Election 2020 (The Pre-Game)

What Joe Biden thought 2020 was gonna be: Look, kids, Bernie just isn't gonna make it, you gotta go with me. And to all the newcomers, get on board with me, there's room for all of you and none of you are ready to do it on your own so I'm your best shot. I'm the leader, I got the money, everyone knows me, Obama loves me, and I can beat Trump. Everyone just get behind me, I'll give jobs to all (most) of you and I'll get you into the White House. All you gotta do is get behind me, tell everyone how great I am and that they need to vote for me. I am the great unifier! Believe in me and we will crush this idiot Trump!

But the Democrats couldn't get over their own fine grained selfish disappointments (the epitome of white privilege) to pull together. (Beware the "inclusive": they never agree on anything) Nancy Pelosi used Biden as a puppet in her Impeachment hearing, AOC never got on board with Biden or the "normal" wing that runs the Democratic Party, the young Progressives have yet to flock to the Biden camp, Obama waited til the bitter end to throw the full weight of his support to Biden, and Biden was bullet absorber #1 in the primary debates. And even though he got smoked in Iowa and New Hampshire, Biden was comfortably in control by the third primary. The pundits would say it was only because the rest of the party couldn't build enough of a coalition against him; but I would suggest he was the only candidate the whole time. The first two primaries were a showcase for everyone/everything else the Democratic Party has to offer and it all led back to Joe Biden. No one wanted him to win and even when he did win, no one wanted to give him the credit. Biden walks ahead of the grumpiest bunch of brats in American history--and that's no mean feat.  

What Donald Trump thought 2020 was gonna be: Make a big trade deal with China in the Spring; Wall Street loves it, unemployment hovers near all-time lows; pull troops out of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria; unveil a series of normalized relations with Israel; lure Russia and China into a tripartite arms limitations treaty. That's what he had set up in front of him. Turning China from a great enemy into a great friend, a new bigshot deal with Russia, Wall Street fat and happy, Israel gaining some significant victories, taxes lowered, (bond markets limping along), soccer moms are happy and the churches will never vote for a Democrat anyway, so everyone's happy--or at least not unhappy enough to wanna do anything about it--and pulling troops out all at the same time. He pulled off some of that stuff anyway but if that had all gone his way you gotta admit: that's not bad, at home and abroad.  And even if he did fail, it does suggest that perhaps he had much more of a broad sense of leadership in the world than we ever really got to see. (Oh...and we'd probably be in a decent size standoff with Iran...but even the fly he built into the buttermilk didn't turn out right, as even that has yet to materialize)

Then Covid-19 comes along and wrecks all of it. 

China goes back to being an enemy, to blame for all the ills of the world (literal and metaphorical). Russia is more estranged than ever--and breaking off arms treaties without actually doing the follow up isn't necessarily a great idea. Turns out the Israeli lobby isn't as powerful as the conspiracy theorists would have you believe. Europe never did develop any fondness for Trump, nor did Canada or Latin America. But if he'd pull off his vision, it would have worked....but this just shows why entrusting so much power to shape the future in the hands of a single POTUS is something we should take more seriously than ever having someone like Trump to be considered. He walked us into a trade war with China with the intention of pulling his punches going into the election, turning a concocted crisis into a generational victory, then throwing down a 'peacemaking' kinda deal for Xi and Putin and pleasing Wall Street, the generals and America's allies all at once....except that Covid-19 kept him from completing his vision, so now everything's half-finished right when he suddenly needs support (and he's left his presumed successor with a pile of god awful tariffs on China that Trump himself probably meant to get rid of). Trump is such a fucking cursed dude--how the fuck did we ever let him get elected? 

Trump's potential for reelection was based not on anyone liking Trump but on Trump being so successful that the world would have to acknowledge it. Unfortunately, that's not how American politics works. You have to be liked, not respected. Nobody really gives a shit what you accomplished--and most 'accomplishments' are just phony baloney positioning anyway. And Trump is not well-liked--least of all by the 'Trumpists' (*). And whatever the state of his 'plans', Covid-19 came along and upended all that.

I believe it was Jamelle Bouie who pointed out that a crisis like Covid-19 would be a godsend for most politicians. All you gotta do is look solemn and talk like you're in church at Xmas time. A scared captive audience that just wants to hear some soothing words is what most politicians dream of because that such a moment requires the blandest possible human to speak. A nice haircut with some harmless platitudes and everyone will be reassured and tell you how caring you are. But Trump is incapable of even that basic political opportunism. So instead he treats Covid-19 like it's Tuesday night at Wrestlemania and he'll defeat the disease but ridiculing its white trash girlfriend. 

But the complaint that Trump bungled the coronavirus is itself pure cynicism: what Trump bungled was his chance to make himself look like a nice guy. The idea that the POTUS is going to stop a viral pandemic is delusional, there was little for Trump to do except self-aggrandize--he failed at his best chance to win unparalleled support! The coronavirus was a states' issue not a federal one (**), I suggest there was very little for the POTUS to do and not much different from any other POTUS in the same position (although most any other POTUS would've handled the self-aggrandizement with more grace). And...wait...isn't Trump going on TV and telling everyone what to do exactly what we're supposed to be afraid of...and that's precisely what he did not do when the time arose...?

To me, the disgusting part of Trump's response was the severe lack of testing, which is something I think he could've been at the forefront for encouraging people to seek out and enforcing localities' ability to offer. I don't know what the POTUS can actually do but at least his bully pulpit could speed up the market mechanisms for more testing, more evaluation, etc., to properly understand how the virus was moving and its effects, to separate the spreaders from the at-risk population. But he seemed to think testing would merely make him look bad--it probably would, but that's no reason not to do the right thing anyway. Trump made it clear that getting reelected was more important to him than America. And no was surprised by this. 

Then when the George Floyd protests took over in May/June, Trump's powerlessness was as big as the great outdoors and he showed that POTUS has little control over situations like what happened to George Floyd or the response to what happened to George Floyd. There was nothing Trump could do but try to weather the storm, which looked impossible at the time. But the protests which started off with such force and such mainstream support actually accomplished...not much. The calls for police reform morphed into an attack on statues and a bizarre thrust toward the "Karens" of the world and then just sorta melted away into ordinary summertime frustrations, as the People shook off the coronavirus and went back to their lives. 

Americans: easy to incite but impossible to satisfy, so even rioting in the street bores them. Though I would say Americans looked more likely to register and vote and do all that shit more than usual and that's probably just the way of things now: more divisiveness will likely bring more voters into the electorate, which is the first step to modernizing the process. 

As for Biden, he was able to loll the summer away in his basement doing very little campaigning, instead relying on Trump to self-combust, which was pretty much the correct strategy. Biden brought in Kamala Harris as a running mate, which was the obvious move: at this time last year she struck me as every Democrat's second favorite choice, making her a virtual lock for the VP slot no matter who the candidate turned out to be. Biden has taken on Buttigieg to his team but has more or less ditched all the other comers that chose to attack him (rather than fall in behind him) back in Iowa. To my mind this shows that Biden never really had any more faith in the next generation of Democrats than they had in him--if he did, he'd be holding Kamala up for Attorney General rather than Vice President! He'd be telling you Cory Booker is gonna be a great Secretary of Housing or Beto O'Rourke is our next UN Ambassador or Stacey Abrams will be our new VP, but he's not doing any of that. And all those non-Biden candidates are mostly all just gone. Yeah, Democrats, you may hate Biden but he's easily the best you got and that was always true. 

The Democrats hate Trump but they've done nothing but attack him since he arrived and frankly I think their attacks have come up wanting. They suggest only one thing: Democrats don't like Donald Trump. Yeah, I get that...is there more to this? They were wiretapping General Flynn before the inauguration and tripped him up with the sort of ticky-tack nonsense that federal prosecutors do all the time. They spent two years on an FBI-driven investigation that yielded...some Russian Facebook accounts (are those even illegal?). They impeached him without even bothering to prove a crime. I'm no fan of Trump but do you honestly think the engine of our gov't is solely built for rival politicians to wage war on each other? 

And...wait...if they don't like Joe Biden, then what's the point? They hate Trump but really what they're saying is they want a president to be likable. They need to like the POTUS but then their nominee is a guy they don't even like....? So the Dems didn't want to vote for Hillary in 2016 and they don't want to vote for Biden in 2020 and really all they want is a president that they like. When you realize that the "Trumpists" only like Trump because he riles up the people that hate Trump, then the vacillations of the Democrats becomes, to my mind, all the more unforgivable. They've done nothing but attack Trump as hard as they can and yet they still can't get excited about their own guy...what do they want? 

They're gonna hate-vote Trump back into office because they love hating him so much. And they'll continue to hate him and read his Tweets hourly after he's out of office, so its not like this is even an attempt to get rid of Trump. Just a chance to hate on him a little louder than usual. 

Personally I couldn't give a shit about the POTUS being likable--indeed, I think it's weird to wanna like your leaders! If this summer has taught us anything it is that liking your leaders simply means future generations will tear down their statues. (And why the fuck do we build statues of people that ruled over us, anyway?)  I am suggesting that Trump does have a larger sense of his image that goes beyond his twitterings and that being hate-followed can be very lucrative (shit, man, got Trump all the way to the White House, there's really no reason why that should've happened). 

Trump is an unlikable a human being as I think I've ever seen. He goes way above and beyond most assholes and I understand completely why the left/liberals/Democrats don't like him. I get that, I understand...I just don't care. To me the fact that Trump is unlikable is a meaningless detail. I don't care that I don't like the POTUS and I don't understand why anyone needs to. And even though Biden seems like a much nicer guy, that does not instill me with any greater desire to vote for him. 

Rather than reminding me of 2016 (when Hillary (***) was such a sure thing to beat Trump that Democrats didn't even bother to vote for her), this reminds me more of 2004: George W. Bush was exceedingly unpopular and John Kerry seemed a shoo-in to wrest the Presidency away from him...but then forgot to win the election. Trump is so uniquely unpopular that this scenario might not play out, but I wouldn't be surprised. If all Biden has to offer is that he's not Trump, that doesn't mean much to me. It doesn't mean anything at all really. 

Democrats have attacked Trump from Day One (well, before Day One actually) and all they've done is remind everyone that Trump is an asshole, which we already knew. Even the relative corruption they've uncovered is really just the clumsiness of an unskilled politician--which suggests his corruption is actually less than average! They've done nothing to establish a different way of running the gov't, merely that they'd prefer someone more in line with their cult of personality. But hating on Trump is all the Left has to offer and it is no better than it was on Election Day 2016. Trump makes everyone him around him stupid and the Democrats have only gotten dumber in the last four years. 

Covid-19 has turned everything upside down. And what we're just now realizing (right?) is that it hasn't even happened yet. The Fed and Congress have been over-promising since March, which has forestalled economic turmoil for this year (though I would expect end of the year profit-taking to be pretty severe this December). But January 1st is a whole new ball game and if the infections are rising again, then more lockdowns, more mask turmoil, and more volatility in the markets, all that stuff. So at best, we've pushed off til next year the true economic impact of the coronavirus; at worst, we've done the same thing with the virus, too. 

USA has avoided the rising tide of viruses and pandemics over the last 20 years or so but Covid-19 hit us squarely in the crotch. You're free to believe that your gov't is gonna save us from that but I don't see any reason to believe the gov't has that power (or inclination). Viruses have bedeviled humanity since before it looked anything like humanity, governments are much more recent by comparison. As the population rises and the temperature rises, seems like we should be having pandemics a lot more often, so social distancing and wearing masks will likely be long term effects. And elections will come and go--each the most important of your lifetime!

Meanwhile, Congress this year has passed multiple trillion dollar spending bills. The Fed has tripled its debt load!

The Congress/Fed tandem is vastly larger and more influential than the POTUS. That is our future, regardless of who wins the election. And there's still no arms deals with Russia, nor trade deals with China, and Brexit guarantees you pretty much gotta re-do Europe, too. Oh, and war with Iran can break out at a moment's notice. And we just had our single highest day of new cases of Covid-19.  

The good news as we go to election day: look, man, I know it seems like everything's falling apart but actually I think the noise itself suggests more participation by individual people, the People are more powerful than ever. And that is the great leap forward for Humanity, not the outcome of any particular election. The fact that there is complaint in the world is a result of more people being heard. Complaint is not mitigated by growth because there is always someone that wants more and will voice that desire; complaint never goes away regardless of how secure/rich everyone becomes. Indeed, as lives become better and more numerous, the amount of complaint should skyrocket. The scary images you see on the TV would be a lot scarier if the doomsayers were actually right.   

Truth be told: I'd prefer four more years of Trump. Because I love Trump? No, good lord, what's to love? It is that I fear what comes after Trump more than I fear Trump. And term limits allow us to have Trump serve his time and leave rather than being vanquished and giving his successors a mandate they shouldn't rightly possess. Also, I kinda hope that four more years of Trump will show us that the power of Twitter is greater than the power of the Presidency and perhaps we will properly bring ourselves in line with the real power (re: social media) instead of the endless exhortations of piddling politicians. Social media allows the People to rule (for better and for worse). 

I don't dislike Joe Biden--that is, I seem to like him better than most Democrats do! But I don't have any great faith in his snake oil and the fact that he's a nice guy means nothing to me. More than any election of my lifetime this is a referendum on the deep bench of the parties in that I think it's extremely possible that both Trump and Biden are dead four years from now. So you're really betting on the supporting cast as much as the main players. (I've seen more of the Democrats, therefore I like them less)

I think the main player is Twitter. And the supporting cast is the People. Merely a matter of waiting for the People to realize how much social power they already have--and how little political power is worth in an age of tripled debt loads and a viral pandemic that we still haven't stopped. 

It's the economy, stupid. It always was, it likely always will be. What a gov't does is collect taxes from a citizenry and then provides services (or more accurately, the assurance of services, not the actual services). We can argue about the color of our skin or our hair or our shoes or our bandannas or our favorite politicians or commentators. Or we could acknowledge that the gov't doesn't do any of that stuff, that all of that shit is a product of political media and not a product of gov't itself. Instead of having the substantive public debate about infrastructure spending (and raison d'etre), politics encourages cultural mudslinging between the hippies and bluenoses, a story as old as off-Broadway theater. What a gov't does is collect taxes from a citizenry in promise of providing certain amenities to enhance the productivity of the populace.  

Economic productivity is the point of gov't service. It wants us to make more money (re: create more value) and what Covid-19 has done has tripled (at least!) our commitment to this way of life in the form of Fed promises to keep interest rates unnaturally low if need be and Congress's quest to spend more and more on "relief" (****). But who the POTUS is...has never mattered less to me than right now. More than ever the POTUS is a channel I can change whenever I like. 

(*) There are no "Trumpists". This is something that Left wingers say because they need icons, they need cult of personality to sway their passions. Conservatives do not. Liberals need a movement, conservatives do not. Liberals have things they want done, conservatives have things they don't want done. The Left needs personalities and acolytes, the Right does not need any of that stuff. The Right basically wants nothing and nothing doesn't require any activity, any movement, any anything. The Left needs movements and it thinks in terms of movements because as a natural minority, it needs a swirl of passions to create enough volatility for them to find success; the Right needs nothing at all, wants nothing at all and will live with nothing at all if that is what is offered. The "Trumpists" like Trump for his ability make Leftists lose their minds...and nothing else. As long as Leftists gladly lose their minds over Trump, he is dangerous to them but as soon as the Left figures out to ignore him....Trump will be gone.  *poof*

(**)  For the federal gov't as a whole 2020 will simply be an anomalous year in taxation income. Nothing more. It won't even be a significant blip in terms of population. Yet another reason why expecting the federal gov't to do...anything...is unrealistic. It's too fuckin' big to notice your piddly problems. (200,000 dead is a 'piddly problem', you ask? Yes. To a gov't that was here when you were born and will be here when you die, 200,000 dead means nothing. Waiting for it to solve your problems is like waiting for the sky to give you rain: it'll do so when it god damn feels like and not until)

(***) A weird counterfactual on the nature of power to ponder: Personally I think Biden could've/would've beaten Trump in 2016. I think he had a better chance to hold together Obama voters than Hillary Clinton did. I think Biden could've peeled away some of the white voters that went to Trump, whereas Hillary thought her advantage among women and African-Americans was enough. Okay. Now think of it this way: if Biden had won in 2016, he would likely be looking pretty good going into 2020, and what if Hillary had stayed Secretary of State? What if Hillary had seen the State Dept as her fortress and dug in?  She stays all 8 years under Obama and then potentially has another 8 years under Biden...what could a single individual accomplish in 16 years of running the State Dept? She could've had a major effect on USA's foreign policy leading into the entire 21st century. Instead "power" meant running for President, even though the coalition wasn't actually there and she bungled all forward progress for her party. What is political power? Does 16 years in the State Dept equal 8 years in the White House? Can owning the State Dept have a wider, deeper effect than just being another ol' POTUS?

(****) I'd like to leave off with something like good news...here's my best shot at it. I've longed believed that the next great global economic downturn would pull countries down together in such a way that the subsequent economic boom would be of astronomical proportions. The 2007-8 crisis wasn't uniform enough worldwide to tug down on all economies in a similar way. But Covid-19 is. The entire global economy is getting pulled like a sheet and when it straightens back out, it'll grow and grow and grow like a fuckin' beanstalk....at least, I hope it does because the alternative is not worth pondering (think Weimar Germany but with fewer night clubs). The spring 2020 moves of the Fed and Congress will either snap the American economy in half or it'll be the catalyst of the next giant leap of the global economy. I'm betting on growth--because the other side is not at all appetizing. 2021 will suck, it might suck real bad. But think about it: by 2022 USA, China, Europe, Russia, the Arab World, India, the Pacific Rim, Africa, Latin America and everyone else that I left out will all be on economic upswings that will swell like no other economic surge ever in history. I'm talking decades of worldwide growth. Or that's the hope anyway. I've been waiting for it and I think this is it. 

Digital Citizenship

Might as well go right to the beginning, huh? I'm talking about a whole new interface of citizenship and it would begin with the birth certificate.

At birth each American child (*) would be issued a birth certificate (name of child, date of birth, gender of child (**), names of parents, names of legal guardians, place of birth, height and weight, and the name of the person that completed the certificate itself). Immediately with this comes a Tax Id # (ugh, currently we call these Social Security numbers but I'd get rid of that), the establishment of an account with the Federal Reserve, automatic registration with e-Verify and the Census Bureau, and an individual dedicated email address with 1TB of storage. Your email address (in tandem with a second private email address) becomes the core of who you are, your interface with everyone you meet for the rest of your life.

Social Security? Well, my impossible dream here is that Congress will create individual retirement accounts (IRA), that are actually capitalized rather than this leaky slush fund of IOU's that Congress has been pissing away for decades called Social Security. Obviously this is probably not possible--there's no actual money there, so unless Congress were to imagine IOU's as actual currency (I suppose this could be possible but probably not very healthy), we're going to be stuck with this scheme of stealing from young workers to pay retirees even though it is embarrassingly crass and inefficient simply because the 'do-gooders' of our society have upheld it as 'helping the poor'--even though that's precisely the opposite of what happens. (smh) Social Security is the worst thing that ever happened to American workers, especially the poorest of them, but good luck finding a politician that would (or even could) truly explain what a waste of capital it is and how incredibly detrimental to the lives of the working poor Social Security has been. Phasing it out can begin once a new system has been constructed.

E-verify? Newborn babies are cited for work status? Yes and they'll stay registered as such until retirement. Labor statistics that are 100% accurate and up to the minute are vital. Data is everything in our world now and our society would be best served by having as much of it at its disposal as possible. Unemployment isn't simply something you register for when you are out of a job, it is something that is tracked from birth to retirement and your relative job status is a means of determining your relative taxation rate (positive or negative). In times of emergency (such as we have now seen), this could be a method of making quick payments/loans/etc to individual citizens. Also, this becomes a mechanism for tracking each person's vaccinations and health status.

Census Bureau? Yeah, this would require a vast expansion of the budget of the current Bureau (though not necessarily its reach), every single day rather than once per decade, but it needs to happen anyway and the Census Bureau is the perfect place for it. Why? Because the Bureau is uniquely focused on the citizenry and nothing else, is insanely dedicated to privacy and has absolutely zero reek of politics (because heretofore it has been so fucking basic as to be un-sexy even to the conniving-est of deep staters). Collecting specific data on each individual citizen would be massive amounts of data entry but the raw general data could then be farmed out to other institutions and corporations for actual analysis. The Census Bureau does one single task as quietly as possible, then disperses the general data--no specifics--to others for practical value. How does it do this? Simply removing names, tax IDs and birthdates (to be replaced by age) in any data disbursement. Massive amounts of demographic data becomes available without impinging on the privacy of a single person. And this data could be disbursed weekly or at least monthly.

The Federal Reserve? The Fed would honor each registration of birth with $40,000 worth of brand new 18-year bonds, that would mature on the newborn's 18th birthday. Four bonds of $10,000 would be in your account: one for education, one for health, one for housing and transportation, the other just for being born. And they could be spent, here's how: when one takes on an educational opportunity, for example, one pays by crediting a portion of their Education bond to that teacher/institution; if the institution charges $150 then $150 of that 18-year bond would then be credited to that institution and they would collect when that bond matures. Wouldn't the interest payments eat that capital away? No. There is no interest, there is simply the principal to be paid at a future date. Why would any institution want to work this way? Because when you have a massive population of people giving a $150 of future earnings at a time, then the institution itself becomes capitalized through this debt obligation and as more institutions take on this form, then an entire market based on the transfer of future bond obligations is born. This capitalizes the debt market for education without punishing each individual student with massive debt obligations. Don't get me wrong: this wouldn't pay for one's entire education but at least the first $10,000 could be accounted for and spent more wisely (and if you're pleased with your level of education, good for you, keep the cash when the bond matures).

Now by the time you turn 18 your entire education bond will likely be used up. Oh well, you got the first $10k for free and by wisely apportioning your share, you maximized its value while doing your part to create and capitalize a whole new market for education. And if you decided to ditch education at an earlier age, then more of that $10k cashes out to you on your 18th birthday. Not necessarily the wisest option....or maybe it is...I dunno, it's up to you.

Giving every citizen $40,000? Seriously? Yeah. Hell, I think it would be cheaper than what we have now! By setting up each citizens with $40,000 in the form of 18-year bonds, the Fed knows to the penny how these funds are traveling through society and it gives each citizen an enormous amount of control over their choices. This favors 1) the bold who master their opportunities and 2) the plodding masses that just keep doing it the right way day after day, because even to them they will eventually accrue a good chunk of change.

Unfortunately, this does not favor those with horrible parents. Would it be possible for parents to squander their children's fortunes? Yes, it would. I'm not opposed to the idea of money-savvy parents investing that $40,000 better than in the form of 18-year bonds, so taking that initial investment from the Fed and increasing it through some other method of investment is a win-win for everybody...when it is successful. But those parents that foolishly waste their children's capital would find themselves in a brand new form of public shaming--possibly even prison--so they better choose wisely or face social ostracism that will be hard to outgrow. Children are still at the mercy of their parents. We can only have faith that parents will be wise enough to make forward-thinking decisions for their children. (And, truth be told: it'll only be the second generation of parents, that is those that were born into this system that would really understand it, so it'll take 30 years for this to really sink in...hmmm, I probably shouldn't have said that...)

Until you're 18, you are still a "Child". After 18 you become an "Adult" ("worker" would be more apt but probably not as politically palatable). That doesn't mean that Children wouldn't be allowed to work, indeed I'd rather see high schools and community colleges, in particular, take on a lot more internships, apprenticeships and job training that would literally involve sending students out into the world instead of languishing in schools. (***) And since their labor would be entirely tax deductible (indeed negative taxation would allow them to accrue credits whenever they get out into the world and start producing), it would allow them to actually start banking savings before they turn 18.

Your Federal Reserve account, too, could be a method for forced savings--reserve requirements extended to individual citizens just as they are for banks and financial institutions--that would give the Fed a blueprint of which people should be required to save money and which would be encouraged to spend more. More people would be making more and saving more and producing more.

The basics of your birth certificate form the basis of your digital citizenship. From here an entire dashboard of interaction can be crafted that can monitor your health, your finances, your vaccinations, your taxes, your job history, your educational accomplishments,your prison record, your registered vehicles, even your social media standing, etc. Where does this dashboard come from? Well you'd see all of it but in fact it would be a series of discrete pieces of info provided by each representative agency. For example, when applying for a passport, the State Department could issue one immediately if your info is up to date and the relative info they would need would be available to them--but nothing else. And the info that you see in your dashboard relating to your passport would come from the State Department, but not your educational accomplishments, that piece of data would come from another agency. The two agencies are contributing to your one single dashboard but they'd be ignorant of each other's contributions. You'd see it all but no single agency (except the overall webmaster) would have access to any more than the piece they have contributed.

In your digital citizenship the information you possess about yourself would be entirely in your control. For example, you might not want to share your health info with a total stranger...unless that total stranger is a paramedic charged with saving your life; you might give that guy a little more access to your data even if he is a total stranger. Or when going into a job interview, you would want to give them complete access (temporarily) to your entire educational history or you may want to share a bit of your financial background to show that you are a responsible citizen...or maybe you wouldn't, the choice is yours.

Or how about a method of verification where the gov't can project that your data is up to date without actually revealing said data. For example, you would be required by law to update your dashboard once a year--that is, check in with the Census Bureau that you are in fact still alive and that your work/tax status (and perhaps an medical questionnaire) and your contact info is up to date. The period of your check in would be the 90 days from the 1st of the month before your birthday month to the end of the month after your birthday month. (Ex: your birthday is August 16, you would have from July 1 to September 30 to check in) This would register you to vote, confirm that your tax schedule is correct, serve as your annual registration of house, auto, boat, etc. and whatever else you need done. It is reasonable for the gov't to expect you to confirm your existence once a year, considering the convenience of citizenship, this is not a high price to pay. But doesn't everyone pay taxes on April 15? Not any more, everyone would pay on rolling basis that's based on your birthday.

So, say you're applying to rent an apartment, the potential landlord can check your dashboard, where he would see nothing of pertinent value--except that the gov't can confirm that you are up to date. The gov't does not reveal your tax ID# but it can confirm that you have one and that is properly active.

Yeah, I know: the civil libertarians have been warning you against this for eons. I get it, I'm creeped out by all of it, too. But this isn't a function of gov't, it is a function of technology. And the technology exists to streamline all of our interactions with the gov't in such a way that the gov't can actually be helpful to us! (Ain't never heard a civil libertarian say that before, have you?)

Our possibilities as workers are too important to leave to a rickety system that exposes us to more harm than good. The danger of this system is identity theft--which already happens. And the danger of that does not come from the gov't (all the 'identity' there is to thieve is info the gov't already has), it comes from our fellow citizens. We need the gov't to have the reach to protect us from each other and to be the guarantor of contracts that is the gov't's mission.

Only when the gov't creates a system that protects our identities while allowing us to have them, can we have true liberty and true connection with our homeland. And gives heaping helpings of analyzable data for the gov't and culture to improve our lives without sacrificing anyone's identity. Will it be expensive? At first but in the long run it'll create efficiencies that will save future generations gajillions of dollars while protecting their Constitutional rights.



(*) This is all about citizenship. Non-citizenship is entirely separate. Non-citizens can be absorbed into this system in other ways, but they would not be receiving all the perks of citizenship because they are citizens of another nation. This is a function of gov't: the Constitution of the United States does not apply to non-citizens. There is a movement afoot to discard terms like 'alien' or 'legal/illegal' in favor of 'citizen' or 'non-citizen'---YES! This is a good move. It puts the language firmly in the legal context rather than the cultural one (which is begging for willful misuse).

(**) Yup I'm already getting hot button on the first step. I believe birth gender of the child should be recorded so as to compile data on potential future births. That is, how many baby-making females exist in the country at any given moment. Data is vital, ladies and gentlemen, for the health and well-being of the Republic itself. Again, though, this information would strictly be generalized and never specified, so as to spot larger trends without implicating any given individual. And in the individual's daily life, he/she would be free to 'identify' as he/she however one likes.

(***) Yeah, I should probably admit up front: I kinda hate schools. I think the problem with education is we keep thinking of it in terms of 'schools', which is a horrible way to think of how people learn. Schools want you to believe that the only learning you do is in schools--which is not merely patently false but the opposite of what any good school should be teaching. I think breaking students and teachers away from each other (I'll return to this) is the next great step in education. Say it with me: Education is about learning, it's not about teaching; education is about learning, it's not about teaching; education is about learning, it's not about teaching; etc. ad infinitum until it finally sinks in. Education is a demand problem, not a supply problem: until you want to be educated, you ain't learning shit. The relative supply of education is as wide as the universe but until you demand it, your wants and needs will just be stars in the sky.

Gov't Sponsored Entities

A quick history lesson: in the early days of the Republic, the Congress mostly concerned itself with transportation issues like highways, canals, railroads,ports etc. Congress would do this by announcing a project (say, a highway from Washington DC to Savannah, GA), then it would create a structure to empower a corporation (or series of corporations) to do the project and when the project was completed, the company would dissolve; if there was money left over, then the investors would divvy up the profits and if there wasn't money left over....oh well. Either way, the company was born to perform a specific task and when the task was done, the company would cease to exist.

This changes after the Civil War, when the American economy evolves on the axis of fixed and variable costs. Before the War if you made shoes, for example, and times were good and you had lots of customers, then your variable costs would pay from themselves and you'd work hard and make money; but if times were bad and you had no customers, your variable costs would keep you from performing any work at all and you'd have to cover your fixed costs in some other way, which is why companies in those days were mostly cottage industries of people who made their living probably by farming or bartering.

But after the Civil War, with the expansion of the trans-Pacific railroad, the invention of the telegraph, the introduction of unified national currency and the cessation of slave labor, companies could be formed that could create and move massive amounts of product where the variable costs fell so low that production never ceases even if the economy is bad. We went from an economy where money was tight and producers literally shut down when there were no customers to an economy that was based on non-stop production regardless of whether buyers for the products would materialize because production itself became so cheap.

Gov'ts think on the level of Gross Domestic Product, the overall tally of all the stuff and services that a population produces. This encompasses hundreds of millions of people across millions of acres of land in thousands of different industries making an incalculable number of products. Basically this is what we call 'big picture' stuff, indeed the biggest picture possible really. So expecting the gov't to sensitively act in regards to this industry or that location or these people over here, is just not realistic. It doesn't think that way, it doesn't move that way, it doesn't have the capacity to think or move that way.

The bigger industries have a better chance of reaching the ear of the politicians and a better chance of creating an impact that politicians feel like they have to react to. In the 2007-08 crisis, for example, the gov't bailed out the mortgage holders, not the homeowners; that is, it bailed out the larger institutions not the individual citizens. Why? Because it's easier to do and clearer to see what needs to happen. (*) In the case of the thousands of people who lost (or could have) their homes, adjudicating each claim would take the courts and mediators several years at least to react to and the distribution of funds will undoubtedly be half-assed, piecemeal, lumpy (and most likely doled out to the nearest politician's donors and cronies, regardless of where the money should go). When a crisis arises, the gov't's levers of action tend to be really huge ones and when the gov't needs to put money into the system, for example, it's gonna go to the big money places (not the small ones). So the federal gov't in general is too big, too slow and too insensitive to ever really get anything useful done because all it can do is farm money out to other entities to do it all anyway and in an emergency the gov't will prize speed over justice so the fat cats get first shot at the buffet while everyone else begs for a refill of Pepsi. (**)

But, as in the history lesson above, Congress has the power to create entities, corporations, to perform specific tasks--indeed, that's the way it is supposed to work and we totally lost that during the Reconstruction. I would suggest creating a series of such entities to continually funnel capital into the industries that are inescapable in the daily life of the citizenry: housing, healthcare, education and transportation. These entities would likely be financial in nature and serve the purpose of backstopping these markets to ensure their liquidity in the face of potential crisis and to safeguard gov't and business from each other. These entities could form a thin gray line where business and gov't intersect. And the good news is we already have some of them.

For example, Fannie Mae (FNM) was created to backstop America's housing and real estate market. The idea was to make sure that real estate markets had enough liquidity to encourage the constant development of property, especially for housing. It is market-based in that it responds to customers rather than following a predetermined gov't plan of production. It is a private company, it sells stocks and bonds and pays dividends to its investors.

Why does the gov't need a backstop? Think of it this way: Congress's dominion is not over the people of the United States of America but it's land. All the states and territories that the American gov't claims is the responsibility of Congress and it is Congress's most basic desire to make money off this property or for this property to be productive. Every single acre has a certain value to Congress and it seeks to yield as much in the form of economic growth and income through taxation. Say, there is a wool hat factory on one of those acres; it is a building filled with equipment, it employs workers to make hats, it transports hats, sells hats, makes profits from hats. In a good year the effect on the macro-economy will be positive (***) and the taxable income to Congress will bring money in to public coffers. Hurray! But if the factory burns down then the party's over. The value of that land has gone from all that fine ass wool hat money to nothing--indeed, perhaps less than nothing! Perhaps the burned down shell of a factory is actually a cost rather than a source of revenue.

Now Congress could come back to the factory owner and say you owe us the same amount of tax this year and we don't care that your factory burned down. The factory owner is likely to say, I ain't got no money...whachu want from me? Congress could get all badass and throw the guy in jail but what good is that? Now that's even more money out from  what used to be a steady source of mad wool hat scrill. At the end of the day the Treasury is going to feel the loss of that factory. A chunk of land that used to be positive is now negative, that's no good.

In real estate, though, since the basis of purchase tends to be in long range bonds (or potentially extended contracts), Fannie Mae can step in and purchase the note on that chunk of land from the bank that sold the land to the factory owner. Now Fannie Mae owns the note, the factory owner owns the land and the bank is out of the picture but hasn't lost a dime; the gov't still isn't making any money off this dilapidated property but the private sector is incurring less of a loss because the pain is now transferred to a secondary holding company (this could be referred to as a 'toxic asset') that is backstopped by the gov't. The money moving around in this scenario is what is referred to as "economy" and keeping the liquid sloshing around is really all the gov't wants to do. It wants to make sure that people can still buy land, make money, build houses, whatever, and Fannie Mae is a part of keeping the market moving without the gov't really being involved, maximizing the profit of the good places while minimizing the cost of the bad places.

If Fannie Mae goes bust will the gov't bail it out? Yes. You know it, I know it, the American people know it. The other side of Fannie Mae's existence is that it is there to be bankrupted if things go wrong and to keep the gov't from having to bail out a million little people, instead it just has one big secondary company to re-liquify. Why would it do this? Because the gov't is going to feel the loss anyway, it can't avoid the loss. As in the example above, when the factory burned down the gov't felt the loss. If Fannie Mae absorbs the loss, then the gov't still feels that loss, but the citizens at least have a better chance to avoid the damage and still participate in a liquid real estate market. The bad times, as in 2008 when Fannie Mae got punched in the face, are gonna be bad for the gov't whether Fannie Mae exists or not. But Fannie Mae gives the gov't a chance to liquefy the market and liquefy it again if need be. So Fannie Mae is better in the good times and convenient in the bad times and that's pretty much all it does.

Do you see the effect? The libertarians will tell you this is creeping Marxism. I'd say it's the opposite: it's creating a separation between gov't and markets (****) that would be better for both. It would give the markets more autonomy and independence while better serving the citizenry and gets the gov't even further away from the grubby spending side (where all the politics come from (*****)) and allow the people themselves to dictate the spending.

Why not create a whole series of these entities to make sure that healthcare, education, and transportation are also permanently funded and driven to meet the needs of the citizenry in ways that decrease gov't participation and increase economic growth? And in terms of public health or economic meltdown, it could serve as a blockchain of industries that in times of emergency that could signal and empower each other in the service of public needs, rather than waiting for President Snail to get something done (or better yet: we need to stop pretending like he's the guy that gets stuff done!).

In terms of healthcare, rather than creating a single backstop Fannie Mae-like company, I would suggest a model based on the Federal Reserve. All the banks of the US are linked in an autonomous (autonomous-ish) hierarchy that has a governing board at the top that makes the rules for how all the other banks do their business. The banks themselves are still independent entities but they are linked in a structure that determines their opportunities and responsibilities. Likewise, what if all the hospitals and other healthcare-related entities joined in a Federal Reserve that could smooth standards and practices and even create price efficiencies?

In the current pandemic, much was made over the President's use of the Defense Production Act. But with a Federal Health Reserve, all that stuff would've happened without ever calling the White House. (******) An influx of new cases would signal throughout the healthcare system triggering its own reactions rather than pretending like the White House is empowered to solve this problem. Indeed, wouldn't you rather have a board of public health go to the White House with suggestions of what to do next, rather than the President's own team of political hacks trying to figure it all out from a distance?

Education, on the other hand, would be more like a Fannie Mae-like entity, because it wouldn't actually control any schools themselves, rather it would be a finance mechanism open to the American people to find ways to pay for their schooling. (First off, I'd expand what we refer to as 'education' by first trying to minimize 'schools', which I think mostly stand in the way of a meaningful realization of what it means to be alive; but that's probably a topic for another blog post in the future) In the case of this pandemic, the schools would still be determining their own standards for relating to actual students and a Fannie Mae for education (something like Sally Mae, but not exactly, as I would fund it entirely differently) would be of little impact on public health but could very useful in getting to the heart of the economic impacts of getting everyone back to school.

But a transportation entity may well have been at the forefront in this crisis. As social distancing is the key to slowing down the impact of the virus, a Federal structure that seeks to find the most efficient ways to transport Americans might have been integral to determining how to close and then re-open the society to interaction. When interacting with the Health Reserve, a transportation reserve could've yielded valuable data for vectors of disease and for economy activity.

A housing reserve, similar to Fannie Mae but connected to the citizenry at a granular level rather than a gov't level, would probably play little part in a crisis such as this. Perhaps it could create schedules for rent/mortgage payment that are realistic to the population of people suddenly out of work, but otherwise probably would've had little do with any health concerns.

Yes, we already some of these things. So what I'm proposing would start with restructuring rather than inventing from whole cloth. A housing agency that is open to each and every citizen (rather than just giant mortgage companies), an education structure that works with individuals and families to find the right educational options (rather than trying to stick prospective students with onerous debt repayment as a means of funding the whole system), a transportation structure that prizes efficiency within the need to keep Americans moving and a healthcare system (obviously more complex) that creates efficiencies and opportunities for the citizenry.

How would we pay for it? Congress could create these entities as the repositories of tax dollars. Your taxes would literally go straight into these four entities (which would be a series of regional entities that would be separate and distinct from each other, but interact totally), which would also be free (where possible) to sell stocks and bonds and find other forms of revenue in addition to tax dollars, which are simply there to keep secondary markets liquid (and keep Congress from arguing about details of shit we don't need them arguing over). It could be done--I think it's what the Founding Fathers actually intended! Congress would retain oversight (making the Congress a make backward-looking as opposed to forward-looking body, which would be a huge improvement, I think) and the system adheres as long as Congress keeps re-affirming its own action to do this. Congress can deconstruct it at any time and go back to the old way (of wasting money while fighting over nothing) whenever it feels like this has gone off the rails.

With negative taxation, the work of the American citizenry will continually pump capital back into these structures in the form of subsidies for education, transportation, healthcare and housing that derives from our tax dollars. The American gov't's job is to pour the tax dollars of Americans back into the structures that form our culture and economy and those tax dollars are increased by negative taxation, which allows Americans to redeem their charitable contributions into infrastructure subsidies. Ideally Congress gives up a lot of its empty posturing and focuses instead on finding the practices that best serve the people and the economy. By funneling tax dollars (and investment dollars) into these structures, it makes use of the dynamism within those economies of scale to stay liquid and efficient. We're already doing most of this stuff, perhaps what we need is a cessation of all the other stuff to create a simplified organized system that each citizen can understand and participate with. 

Any system the creates price and energy efficiencies while making sure that Americans have access to systems that provide what they all want and need would pay for itself. Hell, I would suggest that's the only way we'll serve the needs of growing citizens in an economically efficient manner. We're remaking everything in the wake of this quarantine, let's keep the stuff that works and discard the bloated waste.



(*) And because the gov't giving money to a financial entity (like Goldman Sachs, for example) is an investment that may yield more funds in the future (or maybe not), whereas giving money to individual citizens is a cost that is likely just money out. Do you see how that works? "Investment" brings the potential for further economic growth, while "cost" is just money that the gov't no longer has and probably never will again. The trick at the basis of all I'm suggesting is giving the gov't opportunities to invest in the population rather than haphazardly picking up the costs when it all goes wrong.

(**) The obvious exception being our bi-partisan massive military that is funded to the gills and has never failed to find support for whatever it dreams up in the halls of Congress. One difference, though, is that the Military is by its very nature solely controlled by the gov't, whereas not much else in our society is. The problem with all I'm suggesting is that the military and intelligence get way more of the tax dollars than anything else does and unless the Military likes what I have to say, none of this will matter because the military basically has veto power over a massive chunk of public expenditure.

(***) Probably won't be very big. I mean...shit, dude, they're making wool hats.

(****) I've been reading up on the American Revolution lately and I'm newly struck at the significance of the separation of church and state and why the Founders were so resolute to make it happen: because the church is where all the revolution was coming from and after the Revolution, the gov't wanted that shit to stop pronto. And the way to stop it was to marginalize the churches by giving them so much freedom that they'd drown in it. I'd like to see Wall Street, too, get watered down considerably by codifying the basic interactions between gov't and business.

(*****) The politics wouldn't go away but perhaps the arguments would be better directed and less general. People with kids, for example, would be all into Education moves, which would now be made by a separate entity, whereas people without kids no longer have to be bothered/empowered. So those people that maintain these concerns, rather than complaining to/about their Congressman, they can direct their energies toward the economic entities that are actually building that structure rather than the politicians who would have steadily less control over it.

(******) Indeed, I would suggest that's how it happened anyway, Trump never actually needed to do anything--and I don't think he actually did. This story is a function of a media structure that wants to paint the world in its own way to please its listeners/followers/readers/etc, rather than an actual appraisal of the gov't in action.

Data is Surplus Value

Data is what the political economy wants from us and data is what we have to offer.

My problem with the digital world where corporations (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft at the top of the list) know everything there is to know about me is not that they're out there compiling this info. It is that they don't share the info with me!

Why am I not allowed to know this stuff? Why is it easier for a faceless data-collecting corporation to learn more about me than I am allowed to know about myself? If this info about me can be harvested, then don't I have a proprietary right to that information? Shouldn't all pertinent info about me be made available to me?

I listened to a lecture the other day where a cyber-security expert talked about Equifax (a credit score company) getting hacked by the Chinese in 2017. Yes, it is a shame and a crime that the Chinese now have this information about me--but, shit, man, I never asked Equifax to compile the information about me to begin with! Before I take my revenge on China, shouldn't I sue Equifax? (*) Have you ever gotten a credit report? They don't ask questions about you, they tell you things about you. Things you may have forgotten, things you may not have ever known. They are merely grabbing the info that is out there about me, creating a profile of me and doing so because the banks are greatly benefited by knowing this about me. But why don't I know about me? Why don't I get to see the benefit of that profile?

I'm not cool with the Chinese possessing my data, but how cool should I be that Equifax possesses this data? Why should I be beholden to Equifax to learn about myself? They're, in a sense, making me pay for a service I did not invite them to take up...isn't that extortion? They're not providing me with a service--the service they're providing isn't for me, it's for banks and other lending institutions--instead they are holding me hostage for a payment. This data is worth something to someone, why aren't I benefiting from it? And why didn't Equifax do a better job of protecting me from hackers? Why are they giving this information to foreign spies and not to me?

As workers, we must seek and demand the highest possible return on our labor and on our surplus value. We must demand that our gov't work with us first to receive our share of the work we perform before it goes to other entities. If my financial data, for example, is valuable to someone, it must first and foremost be valuable to me. If it is a source of revenue, then let that revenue be captured by me.

How we work (make money), how we live (spend money) and how we look to the future (save money) are the fullest and highest expressions of our citizenship. It is how we will spend the bulk of our time, it determines the forms our education will take, determines where we will live and serves to shape the peer group we will run with. Our ability to work, to make money, permeates every decision of our lives (even when we don't realize it). The American gov't was constituted to provide protections and guarantees based on property rights, due process and many enumerated freedoms. The Constitution's implicit pledge to honor the Declaration of Independence's desire for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is our bond as a nation.

I worked for a year in a call center signing people up for Affordable Care Act insurance (you probably remember it as Obamacare). I saw people getting great deals, life saving deals, and I saw people paying way too much for something they probably didn't even need. (**) I bring this up not to talk about healthcare but to talk about taxes, which eventually for me became a well worn speech: look, man, you can put down whatever you want for your projected income, you can collect whatever benefits you think you deserve, but on tax day your income will no longer be "projected" and on that day the gov't will decide what you should have received last year (meaning this year, right now). If you did worse than you thought you would, you might get a refund; if you did better, though, you will owe money, your subsidy will be deemed as incorrectly received and you will pay extra. And the gov't reserves the right to not give a shit if you didn't know that. (***)

There you go: the citizen's primary interaction with gov't is taxation. The bad news is this is one place where the customer is never right, the gov't knows what it wants from you and it will get it one way or another. The good news is when the gov't decides to tax you, then it takes an interest in you (****) and frankly it behooves the gov't to maximize your economic power because the gov't's larger interest is to maximize its own economic power. So far the American gov't has more or less allowed others (re: corporations and landlords) to maximize your surplus value, to harvest the potential revenue away from you, probably because it assumed these institutions driven to rent-seeking will do it better than the workers themselves. But I would suggest the best way for the gov't  to truly maximize the citizenry's potential is to maximize the freedoms you have as a citizen to make money, spend money and save money precisely as you see fit (outside of violence and fraud, of course). Taxation is also the source of subsidy, which I would suggest would better be thought of as negative taxation: your return from the gov't is completely dependent on your income (or ability to produce income).

In the form of negative taxation, you can receive subsidy from the gov't for your surplus value, just as with health insurance. The time you spend time working within NGO's, charities and non-profit institutions can be redeemed in the form of lowering your tax obligations and eventually putting a lot of ordinary citizens into negative taxation, meaning they would receive money back from the gov't for working in non-profit organizations.

Does the gov't benefit from this? Yes. A lot of dollars accumulated and re-directed by the gov't will no longer be needed because more citizens would be performing those tasks within their communities, generating the benefit locally rather than federally. Does the economy benefit from this? Yes. More people will be entering the workforce, even if the only compensation is subsidy from the gov't. How does the gov't deliver this subsidy? In the form of capitalizing GSE's that would take up the task of making sure certain industries (healthcare, housing, education, and transportation) would be fully functioning in a manner to serve the needs of the populace first and foremost. The gov't would be pumping money back into the economy--not by incentivizing banks with low interest rates--but by investing in workers and their communities by making sure that the necessary functions of society are well oiled. Does this limit for-profit enterprises or the citizens that want more of a professional life? No, indeed this should separate the go-getters from the masses even more, giving them more opportunity to innovate with less deleterious impact on the necessary workings of the society.

Negative taxation becomes a way for the gov't to help finance non-profits and charities with a great deal of excess labor. The good orgs will know exactly what to do with the extra help, the bad orgs will not and will shrivel away (*****). So at this point it becomes very much in the gov't's interest to separate the worthwhile charities (like, say, programs that get food to the elderly) from the ones that suck up capital without giving anything back (like, a lot of deadbeat churches that perform no worthwhile function)  Yes, churches that do stuff in the community can maintain their tax-exempt status--as can all charities that perform in their communities--but the churches that just pretend to preach a gospel can devolve into Facebook groups where they belong and be forced to pay just like everyone else that wants to live in the real world.

Supposedly a couple of the items in the recent giant Congressional emergency financial package recently passed were 1) the establishment of a digital currency (I mention this only in hopes that I will return to the notion in a future post) and 2) the Federal Reserve offering each citizen it's own account, which is an idea I heard floated for the first time in a podcast last week--I've been kinda riveted by the notion ever since I first heard it and pleased (******) that it was a part of the Congressional action.

Having an account with the Fed means they can literally guide you through every financial choice you make from birth (I'll come back to that) to death (I'll be coming back to this, too). It can help you maximize the value of your consumer spending (especially for education, for example), maximize your savings (I'll be coming back to this one, as well) and your purchasing power. There are any number of things the Fed could help us with (ditching Social Security for an actual retirement plan, would be a great start--I'll definitely be coming back to this one) but first and foremost they can guarantee all of your economic holdings (so long, FDIC, don't need you anymore), at least in the form of bonds, commodities and digital credits and provide a true credit score that is backed by the bond of gov't--rather than a shadowy corporation that I ain't never heard of (like Equifax--they got hacked by the Chinese, did you know that?). The power of an individual account with the Federal Reserve is huge and can be the basis of a whole new citizenship.

The last post was about healthcare--it all starts there. For now I'm going to move on to a pile of other things, that should come back around to healthcare--because it all ends there. But it seems to me that negative taxation is an economic bond the gov't can develop with the citizens to build a whole new world of charitable giving that goes beyond just writing a check at Xmas time. And redistributes wealth from birth without interrupting the larger economy that all of this is based on. Readjusting our individual identities starts with labor and the gov't can expand that very quickly in a manner that pours reinvestment back into America's communities by rewarding citizens to do it themselves.

It begins with data and my plan is about designing a comprehensive digital citizenship that keeps you in touch with your data (what Sartre would've called your facticity) and maximizes the individual citizen's ability to capture their own surplus value, which is to the benefit of the macro-economy. This isn't a function of government, it is a function of technology: digitization allows for us to know a lot more a lot faster. This is good for those that understand it and dangerous to those that don't. So let's help the citizens understand it: data forms our new identity, negative taxation allows the citizenry to capitalize on good works and GSE's create the sub-economy where the gov't can reinvest in the basics of society.

Charitable labor is a giant untapped reservoir of wealth and redistribution. But the first step is for each citizen to understand their own impact, their own power, their own facticity in manner guaranteed by the gov't as a fiduciary (rather than a corporation that is predatory).



(*) Shouldn't we all be suing Equifax? Your dumb fuckin' gov't let them get away with this with basically no penalty! What the fuck, dude? Where is our outrage?

(**) The really sad cases were the ones that fell between the cracks: too broke for ACA, not broke enough for Medicaid. Yeah, dude, I fuckin' cried on more than one occasion. All we could do was suggest community health centers in their area. The calls generally didn't last more than 15 minutes but you could get pretty deep in people's lives very quickly filling out this form. The desperation of the people that needed something and weren't gonna be able to get it, even in the face of this unique opportunity of Obamacare was genuinely heartbreaking.

(***) A mantra of mine for quite some time: the gov't was here when you were born and it'll be here when you die. It ain't worrying about you. Indeed, notice I'm couching all of these possible changes in the notion that the gov't will actually benefit greatly from its citizens being more plugged in.

(****) Look at Saudi Arabia. The people don't pay taxes, which sounds nice, but it means they have absolutely no say on anything their gov't does. When the gov't wants a highway, the people get a highway, but not until the gov't needs one (which is *ahem* pretty much how we got our highway system, too).

(*****) "Good" and "bad" in this sense, unfortunately, does not mean the orgs that do good work. Instead it would incentivize the popular personalities that lead the orgs to be more instrumental in directing labor and capital flows. For example, I can think of an entity in my own community that is headed by a beloved man....that totally sucks at his job. Everyone loves him because he is a truly nice guy but his nice-ness has not overall benefitted his organization. It behooves us as citizens to reward the people that are doing the good work and not simply those that look like they're doing good work. That's on us, people. The gov't in this case will likely make the same stupid mistakes that we do. But as the universe of data opens up to us, we'll get a clearer picture of which orgs work and which ones don't.

(******) "Pleased" meaning optimistic. I've never been optimistic about anything Congress has ever done but I do think this could be a hugely positive development for Americans.