If I Were Elected King of the Country

My new friend asked me a few weeks ago, "what would you change about the world, if you had the power to?"

She said she tried to ask all new people she met that question.

She said it was surprising how many people didn't have an answer because they had never thought about it.

I couldn't answer, but for a very different reason.

I just couldn't sum up, couldn't choose from the list what to say first.

I've been thinking about it ever since then, and I still can't find any way to tie all the various things together, so, instead of going into the detail about how and why for each one, I think I'll just list as many as I can think of.

(and if anyone wants elaboration on any in particular, ask me as a comment, and maybe I'll make that one its own post)

These are in no particular order:

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Election day would be a national holiday.  No one could be forced to work more than a 4 hour day on election day. 

Anyone not registered to vote would pay a small annual penalty with their taxes.

Judges would be subject to recall by popular vote.

Congressional, presidential, and governor terms 6 years.

All term limits would be eliminated.

All elections would be instant run off type (or another equivalent to eliminate "lesser of two evils" votes).

Party, primary, and electoral college systems eliminated.

Voter initiative process on federal level, and all 50 states.

All campaign related ads would be banned from TV, radio, print, direct mail, and billboards, starting 1 year prior to any election.  Each candidate or initiative would receive expanded space in the official election guide.  All statements made that could not be verified by an independent 3rd party fact checker would be marked with an asterisk.

No individual could donate more than $500 to any campaign or political organization in a year.  No company or corporation could donate any amount to any campaign or political organization.  No union, church, or other group could donate without 100% unanimous consent of all members, and then no more than the equivalent of $100 per member.  For any amount an individual spent out of pocket for a campaign, they would have to contribute an equal amount to the public campaign fund. 
All of this would be less important, giving the ban on media ads.

Media (of any form) which reports any mistaken information or error as factual, would be required to report the correction with equal or greater prominence and length of time as the original mistake (if error was headline for 3 days, retraction must be headline for 3 days)

Public school would be paid at the national level, by number of students (regardless of performance).  Any outside income (gifts of cash or supplies by parents for example) would reduce funding by 50% of the amount of income (i.e. parent donates $100, then federal funding is reduced by $50), used for the pool, to benefit schools with less generous parents.

Teacher training and classroom curricula would be evidence based

No multiple choice test could be used for assessment.  Guiding principal should be teaching for understanding, not just retention of facts.

Preschool and kindergarten would both become mandatory and free.

2 and 4 year college / university would be voluntary, free for any family below median national income.

All college finals would be administered one semester after the end of the class (to test for long-term retention)

Public school teacher salaries would be cut by roughly 5-10% (approximately the amount private school teachers make), principals and administrators by 25-50% (to be within 25% more than teachers).  All of this extra money would go to hiring more teachers to reduce classroom size. 

Teachers would have at least 15min of prep time for each 55min of instruction.
They would be eligible for overtime after 112 hours per month(equivalent annual hours to other jobs, considering summer and other breaks - after reduced work hours, (see below))

Cognitive biases, logical fallacies, and predictable irrationality would be a required course in middle school, high school, and college (beginning, intermediate, and advanced, respectively).

Drug use would be decriminalized.  Selling without a license would not be.  Prostitution and gambling would also be legal, (though regulated and taxed).

No law or regulation could stay in effect unless it can be shown to tangibly benefit some individual or society as a whole.

No censorship of "indecency" (nudity, sex, language)

Sex ed would be taught in preschool, 5th grade, and 12th grade, each class more advanced and in-depth (the first would be similar to current Jr High level, the last would be equivalent to college Human Sexuality course).  It would be a graduation requirement, so no opt out.

It would be illegal to formally teach any child below the age of 18 any form of religion, (other than in a historical or sociological context).  This would include attending services.

Churches would no longer be tax exempt.

No government recognition of religion or God, even in a neutral, non-specific way (e.g. "...One Nation, Under God..." or "In God We Trust")

All pronouns would be replaced with gender neutral ones.

All restrooms and locker rooms would be unisex (with individual stalls, and/or separate areas of the room optionally)

Combat and infantry roles would be available to women in the military.

No government or business could mandate different dress codes by gender.

This would include that women could be topless anywhere that men could.

Public beaches and parks would be clothing optional.

All laws on sexual assault, age of consent, marriage, etc would be gender neutral (this would, among other things, inherently legalize gay marriage).

No cosmetic surgery (including circumcision and pierced ears) before the age of 18

All subsidies and price controls for feed crops would be eliminated.

Minimum standards for animal welfare would include daily access to outdoors and a diet resembling a "natural" one - i.e. herbivores could not be fed animal by-products, nothing would be fed manure, nor its own specie, nor a reciprocal specie (i.e. Animal A is fed animal B, and animal B is fed animal A)

All new cars would be governed to a maximum of 65mph, or to the maximum of the state is is sold in, whichever is lower.

Each lane on any highway with 2 or more lanes in each would direction would have specified lane speeds. A two lane would have a maximum speed of 65 and minimum of 55 in the left lane, and max of 55 and minimum of 40 in the right. 
For a 3 lane, from the left, the speeds to maintain would be 60mph, 50, and 40 (each +/- 5mph).  A 4 lane would be 60, 55, 50, and 45 (+/-5).  A 5 lane would be 60, 55, 50, 45, 40 (+/-5). 

Speeds on all highways would be monitored by randomly placed, (and periodically moved) radar machines - a combination of the radar systems that say "your speed is:" and the camera detection system that catch red light and toll violators.  Like the latter, they would look up registration by plate number, and mail you your ticket.

The first 2 violations would be warning.  The 3rd would be a $100 fine.  The 4th would be a $500 fine.  The 5th would be one week mandatory community service.  The 6th would be license suspension for a year.

No one could get a drivers license without an intensive driver's ed class (50 hours minimum).  It would cover all the basics, plus: changing oil, checking tire pressure / fluid levels, changing a wheel, and safety check - cone tests, parallel parking, driving in reverse - calculating speed, distance, and time, as well as braking distance and impact force at different speeds - fuel economy, basic hypermiling - safe and legal bicycle operation - auto crashes, causes and prevention - practical accident avoidance, using simulator - poor weather handling, rain, ice, snow, fog, and glare - driving with manual transmission.  The final test could not contain any multiple choice questions, and would cover all topics, some as hands on skills tests.

Driving class (as above) would have a 2-3 day mandatory refresher course every 10 years - every 5 years before age 25 and after age 60, as well as after every moving violation or accident

No communication device while driving (including hands free) except 2-way radios used in the course of a job which involves driving (truck and taxi drivers, emergency services)

Public safety tax based on weight for all motor vehicles, added to annual registration (i.e. one pays for the additional risk to everyone else caused by their choice to buy a 3 ton SUV rather than a 1 ton car) - based on the grand total public cost of all accidents, divided by the total number of registered cars, proportioned by weight.

Anyone found to be 1% or greater at fault in any auto "accident" would be automatically charged with criminal negligence.

Revoke mandatory airbags, seatbelts, crash rating standards.

Traffic lights would flash green before turning yellow (as in Mexico).  They would flash red before turning green (so you know to turn your engine back on)

Stop signs would be considered yield signs for bicyclists (as in Ohio)

All 4-way stop sign intersections would be converted to either a 2-way stop, a traffic circle, or a stop light.

All major one-way streets would have timed / synchronized stop lights.

50% tax on retail gasoline, money used to subsidize public transit.

At rush hour, instead of a carpool lane, the left most lane would be for commercial vehicles (being used for work, not for commuting), transit, emergency services, and people with permanent disabilities only.  On highways with 3 or more lanes, the next one over from the commercial / handicapped lane would be for carpools of 4+ people, plus toll road paid by electronic RFID tag

Upper limit of inheritance or gifts of $10,000.  The government income from estates would replace all (or at least most) of the income tax.

The rate for any remaining income tax would be at least half for earned income (wages / salary / commission) as for unearned income (dividends, capital gains, gifts, prizes).

The tax rate on unearned income would be steeply progressive, with a maximum rate of 99% after $100,000.

One may only own land which you personally live and/or work on - i.e. a maximum of two parcels (one for work, one for home) per person.  They can be any size, so long as they are a) continuous and b) actively and directly used by the owner in some way.

No one could have more than 2 households as tenants, and then only if the tenants share the same parcel that the landlord lives on.

Corporate charters would only be granted for very specific circumstances, where it is demonstrated that the product or service offered could not be provided by a privately held company, and that it is of overall benefit to society.  Any charter application which met those standards and was granted would be for a specific and limited time period - 1 year by default, 5 years with requested extension, 10 years considered with an explanation of the need for a longer time period.

Patents and copyright would be good for 10 years, or until a 25% return on investment was made by the patent/copyright holder, or until the applicant dies whichever came first.

Business licenses and fees would be by percentage of net income, not flat amounts.

Business insurance companies would be required to offer a broad range of coverage and deductible amounts, so that small scale and hobby businesses with low maximum potential risk could afford coverage.

Any form of business could be run out of one's residence unless a specific risk or harm to the neighbors could be demonstrated.  "Lowering property values" would not in-and-of itself be a valid form of harm.

Employers would not pay for the employees' payroll taxes.  The employee would cover the full amount of their own social security and medicare taxes.

Employers would also not cover medical insurance, but that would be irrelevant, because there would be nationalized, single payer, health care.

1/2 of company profit would be distributed equally among all employees, without regard for title or position.  Any increase in efficiency due to improved technology that were not passed on to the consumer would be distributed to employees either in the form of fixed hours and increased salary, or fixed salary and decreased hours.

No one could sue for loss of profit.

A company with more than zero profit could not lay off employees.

Overtime would be anything over 86 hours per month, would pay time and a half, no exceptions by profession, would apply to salary and commission as well.  Double time after 172 hours in one month.

No company or corporation could buy another.

No company could have more than one location, except in those cases where the nature of the company required multiple locations (such as delivery service).  Exception could be made on a case by case basis, if the expansion could be shown to benefit society as a whole enough to offset the anti-competitiveness.

Any company based in the US, or with a majority of US shareholders, or with 1% or more of product exported to the US, must follow all US wage, safety, and environmental laws and regulations, regardless of the location of production.  (For example, if a company builds a factory in China, they still must pay US minimum wage if they want to export the product into the US)

No US military protection of private property, on US soil or abroad.  For example, US oil companies would have to pay for their own private security to guard pipelines.  Private corporate interests could not be considered "national interests", even if the product they produce is of value to the nation.

Any action of military or CIA is automatically war, whether or not it is officially declared.

Any action longer than 5 days must be approved by congress.  Any action longer than 60 days must be unanimously approved by all 50 states (via senators and/or governors).  Any action longer than one year requires majority vote of all US citizens.

Military budget reduced by 90% (give or take).  It could never be increased to more than 10% less than whatever nation has the highest military budget.

Universal conscription of all citizens at 18, both genders, deferments for medical issues, but no other reason.  Everyone must attend bootcamp.  After that, choice of 2 years of either military service, or civil service.

In middle school, high school, and college, reversible long-term birth control would be provided at no cost to both genders (yes, the technology exists).  This would be voluntary, and either child or parent could choose to opt out for any reason, however it would be the default - everyone would get it unless they actively choose to opt out.

(Voluntary) permanent sterilization would be provided at no cost to all adults.

All forms of contraceptive would be covered in full through health care.

Child tax credits would be eliminated.

Welfare would provide a fixed amount per household - it would not increase with additional children.

Universal, single payer healthcare - however, in order to engage in certain high risk activities, you would have to opt out.  You would present your opt out card before buying cigarettes, and to get a registration sticker with a stripe which indicates you may drive a car without a seatbelt of ride a motorcycle without a helmet.  Possibly also for purchasing more than a certain quantity of alcohol at one time, and certain foods.  Anyone who opted out could be refused service at any hospital unless they pay in full in advance, even in emergencies.  They could still purchase private health insurance, if any private insurer wanted to cover them.



Citizenship would not be automatic:
At age 18, each person would need to pass the same citizenship exam that immigrants have to pass (this would be covered in high school). 
They would  have to go to military bootcamp, and then either serve in the military or in civil service for 2 years.  They would have to register to vote. 

Anyone choosing not to apply for citizenship would be considered a native resident. 

Native residents would not have to pay any taxes.

They also could not vote or run for office.  They would not be eligible for public assistance, including health care and (college level) education.  They could not drive motor vehicles on public roads, nor sue in court.  They would be responsible for the labor, fuel, and expenses if using emergency services such as police or firefighters. 

One could apply for citizenship at anytime, up to age 40, however, once revoked, you could not get it back for 15 years, and would have to begin the process from the beginning.

Trespassing in the Commune

I'm not much of one for ideology or party lines.

If I see an error in someone's thinking, I'm just as likely to mention it if I agree with their overall point as if I don't.  Trying to get people to see all sides of things tends to put me in the roll of Devil's Advocate, and so I have been accused of being a capitalist by communists, a communist by capitalists, a fan of Ayn Rand (HA!) by anarchists.

A few years ago I wrote some about illegal immigration:

http://biodieselhauling.blogspot.com/2012/02/viii-in-which-national-origin-is.html

http://biodieselhauling.blogspot.com/2012/05/23-on-immigration.html
http://biodieselhauling.blogspot.com/2012/05/27-join-california-resistance.html

http://biodieselhauling.blogspot.com/2006/12/two-immigration-articles-in-week.html

Awareness of white privilege VS actually working to change it

• Apr 28, 2010

Awareness of white privilege VS actually working to change it

A couple friends of mine are taking a class on being a "white ally" - race awareness and relations, power and privileged, and counteracting racism.

One of them mentioned to me some critical feedback she had offered and it got me to thinking in more detail what has always bothered me about those sort of discussions, but up until now never quite pinned down.

The following is not a commentary on that class in particular, as I know essentially nothing about it, but rather a critique of a few general ideas I have heard and read on the topic in the past:

1 There is no such thing as "people of color"
-The impact of past racism (including slavery) and present racism does not effect all races equally, nor all in the same way.
- A black american and a white american likely have more in common with each other than with a fresh-off-the-boat Vietnamese person. A white american whose family has been in the US for generations likely has more culture in common with a black american than with a first generation eastern european immigrant with whom they share skin color.
-The very term "people of color" encourages white people to think in terms of a false dichotomy of 'us' (all white people) and 'them' (everyone else). It not only homogenizes all other races, it also makes everyone not white into an "other".
-Lumping all non-white cultures into one category, while giving white an entire separate category in itself suggests a type of superiority.
-This dichotomy also discounts the existence of mixed race individuals (officially 2% of US society, but really much higher - most surveys, as well as society, force people to choose one identity, even if they are in fact mixed)

2 Historical racism is the single largest cause for modern black poverty, and poverty does generally correlate with crime. However no historical or sociological factors can excuse individual behavior. No matter what circumstances a person is born into, they have a choice about their own behavior. Apologizing for, ignoring, discounting, or explaining away black crime rates, drug rates, or general anti-social behavior (e.g. boombox on a crowded train) does nothing to increase equality, and does not bring less conscious white people about as allies.

3 Discrimination is explicitly illegal. Talking about "institutionalized" or "systemic" racism does not address the issues which are most relevant today. While there are still white supremacists in the US, their view has become as unacceptable in mainstream society as it once was only among civil-rights activists. The president of the US is 1/2 African. This does not mean that the conversation about race is over. However, it does mean it is time to change that conversation.

For example, talking about power hierarchies is mostly nonsensical today. If racism = racism + power (as is often claimed by race activists), this does not imply that only whites can be racist, because whites do not have any particular power over other races. There are minorities in the role of police officer, judge, congress person, boss, professor, etc. as well as whites in poverty, in jail, or otherwise powerless. If you ignore all individual circumstances and look only at the whole society, then no one can be racist, because society is no one person.

4 Rarely is it explicitly acknowledged how much - and in what way - individuals (primarily, but not exclusively, white) continue to benefit from past racism. This nation was taken by force from the American Indian, built largely by African slaves (as well as Asian indentured servants) and thanks largely to not only racism, but also inheritance and locally funded education, past disparities directly result in present disparities. Even if one's own ancestors never killed Indians or owned slaves, the mere fact of living in this country means you personally benefit from those who did.

5 Not all non-white people are poor. Not all white people are middle class or wealthy. Class and race are not interchangeable. To speak about them as if they were interchangeable represents a stereotype - it implies a universal truth based on a statistic. The implication itself is racist.

Replacing discussions of poverty, economics, and class with discussions of race is a tool those with power (white, yes, but a special subset of white people - wealthy conservatives) use to polarize the working class. They emphasize criminals and welfare recipients (read: blacks) or immigrants (read: hispanics) and leave unspoken as a given the unity between white Americans of different classes. This helps prevent what should be a natural alliance of the lower class against those who exploit them.

6 What keeps the racial status quo in our society is not a social issue, but rather an economic one.
What too few people talk about is the way in which the condition of one generation affects the next.
After slavery blacks were supposed to get land. This was not a hand-out, but merely a way to compensate, to allow them to begin to catch up. This never happened.
Since poverty is inherited just as surely as wealth, the only way to level the playing field short of paying reparations (with 145 years interest) today would be a strict inheritance tax on not only the wealthy, but the middle class. This would include not only cash, but things such as houses and family businesses.

The single largest factor in predicting an individuals success in life is their education. Pre-school is the best indicator of how well a child does in school. It will be impossible to ever have a equal society without universal, mandatory, publicly financed pre-school. Schools in America are funded 50% or more by local taxes. This system guarantees that schools in poor areas are underfunded and schools in wealthy areas have better resources and an easier time keeping good teachers. Locally funded public schools is an amazingly effective method of retaining the status quo, while appearing on the surface to be neutral and fair. To counteract generations of inherited poverty, ignorance, and a cultural mindset of being separate from society, America should be offering fully funded college for all low-income high-school graduates. And because poverty and ignorance are inherited no matter one's color, this should be extended to anyone who can't afford it.

Racism, in the sense of individual people with power holding stereotypes about a race and acting on that prejudice against individual members of said race, is a relatively small factor in modern America. Formally institutionalized racism is a thing of the past.
Were all of society, at all levels, to suddenly become "color blind", the trends set in motion hundreds of years ago would continue none-the-less. For this reason educating individuals about the existence of "white privilege" can not do much to change anything. If energy is going to be invested into change, it should be invested where it will do the most good.

Its one thing to be aware of culturally insensitive language. It is another all together to recognize that the economic system we take for granted perpetuates the impact of slavery, and that no matter how aware one is in their personal relationships, you directly benefit from the current system - and then work to change that system, even if it means undermining your own economic advantages.

This would mean advocating significant increases in middle class taxes, to fund more social programs. This would mean taking the time to counter the "tea-party" people, pointing out that true justice demands a redistribution of wealth. It would mean protesting to get colleges fees raised, in order to pay for scholarships. This would mean, instead of donating money / time / materials to your own children's school, donating that same time and money to the poorer district a few miles away.

Me personally, I have been called ni**er on more than one occasion. But (not counting by other black people who use it casually - that is whole different topic) it has been in each case by a meth addict (one disowned by her family, and the other evicted from a trailer park). These are people with no power, no influence. These are people so low on the social strata, all they have left to feel even mildly good about themselves is to find someone to hate, for any reason they can. As much as it roils the blood to hear it, they are harmless. The people and ideas that maintain the status quo - including associations of particular races with poverty, drug use, crime, etc - are not overtly racist; in fact, in most cases not even necessarily sub-consciously racist. Racism set up the status quo, but economics is what maintains it.

Capitalism, the free market, individualism, and the republic system of government (as opposed to true democracy) all play a part in maintaining the present as it was in the past. If we want a just society, those are the things that we need to look at first.

Travel and work. And hubris

• Feb 4, 2009

Travel and work. And hubris

I tend to spend time around certain type of people. I feel fortunate to live in a place where there are so many like-minded people to be drawn to, and to have attracted to me.
They work in education, or in jobs with a direct environmental benefit.
They are socially aware, concerned with the world outside of just their own personal lives.
As such they tend to buy local food, used clothes and furniture, they are vegetarian, vote regularly. They bicycle and take transit, or if they drive its a sub-compact shared with other people, a hybrid, or powered by veggie oil.
They value things like education, cultural understanding, and tolerance.
They see that the way we do things here is not always necessarily the "best" way to do them. And a part of valuing what other cultures has to offer entails traveling to other places and experiencing them first hand.

Driving that most-visible-of-all-symbols-of-American-consumption, the H2 (the Hummer luxury model) across the country with a couple of passengers, along the 3000 miles of Highway 80 from SF to NY, uses less fuel and causes less pollution (per person) than doing the same journey in a full loaded commercial passenger plane.

In other words - if you travel by plane, you don't get to look down on Hummer drivers.

A single round-trip intercontinental flight more than negates an entire year's worth of commuting by bicycle.



We are able to get away with travel because it is so grossly subsidized; from our military (with a budget as large as the entire rest of the world's militaries combined) being assigned to guard oil pipelines to the fact that airports are paid for by taxes instead of the airlines; combined with the fact that we simply have way too much money (the world average income is $7000, the less developed world averages $700 per year - in the US its $47,000) and so we don't think twice about spending it frivolously, from household doo-dahs to vacations.

When a person travels for education, or humanitarian reasons, with the peace corp perhaps, the plane ticket alone is likely to cost several times more than what the local residents make - and do more environmental destruction than the residents would have done - in an entire year.

And this segues me nicely into my next topic.

The idea that in order to be a well rounded individual, to understand different perspectives, and be truly educated, worldly and insightful you have to travel is a form of elitism.
It is essentially saying "if you have not had the opportunities I've had, you can not possibly be quite at my level. There is a form of insight I have which you never will".
It is a form of hubris.
Most people in the world won't have the chance to, say, bicycle from home to a foreign country, but I am uncomfortable with claiming it makes me better than someone who hasn't, or even that I posses some great insight or understanding because of it.

When we send aid to small villages we are saying in a way: "You need help. You can't take care of yourself. We know the right way for you to do things". We Americans, wealthy and young and educated (and mostly white) come to offer you poor things some charity and advice. At the same time as we feel superior, we also feel good about ourselves for having been so generous. We live in the local conditions (for a few weeks), so that years later we can say we experienced it, but when the project/class/vacation is over we get to go back to our lives with washing machines, cars, and air conditioning.

We generally tend to come away with a new perspective on our own culture - namely, that not everything we do in our own society is the only, nor necessarily "best" way to do things. Other places are more community oriented, less money driven, less stressed. Love and marriage are seen differently, the role of family is different, the role of government is different.

And as often as not, having experienced a few months, maybe a year, of this alternative culture, we romanticize it, deciding it is ideal and failing to acknowledge any of the problems that it had. Focus on some culture other than ones own is still just as much a form of ethnocentrism.
The most common examples I see are everything which is lumped under the broad category "Eastern" and "Native".
Eastern really means "traditional eastern"; today countries in Asia have things like surgery and drugs to treat people, just like we have here.
We have plenty of traditional cures in the West as well, but its rare to see anyone claim that leeches to draw out bad blood, exorcisms, or cocaine should be included as legitimate alternative medicine.
Pointing to some aspect of another culture, out of context, and saying "this way is better" is a type of elitism.
If there really were one "right" answer, it would have spread everywhere by now.

[All that said, people are going to do it anyway, just like we drive cars even though we know we shouldn't.  So, at the very least, here are a few suggestions to help keep your hubris, and potential negative impact, at a minimum: http://www.ethicaltraveler.org/explore/reports/thirteen-tips-for-the-accidental-ambassador/ ]

While I am attacking those people who I personally identify most with, there is another wide-spread idea which reflects our hubris, an example of the sort of luxury can be bought with our rather decadent lifestyles.
In this, as in the last example, I admit that I too am guilty of it.

Along with the obvious physical necessities (food clean water, air), listed among basic life necessities are relative intangibles should as security, companionship, health care, and meaningful employment.

I had a customer I worked with months ago who was a real estate agent. She lived fairly modestly, but had a fancy car, a nice apartment, an expensive TV. She booked me a 2nd time recently, this time for moving, as she found a place to house sit long term for very little rent. While still working as a real estate agent, she had taken a second job at a bagel shop.

I occasionally work with day-laborers when I get a job that's too big for one person and the customer is unable to help.
There are always plenty to be found in certain areas of Oakland and Berkeley (in designated "day-laborer hiring zones" and near any home depot). They work for whatever you offer to pay.
(Well, I assume so; I pay them the same rate as I get paid, as a matter of principal)

Me: "it'll be 150"
Mario: "50? OK, good" He smiles and nods.
Me: "ONE 50"
Mario: "Oh... What?"
Me: "one hundred and fifty"
Mario: "150? how much for me?"
Me: "no, I mean, 150 each, 150 for you, and 150 for him." [I had 2 employees that day]
I don't think he fully believed it until the end of the day when I actually handed out the pay.

They are plenty strong; although they look small, they have the functional strength that only comes from doing real work - they are far more capable than some of my customers who obviously spend plenty of time in the gym, (while a customer who looks strong will stop to rest on the 3rd flight of stairs when he and I are carrying a big solid Oak desk, a day laborer will put the same desk on his back, and, despite my objections, carry it all the way up himself, nonstop).
They have at least passable English, and have a wide variety of experience, doing carpentry one day, painting the next.

Except recently chances are they aren't doing anything today, and didn't yesterday either.
There are many times more people still waiting for work at noon than I am used to, as the economic situation means less new construction or large remodeling jobs.
Someone I picked up a few weeks ago said it was the first job he had gotten in almost 2 months.

Over the past 60 years unemployment has hovered around 3-6% (the most notable exception being under Regan when it hit nearly 11%).
For the past 5 years its has stayed below 6%, for the last 2 under 5%.
It is currently up to 7.2% with 2 million jobs lost in the last 4 months alone.

For the 11 million unemployed, (not to mention the undocumented workers who don't get counted), the necessity is work. Any work. Work to make money to pay rent, buy food, take care of dependents.

It is the luxury of someone who has never had to worry about those things, who has plenty of prospects, and who, if all else failed, could always move back into mom and dad's house, to decide work is not good enough. We have the luxury of thinking about whether we would prefer a boring job that makes more of a difference, or one with a smaller impact but has more room for creativity. We can decide if we would rather work on social justice or the environment. And we can claim that doing something "meaningful" is not just a nice option to have, but actually a basic human need, without which a person can not truly be happy.

By that standard, not only are the countless unemployed not ok, but the hundreds of millions of people around the world who are just doing ordinary mundane productive work are all living meaningless, pointless lives, and may as well not bother with making it through another day unless they begin the search today for something more fulfilling. All the farmers and welders and janitors and bus drivers and mechanics and construction crews and clerks and mid-level managers and plumbers and actors and waiters and small business owners, who have spouses and friends and homes and activities they like to do with their time off, and who thought they were happy; no, they are not. They are missing one of the fundamental necessities of life. They aren't actively making the world a better place.

Who the hell are we to claim that someone else's happiness isn't real?

What about the countless generations who existed before there was wide-spread environmental degradation, before it occurred to anyone that the world might need saving? What about people who live in a (relatively) just society already? What about the entire world back when most people worked in agriculture and lived fairly self-sufficiently? Were they all unfulfilled in life too, with no possible way to achieve real meaning? Or did they perhaps content themselves with the positive impact they could have on their own life and their own family, friends and neighbors; just by being a decent, generous person?


I hope not to offend, and alienate myself from my friends and readers.

Of course I personally have spent a month in a land far from home and consider that trip to have been a milestone in my life. I cycled out, but I flew home, and have taken quite a few plane trips since.
I run a certified green business and work for a non-profit, and these are things I am proud of.

But I believe its not the Emperor, but ourselves who are walking around naked, each hoping that as long as no one says anything, no one will notice.

As people who are aware of and concerned about the worlds problems and how each individual is a part of the whole, it is us who can least afford hypocrisy.

Global Warming vs. Fascism; or, why NASA wouldn’t have stopped Apophis

Global Warming vs. Fascism; or, why NASA wouldn’t have stopped Apophis

[reposted from Nov 19, 2007 - updated 2012 after in person talk with actual climate scientists!  This is the essay that first caught the attention of the editors of Faircompanies, which led to me blogging for them, and eventually to being video interviewed by them.  The follow up video, about hypermiling, came out 2 days ago]


I am a liberal. I am an environmentalist. I commute by bicycle to my job advocating the bicycle as a means of everyday transportation. I run my work truck on modified vegetable oil at significant extra cost compared to petroleum diesel. I have a reasonably strong understanding of the sciences, including an associates in biology and earth science (which encompasses, among other things, geology and ecology)
I could be called a global warming "denier".

I should clarify; I don’t not believe in the same way I don’t believe in "God".
I acknowledge that the world is almost certainly getting warmer, and there is a good chance that humans have had something to do with it. It is certainly possible. 

Look at the graph above (or click the link below)
Graph of temperature of planet earth over time

Note that the time scale is logarithmic.  In other words, each section to the left is 10 times more compressed than the one next to it.  Notice that the right side of the graph is in thousands of years, the left half is in millions.

The graph is a log-scale in order to more easily see the range over different time scales. Each section exists on its own with a linear scale, I just choose this graphic because I think it allows for a better perspective of the over all long term cycles, in addition to the smaller cycles within the large ones. 


Here is the right side, in linear scale.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
or

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...


Here is another linear scale, looking at only the recent past (12 thousand years is recent in geological terms), after most major Earth changes had settled down:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...




The graph that is used by people who want to convince people of human caused climate change is invariably that of the last 1000 years. 1000 years, on the scale of global processes, is nothing. It is equivalent to looking at specie change or continent movement over the past 1000 years which would "prove" evolution and plate tectonics are myth.

 
However, the question is not "is the Earth getting warmer". That is measurable. The questions are: 1 "is there a net positive or a net negative feedback mechanism?" in other words, will it continue out of control or will it naturally stabilize; and 2 "is it our fault?"

Looking at the larger scale, from the time the earths climate settled into a reasonably stable pattern, there has been a periodic cycle, and we are not outside of the range of normal. From the fact that there have been at least 5 similar cycles so far, there is a strong indication that some negative feedback mechanism at play which serves to keep temperature extremes in check.

This is not to say that the consequences of a temperature increase (like the ones which have in fact occurred, naturally) are not catastrophic. It has been estimated that at least one of those past times of warming contributed to the extinction of up to 90% of all sea life, and 50-70% of land life.  However, humans and our technology wasn’t around to cause it.

I have yet to see any compelling evidence that the rate of change is outside the normal range - we simply have no way to precisely measure the change over very small intervals of something that happened billions of years before we existed. Nor is a rapid rate automatically indicative of a ever-increasing one. If there is a net negative feedback mechanism (and the historical global temperatures cyclic nature is a strong indicator that there is) it may simply kick in sooner if the rate of change is higher.

The historical geologic data suggests that it is temperature which affects CO2 levels, not the other way around.

I have heard many times now environmentalists, journalists, and politicians say something along the lines of "there is a scientific consensus" or "the facts are in, the question is what do we do about it" or some equivalent.
There isn’t, and they aren’t.
There is still a great deal of scientific debate. And not like evolution. Its not just scientologists and scienticians who question this hypothesis (it is not a theory by the scientific definition, as evolution is)

[UPDATE:  I have had an opportunity to speak to several actual climate scientists recently, who were in the Bay Area for a Earth science convention.  I had assumed that, more than 4 years after I had written this essay, things would have changed significantly.  Methods would have improved, more data would have come in, and much of what I wrote would be dated. 
Turns out the only thing I learned is that they genuinely believed in the misinformation they were saying. 
I started explaining some of the points written above. 
When I pointed out the Earth has been warmer at times in the past,  I got the same standard answer I've heard from many knowledgeable non-scientists: "it has never warmed as rapidly as it is now". 
Above I argued that we may not have precise enough measurements to make that assessment, but I have since learned we do - and it has gotten much warmer much faster at times before human technology existed.  In recent history the average Earth temperature has gone up about 1 degree over 50 years.  At the end of the "Younger Dryas period" the average Earth's temperature raised by 7 degrees in just 20 years - about 15 times more rapidly. 
Later we talked about the climate models used to make predictions.  Turns out they are using 1800 as a baseline because thats when we started adding carbon to the atmosphere.  Because reality is so complex and we can't accurately take everything into account, the solution is to pretend that natural climate variations don't exist, and that if not for our actions the world would still be exactly hov it was in 1800.  But of course we know that even if we only look at the Holocene (and I would argue that is still cherry picking data) there is a cycle of roughly 5-10 thousand years.  But that is just a sub-cycle of a larger pattern that repeats every 50-100 thousand years.
That cycle is the baseline.
Now, if we were deviating significantly from THAT moving trend-line, we could say with relative confidence that something we did has affected the balance.
Modern climate scientists, with the fastest computers, are not yet able to even accurately model the climate changes that we already know occurred over the past couple billion years - there are just too many variables.
In other words, no one can plug in the starting conditions on Earth, and then have a program figure out where things were 100 million, 10 million, 1 million, 100 thousand years ago.
Without that, there is no baseline with which to determine where we would be today w/o human activity.
If we don't know where the climate would be today w/o us, we have absolutely no way to say what affect we are having.
I think even the experts are making the "emperor is wearing fine clothes" mistake that comes from being in insulated group of people on the defensive]

--


Granted, IF we are contributing to it, and IF there is a net positive feedback, then we may be doing severe damage, and it may be difficult or impossible to reverse it. It may very well turn out that by the time we know for sure it will be too late.
That is a reason to act now.

The irony is in the fact that we already know for sure that our driving and electricity habits damage both human health and our ecosystem at large.

Cancer, asthma, mercury contamination, loss of habitat, acid rain, smog, ground level ozone, soot, nuclear waste which is deadly for millions of years, strip mining, oil spills - not to mention the undeniable link between how much we drive and how many of us are obese (a problem no hybrid can ever solve).

And whether or not we have reached so-called "peak oil", it is indisputably a finite resource. Even if we find a way to develop tar sand fields, maybe it lasts us 200 years instead of 20, but it will not last forever. And as it eventually declines, the oil related conflicts of the past half century (from OPECs US embargo in the 70s to today ongoing war in Iraq) will inevitably increase proportionately.

These are real problems. There is no doubt that they have affects on our world and our lives. There is no question that we are causing them. There is no question that we could easily reduce or eliminate many of them by cutting back on our own (as Americans) luxuries. Technology is also likely to play a role, along with government regulations.

All of these real and undeniable problems have not been sufficient motivation to change our habits and lifestyle, nor even to spur new technology.

Instead, we have glommed on to this idea of global warming, and in order to make it seem more urgent, people claim there is no debate. Most of them no doubt heard it from someone else, and they fully believe it. Someone must have started this particular urban legend, and must have been lying deliberately.


--

But lets say that it turns out that we are significantly increasing the worlds average temperature.
Lets say that we overwhelm the previous millinea’s negative feedback mechanism so that further ice ages become impossible.
Say that it causes catastrophic consequences for us.

This would ultimately cause problems for much of earth’s life, including all humans. Even you live in one of the places which is not affected (or positively affected) you have to deal with the millions of people who now need to move. We can expect rising prices of all sorts, wars over land, food, water. Weather extremes. Bad stuff.
Everyone loses.
However, for any one person: everyone else is driving. Why should I stop? The impact of any one person cutting electricity usage in half or giving up their car is truly negligible when 300 million other people don’t change. Given that, why self-sacrifice?

Game theory has been run many times, by many people. In nature an altruistic strategy can become stable. The cheaters can be penalized to the point where it is to the individuals advantage to be good. This can be seen in some species societies, as well as in computer models.
Among humans however (at least Americans) it never seems to work.
Among educated professionals and business leaders, agreements break down, and everyone loses.
A frequent scenario involves a publicly available fishing grounds. Anyone can fish for free. You can sell what you catch. The fish have a limited rate of regeneration. If everyone takes only a given number of fish, the system is sustainable.
But as soon as its discovered someone else is "cheating" they all, wanting to keep up or "remain competitive", do the same. No one person causes the destruction of the system, yet everyone involved is directly responsible.
This game has been run by sociologists and mathematicians. They know the theory. They still end up "overfishing" their virtual lakes.

This phenomenon is noted in sociology, biology, and economics, and is referred to as the tragedy of the commons

--

There are certain words in our language which have been attached to a certain perception which goes far beyond their meaning. Communism used to be one such word. Political leaders (with help from the media) deliberately demonized the word. There was a time when few Americans could tell you what the word actually meant, although they could tell you without any doubt that they were strongly against it.

In reality, while it has never been enacted exactly as intended (as we are neither democratic nor purely capitalist here), the basic idea has to do with sharing; that everyone should have their needs met before anyone gets to build wealth.
Details aside, it is a fundamentally different way of looking at things.

In the US we learn to value individual freedom above all else.
Our most basic and fundamental value is freedom - "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" (and, though not written down, that is generally assumed to include pursuit of profit).
Victimless crimes aside, for the most part we feel that as long as we are not directly hurting a particular individual, we should be allowed to do whatever we want.

Ones right to fish should not be infringed upon.

Obviously there are many examples in reality where this outlook leads directly to overall harm for everyone involved.

Global warming, if we are in fact making it worse, will be one of those things.
So far, with the wide spread belief that the debate is over, much has been talked about, little has been done.
Average fuel economy is still far below what we had the technology to produce decades ago. The best hybrid gets worse mileage than a cheap compact car from 10 years ago. (note that CO2, the gas thought responsible for global warming, is a natural result of combustion. A more well built and efficient engine does not emit less CO2. The only way to decrease it per mile is increasing overall mileage)
New power plants are still being built as electricity use is still climbing.

In order to produce real results, we as a society would have to be willing to restrict both the options of individuals and the profit potential of corporations. We are loath to do either.
In fact, we generally feel this is immoral, even if the ultimate consequence is a diminished happiness for everyone (or even, perhaps, our ultimate self-destruction).

--

As it turns out, we are probably safe.
It has been less than a year since increased observation led to this conclusion.
The chances were originally estimated at 2.7% (1 in 37) that in 2029 or 2036 we would be hit by a rather large asteroid called Apophis. It was about 2 years between the time the possibility was noticed and the time it was determined to be safe. Astronomers revised estimates still predict that it will pass closer to the earth than our geosynchronous communications satellites.

Apophis is over 1000ft in diameter, weighs 50 million tons, and travels 18.5 miles every second.

You would think this would have been something more people would have heard about, people would have talked about it, there would have been international conferences, discussions, debates, and public input on who would take the initiative to, say, put a tracking device on Apophis so we would have better data, how long we should wait before acting, and begin plans of what to do if it turned out a collision was likely.

Perhaps it was because the statistical likelihood seemed smaller. Perhaps it was because we prefer to think nature (not just life, but all reality outside of humans) can do no wrong. Perhaps it is as random as what celebrity the media chooses to focus on in a given week.

Ultimately though, if it kept looking more and more likely that Apophis would hit us, eventually someone would likely say something.
And amid the resulting furor, a lot would be said, but chances are, not so much would be done.
The question would be, who is going to pay for this?
Few countries would have the technical capacity to change the course of an asteroid.
The US would resent spending their own tax dollars (which will be at quite a premium by 2029) on a project that is going to save the whole world. It might not even hit our country. Everyone else should chip in at least equally.

--

Fascism refers to a political system in which it is assumed that the good of the overall society supersedes the best interests of individuals.
A fascist superpower would fire up some rockets ensuring a killer asteroid did not hit the Earth, and that would be the end of it. The research would be government funded, and if need be industries would be commandeered to build whatever was deemed the most effective solution. The choice would not be left up to the individual owner of a factory that makes rockets, nor would it be left up to the "free market".

In a pure free market, if a comet is coming, everybody dies.

Fascism, while accurately thought of as authoritarian or totalitarian, is often if not always a populist movement. In places it has arisen in the past it has been supported by the very poor, working class, small business, big business, intellectuals, land owners, and farmers. It is anti-individualistic and anti-liberal, which is why it has grown to be accepted as synonymous with "evil" as the US has strengthened and exported its ideals around the world. It is opposed both to the free market and to communism. It is opposed by both the extremes of the political left and right in the US, in both cases due to the restrictions of individual freedom (social in one case, economic in the other).

Don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating fascism.
I just feel the need to question those things we all take as obvious fact when obviously many other people have felt differently at times. Instead of going along with our local beliefs, whatever they might be, perhaps at times we should question if the ’others’ in the world might not have had something useful going, something we could learn from. Instead of adopting a pre-made ideology, maybe pick and choose the good parts from each, see the problems in each, and maybe come up with something altogether new. It would sound crazy to claim to be a liberal who who thinks a lot of liberals are whiny crybabies living in a dreamland, to believe in much of libertarianism and want to eliminate the corporation, or to vote green and believe there is something positive or valuable in fascism. Or would it?

27; Join The California Resistance

·                     Sep 16, 2006

27; Join The California Resistance

I want to stop the rest of the country from moving in.

They all know this is the best place to live, that's why they keep coming in and driving our housing prices up. But those fuckers weren't born here, I was, why the hell should my tax dollars let them drive on my roads? They need to stay the fuck in Kansas or Ohio or New York or where ever the hell they keep coming from, cause we have enough people here already.
And as if that's not bad enough, they come bringing their republican and christian bull with them.

Look, if you come from Mexico, learn the fucking language. And if you come from Florida, learn the God damn political rhetoric! This is San Fransisco! We LIKE gay people here, so shut the fuck up, or go back to Idaho! This is OUR state. If you weren't born here, get out.

If you weren't born here, you don't deserve the chance to live here and get all it's benefits.

Who's with me!

Secede from the Union!!!

23; On immigration

·                                 Sep 12, 2006

23; On immigration

Imagine this:

A man wins the lottery. He hits the big jackpot, 23 million dollars.

Then, he gets taxed 1/3 of it, 7.6Million dollars.

This means he just got 15.4 Million, which he didn't earn, which he doesn't especially deserve, but which he gets to use on whatever he wants.

And he bitches and moans about having to pay that 7mil in taxes

"Its so unfair, why should everyone else get to profit off of MY money? Why should MY money pay for roads and health care and schools and firemen and police? I can afford those things on my own, I don't need the government!"

Who here thinks this man is not a selfish ass?

But, realize, that this man is every American bitching about illegal immigrants.

You didn't "earn" being an American
YOU GOT LUCKY BY BEING BORN HERE

You don't deserve to be an American anymore than anyone else in the world.

You still have it better than 99% of the illegals who do make it in. You have a better job. You have a better house. You have more money. You have a better future.

You say you work hard - but if you give them a SS#, they can get a real job and work hard too.
You say they don't speak English, but then you turn around and complain that they enroll in public schools
THAT'S HOW THEY FUCKING LEARN ENGLISH

You want them to learn the language, let them go to school.
How obvious is that?

You want them to work and pay taxes, let them get papers so they can.

You think the population is too big, don't have children,
and set up protest rallies for all the people from NY and OH and the rest who keep moving here.

Why does someone born in Kansas have any more MORAL right to move here than someone born in Baja Norte?

Not to mention that Europeans got this land largely by deliberately spreading disease to the people who were already here.  By whose standard is that "legal"?

If you want to distinguish between "legal" and "illegal", in all fairness we should require all American born individuals to take the standard citizenship exam, with deportation as the consequence for failure.

21; 2 simple points to convince any rational person Americans are so stupid that it's hopeless

• Sep 10, 2006

21; 2 simple points to convince any rational person Americans are so stupid that it's hopeless

1 More than half of us still believe in creationism, even after humans have invented genetic engineering. This is artificial evolution. It has been done, and is being done continually.  It is no more a "theory" than gravity. Gravity is also a "theory" in the scientific sense of the word.  This does not mean that things might not fall down.

2 We don't use the metric system. It's better in every way - how many mm in a cm? 10. How many cm in a m? 100. How many m in a km? 1000. How many mm in a km? 1,000,000. How many grams of water in 15 cubic cm? 15.
How many inches in a mile? Who the fuck knows? How many ounces in 15 cubic inches? good luck, better have a reference book and calculator handy.
The entire rest of the world knows this, but not America.)

As long as these two facts remain true, how can we expect anything substantial to get better?

19; in which America has no moral grounds to disarm anyone

• Sep 8, 2006

19; in which America has no moral grounds to disarm anyone

In all of history, nuclear arms have been used only one time.
It was by the US.

We bombed two civilian cities, not military targets.

We did nothing to help in Rwanda

We have more biological and chemical weapon knowledge and reserves than anyone (even if we promise to never use them)

We do not set out to save the world, we set out to protect our own interests.

We didn't care that Hitler was engaged in genocide before we were attacked.

There are no examples which show that we are benevolent, moral caretakers of the world.
We are hardly in a position to tell others they can't have weapons.

Funny thing is, a lot of those in support of an armed America and unarmed everyone else, are often the same ones who oppose gun control, because the government has no right to say who should be armed and who not...  

VIII; in which National Origin is comparable to the lotto

VIII; in which National Origin is comparable to the lotto

Imagine this:

A man wins the lottery. He hits the big jackpot, 23 million dollars.

Then, he gets taxed 1/3 of it, 7.6Million dollars.

This means he just got 15.4 Million, which he didn't earn, which he doesn't especially deserve, but which he gets to use on whatever he wants.

And he bitches and moans about having to pay that 7mil in taxes

"Its so unfair, why should everyone else get to profit off of MY money? Why should MY money pay for roads and health care and schools and firemen and police? I can afford those things on my own, I don't need the government!"



Who here thinks this man is not a selfish ass?

But, realize, that this man is every American bitching about illegal immigrants.

You didn't "earn" being an American
YOU GOT LUCKY BY BEING BORN HERE

You don't deserve to be an American anymore than anyone else in the world.

You still have it better than 99% of the illegals who do make it in. You have a better job. You have a better house. You have more money. You have a better future.

You say you work hard - but if you give them a SS#, they can get a real job and work hard too.
You say they don't speak English, but then you turn around and complain that they enroll in public schools
THAT'S HOW THEY FUCKING LEARN ENGLISH

You want them to learn the language, let them go to school.
How obvious is that?

You want them to work and pay taxes, let them get papers so they can.

You think the population is too big, don't have children,
and set up protest rallies for all the people from NY and OH and the rest who keep moving here to CA

Why does someone born in Kansas have any more MORAL (as distinct from legal) right to move here than someone born in Baja Norte?