Comment Some simple fixes: long, bad spelling, i'm sleepy (Score 1) 1456
Preface: I see the problem (from a historical perspective) to be intimately intwined with these areas. For brevity I wont go into the whys, but instead just list the problem and suggested fixes.
1)Freedom of Speech- The internet is America's last great hope. Sadly it is already going the way of newspapers, radio and TV. They were free until they were business, then the regular joe got cut out. My best solution is a "National Ad Tax." It would be easiest to apply to TV and radio (public airwaves). It might work on the internet, but would be more difficult to apply to the print mediums. Even if it stays with ads on the air waves, we (the people) could round up a pretty penny. All money gained then is spent on FREE universal broadband access. A computer in every home and a gigabit connection in every pot. If you examine the money spent yearly in advertising on JUST the airwaves and then take 10% off that (lets grab more, so what if Michael Jordean only gets $5M for his commercial) you should find that the yearly payoff is enough to maintain and implement this idea. Costs us nothing, liberates everyone (each individual gains as much "free-speach" as any corp) and you get a sense of fullfilling your civic duty while watching Junk Yard Wars. Problem areas- The internet becomes the Post Office (not so bad since B. Franklin would have been Pro-net if it was around then) and the government regulates (censors) reflexively for protecting the children and national securiy. These are both Bogey-Men, don't be fooled. This idea works better IMO, if it's coupled with open source crypto and p2p file sharing.
2) New bill of rights - When was the last time we got a new right? There is no constitutional basis to the right of privacy (it's inferred). Let's put the right to privacy in writing, keep it simple, make it broad. There's other rights that need to be addressed also. The right to control your DNA (how it's used, recorded and disseminated), the right to a free READ (DeCss and linking to drug pages, it'll be a felony soon), Clone's Rights (im serious), Crypto, anonomimity, and others (wanted to keep this short). Probs- Lawyers. Lawyers should not write these rights. Niether should corps. It should be kept in simple language, short and sweet like the first 10. It's broadness/vagueness (benifit of the doubt?) should give the edge to the people and limit the federal govt. How? I don't know, maybe a petition system like in many state elections?
3) Drug war- Must end. It's MUCH cheaper (check the numbers) to allow complete legalizition (similar to the dutch) and provide free universal drug treatment, with quality controlled and taxed pharmecuticals than it is to provide the necessary lawyers, judges, jails, narcs, agents, border patrols, and whatnot. I haven't examined the numbers but I'm pretty sure that the drug treatments could be intirely financed by drug taxes. Further the fact that drugs are illegal makes them expensive which is directly related to a large % of thefts/robberies. The #1 reason we should end the "War" is because the emense profits go directly to some of the most vicious and violent people on the earth. A lot of them in our own government. This money (along with that from corps) is the number one source of corruption in our government and those abroad. The only realistic probs i can see with this is that they'll never allow it (not with billions at stake), Kids (they ruin everything), the government would be a pusher (observe lottery ads and deduce the future).
4) Education- We are uneducated. The money we save from ending the drug war should go to education. I don't think it should go to regular schools though (New, crystal slop bucket Willy?) they're a bottomless pit. However, the drug war is costing us $5B+ and we can take all of that and put it toward a system that educates and teaches skills. I don't know what that system would be (feel free to talk amongst yourselves) but my vote would be toward a system where you can take ANY class at ANY school. After the class you would take a real-world test (if you took a welding class you would have to do some profressional welds to demonstrate you actually learned something). If you get a B or better then we'll pick up the tab. Less than that and you foot the bill. Like I said, I don't know the best way to set the system up, but there needs to be a system where people can get all the training they want for free as long as they aren't wasting money. I believe this is critical because it's skills that allow a person to remove themselves from poverty. It's skilled labor that gives unions it's muscle. Just from what I know about computers I can get a living wage job anywhere in the country. Most people can't, they're trapped in an economy of poverty. How's a brother going to meet his responsiblilties flipping burgers? Problem - drug war needs to end to provide the funds and a system of checks and balances needs to be develpoed to minimizes fraud and waste. Here's an after-thought for saving money on education in the meantime: Books are very expensive and comprise one one the biggest expenses for a school system. The public at large could purchase the rights or commision the writing of numerous textbook topics and release them into the public domain. How many text books can you fit on a palm pilot (or a knock-off)?
5) Living Wage/ Guaranteed Work - No one should HAVE to do more than 40 hours a week of honest work to survive. Crime exists because it PAYS. Honest minmum wage work fails to provide in comparison. I don't have any ideas on how to fix this other than by creating a labor shortage (by eliminating unemployment through guaranteed jobs) and providing the universal education mentioned in the previous idea. By giving workers a stonger negotiating edge the standard of living can be rasied. Problem-economists are going to say I'm full of shit. Maybe they're right, this is probably my least thought out idea. However, I stand by my view that a minimum wage job should at least be able to pay for rent and food with EVERYONE who wants to work, able to find a job.
6) The Rich-Poor Gap: I'm not talking about millionares. Hell, if you have $40M then more power to you brother. I'm talking about the filthy stinking dirty rich. I'm talking about the 5% that owns 90% (or whatever the numbers are now). Let's make a list of the richest 5% and tax them (yearly? with the census?) for 5% of everything they have that's not in a charitable foundation (B. Gates would probably get off the hook). If they try to take their money and split for Brazil, then we should take Half of their loot (and the house) and call it a divorce. Call it the 5% tax. Too much for you? Unamerican? Then let's call it the 1% tax. That's a vote of 99 to 1! That's better than Al Gore's Black vote. Even if we went so far as to create the 0.1% tax and tax only the wealthiest tenth of a percent of the nation; we would be making BIG$$$.
7) Multi-Nationals: Represents one of the largests threats to a free society and may be the easiest to fix. Their achilles heel is profit. Eliminate corporate welfare and tax breaks, turn around and give those benifits to small businesses. This would allow local shops and start ups to compete against the corporation's economy of scale. Smaller businesses are more responsive to the communities they are in and in the long run hire more people at roughly the same wage. Mom&Pop stores won't have to worry when Mega-lo-Mart moves to town since uncle sam has leveled the paying field and has the entrepenuer's back. Another thing is that corporations derive thier existance from various charters and laws. Change those and change change THEM.
6) Patent's, Copyright, and Trademarks- I have no idea how to fix this. None. The original principle was to foster innovation and the exchange of idea's. Not to provide a cash flow to the pimps of artists and engineers. I'm talking to you AOLTIMEWARNER and SONYCOLUMBIAVIACOM (I think i mixed up my media conglometes, too lazy to check)
7) National Security- This is bad. Do you know how many terrorist bombings there are in America compared to those caused by Joe Six pack? Very few. Some dog got its head blown off a few weeks ago by a tennis ball bomb. Before that some dude got his leg blown of by an internet psycho. That's just in town! The only domestic terrorist bombings I can think of is Oklahoma, The UN building, the unabomber and Waco. There have been more attacks on the public from our own government (read up on confirmed US biological warfare experiments) than from a foriegn power. But we have to keep secrets because "the bad guys are out there." We have to catch drug dealers, we have to catch spys. Bullshit. Our government can't even keep our best A-bombs secret. They can't stop drugs on planes what makes you think they can stop bombs? National Security is less about keeping secrets than about controlling information. Actually, it's more about control. The espionage Act, The Sedition Act, Trading with the enemy act, and ect. are all about what the government can do and you can't. They sound necessary and sometimes they use them for good purposes (like RICO) but you need to get into the way-back machine to understand that they came about to provide the means for the government to control information. A simple partial fix is to declassify ALL materierals 20(10?30?) years old. If there's info that's really that dangerous it could be reclassified (though some system) with a note on what it is (like "This material pertains to Uranium Processing") until 20 years rolls around again. There are things that are classified that shouldn't that we have a right to know. What happened to Kennedy? What's this Roswell shit? Why is John Lennon's FBI file suppressed? Why are things from WWI still classified when everyone is dead? What's the scoop on Poppa Bush's cozy relationships with Saddam and Noriega just prior to both invasions? Don't even get me started on COINTELPRO. In order for a free society to work the people making decisions (ultimately us) MUST have access to ALL information available. The Hobgoblin of National Security is used to scare us into complacency and keep us from information we NEED to know. BTW, all this declassified info should be scanned in and web available to allow searches and cross-referencing. All govt docs should also appear on the web as it's created. No more secrets. I firmly believe that our founding fathers (except for Adams and his fucking Alien & Sedition act) understood that the free flow of information is the bedrock on which a republic is founded. Support the constitution: HACK! CRACK! LIBERATE!
8) Fusion Power- The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. The universe is literally made from the best fuel available. I believe that with the current level of technology, WE ARE ONE APOPLLO PROGRAM AWAY FROM FUSION POWER. We did it for the A-Bomb, we did it for the genome, and we did it for the moon. Let's do it for free energy. I can not overstate the importance of a fusion project. I'm aware that we are spending a lot of money on this already. Let's spend more, and let's develope it for people, not for profit. Everything in society fundamentally breaks down to energy. When energy is free, the values of all materials drop considerably and the number one factor of an item's MINIMUM cost becomes the labor involved. The reason we mine ore is because it's cheaper in terms of energy to do so. With unlimited energy you can mine dirt. you could make everything out of titanium or exotic alloys that are unaffordable now. Gold and other minerals can be extracted from desalienated seawater that will provide water to places that need it, like the mid-east. Pollution goes away because now you have the energy available to use less-effiecnct nonpolluting systems as well as the energy to break down garbage to its chemically pure components. Food becomes vastly more available and cheaper (free?) because you can manufcture soil and grow underground. Living space pressures and political oppression become moot in a world with fusion power because the intire solar system would be cheaper to colonize (the largest cost to space travel is the energy to get there). That's a lot of space, and we're sure to develope intersteller travel before we fill it up. Having a vast unexplored frontier rich in resources has historically been shown to be a good thing (hedge: there's no indians in space). Fusion power will eventually be developed. That's a fact. The concern to Americans is WHO HAS IT? If it's the multinationals - we're fucked. Fusion should be a not-for-profit-enterprise. Let's develope it and then give it away. Let every third world country build one. Design the system so that the GigaWatts/$ ratio is as high as possible and then cover costs through power distribution. Rent the line, and all the juice is free. Some folks my doubt me on this. Especially if you think I'm wacked from my previous suggestions. The proof is in the pudding though. Look at the instances throughout human history where we developed a new power source. Slave labor, oxen, gravity, water wheels, steam engines, coal, fossil fuels. Each instance where a culture developed a new power source was promptly followed by a revolution in technology and culture.
Anyway, I'm ranted out now. My apologies for the stream of consciousnes format, i wrote this in one sitting. If you like the any of these ideas, repeat them, tell a friend! If they suck, improve them! Get those memes circulating! We can't fix this mess without an idea of how to do it. And we can't get an idea without a system to freely and equally exchange ideas where the best idea wins.
1)Freedom of Speech- The internet is America's last great hope. Sadly it is already going the way of newspapers, radio and TV. They were free until they were business, then the regular joe got cut out. My best solution is a "National Ad Tax." It would be easiest to apply to TV and radio (public airwaves). It might work on the internet, but would be more difficult to apply to the print mediums. Even if it stays with ads on the air waves, we (the people) could round up a pretty penny. All money gained then is spent on FREE universal broadband access. A computer in every home and a gigabit connection in every pot. If you examine the money spent yearly in advertising on JUST the airwaves and then take 10% off that (lets grab more, so what if Michael Jordean only gets $5M for his commercial) you should find that the yearly payoff is enough to maintain and implement this idea. Costs us nothing, liberates everyone (each individual gains as much "free-speach" as any corp) and you get a sense of fullfilling your civic duty while watching Junk Yard Wars. Problem areas- The internet becomes the Post Office (not so bad since B. Franklin would have been Pro-net if it was around then) and the government regulates (censors) reflexively for protecting the children and national securiy. These are both Bogey-Men, don't be fooled. This idea works better IMO, if it's coupled with open source crypto and p2p file sharing.
2) New bill of rights - When was the last time we got a new right? There is no constitutional basis to the right of privacy (it's inferred). Let's put the right to privacy in writing, keep it simple, make it broad. There's other rights that need to be addressed also. The right to control your DNA (how it's used, recorded and disseminated), the right to a free READ (DeCss and linking to drug pages, it'll be a felony soon), Clone's Rights (im serious), Crypto, anonomimity, and others (wanted to keep this short). Probs- Lawyers. Lawyers should not write these rights. Niether should corps. It should be kept in simple language, short and sweet like the first 10. It's broadness/vagueness (benifit of the doubt?) should give the edge to the people and limit the federal govt. How? I don't know, maybe a petition system like in many state elections?
3) Drug war- Must end. It's MUCH cheaper (check the numbers) to allow complete legalizition (similar to the dutch) and provide free universal drug treatment, with quality controlled and taxed pharmecuticals than it is to provide the necessary lawyers, judges, jails, narcs, agents, border patrols, and whatnot. I haven't examined the numbers but I'm pretty sure that the drug treatments could be intirely financed by drug taxes. Further the fact that drugs are illegal makes them expensive which is directly related to a large % of thefts/robberies. The #1 reason we should end the "War" is because the emense profits go directly to some of the most vicious and violent people on the earth. A lot of them in our own government. This money (along with that from corps) is the number one source of corruption in our government and those abroad. The only realistic probs i can see with this is that they'll never allow it (not with billions at stake), Kids (they ruin everything), the government would be a pusher (observe lottery ads and deduce the future).
4) Education- We are uneducated. The money we save from ending the drug war should go to education. I don't think it should go to regular schools though (New, crystal slop bucket Willy?) they're a bottomless pit. However, the drug war is costing us $5B+ and we can take all of that and put it toward a system that educates and teaches skills. I don't know what that system would be (feel free to talk amongst yourselves) but my vote would be toward a system where you can take ANY class at ANY school. After the class you would take a real-world test (if you took a welding class you would have to do some profressional welds to demonstrate you actually learned something). If you get a B or better then we'll pick up the tab. Less than that and you foot the bill. Like I said, I don't know the best way to set the system up, but there needs to be a system where people can get all the training they want for free as long as they aren't wasting money. I believe this is critical because it's skills that allow a person to remove themselves from poverty. It's skilled labor that gives unions it's muscle. Just from what I know about computers I can get a living wage job anywhere in the country. Most people can't, they're trapped in an economy of poverty. How's a brother going to meet his responsiblilties flipping burgers? Problem - drug war needs to end to provide the funds and a system of checks and balances needs to be develpoed to minimizes fraud and waste. Here's an after-thought for saving money on education in the meantime: Books are very expensive and comprise one one the biggest expenses for a school system. The public at large could purchase the rights or commision the writing of numerous textbook topics and release them into the public domain. How many text books can you fit on a palm pilot (or a knock-off)?
5) Living Wage/ Guaranteed Work - No one should HAVE to do more than 40 hours a week of honest work to survive. Crime exists because it PAYS. Honest minmum wage work fails to provide in comparison. I don't have any ideas on how to fix this other than by creating a labor shortage (by eliminating unemployment through guaranteed jobs) and providing the universal education mentioned in the previous idea. By giving workers a stonger negotiating edge the standard of living can be rasied. Problem-economists are going to say I'm full of shit. Maybe they're right, this is probably my least thought out idea. However, I stand by my view that a minimum wage job should at least be able to pay for rent and food with EVERYONE who wants to work, able to find a job.
6) The Rich-Poor Gap: I'm not talking about millionares. Hell, if you have $40M then more power to you brother. I'm talking about the filthy stinking dirty rich. I'm talking about the 5% that owns 90% (or whatever the numbers are now). Let's make a list of the richest 5% and tax them (yearly? with the census?) for 5% of everything they have that's not in a charitable foundation (B. Gates would probably get off the hook). If they try to take their money and split for Brazil, then we should take Half of their loot (and the house) and call it a divorce. Call it the 5% tax. Too much for you? Unamerican? Then let's call it the 1% tax. That's a vote of 99 to 1! That's better than Al Gore's Black vote. Even if we went so far as to create the 0.1% tax and tax only the wealthiest tenth of a percent of the nation; we would be making BIG$$$.
7) Multi-Nationals: Represents one of the largests threats to a free society and may be the easiest to fix. Their achilles heel is profit. Eliminate corporate welfare and tax breaks, turn around and give those benifits to small businesses. This would allow local shops and start ups to compete against the corporation's economy of scale. Smaller businesses are more responsive to the communities they are in and in the long run hire more people at roughly the same wage. Mom&Pop stores won't have to worry when Mega-lo-Mart moves to town since uncle sam has leveled the paying field and has the entrepenuer's back. Another thing is that corporations derive thier existance from various charters and laws. Change those and change change THEM.
6) Patent's, Copyright, and Trademarks- I have no idea how to fix this. None. The original principle was to foster innovation and the exchange of idea's. Not to provide a cash flow to the pimps of artists and engineers. I'm talking to you AOLTIMEWARNER and SONYCOLUMBIAVIACOM (I think i mixed up my media conglometes, too lazy to check)
7) National Security- This is bad. Do you know how many terrorist bombings there are in America compared to those caused by Joe Six pack? Very few. Some dog got its head blown off a few weeks ago by a tennis ball bomb. Before that some dude got his leg blown of by an internet psycho. That's just in town! The only domestic terrorist bombings I can think of is Oklahoma, The UN building, the unabomber and Waco. There have been more attacks on the public from our own government (read up on confirmed US biological warfare experiments) than from a foriegn power. But we have to keep secrets because "the bad guys are out there." We have to catch drug dealers, we have to catch spys. Bullshit. Our government can't even keep our best A-bombs secret. They can't stop drugs on planes what makes you think they can stop bombs? National Security is less about keeping secrets than about controlling information. Actually, it's more about control. The espionage Act, The Sedition Act, Trading with the enemy act, and ect. are all about what the government can do and you can't. They sound necessary and sometimes they use them for good purposes (like RICO) but you need to get into the way-back machine to understand that they came about to provide the means for the government to control information. A simple partial fix is to declassify ALL materierals 20(10?30?) years old. If there's info that's really that dangerous it could be reclassified (though some system) with a note on what it is (like "This material pertains to Uranium Processing") until 20 years rolls around again. There are things that are classified that shouldn't that we have a right to know. What happened to Kennedy? What's this Roswell shit? Why is John Lennon's FBI file suppressed? Why are things from WWI still classified when everyone is dead? What's the scoop on Poppa Bush's cozy relationships with Saddam and Noriega just prior to both invasions? Don't even get me started on COINTELPRO. In order for a free society to work the people making decisions (ultimately us) MUST have access to ALL information available. The Hobgoblin of National Security is used to scare us into complacency and keep us from information we NEED to know. BTW, all this declassified info should be scanned in and web available to allow searches and cross-referencing. All govt docs should also appear on the web as it's created. No more secrets. I firmly believe that our founding fathers (except for Adams and his fucking Alien & Sedition act) understood that the free flow of information is the bedrock on which a republic is founded. Support the constitution: HACK! CRACK! LIBERATE!
8) Fusion Power- The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. The universe is literally made from the best fuel available. I believe that with the current level of technology, WE ARE ONE APOPLLO PROGRAM AWAY FROM FUSION POWER. We did it for the A-Bomb, we did it for the genome, and we did it for the moon. Let's do it for free energy. I can not overstate the importance of a fusion project. I'm aware that we are spending a lot of money on this already. Let's spend more, and let's develope it for people, not for profit. Everything in society fundamentally breaks down to energy. When energy is free, the values of all materials drop considerably and the number one factor of an item's MINIMUM cost becomes the labor involved. The reason we mine ore is because it's cheaper in terms of energy to do so. With unlimited energy you can mine dirt. you could make everything out of titanium or exotic alloys that are unaffordable now. Gold and other minerals can be extracted from desalienated seawater that will provide water to places that need it, like the mid-east. Pollution goes away because now you have the energy available to use less-effiecnct nonpolluting systems as well as the energy to break down garbage to its chemically pure components. Food becomes vastly more available and cheaper (free?) because you can manufcture soil and grow underground. Living space pressures and political oppression become moot in a world with fusion power because the intire solar system would be cheaper to colonize (the largest cost to space travel is the energy to get there). That's a lot of space, and we're sure to develope intersteller travel before we fill it up. Having a vast unexplored frontier rich in resources has historically been shown to be a good thing (hedge: there's no indians in space). Fusion power will eventually be developed. That's a fact. The concern to Americans is WHO HAS IT? If it's the multinationals - we're fucked. Fusion should be a not-for-profit-enterprise. Let's develope it and then give it away. Let every third world country build one. Design the system so that the GigaWatts/$ ratio is as high as possible and then cover costs through power distribution. Rent the line, and all the juice is free. Some folks my doubt me on this. Especially if you think I'm wacked from my previous suggestions. The proof is in the pudding though. Look at the instances throughout human history where we developed a new power source. Slave labor, oxen, gravity, water wheels, steam engines, coal, fossil fuels. Each instance where a culture developed a new power source was promptly followed by a revolution in technology and culture.
Anyway, I'm ranted out now. My apologies for the stream of consciousnes format, i wrote this in one sitting. If you like the any of these ideas, repeat them, tell a friend! If they suck, improve them! Get those memes circulating! We can't fix this mess without an idea of how to do it. And we can't get an idea without a system to freely and equally exchange ideas where the best idea wins.
