Driving Faster Reduces Accidents, Right?

Say there are fifty people in a study.   Some of them insist that driving faster is safer - as it lets them avoid other drivers.  They go at various speeds between 55 and 65 mph.  Others insist slower is faster as it gives them more reaction time.  They drive between 25 and 40 mph.

So they start driving.  Over the years, they repeatedly show that the slower drivers are right - they have less accidents.

The guys with the ninth highest accident rate realizes they have a problem.   They think it over, and realize they are doing something wrong.  They have to make a change.  So they insist that the solution must of course be to drive at 90 mph - faster than anyone else is driving.

This is the hallmark of stupidity.  Refusing to admit that your core principle is wrong, that people doing the opposite have better results.  

I am of course talking about Tennessee.  They are tied as the 9th worst teen age pregnancy state, in large part because they have a full blown case of "Abstinence Only" sex education.  (source)

So what do they do to fix it?  They pass a "no gateway sex education law'.  You see, they look at the records and realize something.  Many of the 'abstinent kids' with relationships give hand jobs and oral sex to stay abstinent.   Tennessee, instead of realizing that this release is the only way kids can put up with the incredibly moronic and stupid sex ed policy, thinks it encourages the kids to eventually break abstience.

So the 'no gateway sex ed' law makes it illegal (and allows parents to sue school teachers or organizations for it) to promote gateway sexual activity.  They left gateway sex vague - it could be hugging or holding hands claims some lawyers. (news about passing the bill, Bill summary).  Please note that the law specifically negates the 'health message' exception that people sometimes use.  So no, you can't use that excuse to explain that condoms works better than abstinence - because the human sex drive is stronger than abstinence promises but not stronger than condoms.

They think by doing even more of a clearly failed program it will finally work. It won't.

In business, they call this moronic plan to fix an issue "We'll make it up in volume".   No. You can't make it up with volume if your are losing money on each sale.  It didn't work for Karl Marx, and it won't work for Tennessee.  (Karl Marx admitted that the fewer owners an economy had, the worse the worker's life, but claimed that going all the way to 0 would instantly reverse the clear trend of getting worse and actually be better for workers.  He was wrong.  Going to 0 owners from 1 continues to make things worse the same way going from 2 to 1 did.)  More of something that doesn't work never solves the problem.

I will hereby bet anyone that posts here that that Tennessee will NOT go down beneath 15 in teen age pregnancy ranking  as long as this bill is legal.   I will bet up to $1000.  First come, first serve.  Why do I give them the chance of going as high as 15th?  Because some other states might get worse.

In defense of war.

 In the words of Elie Wiesel, (Youtube source, July 27, 2009), "war, by definition, with the exception of a just war …is not moral".  Clearly he hates war, but does not always think it is wrong.  He is not alone, many people (Roma, Jews, Gays, Communists - anyone put in Auschwitz) felt that World War II was the best thing that ever happened to Europe.    


The point is that war in and of itself is not evil.  Yes, it can be evil, but it can also be good.

Recently  Professor Edward O. Wilson (of Harvard) wrote an article in Discover Magazine about the inevitability of war.  He claimed it was is a curse built into our DNA and we could never escape it.   He makes this argument in part based on chimpanzees (very warlike).

I am obviously a liberal, and the stereotypical liberal viewpoint is that  war is evil.  But this is one place where I differ from the masses.

Professor Wilson did not go far enough.  His article treated war as a curse or infliction upon humans, that is unfortunately built into our DNA.  That is where he made his mistake.  

It isn't a curse, anymore than death is a curse. 

The choice is not between War and Utopia.  Instead it is between war as one a on population growth and other, far worse limits - such as famine and disease.  Famine and disease tend to kill the senior citizens first, then children, then healthy, child bearing people.  To control overpopulation, it is best to kill the healthy people of child rearing age.  It cures your current problem and the next generation's one.   More importantly, famine and disease are uncontrolled, while we can always decide we have had enough and stop fighting (barring nuclear war).  A conventional, land war is a far better way to cure the root cause of overpopulation.

[Note that air and naval wars are dramatically different.  They involve far less loss of life, instead revolving around loss of equipment.  A nuclear war on the other hand, would be far less controlled, leading to long term problems.]

Land wars are not a curse, it is instead a natural part of a successful culture, just as death is a natural part of all life.  Yes, people suffer in war.  But usually it is far better than the alternative.  Given a choice between a long, drawn out, painful death from famine/disease or a quick death in war, most people would prefer a quick one. 

War is natural - just look at ants, the other truly successful, civilized creature on earth.  Note, Professor Wilson is an eminent myrmecologist and it is his work on ants that helped him develop his view of war.   Ants live in cities, some of them farm  fungi (wikipedia source), some of them take slaves (Source = North Carolina State Univsersity), and some of them clearly go to war (Army ants, etc. See Wilson's many books, The Ants, Sociobiology:  The New Synthesis, Kingdom of Ants, The Leafcutter Ants: Civilization by instinct).

Now I am not advocating war.   I think it is a horrible, just as death is horrible.  But I recognize that death is part of life, and war is part of being a successful species.  If you want to eat, you need to defecate, if you want to live, you must eventually die.  If you want a successful civilization, you need to accept war.  None of those things are fun, but they are natural and necessary.   I would not villainize war anymore than I would villanize death or defecating.  War is the defecation of a successful civilization - not pleasant, but necessary.

     

(Note, this post contains sections of an editorial letter I sent to Discover Magazine about Professor Wilson's article)

The Cultural Problem with Deception

Deception has major advantages for an individual, assuming the lie is believed.

The problem is when a culture of deception develops.   Then people start to actually BELIEVE the lies.

In someways it works for the betterment of culture.   When you declare something wrong or illegal and people pretend to believe in it, over time, the belief becomes real.  Slowly people move from mouthing statements to believing them.  It doesn't happen overnight.  It takes generations.   But when you have teachers telling kids that that blacks are equal, some of them believe the lies.

The problem is it doesn't work just for good.  The same effect happens when you lie for evil.

When the republicans lie and claim things like the Democrats are communists, some of the younger, more impressionable people will believe two things:

1) That such blatant lies activity are acceptable 

2)  That it is true.


This country needs a loyal opposition.  It is the heart of what makes a democracy work.  Without people that disagree with you, your get sucked into group think.   Imagine if the liberals had a free hand?  Now think about if the conservatives had one.  They recently lost an attempt to declare birth occurs at menstruation.  MENSTRUATION.   Not conception, MENSTRUATION.

I know of almost no one that isn't horrified by the idea of doing this.

A loyal opposition is needed.   The key to having a loyal opposition is that you can NOT vilify the enemy.

You can vilify their practices, their theories, their claims, their beliefs, their politics.   But you can not vilify them.  You can't vilify the group or the individuals. You HAVE to admit that they have the best interest of the nation as their goal.  

The GOP has repeatedly moved beyond vilifying their politics to vilify the democrats as a whole.   When people make the kind of claims that Glenn Beck used to, that Rush Limbaugh still makes, that certain un-named GOP congressman made about communists, then they are attacking the very core of democracy.

Because without a loyal opposition, we just have a dictatorship, not a democracy.

The Secret Service Sex Scandal

Guy hires a prostitute, gets into a dispute about payments after services are rendered, gets in a fight.  Happens all the time.  It's the main reasons pimps exist.

Let's talk about this as if it weren't sex or a crime.  Secret Service guy buys something, has a dispute about the price, gets in a fight.  Not the best behavior but not the worst.  His boss probably gives him a warning to act more professional and that's it.

So, why do we get so upset about this?  It's not the argument, although that does adds to the spice.

My personal experience with sex workers - strippers at bachelor parties - is that they tend to cheat.  Well, actually their managers tend to cheat.   They promise you two hour of service, then show up an hour late and insist on the full price for two hours of service.   What, you gonna do without strippers at the bachelor party?  What, your gonna call the cops?  Either way the party is ruined.   That may just be a bachelor party thing, but it happens.   Maybe prostitutes are more ethical, I don't know.

No one really knows what happened with the Secret Service agents.  Maybe they were cheap SOB's that didn't pay what they promised to pay.  Maybe they were being ripped off.  The Secret Service guys aren't talking so we get just one side of the story.

I don't think the argument about pay is the issue.  From what I have heard, no one else does.  People aren't upset that he didn't pay, though it does add some spice.

Well, lets start out with the is it a crime aspect.  Guess what, prostitution is not a crime everywhere.  There are places in Nevada and Europe where it is legal.   It's the same in Columbia.  They are called  'designated tolerance' zones in Colombia.   Prostitution is legal there, just like certain parts of Nevada.  The Secret Service agents were in one of those areas.  They did not break the law.  Nor were they married.  They didn't even break an oath to their wives.

They did however violate Secret Service policy - as the agency has a policy against prostitution.  Frankly, that's not that big a deal.  I know that some people steal office supplies, surely stealing from a company is worse than disobeying a policy about behavior outside the office?   How you feel if your boss tried to tell you who can have sex with? 

Frankly, the policy says something worse about the government, than it does about the men.  Was what these men did really did so bad?  They disobeyed a rule - a rather crazy rule - of their boss, not a law.

So it's not the argument, not the crime, and honestly not the disobedience that get's people upset and all worked up. 

It's the sex.  There are people in this world that still think sex is evil.  I am not one of them, but they do exist.   They do recognize that sex is necessary, but they want the power to say which kinds of sex are OK.  Usually they are religious and following their bible, (which makes this religious persecution) but not all the time.    The core of this issue is not religion, but POWER.  They want to tell other people what sex is allowed and what is not allowed.  I say, no, you don't get that power.  Not over me, not over your employees, and not over government agents.

We need to get the government out of our sex life.   That includes the government telling their employees what to do.  It especially needs to get out of the sex lives of people on their own time in a foreign country.

How would you feel if your boss fired you because they find out that you did something legal in another country?   Because he didn't like it?  He has no business knowing about it. 

Did these guys exercise poor judgement?  Yes.  He should have realized that while what he was doing was legal, that in his job he is expected to do more than just be legal, but to also to stay away from scandal.

Frankly, if they were private security, it would be no big deal.   This shows more about the still prudish nature of politics than anything else.

Patent Infringement

Patent infringement is a major problem in the US.  Part of the problem is that the electronic tech world and the biotech world have very different needs, yet both have strong lobby's.

Biotech needs very strong patents because their products take a huge amount of work and testing to discover and prove safe.  It is very difficult to find/create new medical treatments, making the invention process expensive.   Then, implementing it, you need expensive quality control checks.   The extensive testing makes sure that only working ideas get patented - otherwise you are forbidden from producing goods.

Software however is very different.  Here it is very easy to come with ideas, taking almost no effort, and quality control is practically nothing.  People can create it in a day, then patent the idea, and little or no testing - or searching for prior art is done.   Because it moves so fast, people can honestly not even be aware of prior art.

These two industries differ in many other ways, but they have a large amount of control over changes in the patent law, because they have very different needs.

But there are a couple of ways we can help the problems of patent law.

1. Outlaw Non-Disclosure agreements for patent lawsuits.  (NDAs)There are people that engage in patent trolling.  They sue for large amounts then settle for small ones.   Mainly because a patent lawsuit can cost millions of dollars to defend, but sometimes because they are guilty.   It is always the bad guy that wins by having a non-disclosure agreement.  ALWAYS.   If you win a large amount of money because the slime bag violated a real patent, then he wants to keep it secret to maintain his reputation.    If you are a patent troll who settles for tiny amounts of money, you want to keep it secret to help you get more money from your next victim.   NDA's are pretty much only wanted by the bad guys in Patent Lawsuits and should be outlawed.  Yes, this might make certain patent suits harder to settle.  But it could kill lawsuits before the courts get involved - if no patent lawsuit was filed yet, you could still get an NDA>  This would save people a lot of money on lawyers.
2. We need to treat different patents differently.   Design patents last 14 years, while general patents last 20.  No reason we can't further expand the system.  For example, a healthcare cure is the most desirable thing, but treatments that don't cure are WAY more profitable.  Grant real cures longer patents, say 30 years, while restricting treatment cures to just 10 patent years.  The software industry moves very fast and costs practically nothing to ramp up from selling one product to selling worldwide 7 billion copies in less than a month.  So reduce the duration to only 7 years.  On the other side, we could offer a special "Main Business Patent", in which a company can declare a single patent that is central their business to be the Main Active Business Patent.  This one patent and only that patent could be extended to 25 year.   Only a top level corporate entity or person could hold such a patent.  I.E.  no creating five subsidiaries and having each own 5 Main patents. 
3. Patent cases are overturned on appeal far more often than other cases.   We need patent only judges.  Patent cases involve much higher expertise on both the nature of the technology and patent law itself.   (Source)

Please note that these three ideas are generally patent neutral.  They don't help either side completely, instead giving a little bit to each of the opposing sides..

Whine: But the Buffett rule only raise x amount.

Recently the GOP has been saying that we don't need the Buffet rule because it would only raise $47 billion over ten years.  They are proving themselves wrong.

We start small.   With something that even an idiot would admit is wrong, and fix it.

When your opponent refuses to fix it, it shows they are corrupt.  That's right CORRUPT.  Anyone that says the Buffet rule should be ignored because it is too small is corrupt and should be thrown out of Congress for taking bribes (or if the rule would apply to them, for putting their own finances above the needs of the country).
 
Saying the rule will only raise a low amount is like saying "It's OK to let wealthy people drink and drive because they will only kill a small number of people."  No.  The size of the problem does not affect the righteousness of the problem.   We don't sit back and let a few people get away with cheating the rest of us.  If you want to do that, you are immoral, corrupt, and can not be trusted with a state government position, let alone a federal position.

It's like a hole in a boat, or a an unpainted spot on your house.  It doesn't matter what the size is, you FIX it.   When you complain about fixing something because it is small (as opposed to claiming that there is a good reason to keep things the way they are), it proves:

1. You are not serious about fixing the problem.  NOT ONE BIT.  If you think the Buffet rule shouldn't be passed because it is too tiny, then you don't care about the deficit. 
2. If you still refuse to fix it, that is admitting you LIKE the problem. As in you think rich people SHOULD be allowed to pay less taxes than their secretaries.
3. Most importantly, this undermines all other arguments you make in the future.  Once you refuse to fix the little hole in the boat, or paint the last corner of your house, your claim that the holes let water out of the boat, or that you like the existing color suddenly get shown for what they are: Lies.

 There are other, reasonable reasons to object to the Buffet rule - for example claiming it the AMT rule is already supposed to fix this problem.  The problem is the AMT rule is broken, rather dramatically so.  It gets temporary patches every year and quite honestly does not do what it was designed to do, as shown by the fact that the Buffet rule is needed.

Revisit of Flat Asset Tax

I recently discussed my Flat Asset tax idea on line and some people pointed out what they thought were major problems.  I want to reply to some of the major objections they came up with:

Wrong Claim #1) You are taxing wealth, so no one becomes wealthy.   My reply is, the current system taxes income, so no one works.    It's kind of like saying "I don't want you to cut off my finger, I'd rather you cut off my leg."  We have to tax one of three things - income/work, spending/necessities, or wealth/luxuries.   What is the difference between necessities and luxuries?  The poor spend almost all of their money on necessities and almost no luxuries, while the wealthy spend almost all their money on luxuries and almost nothing on necessities. Those are the ONLY 3 things we have found to tax and the best of the bunch is to tax the wealth/luxuries.   

Wrong Claim #2)  You end up spending more on taxes on something than it cost to buy it.   Wrong.  First of all, this is not necessarily a problem. If you own a house in New Jersey, you pay about a property tax of about 1.89% each year.  Assuming no growth in value, in 26 years, you have paid more in tax than it's worth.   No big deal.    Why?   For the same reason that you don't care if you pay more to dry clean a shirt then you paid to buy it (assuming you paid $60 for a shirt, and $2 a shirt to dry clean it, if you wear it once a week, by the end of the year you have paid $100 to dry clean).  In fact, using Income Tax, right now, many middle class people pay more than 5% of their total assets in tax.  So no big deal if we make it explicit that we are taxing assets.

But for most property, this won't happen.  Most things depreciate, usually at a fairly high rate.  Cars for example lose about 9% of value the second you drive them off the lot, and an additional 10% each year.  As 10% is > than 5% (the highest of the Flat Asset Taxe rates I proposed), then you will never pay more taxes than 45% of the original value - even assuming you hold it for a thousand years.

Things that don't depreciate, tend to appreciate (i.e. stocks).   A measly old 5% return is not worth much, so your appreciation should generally exceed the taxes you pay.  A few assets, such as bonds and homes, do not have strong appreciation/depreciation.  Which is one of the reasons why I suggested homes and IRA's should be excluded.

Wrong Claim #3)  I gave generous allowances for things like a home, and IRA, which you don't do in 'true flat tax'.  It is true that a 'True flat tax' has no deductions and exemptions.   But many flat tax plans are actually "Marginal Flat Tax plans, which is what you call it when you allow limited deductions/exemptions.  In Marginal Flat Tax plans, the tax rate for any money above and beyond the deductions and exemptions is flat, unlike our current graduated income tax.  The common deductions and exemptions in most Marginal tax systems are charity, home mortgage (= to my home deduction)  and IRAs (because we don't want to screw over the people with a Roth IRA that paid taxes on their income previously in exchange for future tax deductions.)  My marginal flat asset tax plan is in line with most of the existing flat tax plans that are actually considered.  To my knowledge NO ONE is seriously advocating a "true flat tax", as people don't wont to screw over the Roth IRA hold overs.

Wrong Claim #4)  That a 5% Flat asset tax can't possibly generate enough income because all the math says a flat tax has to be at least 17%, with 20% being more likely.

Percentages are not stand alone things.   They are percent of something else.  As Total American Yearly Income is about 1/4 Total American Wealth.  That is, a man that earns 100k a year might own 400k worth of goods.   20% of 100k = 20k.  5% of 400k = 20k.  It's basic math, not that hard to do.

Wrong Claim #5)  That it will be easy for the wealthy to violate the law.  Again, this ignores the current situation.  You don't look at this in a vacuum, you compare to the existing system.  The existing system has people move assets overseas to hide income.   Yes, people that move assets over seas will still do that - now to hide the assets.  The question is not can thieves still steal, but instead, does my system make it EASIER to steal than the current system.

And the answer to that is no, it makes it harder.  Right now, you can move all your income producing assets over seas, and keep your wealth here.  Now you have to move all your WEALTH over seas, not just your income producing assets.  No more owning twenty cars with no taxes.

For example, a common practice right now is to offset income with deductions - usually business expenses.  The equivalent technique for an asset tax would be to incorporate, then create a fake loan on the record books, claiming that your company, while owning 1 million dollars, also has a debt of 1 million dollars.   Fine, then show us where the 1 million loan went to.   Can't do that?   OK, you stole 1 million dollars from the company AND failed to report it for taxes.  You have now committed two crimes, not just one.

More importantly, it is much harder to hide where that money went.   We don't need to prove you kept the $1 million, the fact that   A simpler tax structure with simpler rules makes it harder to lie and cheat.

Wrong Claim #6)  That I am taxing just the rich and we need to save them because they pay more income taxes.  This assumes it is OK to ignore FICA and other taxes because "we are talking about federal income taxes".   NO. We are talking about the total taxes people pay, NOT just their income tax.  Yes, I am altering just the income tax, but only to counter your ridiculous plan to screw over the poor.  If you want to 'make taxes fair', then you start FIRST with the taxes the poor people pay - FICA, sales and property tax.  THEN after you have made those fair - so the wealthy people pay the same percentage of their total income, you can start trying to make the tax the wealthy pay fair.   Until you fix FICA, sales and property tax, you can NOT reduce the only tax that the wealthy pay more than the poor do.  

One final thing. There is a hidden benefit of my flat asset tax idea.
It encourages spending on services as opposed to material goods.

That is, when you buy a diamond, it becomes a tax burden for the rest of your life.  But when you buy a $600 dinner you pay no taxes on that item.  This is an incredibly good thing.  Why?

Because you can't outsource the meal.  Most of the service money gets spent in the United States, and more importantly, STAYS in the USA.  Yes, when you buy a vacation abroad, that money leaves, the US, but it always did.   Currently, pretty much any physical asset you buy except for land has a large percentage of foreign content.  Clothing?  All foreign.   Cars?  American made means 75% built in America.   The number 1 and number two American made cars are owned by TOYOTA and HONDA.   (source)


More important, most studies show people get more fun out of experiences than they do out of things.  (Study)

An asset tax would be good for this country by encouraging people to spend more money on things they like that are made in America, as opposed to foreign goods they grow to regret.