or just change the laws to disincentivize their whole risky business in the first place.
OK. I guess we need more regulation, then, huh? Really. We should find out how they lost money and spend thousands of pages defining precisely what they did and write laws to make sure they never do exactly that thing again. Then we will be safe....
or just change the laws to disincentivize their whole risky business in the first place.
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I'm a candidate on Americans Elect, and I have 3 followers. That's a real fraction of a percent of the leader. It's interesting to see the disinterest in this website. Is it because a) people realize that a third candidate will only steal votes from their candidate? or b) choosing a candidate thoughtfully is not so easy as to post to your facebook a quote about gay marriage? It could be either from what I can tell.
They really should do this at a congressional level first. Congressional battles can actually be won. We all have a fear that if we vote for Nader instead of Gore, then Bush will win and lead us into eight years of war and economic disaster. And no one wants that on their conscience, so they are reluctant make a statement vote. On the other hand there isn't so much fear on a congressional level, and the payoff is possible. It would be wonderful to see enough independents in congress so that neither side has a majority. I had been thinking about "size of government" and how the Right always complains that the government is too big. After some thought, I thought that perhaps the size of government is the wrong question. Who cares what the percentage of GDP is government spending? I think a better question is, how big should the free market be? I have no time to actually go through numbers, but a quick google found the following interesting
post, posted before last election. The nice graphs show a picture of GDP separating itself from median income in the 1970's. http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/09/gdp-per-capita.html Of course, this post doesn't really consider size of the free market (say private consumption) vs median income. In fact, it's basically stock OWS fodder well before OWS, which is always fun to find and post. My hunch now is that a better "target" for the size of government should rather be based on a ratio of median income to mean share of the free market. If GDP grows without median income growth, the mthe government should step up so that the private consumption is still the same ratio to the median income. Just a theory. As always, Thom Hartmann has great guests. Last night I watched a discussion with someone from movetoamend.org. MoveToAmend is proposing a constitutional amendment. Rather than talk about 99% blah blah, I'll just paste it in from http://movetoamend.org/amendment- it's self-explanatory:
Section 1 [A corporation is not a person and can be regulated] The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only. Artificial entities, such as corporations, limited liability companies, and other entities, established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law. The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable. Section 2 [Money is not speech and can be regulated] Federal, State and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate’s own contributions and expenditures, for the purpose of influencing in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure. Federal, State and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed. The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment. Section 3 Nothing contained in this amendment shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press. (End proposed amendment) In honesty, without researching it, the term "corporate personhood" had bothered me a little bit, because it suggest that corporations are people and can thus get married and get murdered and be discriminated against and serve in the military and so on which obviously isn't the case. Thus the "end corporate personhood" movement trumpeting the contra-deepity "corporations are not people" had seemed to me a little bit alarmist and over-the-top, shadowing the clear message that corporations should be regulated, and ignoring the practical issues such as legal liability for corporations when they hurt someone. The website had a form for suggesting for the name of the amendment, and I suggested "Disestablishment of Corporate Privilege " which I think gets to the point without any over-the-top language. In any case, regardless of choice of words to describe what the above amendment is about, the amendment is clear and necessary. Read it and pass it on. I'm seeing a bunch of noise from the left questioning the intentions of this website. To be honest, I'm much less excited about it now, compared when I first discovered the site. ( It was pretty much the only way I could get on the ballot in all 50 states.) Closer to reality, I would prefer to see a congressional version of this thing.
First of all, they promised anyone could declare their candidacy on the website in November. This never happened, instead they just posted a bunch of pictures of guys with either elephants or donkeys in the corner of the picture, and told me how much I match up with them. They seem to think that bipartisan is enough. I had been hoping this would be an opportunity for someone truly independent to be lifted into the political stage without going through the years of politics that it takes to become your party's nominee. But it is still early. The website thinks I should be supporting Ron Paul, based on my answers to some very vague questions that noone could actually pretend to answer in multiple choice format. I can see that I think like Ron Paul on a number of issues, but I think we would disagree on some of the major ones. These questions are pretty bad. I have to hold out judging AE completely still. I don't believe that just because someone donated a million dollars to the website that the website is evil. I haven't researched this Peter Ackerman guy, maybe he's pure evil, maybe not. His Wikipedia description doesn't exactly give me the howling fantods. Some people have claimed he's a right wing nut masquerading in left wing organizations, (evidence that leftists but in any case I highly doubt that the website is a giant conspiracy. It's still possible that the people in charge of it will do what they tell people they are doing. Watched a segment on Thom Hartmann's Conversations with Great Minds. Peter Beilenson was the guest. He knows much more than I do about health care but he seems to apply the perspective I would like to.
As someone who is far left of center, I find myself irritated with half-thought-out-left wing outragedness. It really defeats the whole "I am smarter than you" message. I am a scientist who is not outraged by Obama's decision to back making a plan B drug available only by prescription to girls under the age of 17. Apparently, Obama caved to political concerns, ignoring "hard science" which says that 15 year old girls who engage in risky behaviors and are under stressful circumstances will correctly use drugs to get out of the stressful situation. Really? I really honestly have no idea how they can determine this. We should export this science to Mexico and stop the drug trade completely. Or Africa and stop the AIDS epidemic. On the other hand, I would estimate that kids regularly take illegal drugs in risky ways, despite their ability to read. They combine legal drugs with other drugs in ways that are not recommended. They take more than one dose. They take less than one dose. Especially among the population who is already engaging in other risky behaviors. The effort to make plan B available to all is simply marketing by a drug company, to all ages. The drug company, Teva, wants to have their product out and in your face everytime you buy other forms of birth control. This is obviously in their benefit. Obama isn't outlawing the product, taking it off the streets or making it completely unavailable to kids. All we're doing is hurting the product placement efforts of a drug company. Let's try to describe who benefits from having on the shelves: Girls who are under 17 and A)lack brains and/or means to put themselves in a possible pregnancy situation, and B) have the the brain and means to know to go pay $50 at a drug store yet still C) lack the brains and/or means to get the product if the product is not available in this fashion. Most kids can buy alcohol and cigarettes somehow, finding someone who is 17 should be even easier. Even admitting they might not want to talk to their older sister or mother about this, most pharmacies have someone on call who can write a prescription. There are plenty of other confidential resources in the community that will get this product to a 15 year old girl, if she asks, and might even pay for it. On the other hand, it's easy to imagine situations in which having this product available creates the possibility for bad decision making. See for example some "hard science" .http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/04/hiv-spread-birth-control-warn-scientists You don't have to be a deep Texas conservative to buy into the hormonal-birth-control = less-condoms theory. It would have been absolutely a win-win for the drug companies (who sponsored the studies the FDA referred to) but completely unclear how it will benefit everyone else. We aren't taking away condoms or promoting some naive abstinence-only education. This is more like "Abstinence-OR-condoms-OR-if-none-of-this-works-at-least-talk-to-someone-older-than-17-about it." I will withhold my outrage for the time being. Is there any chance of an Evangelical Left? I wonder often how much religious affiliation is keeping Republicans Republican. In the interest of Christian social issues, Evangelicals are willing to stomach and eventually embrace all the other things Republicans do. Republicans hang out the carrots of changing Roe V Wade or Defense of Marriage proposals, and then take office and philander and give money to the rich and destroy the economy for everybody. But I dare point out: 1) Jesus said "my kingdom is not of this world." God's kingdom is personal and so is virtue. It can't be enforced by the government. There's no point in trying. 2) Jesus said "Render unto Caeser." I guess this means that the Jesus doesn't think the government taxing rich people is stealing. Republicans, however remain very much anti-Render-Unto-Caeser. 3) Regardless of whether you feel the Church has the capability or responsibility to take care of the poor, and regardless of whether or not you feel it's a "moral issue" to take care of the poor, it is an economic issue. Helping the poor out of poverty is a wonderful idea because it's good for the economy. The Church should be rendering-unto-caeser anyways, so we can't blame the government for stopping the Church from helping the poor. I've been reflecting on this more. It seems that the belief in democracy is very deeply held, almost religious belief. But this should be examined.
The arguments against a technocracy are the arguments against any sort of X-ocracy: When given power without having to answer to anybody, the powerful can get carried away and make bad decisions. There's no way around this. In democracy, at least when everyone makes bad decisions, they do it in their own (everyone's supposed) interest. But in almost any other situation, the idea behind democracy sounds pretty crazy. If your car is broken, you go to a mechanic. You realize that he may rip you off, but nonetheless you go to him. If you hear that your mechanic is ripping you off, you fire him and find a new one. If you have some illness, you see a doctor. You may have some suspicions about doctors, but still you realize you should see a doctor. When you want to build a bridge, you consult an engineer. You need to trust the engineer, so you make sure he/she has good credentials. Yet when you need to fix the economy, you trust a bunch of politicians who often at best have law degrees, but rarely have real training in economic theory. If academics made up only something like 15% of our legislative members, then neither party could squeeze through any bad legislation. Academics, who are used to publishing only a few papers a year, wouldn't churn out such a volume of legislation without being convinced it's necessary. For years America has had a two party system. This is bad for many reason. For the most part, the debate is 1-dimensional. Debates and compromises are games of tug-o'-wars along a single axis. These don't really resolve much With more dimensions, there would be room for creative problem solving. Not all countries operate like we do. Germany, for example, has about half a dozen parties in the game. They are forced to work together, form temporary coalitions and be responsible. The result is much more dynamic and in everyone's best interest. It's too bad the Tea party didn't form it's own entity. Of course, that's not why the Koch Brothers created it. Occupy Wall Street should form a party just to break our political system free of its 1-dimensional stalemates and introduce some topology. Adding a little more weight to the Democrat's side of the tug-o-war won't cause any real change in the long run. Someone, please, stand up and do it. (Robert Reich, Jeffrey Sachs, Elizabeth Warren... someone... ) |
AuthorMathematics Assistant Professor at Princeton University Archives
May 2012
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