Each state would be close to sovereign, with general freedom to create and enforce laws, choose and operate economic systems, run military organizations, etc. States would start as they are now, as geographic areas.
Each state would be divided into regions, such as the current counties, though preferably equal in size. Each region would have a nationally prescribed method of voting to switch to governing of another state.
Continue reading post "Ideas: regions vote for governing state"This idea is based on my Local + Proxy Remote Hosting for Personal Site idea, but attempts to mitigate some of its problems further.
Continue reading post "Ideas: Remotely hosted personal site with home data store that syncs as client"“From asshole to awesome in one day flat”
ICANN could make available single character TLD’s for URL shortening purposes, and make available on them SLD’s of one or more characters.
Continue reading post "Idea: Single character TLDs for permashortlinks"Organization created to separate out steps of scientific method to help prevent bias of knowledge. When submitting a step of the scientific method, it is handed off to an independent scientist unaware of who was involved with the previous step and of anything from steps other than the previous.
Continue reading post "Maximizing blindness in science"Every room has sun-light and moon-light. Hallways, stairwells, walkways, etc. probably just have moon-light. The sun-light would be the bright bulb(s) in the middle of the ceiling or by work areas to allow tasks to be performed. The moon-light is the much dimmer, low wattage option like a night-light, for moving about and other less visually precise activities.
Continue reading post "Home Lighting: Sun-light, Moon-light"Usonian income taxes are crazy complicated and a pain to deal with. They shouldn’t be, especially for normal people: Only people performing complex income related activities should have any need for a tax accountant. There are so many modifiers to promote certain behavior and demote other, but it is very inconsistent and confusing and irrelevant stuff often has to be read through by people for whom it doesn’t apply. Promoting behaviors is good, but it needs to be simplified drastically.
Continue reading post "Taxes: Income Tax Simplification of Forms"The destination of tax revenue should directly and rigidly define the destination of where it is spent. The destination should be related to the source as if the source was a customer buying services from the destination.
Continue reading post "Taxes: Sources Define Destinations"It would be nice if you could field questions after killing yourself. Then maybe people could understand why and perhaps be better able to handle others in similar situations who might be considering offing themselves as well. You can write up all that you want before you off yourself, but you can never really know what people would actually ask or who would even be interested enough to ask. There are many nuances in conveying information, and you probably won’t be able to convey your messages in exactly the way that the people you are sending them to need them to be to truly understand what you are trying to say. There can be no follow up questions, which are usually very important for homing in on what the asker wants to know and the answerer wants to say. And of course there is no guarantee that the people who you are sending those messages to or who want to know some answers will actually read them. Reading can be quite tedious, especially the voluminous amounts that a suicidal has to convey and the great boringness it most likely has to most other people. It is, of course, also tedious to write, and you probably in the end just won’t right all you want to before you go through with it. Most people probably have some hope or feeling that it won’t actually happen, and the last bit where they are sure it will happen, they are in poor condition for writing profusely and well. There is, of course, no way to really implement this idea, just thinking.
This is somewhat a revisit and modified version (probably a better one at that) of an idea I discussed earlier. The revisit is in part because of the recent health care legislation. Some argue that health care is a “right” not afforded to some, something that everyone should be given regardless of income on ethical grounds. I’m not sure why health care is considered more essential than food, water, shelter, etc, but it is certainly where a lot of money is spent and made.
The government will provide relatively bare essentials deemed required for survival. These will include food, water, shelter, clothing, protection, education, occupation, health care, and probably some others that I can’t think of. They will be provided in whole by the government, directly, no intermediaries such as with food stamps, medicare, etc and with no fees. Provisions will be bare essential: For instance, food provisions will be limited to calculated nutritional need, and there will in theory be no overuse possible. The government services will be minimums, and will not place any limits on private provision of them that will favor the government provision. Quality will range from mediocre to craptacular, not only to follow real world precedence but also for providing incentive for folks to work hard and obtain better services from the private sector.