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.

Military Expenditure Toward Healthcare

A quick American history lesson. The 1st Continental Congress met in 1774 to form a colonies-wide protest to the British passage of the Intolerable Acts, which was a response to the Boston Tea Party of 1773. That original Congress produced merely a statement...that no one paid any attention to. But the 2nd Continental Congress met in 1775 and the beginnings of a true organized revolt against the British Crown was pretty well underway. Why the differentiation between the 1st and 2nd? The 2nd Continental Congress included all of the original 13 states and thus can rightly be considered the origins of our current federal gov't, but the 1st only included 12 of those states and so is not exactly the same as the 2nd. That said, the 1st and 2nd were clearly from the same source and built around the same causes, so separating the two isn't really necessary save cosmetic differences. (*)

After the Revolution had been fought and the British were vanquished, the Continental Congress ushered in the Articles of Confederation and from 1781-1789 sorta goes to sleep.  It's there, it's doing stuff, it meets regularly--and yes, there were Congresses and Presidents before 1789--but it is really more of a placeholder for a gov't than an actual gov't. The Constitutional Convention of 1787 is where we got our Constitution, our Congress, our President and our Supreme Court. (**) And in 1789 the 1st United States Congress meets and George Washington is inaugurated as President (***).

Though the time from 1781-1789 was something of a dormant period, it was in 1784 that our modern Army was founded, though initially it was rife with mutiny as the Congress was bankrupt and offered little way by way of regular funding. But actually the Army created by the 2nd Continental Convention in 1775 never went away and though it was re-created in 1784, technically it was still the same Army that was there at the beginning of the Revolution. So the modern Army predates the modern Congress. While the argument could made that Congress goes back to 1774 and the Army goes back to 1775, realistically our Congress goes back to 1789 and in 1789 when the 1st Congress met and the 1st President was inaugurated, the military was already there at the disposal of the gov't.

The military, then, is primary and the construction of our constitution has the military in mind throughout. The President's first order of business, for example, is to be the Commander-in-Chief of the military. Think of it this way: the Military is the wild animal, Congress pays for the cage it lives in, the Commander-in-Chief feeds and waters the animal and tells it what to do, all of which is agreeable to the Military as long as the Congress and President are popularly elected. (****) Add in a Supreme Court (to adjudicate claims between the citizens) and a central bank (to finance it all) and--voila!--you got a political economy that has some real teeth to it. But make no mistake: it is the Military that gives the Congress credence, without it no one would give a shit what a room full of old white men wearing wigs thought about anything. It is the monopoly of force that makes our gov't a gov't--and in our case the force was there before the gov't was.

So the real branches of gov't: 1) Military, 2) Congress, 3) President, 4) Supreme Court, 5) Federal Reserve. Smoothly drip over 50 states with their own legislatures, executives and judiciaries, even their own militias (but no central banks, just not central enough at the State level), then trickle down through the city and county gov'ts and courts (and police forces?) within each State and that's America, buddy.

Why do I bring this up? And why did I put the Military at the top? Is it because I love guns? No. It is that the Military already has all the money and is the only truly bi-partisan supported institution in our nation (*****) and deep down is every bit as much of our makeup as the Presidency or the Congress. If you want the gov't to do something, you're probably gonna need the Military on board. And when you can convince the Military it wants it, too, then you got some sweet action.

Covid-19 has shown us that on occasion we will need emergency procedures and crisis management, above and beyond what the day-to-day gov't itself can (or should) provide. Realistically the Military is going to be the source of all that. You can be queasy about giving the Pentagon too much power or you can embrace the notion that militaries all over the world are on the cusp of the transition from war-making functions to life-saving functions. Medical triage, rapid response, emergency procedures, and search and rescue will be needed to combat floods, earthquakes and hurricanes, too (******). These skills will only be needed occasionally but when we need them, we need them to snap into action pronto. Really only the Military with its national security mandate (and virtually unlimited budget) will be able to perform those tasks.

I'm ready to see the Pentagon move away from weapon development and get back into investing in its citizen assets for the purpose of increasing our capacity for emergency preparedness and to bolster the labor market for a move toward a service-driven healthcare economy. What this virus offers us is the time to do that, as all the other peoples of the world realize that's what they need their militaries to do, too. Developing weapons systems is something we do to outspend our adversaries (yeah, truth be told, we develop ever more expensive weapons solely because we can and our enemies (probably) can't). We can afford systems other countries can't even dream of and that's fine, being dominant in that field is what all the most powerful nations of history possessed. But right now an ethic of life-saving rather than war-making should emerge as nations stagger back into the sunlight.

How do we make this happen? I dunno. What kind of medical and search-and-rescue programs can the military offer? I dunno. I suggest we find out. Realistically the Military can reshuffle a little here and there in its medical personnel, but the massive outlays of capital I'm suggesting would be better served going to colleges and universities. So how can the Military partner with educational systems to ramp up the sheer amount of Healthcare workers? I dunno. Perhaps the Military designs 2 or 4 year programs whereby the GI bill will cover more medical training or something. I don't know how that shit works, but my instinct is the Military can figure it out, has the need to do so and the funds and mandate to pull it off. It's less about training more doctors (though that's not bad) and more about widening the training of emergency service providers and first responders.

Perhaps even multiple levels of doctoring: it takes 6 years of med school to do x/y/z but perhaps it only takes 2 years to be certified in a/b/c. Perhaps we should establish a series of certifications and qualifications leading up to doctorhood that can employ people (at least in emergencies) who haven't achieved maximum educational status. Perhaps it is in separating the many various functions of care rather than seeing Healthcare as one giant indivisible mass. And, for god's sake, we've got tone down the liability of medical providers. Ladies and gentlemen, you have to give medical workers the opportunity to save your life! Suing for gross negligence or continually bad practices is one thing, but suing an aid worker that made an honest mistake or just wasn't able to save your dying uncle is not what our courts need to be concerned with.

The coming boom of healthcare workers would create more opportunities in the industry as a whole and I don't say that under the thought that the supply will create the demand. In healthcare the demand is universally latent and permanently under served--indeed, that's the whole libertarian argument against nationalized healthcare: the demand curve never goes down and the supply curve can never match it, therefore paying for it is utterly impossible and doomed to fail while bankrupting the nation and in the end providing no worthwhile healthcare and satisfying no one. I'm not talking about a Healthcare system that tries to accomplish that impossible task, I'm talking about a Healthcare system where all citizens receives more square one level of attention (giving the data analyzers more than enough to work with), which will require a lot more people with square one kinda skills. I'm talking about a nationwide resurgence of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts really but with a Pentagon-size budget behind it.

Do I worry about an oversupply of medical professionals? I do not. And I'd love to see the Pentagon use their massive budget to try and prove me wrong. I bet you a dollar training a shitload of extra medical and emergency personnel will not be a waste of money. How to accomplish this? I don't know but pouring Military money into colleges and universities with the purpose of producing more healthcare workers at every level strikes me as the place to start. Perhaps creating a division within the Defense Department that keeps the practice ongoing is the key.



(*) The Stamp Act Congress of 1765 and the Albany Convention of 1754 could be considered antecedents of our gov't but don't have the same makeup or underlying intentions as what we ended up with, so they are better thought of as examples of the larger evolution toward a general sense of political culture rather than as direct lineage of our current gov't.

(**) It also gave us a central bank but that original bank was drowned in the Potomac during the Jackson administration. Our current Federal Reserve is an altogether different beast from what the founding fathers imagined in 1787, but we did end up with one the way they thought we would, right?

(***) In 1789 everyone ignores the Supreme Court because all through the 1790's it was a shit job that nobody wanted. It isn't until Marbury v Madison of 1803 that the Supreme Court even begins to see a proper role for itself. Under the Chief Justice-ship of John Marshall from 1801-1835, the Court rounds into something that would look familiar to contemporary Americans. But it took a while for that third branch to grow.

(****) As the military possesses its own justice system, the Supreme Court actually has very little oversight in how the military operates and functions, outside of affirming the Congress's power of the purse and the President's standing as commander-in-chief. One could argue that modern courts are just extensions of ancient military tribunals, but in America's case, it was hundreds of years of English common law that formed the backbone of our judicial practices. So though I'm trying to show the primacy of the Military in the Federal Gov't, I don't see that as contributing much to our judicial side.

(*****) Well, maybe college football. Hey, there's a lot more state funding there than you probably ever bothered to notice.

(******) Political rallies (sometimes referred to as "riots"), on the other hand, should be left off of the Military's emergency purview. Amassing troops to keep crowds from performing wanton acts of large-scale destruction might be okay, but anything short of that is something the Military should instinctively avoid. Protecting, say, the POTUS or Supreme Court Justices from physical retribution is not the Military's job and not a task the Military should even consider. I'm okay with the Military protecting buildings (the White House, for example) but not individual people (POTUS has his own security force, he's somebody else's problem).The emergency powers I'm talking about would be reacting to purely act of God-type stuff, nothing political in nature if for no other reason then your Military is made up of normal citizens, their passions and persuasions are not so easily banked upon and keeping their directives as clear as possible is a necessity in the Miliary. The Military should avoid the politics of the people and stick to saving lives and protecting borders. Soldiers firing into a crowd....do you know the story of Christopher Seider? (Personal aside: If a domestic mob can only be stopped by force of arms, then it probably shouldn't be stopped, as the only thing that will stop it is genocide. Thus, pointing your military at your own populace is merely suicidal whether in the long run or short)

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.

Healthcare

I always figured that Americans would receive gov't-sponsored healthcare at the nexus of national security and law enforcement. That is, when the gov't hits a point where it needs the DNA and/or biometric data of the citizenry as a means of protecting its borders or policing internal relations, then the citizenry will get "free" healthcare in the form of regular preventive checkups. When the gov't needs the citizenry to yield its medical data, only then will the gov't be incentivized to provide those necessary medical checkups. Yeah, people screaming for free healthcare is in and of itself not enough to move the gov't to do something it doesn't particularly want to do. The only way it happens is when the gov't itself needs to get it done. And when the technology matures enough to allow these developments to happen.

Well, that's where we are now, right? The gov't needs the citizenry to be tested to accurately account for the spread of Covid-19. And here's the deal with those tests: they're not likely to be particularly accurate at first. And by only testing those with symptoms, you actually don't learn much about how the virus has penetrated the population. So you need everyone (yeah, all 320 million of 'em) to get tested multiple times; say, every 4 weeks for at least 24 weeks, right? Then you'll be able to confidently map out which areas are at risk and which areas no longer need to be worried about (again: there is a point where spreading the virus becomes the strategy). And what does it mean to be "recovered" from Covid-19? Only further testing will tell. So ongoing testing for everyone is the first step to any kind of solution and hopefully the first step to preventing the next virus outbreak (*).

Indeed, Covid-19 has shown us the level of healthcare all Americans should be receiving: regular checkups. Once a year, you get your fluids checked, receive any necessary vaccines or inoculations and your bio-metric data is cataloged. This is not an open-ended system where your kidney transplant is automatically paid for but a basic preventive examination where everyone gets checked out to determine how dangerous they are to each other. This type of preventive checkup system would save an awful lot of lives and improve those saved lives, too. (And would produce a need for expanded labor in Healthcare related fields and a subsequent need for expanded education in Healthcare)

Gov't sponsored healthcare in the American political landscape has, I think, basically always been a Hail Mary of the self-pitying Left, that wants to blame politicians for perfectly natural events and then pat themselves on the back for 'speaking truth to power', when their very definitions of 'power' are distorted and dangerous. Ted Kennedy for decades in the Senate was the master of giving impassioned speeches only when he knew he was going to lose 96-2, making a big show of his attempts to stop injustice, when really what he was doing was distancing himself from his own inability to get votes or make a worthwhile argument to his fellow senators. And that to me was what the healthcare was in the hands of liberal pols: not a plea to consider a new method of satisfying the healthcare needs of Americans but a white flag in the form of empty angry rhetoric. Medicare for All would not have protected us from this or necessarily even projected this occurrence. Medicare for All isn't a real plan, it just sounds like something people would agree with and politicians are just looking for agreement.

But shit's different now. For the first time in our existence, the gov't needs us to have healthcare more than the citizens even want it for themselves. (And that's when action happens: when it gets forced on the people) This virus is going to create an immense amount of changes in our system over the next 2-3 years: the banks are going to need to completely redefine basic terms just to pay their taxes this year, the states have a whole new sense of what is and isn't in the federal domain and the courts are going to be litigating the last three weeks for the next five years. Our lives as workers, students, parents, tenants, taxpayers, etc., are going to be dislocated and/or restructured. And that's just domestically! Internationally, it's all going to change. All of it. It kinda has to: trade and transportation and tourism protocols are going to be completely redesigned, which means suddenly the standards of countries we don't live in will matter a great deal to us. This virus has awakened things in us that we didn't know were there.

Will the gov't be providing these regular free checkups to the citizens? Eventually, I reckon, but probably not in the next month, which is when we need them. But afterwards, plans like this may sink in and take hold. Seriously: just regular checkups would save a lot of lives and teach the living to live better. The expanded economic potential of a happy healthy populace is incalculable, how can we afford not to develop a comprehensive health care plan?

A fascinating element of this: this isn't about race or guns or the environment or industry or region--holy fucking balls, it isn't even about money! It is literally only about public health. The level of the gov't's interest in the public health is now clearly laid bare. There is no need for politics: Medicare for All would not have prevented our current situation and the Republican version of...well, nothing at all....is simply not a productive response for the good of the land.

So the citizens need medical checkups and the gov't needs us to have them. Now you've got something for politicians to work with. And they have the mandate now to be creative (what every politician dreams of!). Rather than shooting for the moon, build it up from the bottom, collect the data, make sure the shit works and go from there. Annual checkups, that's all we need and its a great place to start. But gov't-sponsored healthcare will only exist when it is in the government's favor to provide it and the derived data is indispensable and we may have hit that time.


And that brings me to my real point: data. Data is what the political economy wants from us and it is what we have to offer. I'll be further outlining my thoughts on this subject in a series of blog posts that I have only begun to work on (though I have been contemplating for several years).

Changes are coming and the sooner we awaken ourselves to that fundamental fact, then the sooner we can position ourselves to fight for the good stuff and eliminate the wasteful practices of the past. The virus is not going to kill us off (at least, I'm pretty sure it won't) but for the survivors it will be a new world. And we should strive to make it better than the old one (**).



(*) Oh yeah, there's no reason to think this is the last one. There will be more, the earth will keep coming up with new ways to kill us off/make us stronger, that's just what it does.

(**) Don't get me wrong: I've been a big fan of the old world. But it hasn't been nearly as good as it should've been.

Covid-19 (the virus)

Okay, I think I'm ready to write about Covid-19. Most of what I'm about to write is what I thought a week and a half ago but I feared writing at the time because it felt too optimistic in the face of impending tragedy. But since we're on the very precipice of that coming tragedy, I feel a little more secure about writing, a little less like I'm tempting fate. I think fate is already here now and I can speak to it eye to eye.

I think the ugliness in America is about to take off. The next two weeks will likely suck real bad. NYC, Atlanta and Denver are looking like war zones and San Francisco and Los Angeles (and why not Philadelphia and DC, too?) are getting there, too. So far the quarantine has been fun and games (our toilet paper obsession indicates we're a nation of Al Bundys, which is not heartwarming facing into a storm), but as the virus spreads we'll see more outages in food production, energy distribution and probably even basic utilities across entire zip codes. As long as the grocery stores and gas stations hold out and as long as there's internet, I feel like Americans can bunker down like no one else; but those amenities will be tested along the way and how we react will be telling. But so far nothing has deviated my original thoughts, so I'll try to recapture them.

So not quite two weeks ago (Friday, March 13) when it became apparent that quarantining was the only way to go it seemed to me we'd be on a 6-week plan, something like this: in two weeks we'd have a lot more testing done and we'd be able to replace models with data, we'd be terrified to learn that testing will (likely) show that the virus is waaaaaaay more wide spread than we anticipated and this would lead to another two weeks of quarantine. After two more weeks, the bodies would start piling up and the virus would spread a little wider and quarantine would feel even more like a necessity. After two more weeks, the deaths would taper off, the science would be better, the healthcare would become steadily more active and productive and the end of quarantining would at least be in sight.

And though many will die in that six week span, many others will be taking better care of themselves and their surroundings, they'll be eating healthier, cleaning more thoroughly, driving less, generally treasuring their happiness in a way most Americans just don't, and they'll likely emerge with a stronger sense of sense of purpose, a newly articulated desire for social interaction and a whole new appreciation of work. I don't say that as a cock-eyed optimist, I really do believe that is the likely outcome. The death rates of the virus are scary to those initially exposed to the virus, but pushing off exposure--the name of the game--will keep death rates from spiraling into Walking Dead territory (which I think is an entirely unlikely scenario). And I wouldn't be surprised to see a baby boom in the next 9-12 months, so overall death rates may well find replacement (in a species-level sense). 

What's happening is that the virus is coming for us and we will all get it. Oh yeah, that's worth remembering: we're not avoiding this, it's going to get each and every one of us. But the hope is that by pushing off that initial contact, we each give ourselves a vastly greater chance of surviving the virus because in the coming future a) we'll have a better sense of how to handle it, b) the virus itself will be weaker and less dangerous and c) the healthcare structures around us will be able to assist us rather than being overwhelmed by other virus-infected masses. At that point circulating among others will be quite a bit less dangerous, though big events will probably be rare at first.

The problem with the 6-week plan is in six weeks this will still be the same plan. Letting everybody get back to normal won't seem like a good idea if the virus re-emerges and the numbers start ticking higher again. So I would expect the quarantine to continue at least 12 weeks and in that time testing should've spread enough to target the proper locales to quarantine and which ones can ease up restrictions on movement and/or interaction. The places where the virus has spread worst should be the first places to come back from it, as more residents recover from infection, life can edge back toward normal.

None of this is really over until either a vaccine is found or the overall penetration of the virus is so deep that quarantining no longer matters. Of the former, the thought is 12-18 months; of the latter only massive amounts of testing will tell, so I'd say at least 12-18 months. So dig in, America, social distancing is is gonna be with us for a while. And destined to be one of the great days in American history is the day spreading the virus becomes the correct line of action (that's probably a few years down the road--but that day will come whether we realize it or not).

Again, I'd say 12 weeks at the absolute earliest on getting back to the new normal. I put that day at June 5, 2020. If things are as bad as they are today on June 5, then we can stop being scared because fear will just be a waste of precious time. But I do not anticipate that events will be as dire as today and that seems like a reasonable time for the powers-that-be to have formed some kind of plan for getting people back to work (or paying them to remain at home).

Can the NBA start playing again by June 5? Can we start getting summer action movies by June 5? Will museums and theaters and public parks get back to being full again by June 5? I dunno. I kinda doubt it but by June 5 we'll have a much better sense of where to go and how to get there. Until then we just gotta hope that grocery stores and gas stations can keep it going. (I think they will in America and I think they will around the globe, too;

The world will be stronger when this has passed, that is the good thing to look forward to. Viruses occur because nature is constantly testing us (re: trying to kill us) and each obstacle that does not kill us makes us stronger (one thought, for example, is that Covid-19 has shown tendencies of strengthening the arterial walls around the heart, which may be a brace for heart disease). The earth is trying to make us stronger and it will succeed (eventually) but first it will make us wait in solitude.

That the virus will pass and when it does humankind will in the long run be better off....is this too optimistic? No. Strengthening through endurance is the way of things, this has happened numerous times before (and will happen again). Stay smart, stay strong, stay alive, that's all one can do in the face of nature's tests.

Covid-19 (the politics)

I get my news through a steady diet email newsletters from a variety of industries, sources, and political persuasions. I stay in touch with developments while keeping hype to a minimum and the wide variety of viewpoints keeps me from getting too paranoid in any particular direction. I don't get on Twitter (though I'm pondering a way to craft a useful Twitter life) and I'm too boring a person for Facebook or Instagram. I look at Reddit throughout the day and that's where my political-ness comes from. During this period of quarantine I have seen no diminution in the sheer amount of political stories (er, that is, teenagers being snarky for on-line plaudits, not even because they believe their own snark) and I guess I'm not surprised: politics is a popular parlor game among the sophisticated but bored populace.

But the gov't has never been less crucial to me than this week. I've seen enough of Trump that I don't understand why anybody bothers to watch him.  What could a normal citizen possibly learn from watching this guy? He clearly doesn't get how the virus works--and why would he? Why would it matter if he did? Are you waiting for the president to cure a coronavirus? He doesn't do stuff like that, so why exactly does the population even need him to pretend like he does? Indeed, this is a States' problem more than a Federal one and each State will show different ways to react and recover that will be invaluable going forward while the Federal gov't isn't likely to do much of anything relating to the virus itself that is useful at all.

Even the quarantine didn't derive from the gov't but from the citizenry. The corporations, the banks, the insurance companies, the markets, the masses....we embraced social distancing as a means of fending off this virus and the gov't was forced to come along--even though Trump clearly doesn't like this or want any part of this. The gov't is downright hostile to the plan--so why are we looking to the gov't in this time when it is looking only to us?

It was the NBA that let the cat out of the bag: public interaction is way too much of a liability to afford to have a game. When you have 20,000 people in an arena, it is easy to assume that 2% of those people (400) have the virus and that two hours of sitting crampacked together will surely spread the disease to at least another 2% of anyone with 10 feet of the person (which might be up to 30-40 people); now if anyone dies of this virus--anyone anywhere in the world dies of this--now the NBA is potentially liable to anyone that has ever heard of the NBA. Yes, many of those cases would be frivolous but they would still cost the NBA an enormous amount just to make them go away or many cases would be cheaper for the NBA to pay off rather than litigate, which can be brutally expensive and at least implies a level of culpability, which opens the league to further claims. If the virus progresses as the spreadsheets suggest and the death rates maintain to expected levels, then the NBA becomes financially liable to potentially hundreds of thousands of claims just for a regular old Kings-Nuggets game on a Tuesday night.

Likewise with South-by-Southwest (SXSW): I suspect that at the last minute insurance underwriters came through and said something like, 'yeah, normally we charge a thousand for this but this year it's going to be a million because the rate of spread of this virus is too much to handle.' When liability balloons like that, then calling the whole thing off--cancelling out on the thousands of people and vendors that looked forward to the event every year--is much easier and cheaper than going through with the event.

Well, the logic behind the science that dictates that putting too many people together will spread the virus too quickly, applies to non-basketball games and music festivals, too. Indeed, it applies to anyone and everyone. The NBA showed us that, then the gov't jumped in to look busy.

We think of cold blooded capitalists that just want their money no matter who is injured but when the potential liability of injury is exponential then cancelling the show and foregoing the profits is a wildly cheaper move.

That's where the quarantine came from: insurance companies realizing that, in a legal liability sense, it is too dangerous (potentially too expensive) for people to be around each other. It didn't come from the gov't. The gov't was reacting to what society itself and the markets had already instinctively grasped: that 'flattening the curve' was the only hope to avoid a throttling of our health care infrastructure.

'Flattening the curve' undoubtedly came from insurance companies, not from the gov't. The gov't doesn't have a good eye for gloomy futures, politicians love to keep things rosy no matter how dire the situation truly is. But insurance companies are basically nothing but pessimism machines. And flattening the curve is the only thing that makes sense to them. Again, the gov't is reacting to the markets, not the other way around.

The gov't wasn't completely absent but are the CDC and the Federal Reserve really "gov't"? (Ehh, that's a hobby horse I'll give a ride to some other time) The gov't's initial response came in the form of the CDC sending out tests in early February to track down the spread of the virus within USA's borders. The tests were faulty, thus we lost two weeks of figuring out what was going on. Is that Trump's' fault? No. Hell, I'm not even blaming the CDC--this shit's hard, man! No one knew this virus existed three months ago, putting together a test, mass producing it, implementing it, getting the results back and then analyzing said results is a long process. And it is much easier to do it wrong (as we've seen) than it is to do it right. That's not a function of gov't, that's just how life works. Expecting the gov't to immediately and completely solve all problems (or even diagnose them) is an unrealistic expectation and though it may be fun to barb your political enemies, it does you no service as a citizen or a human being to fill your brain with unrealistic expectations.

The other early gov't action was the Federal Reserve spontaneously lowering interest rates near zero on March 3. That was about week before the virus started spooking Americans but it had already begun to hit the markets. As far back as January I saw choppy waters ahead for the stock market but I figured this was just another one of those viruses we've been getting steadily for the last 20 years (H1N1, swine flu, Mers, bird flu, SARS, West Nile, Zika, Ebola, just to name a few) and that this one would fade like the others, making an impact but ultimately moving on. When the Fed did that rate cut in the middle of the day, that caught me off guard (kinda scared me, truth be told), because that was the first indication that the powers that be knew this was going to be huge. That was the first moment that Covid-19 struck me as a coming onslaught, not merely another one of these influenzas that occasionally spooks us.

The effect of the Fed actions and Congress's subsequent economic overhauls will only become apparent over time. For now, these moves are so large as to be pretty much imaginary. Congress's newly passed $2 trillion bill is really just a giant placeholder for what will eventually be negotiated. Economically speaking it's easy to see where this is going: for now the credit card companies will pay all the bills and the insurance companies will end up with all the liability and they'll have to sit down with the gov't to whack it all out. Until then, I don't really understand why the markets would bother to go up or down: I know cash flow is a concern but in my lifetime I doubt there has ever been less cash flow in the American economy than this week (or the coming weeks) and it feels like getting by on even the shakiest credit is probably gonna work for most people.

I expect the economy to bounce back quickly. Why? Because there has been no physical deterioration of industrial production or of our supply lines. This is not like a war or a hurricane or an earthquake. What this is, economically speaking, is a labor stoppage: the physical infrastructure is just fine except that the workers are not working right now. Once they get back to work, I expect the economy to come back hard and fast. This period will be a gap down in the macro-economy, which is a godawful struggle while its happening but should be a boon to new and future growth once it has been absorbed.

When the workers get back to work, the economy will be strong again--indeed, I don't see why it wouldn't. Not everything will be the same, not everyone will emerge unscathed, it will be a while before things get back to "normal" (yeah, with quotation marks). But the larger economy has suffered only a shock to the system, nothing suggestive of overall material decline, a coma (as Larry Summers suggested). When people do get back to "normal" I think they'll get back to it hard. Workers will suddenly have a new appreciation for work and consumers will have a new appreciation for the products and services they need.

Remember the CDC was the first to act and the Federal Reserve came next (two quasi-gov't institutions, I would add). The gov't is not well-equipped to get ahead of problems: the White House steadily downplayed this as long as they could--and fought being dragged into a quarantine--and Congress only acts when it is absolutely forced to. You can blame the particular personalities in office at the moment or you can recognize that that is simply how gov't works: slowly and only when forced to act. It was SXSW and the NBA and the NCAA that made the fateful decisions that showed the public the light....not the gov't. Long live the people!

It is the citizenry, the markets, the corporations, the PEOPLE that made the move to save lives and they will bring back a new way of life when the time is right. The people have done it and the people will do more. Fuck the gov't, they're a bunch of fucking clowns. In short, Trump was forced into this. I am convinced he never wanted any of this and still doesn't. So crediting Trump or blaming Trump is just a waste of your time. Perhaps pillorying politicians is an amusement to you, in which case, well, Trump is a pretty obvious target. But in my home state of Kentucky we have a governor that's on TV every night and pummeling my inbox with spam every day and he sure wants to look like he's in charge and he is kindly, he is the anti-Trump...and I got no use for him either. What is that dude gonna tell me that's gonna make my life better?

Politicians don't create vaccines and until they do, who gives a fuck what they have to say? They are functionaries, they are fungible commodities, they are not sexy or knowledgeable or important and pretending as if they are (or are supposed to be) is a just a poor use of your conception of gov't. This nation is people, the gov't is just the gov't.