The importance of a good energy source

I’m convinced that the single best use of our resources at present would be energy research and infrastructure.  Imagine  how our world could be different right now if we had a plentiful, cheap, clean source of energy.  Oil rich countries would lose their sway over other nations. Energy can be used to obtain fresh water and make light. heat, and cold, thus making habitable and farmable nearly any place on the planet.  Those places currently struggling for survival would be able to live comfortably and focus on things like education  and society, rather than scrounging for food and making war. Educated people rend to have fewer children, further reducing the problems of overpopulaton and the problems that come with it.

Does freedom of speech work both ways?

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Traditionally the first amendment is thought of as the right to express yourself without being arrested for your viewpoint, but does it also protect you from being forced to express a viewpoint you don’t agree with? Some examples.

Could the government force you to:

1. Do a public service announcement telling kids not to smoke?
2. Take wedding photos for a gay marriage? Paint their portrait? Does it have to look good?
3. Decry the holocaust in your blog post about the SS?
4. Swear on a bible to tell the truth?
5. Pledge allegiance to the flag? Complete with Under God?
6. Photograph an equal number of women and men for your book on sumo wrestlers?

The constitution was drafted as a document to protect the few from the majority and the weak from the powerful. If the government can force you express yourself in one way, chances are good that they will claim the right to do so in the others. For speech to be truly free, it cannot be coerced, however it would make our legal system more difficult if no one could be forced into incriminating others. The problem with the grey area in between is that those in power inexorably pull the greyscale towards their own desired ends, and the will of the people to defend the rights of those they disagree with often falters, especially in light of the uphill battle fighting the powers that be always entails.

Mandated gambling

According to The Economic Times, the Islamic Fiqh Academy has decided that health insurance is a form of gambling, and thus is illegal under Islamic law. I find this to be a deplorable insult to gambling houses everywhere. Gambling generally has much better odds, and I think is likely a less corrupt industry. Let us compare and contrast:

1. Gambling preys on the hopes of the poor.  Insurance preys on the fears of the poor.
2. Gambling is fun. Insurance: not fun.
3. Money lost to insurance goes to corrupt old white guys, Money lost to gambling goes to corrupt old white guys, or Indians.
4. Gambling is optional. Insurance is sometimes optional, but getting less so every day.

A note on number four; the academy stated that if the insurer was under legal constraints, it might be ok  to purchase insurance. I find it interesting that an all powerful deity that will punish me in the afterlife would be nice enough to leave me a legal loophole. I guess Muslims can vote for Hillary after all.

Traffic cameras

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time – using ticket revenue to help pay for government. It would seem to fall right in with the views of this site; Tax the problem to pay for the solution, right? The problem arises when you mix the government’s inability to shrink with the conflict of interest of needing to feed itself by creating the very problem it was designed to fix.

I know someone who was recently ticketed by one of those traffic cameras they put at intersections. They snap a picture of your license plate, your face, and take a video (displayed big screen in court) of your violation. They never sleep or decide to let you go with a warning. There is a huge amount of data online about these cameras, and after some research I came to the conclusion that this particular camera was making around a thousand dollars an hour. Obviously a lot of cities saw dollar signs and started installing the cameras all over, and seeing immediate revenue boosts. The cameras are so effective in fact, that people have actually quit breaking the traffic laws they police. According to dallasnews. Dallas has seen a 50% drop in camera revenue due to lack of crime. Great, we can reduce our traffic patrol now that the cameras have reduced violations, right? Unfortunately, once government creates a job and gains a source of revenue, it is reluctant to let go. It doesn’t want to lay off employees, it just wants its revenue back. The city is starting to turn off the cameras on a rotating basis. Since the infallibility of the cameras is such a key to their success, I expect this will put people back in a gambling mood and increase violations again. I suspect the city knows this. The cameras are run by a company called Redflex. Redflex receives 80% of the ticket price for the first 95 tickets each month, after that they split the revenue with the city. Where does that money go? It is an Australian company.

Related Posts:

Guilty until you find out who really did it?

Speed Camera Pimping

Crowdsourcing

Some of the deepest foundations of my ideal political framework are based on the concept that incentives are far more effective than legislation or subsidies. I was a huge fan of the X-prize, and some of the recent crowdsourcing methods recently employed by DARPA. Never has the saying, “If you’re not a part of the solution, there’s good money to be made In prolonging the problem” been more relevant than it is with today’s medical research and oil companies. If even a fraction of the money we spend on medication and gasoline were to go into prizes to be awarded to those who meet benchmarks for disease eradication and clean energy, the prize would be too enormous to ignore in very short order.

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