming to re-establish 6000 years of feudalism.
ALL of the moves toward flat-fair-creative competition were done by the enlightenment he despises, and especially by Blue America of Franklin-Washington, then Lincoln and then the FDR GI Bill generation.
His cult never uses the very word 'compeition' because they know they betray it with deliberate intensity and fury.
It's not rape or murder... unless you really do see corporations as types of people. I don't. At best they are 'not human' slaves.
Perhaps you see it as a rape of the employees? Well... I don't.
If I get upset about the demolish of companies done in this way it is because I think the small owners might be the ones being raped. Maybe. Would be owners need to keep their eyes open and watch for threats.
reason,
Many do merge.. or buy out initial investors with shares in the other company... or something like that. The moment one of those initial investors cashes out, though, you essentially have the scenario I'm inclined to protect. The 'merger' was a fig leaf for them.
I've sought investors for past projects, so I'm familiar with some of their expectations for exit ramps. They wanted to make money while I wanted to create a profitable company. Those are not the same because they planned to leave likely before I would
Restricting the hostile takeover might sound like good moral sense, but it isn't. Not always. It's an unpleasant experience when it happens, but it forces what might be misallocated resources to go elsewhere. I've BEEN the misallocated resource enough times to see the value of getting the boot.
Der Oger,
I don't think it is possible to separate economic and political power. What is barely possible is to have too many people in the market for them to wield effective political power. Just BARELY possible... because there have been times and places in the last 200 years where the princes and priests were too weak.
I accept the need to regulate and limit power blocs from skewing market rules in their favor. This applies in the economic AND political markets.
Alfred, my problem with hostile takeovers is that you cannot actually know that resources are allocated. This is what I would call model uncertainty. We want to see different strategies competing against each other, not one strategy with more or better access to funding buying the other out. The danger is that hubris wins, knowhow or originality loses out.
I agree - deeper pockets does not mean greater efficiency
Some additional ideas:
Impeachment Advisors: Upon start of his tenure, have each member of congress appoint a qualified lawyer to advise him on impeachment votes. Those advices are always made public, so constituents can see if the vote differs from the advice.
Citizen councils: Randomly but representatively draft members of a citizens council from the population. They gain access to all experts mattering in a case. After a period of deliberation, they vote on suggested policies to Congress, who are then free to follow the whishes or ignore them, but again, those suggestions are made public.
Council of Representation: Likewise, one could Install such a council for each member of Congress. Numbers how many times a Representative or Senator voted for or against the advice and suggestions of the council is made public.
Not wanting to defend the Camp Doctor here, but "Flat & Fair markets" exclude industrial espionage, in which "the good protector caste" of yours has the lions share in an estimated 53 billion of damage alone to our economy, or 30K jobs each year. I do not expect that to change under a non-MAGA administration.
Competition is all fine and good, but then and now, you need cooperation, too.
Of what use is your win if no one likes or trusts you?
I wasn't making a direct analogy between "rape and murder" and corporate mergers. My point was that both rape and murder are evolutionary strategies that benefit the perpetrator in winning the gene-propagation game--rape directly and murder by eliminating competitors. In an amoral world, both are defensible by the "weeding out the unfit" argument.
The entire second half of the Ten Commandments introduce checks on certain types of evolutionary tactics in the name of morality--not merely for niceness's sake, but because we have to live with our neighbors, and living with them in a perpetual state of war is inefficient.
My thought was that the original post on this subject was about introducing the same type of dynamic in the way corporations are allowed to interact with each other.
unless you really do see corporations as types of people. I don't. At best they are 'not human' slaves.
Are you being as much of a contrarian as our host? :)
I thought you were a firm proponent of the notion that corporations are (legally) people and an opponent of my assertion that they are useful tools that can also be dangerous and should be made safer in the same way that knives have handles. So what's the difference between "useful tools" and "'not human' slaves"? Seriously asking.
Reposting at the bottom to make sure of visibility.
If you've already responded above, no need to answer again. I'll see it.
Alfred Differ:
It's not rape or murder...
I wasn't making a direct analogy between "rape and murder" and corporate mergers. My point was that both rape and murder are evolutionary strategies that benefit the perpetrator in winning the gene-propagation game--rape directly and murder by eliminating competitors. In an amoral world, both are defensible by the "weeding out the unfit" argument.
The entire second half of the Ten Commandments introduce checks on certain types of evolutionary tactics in the name of morality--not merely for niceness's sake, but because we have to live with our neighbors, and living with them in a perpetual state of war is inefficient.
My thought was that the original post on this subject was about introducing the same type of dynamic in the way corporations are allowed to interact with each other.
...unless you really do see corporations as types of people. I don't. At best they are 'not human' slaves.
Are you being as much of a contrarian as our host? :)
I thought you were a firm proponent of the notion that corporations are (legally) people and an opponent of my assertion that they are useful tools that can also be dangerous and should be made safer in the same way that knives have handles. So what's the difference between "useful tools" and "'not human' slaves"? Seriously asking.
Der Oger. There is some overlap between your notions and mine. e.g. the allocation to every member of Congress of one peremptory subpoena per year (or Congressional session and allocating funds for each member to hire a 'Facts and Science Adviser" from their home district. In each case there would develop a self-interested drive for most of them to keep the reform going, even if there's a switch in majority control. Alas, that drive is not present in your somewhat similar proposals.
As for cooperation and competition, I have always said theiy are partners. In nature, one leads to or fosters the other. Ecosystems featuring lots of competition at one level LOOK cooperative from above.
Likewise, we cannot get flat-fair Smithian competition unless there is a cooperative will to legislate and enforce rules that keep the markets etc flat and fair!
What frustrates me most, amid today’s struggles over the course of enlightenment civilization, is how "capitalism” has become a buzzword as useless as “socialism.” Those screeching hatred of capitalism(!) seldom have a clue what they are talking about. Dig it, please? KARL MARX himself admired early and middle stage capitalism! When competition is flat and somewhat-fair and vigorously creative – he deemed it THE principal force that would drive humanity's advancement of the means of production and hence offering ability to eliminate poverty, to create a demand for mass education and to eventually create a fully elevated working class that is – at the right time -- ready to take over.
If you don't know any of that, it is because no one nowadays has a clue what they are talking about, or the actual meaning of the vocabulary that they use. Average workers in my parents' day - whether pro-or anti Marx and whether or not they graduated high school - at least knew what they were talking about!
Yes, Marx predicted that LATE stage capitalism would result in consolidation of ownership into narrow hands, leading to vastly greedy cheating and competition-suppression, re-creating the feudalism with which he was familiar. That was the only outcome he deemed possible.
(Side note: that next-to-last phase was Ayn Rand's paradise, since she assumed it would all stop there, before Marx's final stage, when Karl figured the elevated advanced working class would get fed up, rebel and take over, cutting off John Galt’s head and putting it at the gate of his factory, in honor of his historical role.
We now know Marx was oversimplifying like mad. But his future scenario HAD seemed logical till FDR. Indeed under FDR and the Greatest Generation it was set aside by the alternative that Marx never imagined. That bourgeoise society could reform itself and forestall the late-phase dilemma. Indeed, the GI Bill and all the rest, returned us to a state of flat-fair-creative, for a generation, saving mid-stage capitalism to last longer and achieve miracles. Marx had seemed cast into the dustbin.
Only now, the world cabal of nescient neo-moguls and inheritance brats and "ex" commissars and their lumpenprol confederate serfs seem hell bent on making the late-stage predictions of Marx come true! Exactly as he predicted!
(I know some of them; they think they can halt the Marxian progression at the penultimate phase, Ayn Rand's paradise of uber-prepper giga-ego lords restoring feudalism, augmented by high-tech, Orwellian tools of permanence. Good luck with that! Because the world's BILLION fact professionals know cyber, bio, nuclear, nano and the rest. And you will not like us, when we're mad.)
The problem is that the WWII generation KNEW ALL THIS. And that knowledge enabled them to pull off the post-WWII miracle of staving off feudalism for a human lifetime.
…though alas, those who followed – even smart folks like Robert Reich - are illiterate ignoramuses. And yes, I include ALL the new lords and ALL the smart folks who know in their guts that this is wrong... but can't be bothered to actually know what they are talking about.
See https://jacobin.com/2019/01/karl-marx-engels-capitalism-political-economy?
(Side note: that next-to-last phase was Ayn Rand's paradise, since she assumed it would all stop there, before Marx's final stage, when Karl figured the elevated advanced working class would get fed up, rebel and take over, cutting off John Galt’s head and putting it at the gate of his factory, in honor of his historical role.
Atlas Shrugged had some sci-fi elements, such as Rearden's miracle metal, and the screen that kept Galt's Gulch hidden from the outside like Wakanda, and the goat-killing force field. But the plot also revolved around Galt's invention of an essentially-unlimited energy source that defies the laws of physics and therefore qualifies more as fantasy.
LH yes. And Galt refusing to share his inventions, even via existing imprefect markets where 'looters' would steal some value , was tantamount to murdering a billion people.. She was a deeply and spectacularly evil woman. But in her essense a (heretical) Marxist. https://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/aynrand.html
reason,
It's all hubris my friend. Even from those of us who have honest-to-goodness useful, disruptive ideas. Even from those of us who don't think it is hubris.
We DO want to see different strategies competing, but the players are all vulnerable to their own delusions. They never see themselves as misallocated. The POINT of competing is to determine who WAS and not who is.
For example, I thought my folks had a really neat idea for a launch system. We had some difficulty at one point getting along with each other (I'm at least partially to blame for that), but we split and continued with different strategies pursing the same neat idea. Turns out we were all wrong, though, and Musk and his team proved it a few years later.
On a technical level, my second team’s idea was decent, but needed a lot more money than we could raise. We didn't believe a team like the one Musk put together could beat the re-usability problem the way they did, so our 'booster' stage was radically different. He brought his own money onto the playing field and was able to leverage it MUCH more than we could have dreamed of doing... SO much so that they beat the technical issues we thought were insurmountable.
Only in hindsight can I admit that I was wrong, thus misallocated. Most of the possible investors with whom I spoke saw it in advance and wouldn’t touch us. Some of my friends got pulled along, though, and spent a decent chuck of their retirement savings along with putting their reputations at risk. I do NOT feel guilty for trying, but there can be no doubt today that we all were misallocated.
———
I’m not arguing that all corporate failures are evidence of misallocation. I DO believe that our need to raise private money requires a great deal more risk than many can stomach and a big part of that fear involves the death of a dream we nurture as our projects turn from mostly smoke and mirrors into profitable enterprises. Death of those dreams is necessary, though, and when it happens it really doesn’t matter much how the predator slips the knife between our ribs. The dream dies, but the dreamer lives on to try again.
I may sound like I oppose all regulations that constrain the game, but I don’t. What sparks my strongest objections are suggested constraints offered by those who haven’t played it… especially from those lacking the courage to play it. For anyone who has dreamed and lost, I’m very happy to discuss what could be done better. For those who decide to remain employees all their lives never taking ownership of their work… I ask for considerable caution because rule changes might not have the consequences you expect.
Okay... onward
onward and please share.
Excellent!
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