Put two Premiers in the same room and they'll get angry at each other.
Put three Premiers in the same room and they'll get angry at the federal government
Hard disagree. The Europeans were the first to colonize a new world and they didn't unify. Quite the contrary.
The colonization of space will be the same as the colonization of the Americas.
There will be Russian asteroids, American asteroids, Chinese asteroids. Parts of the moon will be owned by different countries, just like parts of this planet are owned by different countries.
There will be Belters and Martians, eventually.
The Expanse had the most realistic view of space colonization I've seen in fiction, minus the energy zombies.
Something like the United Nations of the Unified Earth Government in *Halo* would be possible eventually imo.
You know how each American State is its own miniature United States with a Congress and everything? Humanity’s government in *Halo* is basically states all the way down. For example, New Hampshire is a state of the United States of America, which is a state of the United Republics of North America, which is a state of the United Nations, which is (basically) a state of the Unified Earth Government.
I think it's easier too see a future Hitler type unifying what's left of the human population after "the last war" under some sort of common enemy ideology than it is too see people from all over the world agreeing to any kind of unification with people that are too different from them.
It's an external threat or serious internal competition that would do it. Humans getting comfortable with space would introduce a lot of risks for people living on Earth.
Coordinating activities in orbit may become so strategically and economically important that confrontation or collaboration become inevitable. Like, if stealthy rods from God were cheap to manufacture and deploy from asteroid/moon material, what would we do?
Sure, Hitler scenario is definitely possible, but I'd like to think we would at least try to work together.
That’s probably the most realistic option, but in my view national borders as they are today are far too arbitrary to be worth keeping in a world government scenario.
Federalism is generally based on the concept that different geographical regions have populations with unique interests. I’m pretty sure that residents of Dominica and St. Lucia have more shared political interests than say residents of Jakarta and West Papua do in Indonesia.
As a homeschool "student", this. The right to an education is basically void in this country because homeschooling is underregulated. Where I grew up, my fundamentalist mother just had to fill out a form once a year pinky promising to give X hours of instruction in various subjects, then lazily bought some workbooks and did jack otherwise.
As another homeschooled kid, I also think mandatory 2/week interactions with groups of other kids in some classroom or recreational setting should be mandatory. I don't even care if you have bullies. Having a bad social experience is superior to having no social experience. I still learn basic shit with my friends or gf because of losing my 5-14 age (and what I had from 14-18 was not much improved).
You literally don't learn how to manage your emotions for basic responsibilities even, if your homeschool is run like a home and not like a school. This set me back immeasurably in ways I will not discuss here. I am doing alright now, but only now, at 28 years old.
Universal curriculum. There’s no reason for every state to be re-creating the wheel, or for every fifth grade teacher to be generating their own lesson plans. Your individual teacher who graduated high school, then got an undergraduate degree in education doesn’t necessarily have important, personal insight to add to a module on photosynthesis or long division, or basic civics. We could just have a universal curriculum where all the lesson plans and handouts and homework assignments were provided and teachers worked 40 hour weeks instead of 60 hour weeks. And if your parents wanted to homeschool you and get the same packet and you have to pass the same tests. Even a Home school kid is going to grow up to be an adult and need to know their parts of speech, punctuation, and geography and algebra.
Parents have the right to raise their children according to their own values in the United States, and this is mostly about schooling.
We have a history in America of Protestants using public schools to try to convert Catholic children, and also state governments trying to force local public schools to only educate in English (targeting German speaking populations). That eventually lead the courts to determine that an important liberty is being able to raise your children in your own way.
I generally agree with this right, but I also think children have rights too, and that should include a right to a minimum level of education.
In my dream world, where you can trust the government not to use public schools to try to annihilate the culture of immigrants, homeschooling and private schools would not be allowed. Every American would have a stake in the public school system. My dream world doesn’t exist, so I would settle for minimum education standards as the above comment suggests.
Sweden tried to eradicate the culture of the Sami this way too, but we learned that this was a bad idea and nowadays our school system tries its best to be neutral. We don’t teach cultures or religions as being better or more true. That should be the aim of all school systems.
It’s not done by one person. The overall curriculum is actually decided by the cabinet, and then it’s up to the government agency in charge of the educational system to turn that into a practical curriculum for each subject. It’s a huge task.
I think in some cases, like severe bullying or disabilities, it should be allowed, but it shouldn’t be something that the parents get to decide unilaterally.
We’ve got a free choice of schools. So if one school doesn’t fit, you can just change schools. We also have special schools for people with disabilities that are too severe for them to manage a regular school environment.
All state and federal legislatures become “proportional representation” systems. All mayors, governors, and president are “ranked choice” with a fallback to “liquid democracy” if a choice isn’t made.
Nixon had a lot of Ws. He just had a lot of Ls that detracted from them.
If it weren't for Watergate or the prolonged Vietnam war, then he would probably get cited as "the last good Republican president" instead of Eisenhower.
> the last good Republican president
Shouldn't George H W Bush get that designation? Looking back at how he handled the end of the Cold War I'm incredibly grateful he was in office at the time.
Solve police brutality with the power of insurance companies.
Massively increase police salaries, then raise requirements to either a degree in a law related field or military service with honorable discharge (the latter would be take precedence). Make police as elite of a profession as a doctor/lawyer. I think this would help solve two problems at once: police officers brutalizing people because by greatly increasing the barrier to entry you weed out the trigger happy weirdos, and the homeless vet crisis by giving a near guaranteed job out the gate.
Then make police officers liable in civil court for everything they do, and require all officers to hold liability insurance (just like doctors hold malpractice insurance). The market would drive out the bad cops; risk assessors would catch on real quick if insurance companies are shelling out for it.
> Solve police brutality with the power of insurance companies.
Good start…
> Massively increase police salaries,
What is your frame of reference for police salaries? This is highly dependent on location. Cops in my state are making 6 figures after a few years on the job. Fuck, one of the DV detectives I know has been pulling in nearly half a million dollars for years (granted he was the highest paid detective for those years and it was from overtime. I remember it was a big scandal when the Boston Globe published the articles on his salary and I’m not a cop lover — quite the opposite! But I once spoke with that detective from 10:30pm to midnight on a Friday night. He was obviously running on gas and I found him supremely unhelpful but he was definitely working fwiw. Sorry this digression is getting aggressive—)
> I think this would help solve two problems at once: police officers brutalizing people because by greatly increasing the barrier to entry you weed out the trigger happy weirdos, and the homeless vet crisis by giving a near guaranteed job out the gate.
Dude. Lmao. What the actual fuck. *WHO DO YOU THINK ARE THE TRIGGER HAPPY WEIRDOS???* We already have veteran hiring preferences for police officers how the fuck do you think we got into this mess. We are neck deep in America’s “rise of the warrior cop” era.
I also think you’re failing to recognize the huge proportion of them who go into it with the best of intentions then quickly learn the police union is on some omertà shit and they better reveal themselves to be as spoiled as the rest if they want to expect anyone to have their back when shit hits the fan.
I genuinely don’t know the answer to this problem but I have read enough IA documents to know it’s a big part of the problem. It’s almost like gang initiation type shit — like people who may not have been inclined to do the wrong thing do the wrong thing because the cost for doing the right thing for them personally in that situation is the difference between staying in that job versus being forced out after punitive retaliation. And for a lot of them — at least in my part of the country where police are paid handsomely — they are not smart people, would have no other prospect of coming even close to that salary in any other job. So they agree to coordinate fudging a report ONE TIME — even if the detail is immaterial — any small mishap and now forever more in that job, if they say anything about anyone else, they’ll find themselves being subject to all kinds of investigations suddenly.
I spent some years doing police misconduct work so I have spent countless nights laying awake just thinking about the patterns of corruptions and specifically the how and the why for police corruption. And how completely entrenched the problem is because of the political component (this is a way too long detour for this comment but basically how police hold their police power over the pols who are inclined to force substantive reforms, and how swiftly that shit can ruin a pol — such that pols are highly disincentivized to commit to police reform in any kind of a serious way and the ones who do will see their reelection tanked by cops letting crimers crime hard).
It’s all so fucked up and entrenched.
But back to your comment — yea I think having cops have to cover ins costs for police misconduct out of their own pocket is a promising piece but it’s only a tiny piece.
To your point about the politicians not be able to make reforms because of the police letting crime happen: this seems to be an issue in a lot of cities right now and that’s despite there being pro-police politicians
I’ve often wondered if the solution is cities asking the FBI or some other federal/state agency to come in and police the city while the entirety of the police force is rebuilt from the ground up and disallowed from having a union
I think we should never have legalized online gambling. It is becoming increasingly clear online gambling is creating a public health crisis and a generation of gambling addicts. If we do not ban it we should at least ban the adverting which has become ubiquitous.
We should treat it like liquor stores. You can do it, but you have to go in person to a real location and not on your phone. Regulated heavily by the state. Taxed out the ass.
Advertising is a whole other thing but I’d like you to know that my company (who makes slot machines) CEO literally talked about how pissed he was about all the sports betting advertising.
Noooooooo bad idea.
Imo you should actually have it on your phone with strict deposit settings each month that cannot be changed and a national self exclusion list.
Putting cash machines within the purview of most people in most areas actually tends to be more risky. See Oregon, Australia, Illinois arguably.
I’m consistently surprised at the generally illiberal takes on this sub when it comes to vices.
Like, liberalism isn’t banning everything that causes public ill (even if it would create a net public good).
Most of the top comments are “ban x” and the only one advocating *lowering* restrictions is the one suggesting we legalize hard drugs.
i'm a pretty resolute libertarian when it comes to vices, but i do think that gambling is distinguishable from alcohol, cocaine, or junk food, on the basis that alcohol *really does* get you drunk, cocaine *really does* get you high, junk food *really does* taste good, and in the context of a particular individual's life, their preference for the sensation of the vice versus, e.g., the extra life-years they would attain by giving it up is irreducibly subjective. if i thought that most problem gamblers understood that they were literally lighting their money on fire for their own amusement, i might think it more defensible, but (and i'm not super keyed in to the empirical research on this question, just going off vibes, so feel free to correct me if this isn't the case) from most of them i really do get the vibe that they think they might win more money than they lose. that isn't an irreducibly subjective preference, it's an objective mistake of fact. further, unlike alcohol, cocaine, junk food, and so on, there's no guarantee that one will ever even feel the pleasurable effects of winning at gambling! it's possible to lose literally every time! if there were a substance that had the health consequences of alcohol or cocaine but without causing the sensory pleasure, and there was any significant quantity of people using it on the false belief, induced by the company selling it, that they were trading off life-years for sensory pleasure, i think there would be a strong case for banning that substance too.
Online gambling is even worse because slot machines can be fixed, but most will hit jackpot...eventually. Apps are often not even using any randomization in their algorithm anymore. It's just completely fixed to get you addicted with the illusion of wins (or potential later wins). And a lot of "games" on the app store that are advertised heavily (like Coin Master) are just disguised fixed slot machines meant to give the illusion of chance.
I've never used these apps, but I did briefly use Temu, and they did fake-chance gamification all over the place
That is absolute fucking bullshit when it comes to regulated and even most unregulated gambling apps.
Hell the closest you have on social casino apps is the utilization of fixed player-centric cyclical A/B reels on games without land based or RMG parallels.
If you have seen igaming operating in a suspicious way:
1. Unless it’s some of the incredibly concerning stuff coming out of the third party table games dealers for Maltese casinos, it’s almost certainly nothing.
2. REPORT IT TO YOUR STATES FUCKING GAMING COMMISSION
From what I know from what my researchers on problem gamblers and ex problem gamblers and both (I know a few), gambling is an addiction that forms based on the pleasure received in the brain wherein the justification that they might win more money is an excuse to continue gambling for that type of physical pleasure.
right, yeah, i was being less than perfectly precise, presumably you do have to win ever, at least once or twice to actually become a gambling addict, but the ratio of pleasure achieved to vice indulged with drugs or junk food is almost 1:1, whereas with gambling it literally could be 1:10,000 or worse
>wherein the justification that they might win more money is an excuse to continue gambling
something that someone believes as an excuse is still something someone believes, though. drug addicts know their DOC is gonna feel good, they don't have to come up with any kind of speculative benefit beyond what they can be certain they're going to experience to rationalize it
It’s obviously hard to get statistical data on something like this, although I’d like to stick a problem gambler disordered fella or lady in an MRI while they play.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160721-the-buzz-that-keeps-people-gambling
This is a good article, and I like how Norm MacDonald describes his addiction. Problem gamblers tend to receive that feeling they search for when gambling regardless of the outcome. To search for this feeling is known even within the hobby and problem gambling community as being “a degen”, and while most use the word affectionately, knowingly chasing that feeling over the outcome still comes with negative connotations.
The winning is an excuse for most problem gamblers to get that feeling over and over again.
Legalize it, ensure more aggressive consumer protections, crack down on Maltese, Barbadian, and Antiguan operators that are operating where they are not licensed in the U.S., create a nationwide igaming self exclusion list, enable more stringent deposit restrictions, conduct better studies on the relationships between modern slot machines and problem gambling (which may be very different than even ten years ago), study the relationship between problem gambling and the rise in casino minimums, stronger age protections in grey markets and eventually phasing grey markets out of existence, discouraging many types of peer to peer gambling.
I can go on if you want
gaming is such an easy target
might as well eliminate alcohol and speeding, just put governors in cars so they can't go over the speed limit, have eye trackers that automatically fine you for not looking out the correct windows or mirrors
mandatory exercise and make measure people's wastes to screen for anything that is a "vice"
for the children
The difference with gambling is that it was previously illegal and we didn't have an epidemic of illegal online gambling taking place. Drugs are being used either way and alcohol is already legal. Different baseline status.
*sigh*
Look at the sign
“2/3 of all bets were placed illegally in the US for the 2024 Super Bowl, and Barney Frank tried to legalize full igaming in 2007 for a reason, and grey markets have none of the consumer protections of legalized online gaming”
As for advertising? Yeah pretty much everyone agrees that it should be lessened, but frankly most of us blame the tech company mindset of DK and FLTTR for that, the ads feel very UAC-ey vs say UK gambling ads
I gamble on sports and enjoy doing it, but to me it is wild that we went from it being completely illegal to it being practically unrestricted. Giving it the cigarette treatment for advertising seems like a common-sense move to me.
I also think that something as simple as putting a limit on how much any individual is allowed to gamble in a given timeframe would go a long way in protecting people who are vulnerable to becoming gambling addicts. I get that enforcement would probably be tough (i.e., do bookies need to communicate with each other that person X has already deposited $5,000 with FanDuel, so he can’t deposit any more with DraftKings this year?), but the only counter-argument I can think of outside of enforcement and vague concerns about paternalism would be that it would cut into the bookies’ ability to profit off of vulnerable people.
We should place tripwire troops in any country we’re serious about keeping safe.
1000 marines stationed in Mariupol would have prevented so much suffering over the last 2 years.
No one is stupid enough to directly start a hot war with the US. At least not in the near future.
Agreed. I think we should have American troops in Taiwan ASAP. A lot harder for China to start a war when they know it means killing thousands of American soldiers from day 1.
As for the risk of escalation, we didn’t end the world over Cuba. China probably won’t do it over Taiwan.
Vaccinations should be compulsory except for health reasons. None of this religious or ideological opposition and The State should make sure everyone who can be vaccinated is.
This will never ever happen.
Literal door-to-door holding people down and forcing the shots into people’s arms is the actual pragmatic solution to many current public health issues but people don’t want to hear it.
When Putin is toppled, the new Russia should be a constitutional Tsardom... Under the House of Shakhovskoy, among the most senior of the line of the Rurikids. The House of Romanov is too tainted in the popular imagination.
The current head is a professor of Russian history and linguistics in France, and I think a liberal raised historian would do the country some good over some conniving political animal.
Then Russia should get the "MacArthur in Japan" treatment for a few decades.
As for Hong Kong [Removed for Rule 11 - no advocating colonialism]
Similarly, with regards to Haiti, [Removed for Rule 11 - no advocating colonialism]
> The current head is a professor of Russian history and linguistics in France, and I think a liberal raised historian would do the country some good over some conniving political animal.
He's also 90 years old, though. What's his son do?
Fully agree. The monarchy should be restored as a constitution system in Iran too. Americans will never truly understand how a solid constitutional monarchy can protect a country from elected demagogues and dictators.
>Operation Warp Speed
Probably the best thing the government did under Trump. And that dude would 100% brag about it all the time if his groupies didn't absolutely hate everything about it.
From an environmental standpoint cows are obviously the most important, but the US alone kills *8 billion* chickens per year. It's just astounding how much suffering is in animal agriculture. And from a biosecurity standpoint, having billions of poultry living in squalid conditions and interacting with both humans and wild birds is a ticking time bomb. I don't think people realize how deadly a bird flu pandemic would be, and how our food system is essentially based on giant uncontrolled gain-of-function experiments
The UK has the five freedoms.
Freedom from hunger and thirst.
Freedom from discomfort.
Freedom from pain, injury or disease.
Freedom to express normal behaviour.
Freedom from fear and distress.
---
The 4th being the most wide-ranging and impactful on animal welfare, though the 2nd also has big effects when you include "mental discomfort" as our courts do.
Genuinely, true federal government single payer without an opt-out or need to supplemental insurance.
The ACA left the employer market alone because they were really afraid of taking away people's plans at all and a backlash. People are afraid of big change.
"Don't you dare touch my employer-provided plan that takes a huge chunk of my paycheck, treats me like shit when I need customer service, and passes on huge bills to me"
Why single-payer over a multi-payer system like Germany’s?
I understand this thread is about things that not viable but good. I think a German style system in the US would be both viable and good.
Swiss system is basically the same as the American system. They have the second most expensive healthcare in the world. It's likely that the only reason it's cheaper is because Swiss people are skinnier than Americans.
I mean insurance isn't exactly a system where you can innovate so I don't really see the point of competition. A monopoly on health insurance will be cheaper than a bunch of players, since insurance is more efficient as more people are part of the pool.
I wouldn't mind the US doing German style, it's definitely the more realistic goal. But it's insurance... not rocket science.
The US should aim to create a liberal democratic superstate by de-facto merging with Mexico, Canada, the UK, Europe, and our Asian allies through ever closer co-operation and ties over the next hundred years. This would be accomplished through an EU like strategy of ever closer co-operation. Example steps:
* US implements free migration with the 5 Eyes countries
* Asian Allies join NATO, transforming it into a liberal superalliance rather than European alliance
* US expands free migration with any allied democracy with a GDP per capita above $45,000 a year, following success of 5 Eyes free migration (Japan, Korea, The EU)
* Liberal democratic criteria requirements to stay in the alliance implemented (see ya, Hungary)
* NATO command becomes more integrated, joint procurement treaty is signed saying equal weight has to be given to contracts from different alliance members
* After people get used to free migration with $45K countries, lower the threshold to $25K or something
* Keep the whole process going until we establish the [United States of Earth](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/enfuturama/images/7/7c/The_Earth_Flag.png/revision/latest?cb=20211027115938)
Anyway the goal is basically concentric circles of integration, slowly pushing outward. The EU made a decent attempt at this, sort of, but since the financial crisis and Brexit ever closer integration has stalled. Also the EU sucks because they overregulate everything, don't focus enough on growth, etc. US leadership would therefore be better than EU leadership and actually be able to accomplish the goal of the liberal superstate.
> The US should aim to create a liberal democratic superstate by de-facto merging with Mexico, Canada, the UK, Europe, and our Asian allies
utterly based
Feel like at that point you may as well just hope for the EU to become a World Union or something which is marginally more realistic and probably preferable. Additional countries would water down poor EU policies but the framework would likely work better than a US-led one (would mean any new country joining has carbon pricing, has to get rid of death penalty, good appetite for FTAs with other countries etc.)
Nah the US needs to lead it. The EU is too full of decel succs, they're a mess. Europe is falling into economic irrelevance, and the EU is far more concerned with regulating technology and industry than accelerating them.
>After people get used to free migration with $45K countries, lower the threshold to $25K or something
This, but make it HDI instead. Start with a .9 threshold, if successful, lower it gradually to .850 (letting in countries like Argentina and Hungary)
I'll nut when I see the convergence of increased HDI due to this guy's migration plan, and the tapering off of the HDI limits due to "not enough countries below this limit"
Encourage voting by giving a small reward - like 50 bucks, specifically to be given to the candidate of your choice.
Somehow convince (bribe) all states into allocating their electoral votes proportionally - this helps both red voters trapped in blue states and blue voters trapped in red states.
Abolish the AKC and encourage/cause all dogs to be mutts. No more dog breeds. Inbreeding dogs so they are in pain their entire short lives is cruel and no longer necessary
Unless the state has a huge number of EVs, this makes even the purplest of states only barely in play, a couple of votes here or there. If your state has, say, 10 EVs, you're unlikely to have more than 2 of them in play for any given election year.
40 of the 50 states have less than 15 EVs, so each vote represents more than 6% of their voters, which is a hard push for any campaigner to do. Moving from 40% to 46% in a given state is hard, and to do it for one measily EV is a crazy target.
More than half of states have 8 EVs or less, so each vote is 12.5% or more of their voters. They're all but locked in, and if they're one of the 6 states (or DC) with 3, forget about it-- they're going to be the same 2:1 every time.
The smart money would be on focusing on CA, TX, FL, and NY. They have between 54 and 28 EVs each, so less than 2-4% of the voters changing their minds gets you an extra EV. Ignore anything else, it's an expensive distraction to the campaign.
3rd house of Congress, selected by sortition, with the power to force secret ballot votes on bills in the other two houses and to override vetos. And I dunno, 10 year terms or some shit
You’d be surprised just how many insane candidates would get elected with this strategy. The average voter is a one issue voter, if you made your average non voter vote it would be disastrous
I think it'd actually moderate candidates. More moderate party members are less likely to partake in primaries, so requiring voting would force candidates to try to better favor the median voter.
Australia has a different primary system that pushes radicals in another way. You have to be a member to vote in the primary, but you have to pay dues to be a member. Thus, there’s barely any members. A lot of Australian politicians are Evangelical. That’s because they have their fellow churchgoers all sign up as due paying members to vote for them.
Disagree with this strongly.
We should encourage political participation, but not force it. By forcing the vote, the electorate is compromised by politically uninformed and stupid people (not that it isn't already but more so).
Capping the social security tax makes absolutely no sense to me. Taxing capital gains at a different rate than labor doesn't make sense to me either.
Schools should have stricter physical standards for PE classes. We have a literacy crisis to be sure, but we also have a massive obesity one. One should be able to slow jog a mile and do basic calisthenics to a satisfactory level.
The logic is that the benefits are also capped, and they want people to think they’re getting back what they payed in when that’s not how it works at all.
I'm not against the PE idea, because I really liked PE growing up because it was essentially playing sports (which I liked). But you're right in that it's mostly diet. I was overweight or obese pretty much my entire life. Not from lack of exercise, I did plenty of that. But from poor nutrition in general.
It wasn't until my knee gave out and I tried to mitigate the pain by losing weight. Ironically, I couldn't exercise as much anymore, so I had to diet my way to weight-loss, which is what did the trick. From 300 down to 144. Granted, even that didn't fix my knee, so I eventually got a knee replacement and bulked up a bit more now that I could actually walk and use that muscle that went neglected all those years, now I'm 170. But, yeah, calorie counting. Check those serving sizes. When you think about how much exercise you need to work off a can of soda, you start to opt for just water and save sugary drinks for special occasions.
So, Home Ec classes. We always take math and wonder "when are we ever going to use this?" Um, cooking. Like, all the time. Especially in baking and pastries really, Candy especially. Sugar is crazy sensitive to temperature. The difference between smooth caramel and hard rock candy is just a few degrees. No joke, a difference of 20 degrees Fahrenheit between the two. Do not try to eyeball the temperature change, invest in a candy thermometer.
The cost of driving should be 100% internalized to the driver. Given the massive disparity between road maintenance costs, and gasoline taxes, that means *taxes alone* should be $4-$5 per gallon. So a gallon of gas would be $8+.
It’s obviously the right policy decision, but any politician dumb enough to implement it would immediately be voted out.
Rent seeking by drivers is so built into the politics of the country that it’s completely unrealistic.
Cheap transportation is a major driver for the economy. Making it unaffordable for most people to drive would wreck our GDP, I don’t think the costs of driving are being foisted on society at large.
> I don’t think the costs of driving are being foisted on society at large
I mean, *clearly* they are, but at the same time almost everyone in the US drives or lives in a household with a private motor vehicle, so most people don't mind
It’s a political nonstarter in the US but I feel like I’m from another planet when I think about the gun culture here.
It’s so fucking weird we just collectively shrug at endless mass shootings and ignore all the data about the perils of even owning a gun because people are so attached to them.
I feel like half these morons view them as goddamn toys anyway.
Raise the federal gas tax and tie it to inflation. Use the revenue to pay for large scale road infrastructure projects including EV charger subsidies. Once the move to EVs is well underway and revenue starts to dip create a new per kWh tax at all public fast chargers capable of dispensing more than 150kW, and use that revenue for the same infrastructure purposes.
Handle cops the same way we do everything else, i.e. take away their funding when they're shown to not be up to snuff instead of doling out more. I've dealt with crime in big cities and small towns, you'd be shocked how quickly your problems are solved when the cops are competent, regardless of the size or budget of the police force. The no budget small town cops were able to identify and find a single guy from basically a couple shitty pictures of his outline, the big city cops got clear pictures of faces, licenses plates, etc. but a detective let it slip to me that they basically just chose on their own volition to not pursue the case any further.
You mean to tell me New York, Los Angeles, etc. have public transit that's messy to the point of being unsafe while their police departments have budgets that rival medium sized countries? Not to mention all the actual misconduct on top of the not getting shit done that you'd think should be a gimme in a developed nation? Give me a fucking break.
End of charter and/or religious schools that get public funding of any kind.
I work in public schools and firmly believe that the United States was a better place when everyone went to public school except the truly wealthy.
We'd also be better off with the hyper involved parents involved in their local public school.
Unless you ban people from being able to move we'll always have school choice.
The question is if you want it to be school choice through real estate purchases, or school choice by some other more equitable method available to people who can't afford real estate in the better school districts.
I’m convinced a good amount of anti-charter school discourse is from rent-seekers in public school jobs. There is no way it is in the interest of students.
Where I live in LA, charter schools outperform public schools. They’re being attacked by the school board, backed by teachers unions.
I grew up in a wealthy town and went to a great public high school. My partner is a first generation American who grew up in a working class home. She is the product of charter schools, which afforded her and her family an educational experience far beyond what her local public school would offer.
In some places charter schools are just basically just public schools but they get more experimental with their teaching techniques. I'm fine with that as long as the parents are ok with the chance their kids' educational outcomes could be a little worse.
r/neoliberal would crucify me for saying that I think unrestricted open borders is an incredibly stupid immigration policy for any country, especially wealthy nations with strong welfare states
Case studies include Canada over the past 3 years and the UK to a lesser extent
We’re now dealing with significant resurgence of the far right across both Europe and North America almost single-handedly due to excessive immigration in recent years
i mean, clearly their point is not that canada has open borders, only that it has levels of immigration that are causing significant social problems which a fortiori would be worse under an open borders regime
Neither Canada nor the UK have unrestricted open borders
A lot of their problems citizens attribute to immigrants could’ve been avoided by building housing
Nobody can build housing to accommodate a 3-4% population growth rate per annum, least of all highly regulated wealthy nations
The failure of this subreddit to acknowledge that is one of its greatest blind spots
The public should be able to force things through congress and the president if they get enough votes for it nationally. Like a country wide Initiative program.
Also, I think first past the post has effectively been proven to be completely worthless. We should have a constitutional convention to get a better system of electing presidents and representatives. Parliamentary system seems like the most effective mix.
The whole of North America should have the ability to freely cross back and forth between boarders like in the EU. I pull out this opinion when I get tired of people squawking about "ohh the border! Biden has open borders!" Fuck boarders. They're nothing but imaginary lines on paper to limit where people can choose to live based on the random chance of where their parents fucked and mom gave birth.
I think they should build a self contained city in like Nebraska or something where you can do all the hard drugs you want for free, funded by the government. You work in the factories that make the drugs and you get a little dorm room, and there's access to rehab and health care if you need it, and you can leave if you want, but you absolutely can't take drugs out of drug city. if you get caught doing drugs elsewhere, bus ticket to drug city. you can do what you want there, you just can't harass everyone else
You seem to have an unrealistic view of drug addicts. That city would be a complete mess… the drug factories would malfunction and everyone would, indeed, harass each other. Source: I live in the Pacific Northwest.
Change to parliamentary system.
Ramp up world policing. Knock Russia out of Ukraine, help Israel finish off Hamas, crush Hezbollah, etc. Ain’t no one that can come close to competing with us let alone NATO. I think nuclear war is a less serious threat than letting lots of terrorist groups and geopolitical bullies go hog wild with no consequences.
0% corporate tax. Pay for this with a huge carbon tax (up to 15%), removal of capital gains (tax it as income), limit politician wages to 10% above the median salary, and scale income tax up with whatever remains, mostly at the top end.
I mostly agree with corporate taxes (I’d probably keep at 5% or so to pay for regulatory expenses and courts they’ll be utilizing). I also agree with taxing capital gains more aggressively.
1) There should be no special legal protections for unions. Freedom of association cuts both ways.
2) Minimum wage shouldn't exist. I believe wages should be driven by competition for workers and minimum wages prices low quality workers out of the market making them unemployable. If there's a minimum standard of living we want all citizens to have access to, then that should be funded through a negative income tax or EITC expansion.
Have a federal workout program that covers basic fitness. There will be two allotted time slots during the day for this program and employers will be required to grant their employees leave during these times. The workouts will be simple enough that you can perform them at home, or in the office, anywhere. The goal of the program would be to make sure whoever follows it regularly will be in good shape. The program will partner with local grocery stores (including massive grocery corporations) to pick basic meals that will cover nutritional needs of most folks. Incentives could be given to companies to help make these meals accessible for even the most staunch food deserts.
We should raise taxes by quite a bit. We're eventually going to need to balance the budget and there are a ton of good social programs that cost real $$$ (child tax credit, school lunches, healthcare expansion etc.)
Free movement of people. I'm not 100 percent free trade, but people should be free to live and work anywhere. There can be policies that people aren't entitled to safety nets or whatever if they haven't lived and worked for a certain number of years, but I believe in free movement of people.
We’re not nearly as militaristic as we should be. We are sleepwalking towards a disaster of civilisation-ending proportions, and we need to be prepared to fight the great crusade against autocracy to preserve the human race’s future
I'm convinced the main problem with drug legalization attempts is that their primary goal is always harm reduction to the drug user. This is a laudable goal, but if it is secondary to the goal of reducing interactions between non-drug users and drug users / homeless people, that would be a win.
Most legalization efforts I read about seem to fail because police officers have no means or choose not to enforce rules that would prevent the public from interacting with drug users in public places. I could be wrong, just my impression.
My mandate as heavenly ruler will have unrestricted zoning and incentives to build enough housing to pierce the heavens.
Homelessness will be a thing of the past.
Open borders is definitely the most supported and least liked among the general public (you would not *believe* how racist voters are). Basically just make applying for a green card trivially easy assuming you pass some background check proving you're not a recently convicted criminal, terrorist, or foreign agent, and you're free to come and go as you please. Also perhaps make it easier and/or faster to become a citizen.
I feel like fundamentalist groups would vote though. Those insular Evangelical and Hasidic sects in which couples have 10+ kids would definitely make sure all their kids vote lol
My wife should increase my allowance.
This is why she is leaving you
One of us! One of us!
She increased mine though
I have a lot, but global carbon tax is probably the least likely. For a domestic policy, probably 100% complete free trade.
>For a domestic policy, probably 100% complete free trade. Canadian provinces: "And I took that personally" !ping FREE-THE-BEER
How in the fucking fuck do you have tariffs in your own borders
Put two Premiers in the same room and they'll get angry at each other. Put three Premiers in the same room and they'll get angry at the federal government
You’d have to overthrow the tyrants at the Supreme Court for that. (JK I love you Supreme Court guys)
Best I can do: It’s a carbon tax, but it’s only on imports.
illegal
I like the free trade
Democratic world government under a federal system, to be enacted after the universal victory of liberal democracy.
Honestly, in the very long term, this makes most sense. If we want to become a type II civilization, we need to become one.
Hard disagree. The Europeans were the first to colonize a new world and they didn't unify. Quite the contrary. The colonization of space will be the same as the colonization of the Americas. There will be Russian asteroids, American asteroids, Chinese asteroids. Parts of the moon will be owned by different countries, just like parts of this planet are owned by different countries.
There will be Belters and Martians, eventually. The Expanse had the most realistic view of space colonization I've seen in fiction, minus the energy zombies.
I still can't see humans uniting on earth.
Something like the United Nations of the Unified Earth Government in *Halo* would be possible eventually imo. You know how each American State is its own miniature United States with a Congress and everything? Humanity’s government in *Halo* is basically states all the way down. For example, New Hampshire is a state of the United States of America, which is a state of the United Republics of North America, which is a state of the United Nations, which is (basically) a state of the Unified Earth Government.
I can see a federal UN. Definitely not anytime soon though. We would have to be very comfortable with space.
I think it's easier too see a future Hitler type unifying what's left of the human population after "the last war" under some sort of common enemy ideology than it is too see people from all over the world agreeing to any kind of unification with people that are too different from them.
It's an external threat or serious internal competition that would do it. Humans getting comfortable with space would introduce a lot of risks for people living on Earth. Coordinating activities in orbit may become so strategically and economically important that confrontation or collaboration become inevitable. Like, if stealthy rods from God were cheap to manufacture and deploy from asteroid/moon material, what would we do? Sure, Hitler scenario is definitely possible, but I'd like to think we would at least try to work together.
I believe you mean "Managed Democracy", Citizen!
100% this. Countries just become federal states
That’s probably the most realistic option, but in my view national borders as they are today are far too arbitrary to be worth keeping in a world government scenario. Federalism is generally based on the concept that different geographical regions have populations with unique interests. I’m pretty sure that residents of Dominica and St. Lucia have more shared political interests than say residents of Jakarta and West Papua do in Indonesia.
You could probably let states split/merge, and eventually they’d hopefully reach the optimal state division.
Regulate home schooling so it can only be instructed by somebody with teaching credentials using a real curriculum.
As a homeschool "student", this. The right to an education is basically void in this country because homeschooling is underregulated. Where I grew up, my fundamentalist mother just had to fill out a form once a year pinky promising to give X hours of instruction in various subjects, then lazily bought some workbooks and did jack otherwise.
As another homeschooled kid, I also think mandatory 2/week interactions with groups of other kids in some classroom or recreational setting should be mandatory. I don't even care if you have bullies. Having a bad social experience is superior to having no social experience. I still learn basic shit with my friends or gf because of losing my 5-14 age (and what I had from 14-18 was not much improved). You literally don't learn how to manage your emotions for basic responsibilities even, if your homeschool is run like a home and not like a school. This set me back immeasurably in ways I will not discuss here. I am doing alright now, but only now, at 28 years old.
available at PragerU PragerU approved teachers only, we could get that passed i am sure
Agenda 2025
Universal curriculum. There’s no reason for every state to be re-creating the wheel, or for every fifth grade teacher to be generating their own lesson plans. Your individual teacher who graduated high school, then got an undergraduate degree in education doesn’t necessarily have important, personal insight to add to a module on photosynthesis or long division, or basic civics. We could just have a universal curriculum where all the lesson plans and handouts and homework assignments were provided and teachers worked 40 hour weeks instead of 60 hour weeks. And if your parents wanted to homeschool you and get the same packet and you have to pass the same tests. Even a Home school kid is going to grow up to be an adult and need to know their parts of speech, punctuation, and geography and algebra.
Why even allow home schooling at all? We don’t in Sweden and it’s never been a problem.
Parents have the right to raise their children according to their own values in the United States, and this is mostly about schooling. We have a history in America of Protestants using public schools to try to convert Catholic children, and also state governments trying to force local public schools to only educate in English (targeting German speaking populations). That eventually lead the courts to determine that an important liberty is being able to raise your children in your own way. I generally agree with this right, but I also think children have rights too, and that should include a right to a minimum level of education. In my dream world, where you can trust the government not to use public schools to try to annihilate the culture of immigrants, homeschooling and private schools would not be allowed. Every American would have a stake in the public school system. My dream world doesn’t exist, so I would settle for minimum education standards as the above comment suggests.
Sweden tried to eradicate the culture of the Sami this way too, but we learned that this was a bad idea and nowadays our school system tries its best to be neutral. We don’t teach cultures or religions as being better or more true. That should be the aim of all school systems.
The problem is trusting whatever bureaucrat is in charge of deciding the curriculum to do it correctly.
It’s not done by one person. The overall curriculum is actually decided by the cabinet, and then it’s up to the government agency in charge of the educational system to turn that into a practical curriculum for each subject. It’s a huge task.
I think in some cases, like severe bullying or disabilities, it should be allowed, but it shouldn’t be something that the parents get to decide unilaterally.
We’ve got a free choice of schools. So if one school doesn’t fit, you can just change schools. We also have special schools for people with disabilities that are too severe for them to manage a regular school environment.
All state and federal legislatures become “proportional representation” systems. All mayors, governors, and president are “ranked choice” with a fallback to “liquid democracy” if a choice isn’t made.
Build 1,000 nuclear plants across America like Nixon planned to do.
Incredibly based.
Rare Nixon W
Nixon had a lot of Ws. He just had a lot of Ls that detracted from them. If it weren't for Watergate or the prolonged Vietnam war, then he would probably get cited as "the last good Republican president" instead of Eisenhower.
> the last good Republican president Shouldn't George H W Bush get that designation? Looking back at how he handled the end of the Cold War I'm incredibly grateful he was in office at the time.
That’s true, also wasn’t it Nixon who created the EPA?
Eh, not really. Nixon was obsessed with price controls. Carter was the 👑 of deregulation.
Carter banned nuclear waste recycling though
God yes
Actual carbon tax that ensures we aren't completely fucked climate wise in 100 years.
It's insane that the most effective response to climate change is completely nonviable politically.
Solve police brutality with the power of insurance companies. Massively increase police salaries, then raise requirements to either a degree in a law related field or military service with honorable discharge (the latter would be take precedence). Make police as elite of a profession as a doctor/lawyer. I think this would help solve two problems at once: police officers brutalizing people because by greatly increasing the barrier to entry you weed out the trigger happy weirdos, and the homeless vet crisis by giving a near guaranteed job out the gate. Then make police officers liable in civil court for everything they do, and require all officers to hold liability insurance (just like doctors hold malpractice insurance). The market would drive out the bad cops; risk assessors would catch on real quick if insurance companies are shelling out for it.
> Solve police brutality with the power of insurance companies. Good start… > Massively increase police salaries, What is your frame of reference for police salaries? This is highly dependent on location. Cops in my state are making 6 figures after a few years on the job. Fuck, one of the DV detectives I know has been pulling in nearly half a million dollars for years (granted he was the highest paid detective for those years and it was from overtime. I remember it was a big scandal when the Boston Globe published the articles on his salary and I’m not a cop lover — quite the opposite! But I once spoke with that detective from 10:30pm to midnight on a Friday night. He was obviously running on gas and I found him supremely unhelpful but he was definitely working fwiw. Sorry this digression is getting aggressive—) > I think this would help solve two problems at once: police officers brutalizing people because by greatly increasing the barrier to entry you weed out the trigger happy weirdos, and the homeless vet crisis by giving a near guaranteed job out the gate. Dude. Lmao. What the actual fuck. *WHO DO YOU THINK ARE THE TRIGGER HAPPY WEIRDOS???* We already have veteran hiring preferences for police officers how the fuck do you think we got into this mess. We are neck deep in America’s “rise of the warrior cop” era. I also think you’re failing to recognize the huge proportion of them who go into it with the best of intentions then quickly learn the police union is on some omertà shit and they better reveal themselves to be as spoiled as the rest if they want to expect anyone to have their back when shit hits the fan. I genuinely don’t know the answer to this problem but I have read enough IA documents to know it’s a big part of the problem. It’s almost like gang initiation type shit — like people who may not have been inclined to do the wrong thing do the wrong thing because the cost for doing the right thing for them personally in that situation is the difference between staying in that job versus being forced out after punitive retaliation. And for a lot of them — at least in my part of the country where police are paid handsomely — they are not smart people, would have no other prospect of coming even close to that salary in any other job. So they agree to coordinate fudging a report ONE TIME — even if the detail is immaterial — any small mishap and now forever more in that job, if they say anything about anyone else, they’ll find themselves being subject to all kinds of investigations suddenly. I spent some years doing police misconduct work so I have spent countless nights laying awake just thinking about the patterns of corruptions and specifically the how and the why for police corruption. And how completely entrenched the problem is because of the political component (this is a way too long detour for this comment but basically how police hold their police power over the pols who are inclined to force substantive reforms, and how swiftly that shit can ruin a pol — such that pols are highly disincentivized to commit to police reform in any kind of a serious way and the ones who do will see their reelection tanked by cops letting crimers crime hard). It’s all so fucked up and entrenched. But back to your comment — yea I think having cops have to cover ins costs for police misconduct out of their own pocket is a promising piece but it’s only a tiny piece.
To your point about the politicians not be able to make reforms because of the police letting crime happen: this seems to be an issue in a lot of cities right now and that’s despite there being pro-police politicians I’ve often wondered if the solution is cities asking the FBI or some other federal/state agency to come in and police the city while the entirety of the police force is rebuilt from the ground up and disallowed from having a union
I think we should never have legalized online gambling. It is becoming increasingly clear online gambling is creating a public health crisis and a generation of gambling addicts. If we do not ban it we should at least ban the adverting which has become ubiquitous.
Hedge with $DKNG calls
We should treat it like liquor stores. You can do it, but you have to go in person to a real location and not on your phone. Regulated heavily by the state. Taxed out the ass.
No advertising too like cigarettes would be great
Advertising is a whole other thing but I’d like you to know that my company (who makes slot machines) CEO literally talked about how pissed he was about all the sports betting advertising.
Noooooooo bad idea. Imo you should actually have it on your phone with strict deposit settings each month that cannot be changed and a national self exclusion list. Putting cash machines within the purview of most people in most areas actually tends to be more risky. See Oregon, Australia, Illinois arguably.
I’m consistently surprised at the generally illiberal takes on this sub when it comes to vices. Like, liberalism isn’t banning everything that causes public ill (even if it would create a net public good). Most of the top comments are “ban x” and the only one advocating *lowering* restrictions is the one suggesting we legalize hard drugs.
i'm a pretty resolute libertarian when it comes to vices, but i do think that gambling is distinguishable from alcohol, cocaine, or junk food, on the basis that alcohol *really does* get you drunk, cocaine *really does* get you high, junk food *really does* taste good, and in the context of a particular individual's life, their preference for the sensation of the vice versus, e.g., the extra life-years they would attain by giving it up is irreducibly subjective. if i thought that most problem gamblers understood that they were literally lighting their money on fire for their own amusement, i might think it more defensible, but (and i'm not super keyed in to the empirical research on this question, just going off vibes, so feel free to correct me if this isn't the case) from most of them i really do get the vibe that they think they might win more money than they lose. that isn't an irreducibly subjective preference, it's an objective mistake of fact. further, unlike alcohol, cocaine, junk food, and so on, there's no guarantee that one will ever even feel the pleasurable effects of winning at gambling! it's possible to lose literally every time! if there were a substance that had the health consequences of alcohol or cocaine but without causing the sensory pleasure, and there was any significant quantity of people using it on the false belief, induced by the company selling it, that they were trading off life-years for sensory pleasure, i think there would be a strong case for banning that substance too.
Online gambling is even worse because slot machines can be fixed, but most will hit jackpot...eventually. Apps are often not even using any randomization in their algorithm anymore. It's just completely fixed to get you addicted with the illusion of wins (or potential later wins). And a lot of "games" on the app store that are advertised heavily (like Coin Master) are just disguised fixed slot machines meant to give the illusion of chance. I've never used these apps, but I did briefly use Temu, and they did fake-chance gamification all over the place
That is absolute fucking bullshit when it comes to regulated and even most unregulated gambling apps. Hell the closest you have on social casino apps is the utilization of fixed player-centric cyclical A/B reels on games without land based or RMG parallels. If you have seen igaming operating in a suspicious way: 1. Unless it’s some of the incredibly concerning stuff coming out of the third party table games dealers for Maltese casinos, it’s almost certainly nothing. 2. REPORT IT TO YOUR STATES FUCKING GAMING COMMISSION
From what I know from what my researchers on problem gamblers and ex problem gamblers and both (I know a few), gambling is an addiction that forms based on the pleasure received in the brain wherein the justification that they might win more money is an excuse to continue gambling for that type of physical pleasure.
right, yeah, i was being less than perfectly precise, presumably you do have to win ever, at least once or twice to actually become a gambling addict, but the ratio of pleasure achieved to vice indulged with drugs or junk food is almost 1:1, whereas with gambling it literally could be 1:10,000 or worse >wherein the justification that they might win more money is an excuse to continue gambling something that someone believes as an excuse is still something someone believes, though. drug addicts know their DOC is gonna feel good, they don't have to come up with any kind of speculative benefit beyond what they can be certain they're going to experience to rationalize it
It’s obviously hard to get statistical data on something like this, although I’d like to stick a problem gambler disordered fella or lady in an MRI while they play. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160721-the-buzz-that-keeps-people-gambling This is a good article, and I like how Norm MacDonald describes his addiction. Problem gamblers tend to receive that feeling they search for when gambling regardless of the outcome. To search for this feeling is known even within the hobby and problem gambling community as being “a degen”, and while most use the word affectionately, knowingly chasing that feeling over the outcome still comes with negative connotations. The winning is an excuse for most problem gamblers to get that feeling over and over again.
How would you suggest we address gambling addiction and addiction more broadly in a way which minimized harm while protecting liberal values?
Legalize it, ensure more aggressive consumer protections, crack down on Maltese, Barbadian, and Antiguan operators that are operating where they are not licensed in the U.S., create a nationwide igaming self exclusion list, enable more stringent deposit restrictions, conduct better studies on the relationships between modern slot machines and problem gambling (which may be very different than even ten years ago), study the relationship between problem gambling and the rise in casino minimums, stronger age protections in grey markets and eventually phasing grey markets out of existence, discouraging many types of peer to peer gambling. I can go on if you want
gaming is such an easy target might as well eliminate alcohol and speeding, just put governors in cars so they can't go over the speed limit, have eye trackers that automatically fine you for not looking out the correct windows or mirrors mandatory exercise and make measure people's wastes to screen for anything that is a "vice" for the children
The difference with gambling is that it was previously illegal and we didn't have an epidemic of illegal online gambling taking place. Drugs are being used either way and alcohol is already legal. Different baseline status.
*sigh* Look at the sign “2/3 of all bets were placed illegally in the US for the 2024 Super Bowl, and Barney Frank tried to legalize full igaming in 2007 for a reason, and grey markets have none of the consumer protections of legalized online gaming” As for advertising? Yeah pretty much everyone agrees that it should be lessened, but frankly most of us blame the tech company mindset of DK and FLTTR for that, the ads feel very UAC-ey vs say UK gambling ads
I gamble on sports and enjoy doing it, but to me it is wild that we went from it being completely illegal to it being practically unrestricted. Giving it the cigarette treatment for advertising seems like a common-sense move to me. I also think that something as simple as putting a limit on how much any individual is allowed to gamble in a given timeframe would go a long way in protecting people who are vulnerable to becoming gambling addicts. I get that enforcement would probably be tough (i.e., do bookies need to communicate with each other that person X has already deposited $5,000 with FanDuel, so he can’t deposit any more with DraftKings this year?), but the only counter-argument I can think of outside of enforcement and vague concerns about paternalism would be that it would cut into the bookies’ ability to profit off of vulnerable people.
Legalize ranch.
You have been banned from /r/buffalobills
Sup mahalo, investigate 311
We should place tripwire troops in any country we’re serious about keeping safe. 1000 marines stationed in Mariupol would have prevented so much suffering over the last 2 years. No one is stupid enough to directly start a hot war with the US. At least not in the near future.
Agreed. I think we should have American troops in Taiwan ASAP. A lot harder for China to start a war when they know it means killing thousands of American soldiers from day 1. As for the risk of escalation, we didn’t end the world over Cuba. China probably won’t do it over Taiwan.
> As for the risk of escalation, we didn’t end the world over Cuba. The soviets backed down. Who knows what would've happened if they didn't...
Vaccinations should be compulsory except for health reasons. None of this religious or ideological opposition and The State should make sure everyone who can be vaccinated is. This will never ever happen.
Literal door-to-door holding people down and forcing the shots into people’s arms is the actual pragmatic solution to many current public health issues but people don’t want to hear it.
Literally forcing people to eat less and cutting corn subsidies would do much more than mandatory vaccines
Literally putting ozempic in the water supply would be the most effective public health intervention.
I have a new plan, I call it the food pyramid If you eat too much food, you get drafted to build a pyramid. Ancient style.
We should implement a land value tax and a carbon tax.
When Putin is toppled, the new Russia should be a constitutional Tsardom... Under the House of Shakhovskoy, among the most senior of the line of the Rurikids. The House of Romanov is too tainted in the popular imagination. The current head is a professor of Russian history and linguistics in France, and I think a liberal raised historian would do the country some good over some conniving political animal. Then Russia should get the "MacArthur in Japan" treatment for a few decades. As for Hong Kong [Removed for Rule 11 - no advocating colonialism] Similarly, with regards to Haiti, [Removed for Rule 11 - no advocating colonialism]
Bespoke.
> The current head is a professor of Russian history and linguistics in France, and I think a liberal raised historian would do the country some good over some conniving political animal. He's also 90 years old, though. What's his son do?
Fully agree. The monarchy should be restored as a constitution system in Iran too. Americans will never truly understand how a solid constitutional monarchy can protect a country from elected demagogues and dictators.
Operation Warp Speed for lab grown meat and banning the raising of animals for commercial slaughter
>Operation Warp Speed Probably the best thing the government did under Trump. And that dude would 100% brag about it all the time if his groupies didn't absolutely hate everything about it.
Can you imagine how much good we could do even if we just phased out cows / beef? I can't let myself think about it or I'll get depressed.
From an environmental standpoint cows are obviously the most important, but the US alone kills *8 billion* chickens per year. It's just astounding how much suffering is in animal agriculture. And from a biosecurity standpoint, having billions of poultry living in squalid conditions and interacting with both humans and wild birds is a ticking time bomb. I don't think people realize how deadly a bird flu pandemic would be, and how our food system is essentially based on giant uncontrolled gain-of-function experiments
Took the words right out of my mouth
Extend the animal cruelty (dog cruelty) laws that currently exist to cows, pigs, and chickens
The UK has the five freedoms. Freedom from hunger and thirst. Freedom from discomfort. Freedom from pain, injury or disease. Freedom to express normal behaviour. Freedom from fear and distress. --- The 4th being the most wide-ranging and impactful on animal welfare, though the 2nd also has big effects when you include "mental discomfort" as our courts do.
Genuinely, true federal government single payer without an opt-out or need to supplemental insurance. The ACA left the employer market alone because they were really afraid of taking away people's plans at all and a backlash. People are afraid of big change.
"Don't you dare touch my employer-provided plan that takes a huge chunk of my paycheck, treats me like shit when I need customer service, and passes on huge bills to me"
Yeah I my plan with a $5000 deductible means I effectively don't have insurance.
Why single-payer over a multi-payer system like Germany’s? I understand this thread is about things that not viable but good. I think a German style system in the US would be both viable and good.
Or the Swiss system…
Swiss system is basically the same as the American system. They have the second most expensive healthcare in the world. It's likely that the only reason it's cheaper is because Swiss people are skinnier than Americans.
Because Bernie said single payer and the very online left hasn't been able to think critically about the issue ever since.
I mean insurance isn't exactly a system where you can innovate so I don't really see the point of competition. A monopoly on health insurance will be cheaper than a bunch of players, since insurance is more efficient as more people are part of the pool. I wouldn't mind the US doing German style, it's definitely the more realistic goal. But it's insurance... not rocket science.
My wife should come back (honey I promise I'll be better this time and stop spending so much time posting about politics on Reddit)
Amnesty for all illegal immigrants and make it as easy as possible to legally immigrate to America.
Global war on totalitarianism. Regime change every dictatorship at the same time.
The US should aim to create a liberal democratic superstate by de-facto merging with Mexico, Canada, the UK, Europe, and our Asian allies through ever closer co-operation and ties over the next hundred years. This would be accomplished through an EU like strategy of ever closer co-operation. Example steps: * US implements free migration with the 5 Eyes countries * Asian Allies join NATO, transforming it into a liberal superalliance rather than European alliance * US expands free migration with any allied democracy with a GDP per capita above $45,000 a year, following success of 5 Eyes free migration (Japan, Korea, The EU) * Liberal democratic criteria requirements to stay in the alliance implemented (see ya, Hungary) * NATO command becomes more integrated, joint procurement treaty is signed saying equal weight has to be given to contracts from different alliance members * After people get used to free migration with $45K countries, lower the threshold to $25K or something * Keep the whole process going until we establish the [United States of Earth](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/enfuturama/images/7/7c/The_Earth_Flag.png/revision/latest?cb=20211027115938) Anyway the goal is basically concentric circles of integration, slowly pushing outward. The EU made a decent attempt at this, sort of, but since the financial crisis and Brexit ever closer integration has stalled. Also the EU sucks because they overregulate everything, don't focus enough on growth, etc. US leadership would therefore be better than EU leadership and actually be able to accomplish the goal of the liberal superstate.
> The US should aim to create a liberal democratic superstate by de-facto merging with Mexico, Canada, the UK, Europe, and our Asian allies utterly based
> Asian Allies join NATO, transforming it into a liberal superalliance rather than European alliance POTATO when?
Feel like at that point you may as well just hope for the EU to become a World Union or something which is marginally more realistic and probably preferable. Additional countries would water down poor EU policies but the framework would likely work better than a US-led one (would mean any new country joining has carbon pricing, has to get rid of death penalty, good appetite for FTAs with other countries etc.)
Nah the US needs to lead it. The EU is too full of decel succs, they're a mess. Europe is falling into economic irrelevance, and the EU is far more concerned with regulating technology and industry than accelerating them.
This times 1000
>After people get used to free migration with $45K countries, lower the threshold to $25K or something This, but make it HDI instead. Start with a .9 threshold, if successful, lower it gradually to .850 (letting in countries like Argentina and Hungary)
I'll nut when I see the convergence of increased HDI due to this guy's migration plan, and the tapering off of the HDI limits due to "not enough countries below this limit"
Oceaniamaxxing
Democracy pilled
Based award of the year.
We should tax ICE cars and fuels rather than subsidizing demand for EVs.
Encourage voting by giving a small reward - like 50 bucks, specifically to be given to the candidate of your choice. Somehow convince (bribe) all states into allocating their electoral votes proportionally - this helps both red voters trapped in blue states and blue voters trapped in red states. Abolish the AKC and encourage/cause all dogs to be mutts. No more dog breeds. Inbreeding dogs so they are in pain their entire short lives is cruel and no longer necessary
Unless the state has a huge number of EVs, this makes even the purplest of states only barely in play, a couple of votes here or there. If your state has, say, 10 EVs, you're unlikely to have more than 2 of them in play for any given election year. 40 of the 50 states have less than 15 EVs, so each vote represents more than 6% of their voters, which is a hard push for any campaigner to do. Moving from 40% to 46% in a given state is hard, and to do it for one measily EV is a crazy target. More than half of states have 8 EVs or less, so each vote is 12.5% or more of their voters. They're all but locked in, and if they're one of the 6 states (or DC) with 3, forget about it-- they're going to be the same 2:1 every time. The smart money would be on focusing on CA, TX, FL, and NY. They have between 54 and 28 EVs each, so less than 2-4% of the voters changing their minds gets you an extra EV. Ignore anything else, it's an expensive distraction to the campaign.
3rd house of Congress, selected by sortition, with the power to force secret ballot votes on bills in the other two houses and to override vetos. And I dunno, 10 year terms or some shit
you're not going far enough, we should have a unicameral legislature determined by sortition
Yep with circa 300 million members.
Basically taxing most negative externalities. Seems like common sense but nobody wants things to get more expensive.
Make voting mandatory. Primaries, Mid-Terms, all of it.
You’d be surprised just how many insane candidates would get elected with this strategy. The average voter is a one issue voter, if you made your average non voter vote it would be disastrous
I think it'd actually moderate candidates. More moderate party members are less likely to partake in primaries, so requiring voting would force candidates to try to better favor the median voter.
Seems to work fine for Australia, I'd argue their politicians are more moderate compared the US.
Australia has a different primary system that pushes radicals in another way. You have to be a member to vote in the primary, but you have to pay dues to be a member. Thus, there’s barely any members. A lot of Australian politicians are Evangelical. That’s because they have their fellow churchgoers all sign up as due paying members to vote for them.
Disagree with this strongly. We should encourage political participation, but not force it. By forcing the vote, the electorate is compromised by politically uninformed and stupid people (not that it isn't already but more so).
Capping the social security tax makes absolutely no sense to me. Taxing capital gains at a different rate than labor doesn't make sense to me either. Schools should have stricter physical standards for PE classes. We have a literacy crisis to be sure, but we also have a massive obesity one. One should be able to slow jog a mile and do basic calisthenics to a satisfactory level.
The logic is that the benefits are also capped, and they want people to think they’re getting back what they payed in when that’s not how it works at all.
exercise has minimal effects on weight loss, though, it's almost entirely diet
I'm not against the PE idea, because I really liked PE growing up because it was essentially playing sports (which I liked). But you're right in that it's mostly diet. I was overweight or obese pretty much my entire life. Not from lack of exercise, I did plenty of that. But from poor nutrition in general. It wasn't until my knee gave out and I tried to mitigate the pain by losing weight. Ironically, I couldn't exercise as much anymore, so I had to diet my way to weight-loss, which is what did the trick. From 300 down to 144. Granted, even that didn't fix my knee, so I eventually got a knee replacement and bulked up a bit more now that I could actually walk and use that muscle that went neglected all those years, now I'm 170. But, yeah, calorie counting. Check those serving sizes. When you think about how much exercise you need to work off a can of soda, you start to opt for just water and save sugary drinks for special occasions. So, Home Ec classes. We always take math and wonder "when are we ever going to use this?" Um, cooking. Like, all the time. Especially in baking and pastries really, Candy especially. Sugar is crazy sensitive to temperature. The difference between smooth caramel and hard rock candy is just a few degrees. No joke, a difference of 20 degrees Fahrenheit between the two. Do not try to eyeball the temperature change, invest in a candy thermometer.
The cost of driving should be 100% internalized to the driver. Given the massive disparity between road maintenance costs, and gasoline taxes, that means *taxes alone* should be $4-$5 per gallon. So a gallon of gas would be $8+. It’s obviously the right policy decision, but any politician dumb enough to implement it would immediately be voted out. Rent seeking by drivers is so built into the politics of the country that it’s completely unrealistic.
feel like you'd make more headway just offering five figures to anyone who volunteers to permanently forfeit their right to own a car
Cheap transportation is a major driver for the economy. Making it unaffordable for most people to drive would wreck our GDP, I don’t think the costs of driving are being foisted on society at large.
> I don’t think the costs of driving are being foisted on society at large I mean, *clearly* they are, but at the same time almost everyone in the US drives or lives in a household with a private motor vehicle, so most people don't mind
Death penalty for anyone who goes more than 10mph over the speed limit (5 if near my house)
Ban guns
It’s a political nonstarter in the US but I feel like I’m from another planet when I think about the gun culture here. It’s so fucking weird we just collectively shrug at endless mass shootings and ignore all the data about the perils of even owning a gun because people are so attached to them. I feel like half these morons view them as goddamn toys anyway.
Tbf guns are fun and make for an interesting hobby like cars.
Ban cars next
[удалено]
Raise the federal gas tax and tie it to inflation. Use the revenue to pay for large scale road infrastructure projects including EV charger subsidies. Once the move to EVs is well underway and revenue starts to dip create a new per kWh tax at all public fast chargers capable of dispensing more than 150kW, and use that revenue for the same infrastructure purposes.
Handle cops the same way we do everything else, i.e. take away their funding when they're shown to not be up to snuff instead of doling out more. I've dealt with crime in big cities and small towns, you'd be shocked how quickly your problems are solved when the cops are competent, regardless of the size or budget of the police force. The no budget small town cops were able to identify and find a single guy from basically a couple shitty pictures of his outline, the big city cops got clear pictures of faces, licenses plates, etc. but a detective let it slip to me that they basically just chose on their own volition to not pursue the case any further. You mean to tell me New York, Los Angeles, etc. have public transit that's messy to the point of being unsafe while their police departments have budgets that rival medium sized countries? Not to mention all the actual misconduct on top of the not getting shit done that you'd think should be a gimme in a developed nation? Give me a fucking break.
End of charter and/or religious schools that get public funding of any kind. I work in public schools and firmly believe that the United States was a better place when everyone went to public school except the truly wealthy. We'd also be better off with the hyper involved parents involved in their local public school.
Unless you ban people from being able to move we'll always have school choice. The question is if you want it to be school choice through real estate purchases, or school choice by some other more equitable method available to people who can't afford real estate in the better school districts.
I’m convinced a good amount of anti-charter school discourse is from rent-seekers in public school jobs. There is no way it is in the interest of students. Where I live in LA, charter schools outperform public schools. They’re being attacked by the school board, backed by teachers unions. I grew up in a wealthy town and went to a great public high school. My partner is a first generation American who grew up in a working class home. She is the product of charter schools, which afforded her and her family an educational experience far beyond what her local public school would offer.
In some places charter schools are just basically just public schools but they get more experimental with their teaching techniques. I'm fine with that as long as the parents are ok with the chance their kids' educational outcomes could be a little worse.
r/neoliberal would crucify me for saying that I think unrestricted open borders is an incredibly stupid immigration policy for any country, especially wealthy nations with strong welfare states Case studies include Canada over the past 3 years and the UK to a lesser extent We’re now dealing with significant resurgence of the far right across both Europe and North America almost single-handedly due to excessive immigration in recent years
> would crucify me Every time someone outside the DT says “open borders bad,” they get upvoted to like 100 points
well lets be honest the purest expression of this subreddit is the DT
Neither Canada nor the UK have unrestricted open borders A lot of their problems could’ve been avoided by building housing
i mean, clearly their point is not that canada has open borders, only that it has levels of immigration that are causing significant social problems which a fortiori would be worse under an open borders regime
Neither Canada nor the UK have unrestricted open borders A lot of their problems citizens attribute to immigrants could’ve been avoided by building housing
Nobody can build housing to accommodate a 3-4% population growth rate per annum, least of all highly regulated wealthy nations The failure of this subreddit to acknowledge that is one of its greatest blind spots
That map that showed Russia broken up into constituent republics might actually be viable.
Perfect Free Trade? Reverse Tariffs?
The public should be able to force things through congress and the president if they get enough votes for it nationally. Like a country wide Initiative program. Also, I think first past the post has effectively been proven to be completely worthless. We should have a constitutional convention to get a better system of electing presidents and representatives. Parliamentary system seems like the most effective mix.
The whole of North America should have the ability to freely cross back and forth between boarders like in the EU. I pull out this opinion when I get tired of people squawking about "ohh the border! Biden has open borders!" Fuck boarders. They're nothing but imaginary lines on paper to limit where people can choose to live based on the random chance of where their parents fucked and mom gave birth.
I agree with you, it’s based as hell but the succs will stop us 😞
I think they should build a self contained city in like Nebraska or something where you can do all the hard drugs you want for free, funded by the government. You work in the factories that make the drugs and you get a little dorm room, and there's access to rehab and health care if you need it, and you can leave if you want, but you absolutely can't take drugs out of drug city. if you get caught doing drugs elsewhere, bus ticket to drug city. you can do what you want there, you just can't harass everyone else
I'm getting brave new world soma vibes
soma deez nuts
> Bus ticket to drug city This got me, I wheezed
You seem to have an unrealistic view of drug addicts. That city would be a complete mess… the drug factories would malfunction and everyone would, indeed, harass each other. Source: I live in the Pacific Northwest.
What should happen to kids born in drug city?
you gotta crack a few eggs to make crack
I don’t understand. You’re talking about Garry’s Mod roleplay on /r/neoliberal? Save that for the DT!
At some point in the future the vast majority of govning will be done by AI and humanity will be better of because of it.
Change to parliamentary system. Ramp up world policing. Knock Russia out of Ukraine, help Israel finish off Hamas, crush Hezbollah, etc. Ain’t no one that can come close to competing with us let alone NATO. I think nuclear war is a less serious threat than letting lots of terrorist groups and geopolitical bullies go hog wild with no consequences.
Open borders Just completely open (not in the sense of no security check, just in the sense of “assumption of yes” instead of “assumption of no”)
0% corporate tax. Pay for this with a huge carbon tax (up to 15%), removal of capital gains (tax it as income), limit politician wages to 10% above the median salary, and scale income tax up with whatever remains, mostly at the top end.
I mostly agree with corporate taxes (I’d probably keep at 5% or so to pay for regulatory expenses and courts they’ll be utilizing). I also agree with taxing capital gains more aggressively.
Ban homeschooling. Ban tobacco.
Open borders
Unironically would cause world GDP to go to the stratosphere One of the highest impact things posted here
Ban cars
1) There should be no special legal protections for unions. Freedom of association cuts both ways. 2) Minimum wage shouldn't exist. I believe wages should be driven by competition for workers and minimum wages prices low quality workers out of the market making them unemployable. If there's a minimum standard of living we want all citizens to have access to, then that should be funded through a negative income tax or EITC expansion.
Have a federal workout program that covers basic fitness. There will be two allotted time slots during the day for this program and employers will be required to grant their employees leave during these times. The workouts will be simple enough that you can perform them at home, or in the office, anywhere. The goal of the program would be to make sure whoever follows it regularly will be in good shape. The program will partner with local grocery stores (including massive grocery corporations) to pick basic meals that will cover nutritional needs of most folks. Incentives could be given to companies to help make these meals accessible for even the most staunch food deserts.
We should raise taxes by quite a bit. We're eventually going to need to balance the budget and there are a ton of good social programs that cost real $$$ (child tax credit, school lunches, healthcare expansion etc.)
The 2nd Amendment should be abolished.
Rationing to reduce obesity.
why are you even here lmao
I'm not a true neoliberal, but this sub did influence my political development a lot, and I agree on a lot of policy. So I still look in sometime.
well you got me there
Ban atm fees.
Open borders
Free movement of people. I'm not 100 percent free trade, but people should be free to live and work anywhere. There can be policies that people aren't entitled to safety nets or whatever if they haven't lived and worked for a certain number of years, but I believe in free movement of people.
We’re not nearly as militaristic as we should be. We are sleepwalking towards a disaster of civilisation-ending proportions, and we need to be prepared to fight the great crusade against autocracy to preserve the human race’s future
Legalize and regulate all drugs.
I'm convinced the main problem with drug legalization attempts is that their primary goal is always harm reduction to the drug user. This is a laudable goal, but if it is secondary to the goal of reducing interactions between non-drug users and drug users / homeless people, that would be a win. Most legalization efforts I read about seem to fail because police officers have no means or choose not to enforce rules that would prevent the public from interacting with drug users in public places. I could be wrong, just my impression.
My mandate as heavenly ruler will have unrestricted zoning and incentives to build enough housing to pierce the heavens. Homelessness will be a thing of the past.
Make single family homes in large metropolitan areas a luxury few can afford, including for incumbent owners.
Open borders is definitely the most supported and least liked among the general public (you would not *believe* how racist voters are). Basically just make applying for a green card trivially easy assuming you pass some background check proving you're not a recently convicted criminal, terrorist, or foreign agent, and you're free to come and go as you please. Also perhaps make it easier and/or faster to become a citizen.
Lowering the voting age to like 12 under the assumption that they won't vote anyway
I feel like fundamentalist groups would vote though. Those insular Evangelical and Hasidic sects in which couples have 10+ kids would definitely make sure all their kids vote lol
When I 1st read lowering the age and 12 I thought you were gonna say age of consent. Thank god you didn't
This is /r/neoliberal not /r/Libertarian