Patents

Today's patents grant an exclusive right to the patent owner to make, use, or sell an invention. This is a measure intended to promote innovation but has also been documented to stifle innovation. And the fees involved in obtaining a patent are prohibitively expensive for many individuals.

We're so worried about other people "stealing" our ideas and we're so worried about not being able to profit from our ideas that we lose sight of the greater good. Innovation is good. The more people use our invention, assuming it is a good one, the better the world will be. The more people improve on our invention, the better the world will be. 

What would our world be like if we found another way to promote innovation and reward inventors, that doesn't also stifle other innovation? I imagine it would be very awesome. 

Here is an outline of a completely different way to approach patents:

Disclosure. An inventor submits a detailed description of the invention to the government, much like a patent application today. It needs to be useful and non-obvious, and it needs to be comprised of one or more claims. Many of the existing rules about what makes a valid patent would probably still apply here. The first inventor to submit an invention that is novel receives the patent. It's not possible to know when someone really invented it but it is possible to know when the patent office received the submission. There would be a fee for disclosure to cover the government's processing costs. Inventors would still need to search for prior art before they submit to avoid paying the fee on an patent application that would not be granted. 

Declaration. This is where the similarity to the current patent system ends. Instead of being granted exclusive rights to use the invention, the inventor receives a right to get credit for use of the invention. Anyone who makes, uses, or sells a product that involves one or more patents must declare to the government the product and the reference the patents involved. This declaration would cost a little bit of money, just a small fee for the government to cover the cost of processing it.

Reporting. Every quarter, every organization that makes, uses, or sells products or services that involve patented inventions must declare their volume to the government. For example of "make", if a manufacturer is paid to build a million gadgets that involve patents A and B over a six month period, the manufacturer would first declare that it will be building gadgets involving patents A and B, and then at the end of each quarter (or beginning of the following quarter) it would declare how many of those gadgets it produced in that quarter. For example of "use", if a hospital uses a medical device on some patients, it would first declare that it will be using that medical device and then it would report at the end of each quarter how many times that device was used. The government would already know which patents are involved in that device because the manufacturer would have already declared it and the company selling the device to the hospital would have already declared it. The government should have rules defining what it means to use an invention, for different categories of inventions. It could be once per patient per day, or an amount of time, or some other metric that fits the category. The point is to track the use of the invention in the most natural way possible. for example of "sell", if a company is going to sell a gadget, it first declares the gadget to the government, and then reports each quarter how many of that gadget it sold and the total revenue it collected for that amount. The government doesn't need a per item price, and also the price may vary. The government just needs the total for that quarter. 

Credit. The government will use the reports to assign points to each invention. Every invention referenced in a product gets the same number of points assigned. This is not a zero-sum game - if a product involves 5 inventions, then 1 point is assigned to each invention for each use of that product, or gift of that product, or each dollar of sales volume for that product.  Inventions accrue more points when they are used in more products and when they are used in products that earn greater amounts of revenue. The credit is divided among all the inventors listed in the patent disclosure, either evenly among them or according to a proportion stated in the disclosure. A proportion would be stated if there is one or more primary inventors and other contributing inventors who acknowledge they had a smaller part in it than the primary inventor(s). If someone notices that a product wrongfully references a patent, meaning that patent isn't actually involved in the product, they may file a complaint with the government and if it is found that the invention does not cover the product, all points assigned from that product would be revoked, any money paid for that would become immediately due from the inventor to refund the government, and the person or company who declared the product with the wrongful reference would pay the fee for the investigation. If the claim of wrongfully referencing a patent turns out to be wrongful itself, the person or company filing the claim would pay the fee to cover the government's processing effort.

Reward. When an inventor accrues enough points, the government would pay the inventor for points accrued up to that point. When an inventor accrues enough points again, the government would pay

for the points earned since the last report. This would continue to happen until the inventor reaches a lifetime maximum amount of monetary compensation by the government for inventions.  The government will continue to track the points for each inventor, will will not send any more money to inventors who have reached their lifetime maximum. After reaching the lifetime maximum, inventors still earn public recognition and awards such as ribbons or medals from the government for reaching ever higher levels of points. 

Funding. The government collects taxes on sale of products and services, and also on business revenues which are also related to the sale or use of products. The more products and services are sold, for more revenue, the more money the government collects. This, in turn, funds the rewards for the inventors. People and companies who buy or use those products are therefore partially or completely funding the monetary rewards for the inventors.

Expiration. A patent may expire after a few years. When a patent expires, the government will stop awarding money to the inventor, but the government will continue to assign points to the invention according to business reports in order to publicly recognize the inventor.

Non-disclosure. Theoretically, a company could compensate an inventor for not submitting the invention to the government and therefore not receiving the awards and recognition for inventing it. This might be done in an attempt to keep the product secret for some time. However, this does not make much sense because as soon as someone else sees the product, they could (unethically) submit the patent to the government claiming they invented it. Inventors signing non-disclosure agreements would want to ensure they receive adequate compensation from the company, because they may lose their right to be compensated by the government for the effort when someone else submits the idea first.

Competition. A good idea would quickly be adopted by multiple competitors in the same space. They can still compete on price, quality, and other features. 

Employment Laws

There are federal employment laws and every state has its own employment laws. Wherever one is doing business within the United States, there are a lot of employment laws to know about and follow. Large businesses can afford the overhead of a conglomeration of departments to keep track of all the laws and to comply with them. Small businesses are unlikely to even know about some of the laws until some unfortunate incident brings a complaint or investigation, and then penalties follow.

Now, a couple of facts to contemplate: First, the government grants business licenses in various industries as a way to monitor those business activities and, of course, collect additional revenue. Second, there are companies that specialize in accounting and employment laws, filing forms on behalf of businesses, and helping businesses stay in compliance with the law.

Assuming that most employment laws are actually "good" in that they require businesses to follow procedures for the benefit of employees, we should make it easy for businesses to be in compliance with such laws. Here is how government could be a lot more useful:

First, require every business to obtain a business license, regardless of industry. We don't need special cases for this or that. Every business must have a license to operate, which involves registering the business activity with the government. The government office receiving such registrations must make them available to all other branches of government. The revenue service can then know where to collect taxes, and various industry-specific departments like energy and food can follow up with businesses that are in their area of interest. Businesses must not be required to register separately with every government department -- there must be only one registration that is shared.

Second, the government can use the business license to help businesses learn about the laws and follow them. One of the questions in the license application must be about the nature of the activity, so that relevant government departments can find the business license and follow up with the business. One of the items in the license application must be to note the contact information of the company that will be tracking employment laws and compliance on behalf of the business. The business could write its own company name and contact information for its personnel officer there, or the business could hire another company, and these exist today, to do this work. Either way, the business owner, at the time of applying for the business license, through the course of completing the license application, learns that there are employment laws that must be followed and has an opportunity to hire someone and write their information, or to contemplate doing it "in house". The item on the form must be annotated with a reference where the business owner can see a summary of the "start up laws" like registering new employees, getting a tax identification number, obtaining insurance, and so on.  That information should help the business owner decide to do it "in house" or to hire an external company, and if doing it "in house" it should help with getting started.

Third, the government can require "HR" businesses to obtain an employment compliance license, which must involve demonstrating knowledge of all applicable laws for the jurisdictions in which they offer services, and also their internal controls that would be used to ensure that businesses stay in compliance. Any business offering "HR" services or doing "HR" itself would need to apply for and obtain the employment compliance license. This step will help ensure that whoever the business designates as its employment compliance representative in the business license form will be competent to perform that work.

The combination of these three steps means that the education to business owners can be very simple:

Every business must obtain a business license.  The process of applying for the license and obtaining the license will then inform the business about other legal requirements. One of these is employment compliance, and by choosing a licensed employment compliance representative, whether in house or outsourced, the business can be built on a solid foundation of following the employment laws and taking good care of its employees.

Liberty Day

So the government has 10 official holidays: new year's day, Martin Luther King Jr birthday, Washington birthday, memorial day, independence day, labor day, Columbus day, Veterans day, Thanksgiving day, and Christmas day.

The three days named after people commemorate the discovery of North America by Columbus, the leadership of Washington in securing independence from the English, and leadership of the civil rights movement by Martin Luther King Jr.

Labor day celebrates all workers. Veterans day celebrates all military veterans. Memorial day isn't a celebration but is a day to remember soldiers who died in the civil war, in the first world war, and all later conflicts.

Independence day celebrates independence from the English but ignores American Indians, who in that period were losing their lands to the colonists. More on this below.

Thanksgiving day celebrates a number of different things, depending on who you ask, but is both generic -- because cultures around the world have a celebration after the harvest -- and sad because like independence day, this specific celebration originated in a time when the American Indians were starting to lose their lands to the colonists. Also, even though the American Indians also had their own celebrations, thanksgiving day is distinctly colonial.

Christmas day is a religious holiday only for Christians, even though it's not purely Christian in nature. No official federal holidays for other religions.

New year's day is the most secular "holiday".

The government should officially drop Christmas as a federal holiday because it's religious in nature, even if that religious nature isn't entirely Christian. I'm not saying that people should stop celebrating Christmas, just that the government shouldn't give it any more weight than holidays of other religions. The fact is that a vast majority of Americans do claim to be Christian so if they all celebrate Christmas at the same time, businesses and offices will continue to be closed, but let that be a decision by each organization and not a federal standard.

Let us have four standard vacation weeks during the year: the week surrounding January first, the week surrounding April first, the week surrounding July first, and the week surrounding October first. If anyone wants to rearrange their vacations they should negotiate with their manager, but the standard should be four weeks in a year, equally spaced around the calendar, to ensure people have the time to spend with their families without being penalized for it. So winter vacation would be December 28 thru January 4th, and if someone wants to take extra days earlier to celebrate Christmas or just "round off" to an entire week, they should negotiate that with their manager.

Let's drop all official holidays based on individuals and get back to the meaning of things.

Instead of Washington's birthday, the federal government should officially change its name to President's day (which many people already call it) and move it to April 30th to celebrate when Washington took the oath of office to become the first President of the United States. Even though the inauguration day has since moved to January, as a commemorative holiday the first inauguration is better, and won't be confused with Washington or Lincoln's birthdays.

Instead of Martin Luther King Jr's birthday, the federal government should officially change its name to Civil Rights Day, maybe move it to December 1st to commemorate Rosa Parks' brave civil disobedience, or maybe move it to May 17th to commemorate the decision of Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka, when the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that segregation is inherently unequal. It's hard to pick a single point in time, because a long stream of events led to the improvement of civil rights. I just think it shouldn't be any one person's birthday. December 1st is probably a good choice because it's associated as the starting point of the modern civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr.

Instead of Columbus day... actually, we can just drop it we don't need to replace it with anything (but I propose we should - read on). Columbus was a Spanish imperialist, his birthday just seems very irrelevant today. Some people celebrate a Native American day or some other substitution on the same day to make a statement, and that's not necessary either if we just drop this holiday.

Let's create a new federal celebration for liberty, and let's use it every year to remind ourselves what this country is about, because sometimes people forget that liberty is an important goal of our constitution. Past generations forgot about liberty when they continued to hold slaves after the declaration of independence, when they continued to fight American Indians after the signing of the declaration of independence, when they forced Japanese Americans into internment camps, when they authorized secret government programs to develop the most massive covert collection (spying) program on this plane on our own citizens, and many other incidents.  It's that declaration - remember  "all men are created equal ... with certain unalienable rights ... life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"???  That was on July 4th and we are celebrating independence from the English but we've forgotten so many times the reasons we needed independence. If we celebrate a Liberty Day, and make it a tradition to talk about the meaning of liberty and the limits on pursuit of happiness (the boundaries being harm to other people individually or collectively, whether direct or indirect), and recounting past mistakes and making a commitment to do our best not to let that happen in the future, then maybe we'll have a chance at keeping our liberty a little longer.

I propose to celebrate Liberty Day on October 1st of each year.

Doctrine of Honorable Intent

When one person accuses another person of causing indirect harm, and the harm is evident, it is  straightforward to demand that the accused stop the activity that is harming others indirectly or modify the activity such that it no longer harms others. When the harm is not evident, there needs to be a process to determine if the indirect harm actually occurred, occurs, or will occur. All this is in the context of activities that are not already regulated -- clearly if there is already a law governing the activity and the accused did not comply with the law the government would investigate and there are already resources to deal with that. In cases where the activity is not regulated, the accuser may not have the resources or the access to fully investigate, and it would be unjust to burden the accused with providing the resources, whether or not the accused actually has the resources.

In such cases, the doctrine of honorable intent is to assume that both the accuser and the accused have honorable intent, to establish a procedure for mediating the conflict, and to impose tough penalties if either accuser or accused is discovered to have dishonorable intent.

For the accuser, honorable intent means that the accuser truly believes that harm occurred, occurs, or will occur as a result of the actions of the accused, and that the accuser is not attempting to harm the accused via the accusation itself.

For the accused, honorable intent means that the accused did not know that the harm occurred, occurs, or will occur as a result of the actions of the accused, and is willing to stop or modify the activity in order to prevent further harm.

The mediation would start with an exploration of the harm that occurred, occurs, or will occur as a result of the activity. This is the time to raise concerns, share evidence, and generate theories about how the activity indirectly resulted or may result in harm. It is not the time for the accused to attempt to disprove anything. The exploration ends when the mediator understands the activity and the harm and how they are or may be related. If the mediator needs additional information to understand, the mediator will request government resources to fully investigate.  The request is prioritized by the mediator according to the scope and impact of the harm that occurred, occurs, or will occur.

The mediation continues with an exploration of what would have to stop or change in order to prevent further harm. The accuser, the accused, and interested other parties may provide ideas. There may be multiple ideas presented, and the focus is on preventing further harm and not compensating for any past harm. Some ideas may imply a cost to the accused, and the mediator must weigh this against the harm. Honorable intent means the accuser and accused will discuss the minimum possible change that would be required to stop or prevent the harm.

If at any point the accuser or the accused is discovered to have dishonorable intent, the mediation will stop and the matter will be forwarded to a judge for punishing the dishonorable party for attempting to use the legal procedure itself to harm the other party. Dishonorable intent is demonstrated by hiding evidence, lying or falsifying or omitting available information, interfering with the other party during the procedure, attempting to influence the mediator or any investigator, clerk, or expert assigned to the case, or other actions that may be deemed dishonorable. Such dishonorable conduct must be punished severely to ensure the integrity of legal procedures.

The mediation concludes with an agreement between the accuser and the accused on a plan to stop or prevent the harm. If an agreement cannot be reached, and the mediator has not yet requested a full investigation, the full investigation must be requested at this time. If an agreement is not reached and the mediator believes the harm is evident the mediator must forward the case with the mediator's comments to a judge. The judge will determine if any existing laws may apply to resolve the case. If the judge believes the harm is evident and there are no existing laws to resolve the case, the judge may order the accused to stop or modify the activity in a way that would prevent the harm, and impose penalties for not complying with the order. The judge would also forward the case to the legislature to consider writing a new law that would govern the same or similar situations in the future.

If at any point during the process either the accused or accuser believes that the other party or the mediator or the judge is acting with dishonorable intent, the case may be forwarded to a higher court to investigate the dishonorable conduct only and, if it is evident, to punish the dishonorable party and return the case to the lower court.

Eternalism vs Presentism

If eternalism is the idea that the past and the future coexist, and that we are just experiencing a safari - an observation adventure - through a world that is pre-determined, then it means our free will is just an illusion, but time travel would be possible because as "simply" movement along the time dimension.

If presentism is the idea that only the present exists, and that the past and the future are just concepts that we can use to relate to states that have changed and states that we expect to happen, then it means time travel is impossible and that time itself can only be a measure of the difference between states of the present, so that in an absolutely static world with no movement at all it would be impossible to measure time, and in other cases it would be possible for time to be measured differently at different places.

Since no one has been able to demonstrate travel either forward or backward in time, and since a concept of the present is required in order to form concepts of past and future, I believe the idea of presentism has to be assumed to be a better estimation of reality than eternalism; I live in the present and if anyone want to convince me otherwise, the burden of proof is on them!

Animals

I think it's cruel to spay or neuter an animal for any reason other than its own health. Preventing an animal from having offspring does prevent cruelty from happening to its offspring but it's not preventing cruelty to the animal itself. I believe that if a survey were done of humans asking if they believe that they would be thankful for being neutered without their consent because it prevents them from having children who will experience cruelty, the results would be overwhelmingly negative (but maybe not entirely negative).


From http://www.beefusa.org/beefindustrystatistics.aspx:

2014 Cattle inventory (as of July 1, 2014):  95 million, 3% down from July 2012.
Economic impact:  $44 billion in farm gate receipts (USDA NASS)
Number of beef cow operations: 729,000
Number of cattle & calf operations: 915,000
29.0 million beef cows (down 1%)
33.9 million head calf crop (2013)
The average cow herd size: 40 head
2014 U.S. total beef exports: 5.6 billion pounds
Top export markets:  Canada, Japan, Mexico, South Korea and Hong Kong

More than 50 percent of the total value of U.S. sales of cattle and calves comes from the top 5 states:
  1. Texas
  2. Nebraska
  3. Kansas
  4. California
  5. Oklahoma
Average producer age:  58.3, up 1.2 years since 2007 (USDA 2012 Ag Census)
U.S. beef production (commercial carcass weight) was 25.8 billion pounds.
The total U.S. beef consumed was 25.5 billion pounds.
Average annual U.S. retail Choice beef price in 2013 was $5.29/lb.
U.S. commercial slaughter total was 31.9 million head


From http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/pet_overpopulation/facts/pet_ownership_statistics.html:

U.S. pet-ownership estimates from the APPA for 2012

Dogs
83.3 million—Number of owned dogs
47 percent—Percentage of households that own at least one dog
70 percent—Percentage of owners with one dog
20 percent—Percentage of owners with two dogs
10 percent—Percentage of owners with three or more dogs
1.47—Average number of owned dogs per household
20 percent—Percentage of owned dogs who were adopted from animal shelters
$231—Average annual amount spent by dog owners on routine veterinary visits
83 percent—Percentage of owned dogs who are spayed or neutered
Even—Proportion of male to female owned dogs

Cats
95.6 million—Number of owned cats
46 percent—Percentage of owners with one cat
31 percent—Percentage of owners with two cats
24 percent—Percentage of owners with three or more cats
2.11—Average number of owned cats per household
26 percent—Percentage of owned cats who were adopted from an animal shelter
$193—Average annual amount spent by cat owners on routine veterinary visits
91 percent—Percentage of owned cats who are spayed or neutered
73 percent vs. 62 percent—The difference in number of owned female cats and owned male cats, respectively

Functions of government

In a news story http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/12/28/unemployment-benefits-expire-dems-vow-to-fight-on/ about unemployment benefits, Dean Heller, R-Nevada, was quoted: "providing a safety net for those in need is one of the most important functions of the federal government"

Dean Heller is wrong. Providing for people in need is the function of charities, not the government. 

The government does have a useful role to play in coordinating efforts to help people in need, especially during a crisis such as natural disaster or violence. Paying people to do nothing is something our government has a long history of doing but is not something that should be a function of any government.

Among the most important functions of government are:

Protecting each citizen's right to life, liberty, justice, property, and equal opportunity. 

Organizing the national defense - which supports protecting citizen rights.

Engaging other nations with diplomacy to protect citizens traveling abroad and to resolve disputes with other nations peacefully.

Coordinating public efforts such as building infrastructure for transportation, communications, water and electricity distribution, education, recycling, and waste disposal; and controlling the use or preservation of natural resources.

Anonymous Corporations

If a corporation can hide the personal involvement of its true owners - the people who control it and benefit most from its existence - what else can it hide?

Unethical behavior? Illegal activity? It's certain that shell corporations have been used to hide these things.

I'm not saying that a person should be unable to maintain some anonymity. But I am saying that corporations should pay taxes on their income, and being entities formed specifically for certain legal standing they should not have the same right to privacy that individuals have.

So if one wants to be anonymous in one's personal activities, one should not form a corporation to conduct them. 

And if one wants to be anonymous in one's business activities, one should move to another country that is more supportive of organized crime.

Thoughts and Policies

A person's thoughts are private. If that person is an elected official, then his official thoughts are private too. This means anyone employed or appointed by the elected official has a duty to keep their internal discussions private and not to leak any information. This provides the official room to think and to discuss issues with other smart people in the room without fear of being judged prematurely. Elected officials are people and it is unreasonable to expect them to think and speak perfectly all the time.

An elected official therefore needs a means to express thoughts to the public in a way that invites discussion and criticism. That means should be the written word, in the form of speeches, policies, and policy drafts. Speeches are usually a public reading of a written essay. Policies should be the product of a lot of thought, reason, discussion, criticism, and editing to clarify, mitigate, explain, emphasize, and revise. Policy drafts should be the product of some initial thought and discussion with some problems remaining for which the elected official is soliciting debate and criticism from the public in order to identify points or issues that need clarification, mitigation, explanation, emphasis, or revision.

Policy drafts are requests for comments. However, to be helpful those comments must be constructive. For example, a comment like "this is the dumbest idea I've ever seen" should be immediately discarded by a clerk and replaced with a single tick in a count of opposing viewpoints. Similar constructive comments should be grouped together, rephrased if necessary to capture the point clearly, and tallied.

Anarchy

Thoughtful people who are concerned with survival in a dangerous world recognize that chances of survival are better when they cooperate with other people. This leads to bands, caravans, villages, and larger organizations.

When an organization already exists for mutual benefit, it's natural for some people to view it as a resource to be exploited. They want to enjoy its advantages without contributing their share. They may not be complete freeloaders but simply trying to maximize their own benefit and minimize their costs. To counteract this natural tendency, societies have for centuries designated judges and police to enforce their rules.

I think that anarchists, especially those living in cities, have an irrational desire for total disorder. If lack of government is what they want, there are plenty of places inside and outside the country where they can go and not be bothered by any authorities. They are free to choose one and go there.

Yet many anarchists stay in cities. Why do anarchists choose to live within the confines of the most successful social organizations in history? Why do anarchists choose to stay in cities - places that have so many rules? If freedom from authority is what they wish for, why don't they venture out of the cities and make the wilderness their home? Or at least rural areas where there are fewer people and fewer rules?

Cities are convenient places to find shelter, food, and social experience. In the wilderness, the anarchist would have to work much harder to obtain these.

If government were abolished and everyone lived in anarchy, then people who who would invest their assets to build something of value would always incur an additional cost for security. Anything that is built would need to be secured against other people. For example, a farmer who plants crops needs to protect them from looters; a blacksmith who creates tools needs to protect them from looters; a performer needs to protect the stage from drunks and violent critics. These security tasks require cooperation among people. It would be tedious to negotiate the terms of the cooperation every day, so the cooperation will naturally lead to a standing agreement among the parties, thereby creating an organizational structure and associated rules.

Societies emerge naturally out of the mutual cooperation and agreement of their founders because they are beneficial. Children born into societies learn the rules and are expected to follow them as long as they are part of those societies.

I think in a free country it is critical for people to be able to move freely so they can choose to live in a society that is a good fit for them, or choose to eschew society and live alone somewhere rural or wild and avoid contact with other people.

It's alright to talk about revolution against a government that oppresses its people, because as the Founders of the United States wrote, the government exists to uphold individual rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. But any anarchist who advocates revolution for the sake of eliminating government altogether is a hypocrite, because that would be taking away choice from other people who want a government to uphold their rights. For that reason, people who understand the value of government will always be opposed to the anarchists.

The anarchist has only one rational move: relocate to an area where contact with other people would be rare, and thus achieve a very high degree of personal freedom. Even the anarchist can rely on government to uphold his or her rights, because without a government to monopolize violence anyone with a weapon can attempt to become a little dictator, which makes for a dangerous wilderness.

Keeping the legislative branch accountable

Does the executive branch need to participate in keeping track of who voted for or against specific bills in the legislature?

If you're paranoid you may say that such record keeping could lead to harassment of legislators.

On the other hand, a president who needs to persuade legislators to take his cause seriously needs to be able to embarrass them if they have voted for nonsense in the past, or publicly acknowledge contributions to rational lawmaking by others.

Can the president rely on the legislative branch to keep those records? I think so. Also the legislative branch is the authority on those records so it makes sense for them to be provided by the legislative branch for all public and private use.

Those records should be easily accessible to any American.

Democracy can be unfair

Democracy is not inherently fair.

Take hypothetical candidates for some office. The people will vote for the candidate of their choice, but how do the people know which candidate is the best choice for the office? Their perception of each candidate depends on what they know about that candidate. Because there are so many people and they are spread across a large amount of land, it's not possible for the candidates to speak to each person directly. What each candidate tells the people about themselves is limited by how that candidate can reach the people. Television, radio, billboards, pamphlets, internet sites, and word of mouth are some common ways to reach people and they all incur costs for the candidate. So how much each candidate can tell people about him or her self depends on money. Not all candidates have the same amount of money so candidates with more money are more likely to reach more people and be able to tell them more about themselves (or tell them negative things about other candidates). Because people are more comfortable with people with whom they are more familiar, even if the messages from two identical candidates are essentially the same, the candidate with more public exposure is likely to receive more votes. This may be unfair. Furthermore, people don't necessarily vote for what is best for the county, state, or country. Some people may conscientiously vote for what is best for everyone but most people just vote for what they think is best for themselves first and then for everyone else. So the votes are naturally subjective and playing to people's selfish subjectivity is an old play for politicians running for an office. Once in office, politicians are under no obligation to fulfill their campaign promises. There is no law requiring any effort towards fulfilling campaign promises. There is no penalty for not fulfilling them and even though theoretically the punishment for not fulfilling them is to be voted out of office the next election, historically politicians continue to be re-elected even after failing to fulfill their most important promises.

In a state with millions of people, not all people drive the same roads. But is the road improvement budget apportioned according to the number of people in each area and the taxes they paid towards the road improvement budget? Or do people in rural areas pay the same amount towards road improvement but see a fraction of the benefit relative to tax payers in other areas because the money from all over the state tends to be spent in more highly populated areas?  Do people in some areas wait an unreasonable amount of time for improvements to occur because the state published the entire work as one offer and the winning company can't do it all at once, so it focuses on highly monitored areas first? Maybe work should be published as multiple offers according to geographical areas and the work contracted to multiple companies who will execute simultaneously.

Claude Vorhilhorn's Fraud

I recently discovered a really fantastic atheistic cult called the Raelian Movement, started by Claude Vorhilhorn in the 1970's.  He wrote a book in which he describes an encounter with an alien (Mr. President) who revealed to him the true origins of life on our planet and human civilization. Here are some of his claims (not in any particular order):

1. the same alien (Mr. President) is a scientist who has lived for over 25,000 years and together with a team of similarly long-lived scientists created all the forms of plant and animal life on this planet, and that the diversity of human races and of all life reflects the creativity of different teams of scientists and artists who were the creators.

2. the team of alien scientists created the single continent that existed before breaking up and becoming the separate continents we know today

3. the aliens are waiting to see how humanity turns out, to see if we're intelligent and peaceful enough to deserve receiving our inheritance - the sum of all knowledge acquired by our alien creators

4. the aliens have intervened in human affairs throughout our early history and some of these incidents are documented in the Bible, and have been misinterpreted by subsequent generations

5. the aliens are afraid that humans will be dangerous to them when we catch up to their technological achievements, which is why they're watching us, but also they want to hurry things along so that's why they've allowed themselves to be seen (UFO sightings)

6. the aliens achieved immortality through cloning, and it's possible to clone a person and all his personality and knowledge from a single cell of any part of the body. Also, that it's possible to transfer knowledge from one person to another by extracting brain fluid from the brain of one and injecting it into the brain of the other - and that's how the aliens teach their young.

7. the resurrection of the righteous that is predicted in the Bible will be done by the aliens using their cloning techniques

What's really interesting to me is that, when I was reading his book this week, I found myself really unsurprised by many of his alien biblical interpretations because I have seen some of the episodes of Ancient Aliens and I believe that the artifacts we have from ancient civilizations combined with religious histories from around the world certainly make a pretty good case that it's possible that aliens have visited our planet in the past.

However, I was disappointed that Claude didn't research the science better before writing his book, because some of what we know today about the world is seated very strongly in physical evidence that doesn't match the story Claude tells.

For example, the theory of continental drift is based on pretty good evidence that the continents drift a tiny amount every year and that over the 4.5 billion years that the earth has existed they have drifted together and and part several times, and the last time they were together was from approximately 300 million years ago to 200 million years ago when they started their drift from the last single continent into their current positions.  This contrasts greatly with Claude's story that the aliens found our planet covered completely by water 25,000 years ago and created a single continent by setting explosions everywhere and piling the earth into a single mass... which then drifted apart into our current continents sometime between 22,000 years ago and now.  That's enough time for the sea levels to change in many places but not for the continental drift.

Another problem with Claude's story is that we know quite a lot about how the body works and there isn't any evidence at all that any part of a person's knowledge lies outside of their brain. Even "muscle memory" is stored in the brain.  The genetic material in our cells is a blueprint for the body, it's not a copy of our memory. Furthermore, what we know of how the brain works also doesn't include any evidence that brain fluid stores any of a person's knowledge. So even if Claude's aliens can clone themselves and transfer their own memory to their clones using such a pair of techniques, which I'll assume is possible although not in the way Claude describes, they still wouldn't be able to resurrect righteous people who died generations ago because first, it's not possible to know by looking at a grave who was righteous and who wasn't (unless the aliens have tracked every single person's life and their burial site); and second, even if aliens recover genetic material from a person's grave they are not likely to find any brain fluid remaining from which to recover the personality. So this seems like quite a bit of fiction.

Finally, Claude claims that the alien intentionally didn't give him any evidence to show the world as a test of our intelligence - if we are intelligent enough then we will know Claude's story is true without any evidence. Well... that's absurd. An intelligent person who seeks the truth prefers to find it from evidence and observations.  And if we arrive at the conclusion that aliens have already visited our planet in the past independently of Claude, it will be using evidence that we find in our environment.

We'll be forced to conclude that although Claude is one of many authors who have postulated the existence of aliens, Claude is also one of the many phonies who invented incredible stories, and a creator of yet another cult.

I think that a beautiful idea isn't a good enough reason to lie to people.  Assuming Claude's story of alien encounter is a hoax, I would say to Claude that he had a fantastic idea and that if he had simply published it as a "what if", then if evidence is later discovered that shows he was in the ballpark of the truth he could have been honored as a visionary.

Assorted Problems

Here are some issues that I feel are a huge drain on society. It's not a complete list and it's not ordered in any way.

Lack of respect for nature and other people. Stealing, vandalizing, littering, dumping chemicals, cutting trees without replacing them, all these things make our entire nation a little bit poorer one disrespectful act at a time. Our attitude should be to preserve and improve the world, not lash out in anger or damage it out of laziness or greed.

Unwillingness to let other people suffer the consequences of their own actions or inactions. If you want to help, that's great, but don't make slaves of good people to help lazy or unfit people. By this I mean that taxing everyone to provide free food, clothing, and housing for a few people who refuse to work is very unfair. Very few people have a legitimate disability that prevents them from doing anything useful at all. Those people need to be cared for by their own families, not by the taxes of everyone else. And if they don't have families, and absolutely zero value to anyone, why do they deserve to live on the backs of everyone else? When we make such a system possible (as it is today) then a lot of people find reasons why they can't work, and this class of freeloaders grows as large as the rest of society can support.  Too many people have seen the case of the food-stamp shopper who talks on a nice new cell phone and drives a nice new car, and this is an injustice to everyone who was forced to pay for those food stamps with their taxes. Therefore helping the poor must be the work of charities, not government.

Overprotection of criminals. We treat even the most violent criminals to free room, free food, free education, free medical care, and free entertainment. Except for being confined to the prison,  we give them rights just as if they were free people, and that's not fair. They are in prison as punishment for their crimes, it must not be healthy, delicious, or enjoyable. So we must ensure that non-criminals aren't sent to prison. Prison isn't suitable for people who only violated the law, who hurt someone unintentionally, or who paid reparations for what they damaged or stole. Prison is for people who intentionally hurt other people and can't or won't pay the damages. Prison should be slavery. Prison time should have a rate at which we value the work done by prisoners and credit it toward their reparations. When the reparations are fully paid the inmate can be released after some counseling to live a non-violent life and to comply with the law. Reparations are possible for everything but the most violent and permanent of crimes - murder and rape. The work done by prisoners should be valuable and pay for the costs of their imprisonment, with excesses going into a fund that will be used to pay reparations to the victims faster, or to fund law enforcement and judicial activities. Extreme care must be taken so that the role of the jury in convicting criminals is not undermined by a desire to increase production in prisons. Prisoners must never work in cooking or baking; their food should be prepared by free citizens to serve as a reminder that it is society that is keeping them alive there and also for food security.

Misinterpretation of the constitution. The constitution isn't perfect but some things are clearly widely misinterpreted. The right to assemble and the right to free speech are meant to protect people's political rights. I don't believe for a second that the founder George Washington would have let the crazy Westboro Baptist Church protest with their hateful and idiotic messages at the funerals of his Soldiers. It's a crime, they are hurting the mourners. Free (political) speech is only intended to protect people from being arrested only for voicing displeasure with the government. That is not at all the same as the right to say anything, anywhere, to anybody; especially not the same as this church group desecrating funerals to promote a hateful homophobic message.

Injustice.  If a poor or middle class man steals $50,000 from someone, or robs a bank at gunpoint, when he is caught he would definitely spend some time in jail and if he still has the capability to earn an income he may be ordered to pay it back.  If a network of banks and brokers steals billions of dollars from the American public by rigging the bond bidding system, when they are caught some junior executives are fined and the banks are fined but only for a fraction of the amount for which they defrauded the public, and the rest is never paid back and the banks are allowed to continue to operate and do business with the government and receive more public money.  When the largest insurance company made bad investment decisions that should have caused it to go out of business, the government gave it large amounts of money as a "bail out" to prevent it from crashing. Yet the government doesn't bail out any of the thousands of small businesses that close every year due to not being profitable. That is a huge injustice. If an individual is hurt by circumstances involving a business, and the business is held liable for all of the damage even though some of the fault clearly was with the individual, and the business is fined for millions of dollars in damages more than the actual damage done just to make a point, that is also a huge injustice.  Justice is not prejudiced against the rich or the poor. Justice must be created one case at a time. There may be some guidelines about what is justice but the facts of the case are everything. The courts may be doing a good job in general on small cases but there are far too many large cases that end up with injustice, and that is causing a feeling of unrest in the public.

The Meaning of Life

If you ask, "What is the meaning of life?" and then look to other people for an answer, you will find a large variety of answers.

I think the meaning of life is improvement.

Everything that lives tries to either improve itself or improve its surroundings by growing, moving, or thinking.

In the past I thought that the meaning of life was survival because everything that lives attempts to survive, procreating to promote survival of its genetic code. I interpreted every action in the light of the ultimate task of survival. But to say that the meaning of life is to survive doesn't help much because it doesn't answer why life exists. If life was formed out of non-life, then forming just to survive is absurd because all the elements in the world would have persisted - survived - in their lifeless form due to the law of conservation of matter. To be clear, I don't expect a rock to know of, or understand, or employ the law of conservation of matter in its decision-making. What I do expect is that if a rock should become alive, that there be a cosmic reason for this change. Survival just doesn't seem to answer the question. But improvement does. I found that survival doesn't explain enough of our actions as humans. However, improvement can explain the motive for survival. Survival doesn't explain the origin of life, but improvement does.  A world without life is boring: changes are slow, sands move from here to there, the laws of physics are barely used. The lifeless world survives, but a lively world improves.

To move from a lifeless world to a lively world is an improvement. Therefore the cosmic reason for life can simply be to improve upon a lifeless world. It doesn't need to be more complicated than “to improve.” From the lifeless world to the principal forms of life that first existed all the way to the present day, improvement is the invariant of life.

Because changes to a species happen in each generation, the motive to survive is given meaning by improvement. An organism must survive and procreate in order to have a chance at genetic improvement in its offspring. Every action that is necessary to survive is given meaning by the ultimate goal of improvement.

If a person accepts improvement as the meaning of life then it explains the joy derived from a regular cycle of work and rest; the motivation to make the world a better place; the motivation to help others; the motivation to pursue the arts, sciences, and sports. Survival is possible without these inclinations but pursuing them leads to improvements in oneself, society, or the environment.

Starting with the axiom that existence exists, I think there are two natural tendencies. The first is towards chaos and the second is towards improvement. The world is in motion, the sands are moved by the wind, gases disperse to fill available space, liquids pool together, all these are manifestations of physics that affect atoms and small particles. Existence exists, it doesn't care what happens to a grain of sand as it is moved by the wind. When some combinations of particles are brought together due to the chaotic activity and they form bonds with each other due to their physics, those combinations will stay together when moved by the chaos. There isn't necessarily a purpose for them to stay together but they do because of their physics and the chance that brought them together in the chaos. Some combinations will break apart, some will continue to grow. New combinations will form due to chance. This is an example of a boundary between chaos and improvement. If there is a combination that is likely given the elements in existence, and stable due to its physics, then given enough time and chaos there will be many instances of this combination. The natural tendency of improvement is that, if something is better, it will persist. Therefore, even without a perspective on the end result of this evolution, the changes that persist may be called improvements. And so the world has both chaos and improvement, and this has naturally created life.

The universe is not only cold and dark, it is filled with much material that has formed into stars and planets and debris. The universe contains varying degrees of chaos, with their temperatures, and many improvements - changes or combinations that persist as long as they are able.

I don't pretend to know the purpose of the universe, if there is one.  I only know that it exists because I trust my senses. I know that it contains chaos because there is plenty of evidence. I know that it contains improvement because there is plenty of evidence. I believe that chaos and improvement are natural tendencies of the universe because my experience, which includes reading the work of many authors before me, has led me to this belief. The belief that the meaning of life is improvement has resonated very well with all of my prior beliefs. I can't prove it. But I think it's useful and it may turn out to be a conclusion if I am not able to improve upon it before I die.

It's hard to give up the idea of God because of all the psychological construction since my youth. The large number of people who believe in God, who claim to have seen and experienced God, who claim that if I don't believe in God I will suffer greatly - this makes me afraid to shuck my belief in God. But in contrast, I also know that it's possible for all the people in the world to be wrong. And I know that a all the proof of God that people cling to reduces to circular logic or invention with no root in reality, and worse, that there is clear evidence which contradicts many religious claims. So I am not afraid to say, that the God I believe in is not at all the same as the God that is popular in religious teachings.  My God is the creator of the universe. God is whatever caused the universe to exist.  For me, everything after that can be explained by the nature of the universe that exists.

Science is a methodology for acquiring knowledge about our world and it's concerned only with what exists in our world. This is why through science it will never be possible to completely know God, the creator of all existence, because God is outside existence. If God has manifested in any way within existence, we can only know the part of God that has manifested in existence, and we can only know it as part of existence.

So the meaning of life is improvement, and if there is a God who created the universe then I assume that God must have intended for me to find this meaning, since it is a natural part of the universe.  All of my values are derived from what I was taught when I was younger,  and yet they can be derived just as well from the axiom that existence exists and that the universe contains chaos and improvement and that the meaning of life, the cause and motivation of life, is improvement.

Education Standards

In recent years there has been a push to standardize the public school curriculum across the nation. Standardized tests have been implemented to test such a large array of topics that there are reports of teachers focusing their time solely on material that is on the test and discarding their former lesson plans.

There's a huge benefit to a uniform education for our nation's youths and that is, assuming it's a good quality education, all the youths will have an approximately equal opportunity to succeed in adulthood.

There's also a huge drawback to a nationally uniform education: if it's not a good quality education, the number of people who are able to improve it is drastically reduced due to centralized control.

And there's a second huge drawback as well: we lose the ability to compare approaches. If everyone is doing the same thing, we have to trust that the centralized management is evaluating potential changes rationally - maybe carrying out experiments and studies - but the process is sure to be slow in order to allow ample time for discussion, evaluation, and planning. These activities are necessary before making a change to a national standard because every change will affect educators and students across the nation.

There are people out there who believe the Sun revolves around the Earth, that science was invented by the devil to trap humanity, and that the theory of evolution is a religious stance.  It's clear to me that these people should not be involved in the education system. Yet, they might say the same about me. So who should be allowed to set the standard of a good education?

One way to do it is that whoever pays the most money in "political contributions" to the recent campaign winners should get appointed as head of education and set the agenda for everyone. I think this way leads to poverty.

A better way to guide our national education program is to have a council of twelve wise people determine the educational standard. Each year, a list of the most successful companies in each industry and prominent researchers in every science will be compiled. Council members would be selected at random from this list, with the restriction that any person who has been drafted for the council in the past must be excluded at least five years before being drafted again. They would be notified six months in advance and brought together for two full days and two nights and have access to all available information and reports from our government departments - education, commerce, agriculture, defense, and so on. Each one would write his or her recommendations for changes to our educational program, and then a secretary assigned to support the council would combine all the recommendations into a report. The report would be circulated to all council members and each one would write comments on any section - encouragement or criticism. The secretary would combine all the comments into a single volume to accompany the report. Then the council would discuss each proposal and its associated comments, amending the proposal in accordance with the discussion, and voting to approved or reject it as amended. A two-thirds majority vote would be required to approve any proposal. The complete report, divided into two sections, would be published so that all educators will know the guidance. The first section is approved proposals, as amended, with any remaining criticism. The second section is rejected proposals with their criticism. It will be up to each school, county, and state to implement the guidance. Implementing the guidance would not be mandatory but prudent educators will pursue it. Reports on which communities implement approved guidance from the council and statistics on how their graduates fare in life should be collected by the government and made available to the public.  This way is democratic and meritocratic. In fact, such councils can be used at every level of government so that in addition to the national council, states may run their own councils, and counties may run their own councils. Schools implementing guidance from any council must track their efforts and results and report on them. In this way, a really good proposal from a local council can be shared nationally when the next council meets and sees its results.

Yet another way is to apply a free market to the problem - education companies will offer programs and parents will choose the education for their children based on cost and quality. National uniform tests would be administered by the government to rate how well children are learning in each company and these ratings would be made available to the public. This method does not set standards for education - the national uniform tests would not have a minimum passing score, only a rating of how well a student knows the facts of each subject. The range of subjects need not be limited arbitrarily. Interpretation of the results would be up to the public. Special interest groups such as churches, engineering associations, etc. can organize committees to interpret the results with their implications for the group and publish it so their members can more easily make decisions regarding where to send their children to school. So, for example, in the subject of science there might be a question such as "Which of these is true? Earth revolves around the Sun;  Sun revolves around the Earth; Neither; Both."  People who believe that the Earth is fixed and the sun revolves around the Earth might be attracted to areas where kids tend to answer that question incorrectly, but in general people might be attracted to areas where kids tend to answer questions correctly.

In a free market system, there must be schools to educate children whose parents choose not to pay the cost or cannot pay the cost. The burden of uneducated adults living on society is too heavy, and the injustice to children of poor parents is too great, so children must be given an opportunity.  But also there are issues of fairness to people who do pay for their children's education - because by providing free education to the children of their unable or unwilling peers, the government is forcing everyone else to pay the cost.  Maybe that's acceptable as long as there are strict rules enforced regarding the removal of children who are disruptive in the classroom or harass other kids.  It's perverse for them to stay in school.  I think that people will feel a lot better about paying for public education through taxes when the system is set up to provide a safe environment for their children.  So all children would have an opportunity to be educated, but children who aren't fit for it will not be allowed to attend public schools.

Some people may rightly say that children who misbehave are victims of bad parents, but society must draw the line there.  Disruptive or dangerous children shouldn't be allowed to interfere with the education and growth of other kids. If we see them as victims of bad parents we need to remove them from their broken homes. The state and charity organizations should work together to provide foster homes from which the children attend a separate school that has a much longer school day and where besides academics there is a combination of paid and volunteer staff who devote a lot of time to teaching proper behavior.  The point is in such a system the bad parents don't have any influence on their victim children, thus saving the children. When children in foster homes improve their behavior they would be allowed to return to regular public schools while living in the foster homes.

Corporations

No person shall be held personally responsible for the actions of another person. Every person shall be held personally responsible for his or her own actions and inactions. A business shall be held responsible for the actions and inactions of any owner or employee. When a wrongdoing is not criminal, it's acceptable for the responsible party to receive assistance in paying the damages. When the wrongdoing is criminal, it's acceptable for the responsible party to receive assistance in paying the damages but the members of that party may still be imprisoned as a punishment for their crimes. Together, these principles lead to the common-sense outcomes that in a business with two or more partners, if one partner commits a crime or tort without the knowledge of the others, that the other partners will not be liable for the actions of the individual alone; if the other partners knew of the activity and failed to report it or stop it or leave the partnership, then they are responsible for their inaction and become "guilty by association"; for any crime or tort the judge must determine if the activity was a one-time occurrence or if it was regular, and to what extent was the activity a joint responsibility of the business or a responsibility of the individuals involved. This shall not be an automatic determination based on the "type" of business - it must be made separately for each case.

Starting a business is very risky but it has great rewards for the community. Successful businesses create jobs and productive industries bring wealth to their communities. Entrepreneurs and investors need some protection if things don't end well - but that protection must be limited. First, if there is a crime involved there shall be no protections for those persons who were involved with the crime. Second, if the business simply did not work, with no evidence of wrong-doing, then the protection should be only that which was agreed to by the entrepreneur and his or her investors and customers. This is what should be referred to as "limited liability" - it's only by agreement, not a protection from the state.

The concept of the corporation has failed in the following four ways:

One. It has become standard practice for judges who convict corporate executives of wrongdoing to fine them either a tiny fraction of the damages they caused and to allow the corporation to continue operating, often under the continued management of more senior executives who were principally responsible for the wrongdoing, or to fine the corporation an amount disproportionally big to the actual damage in order to "make a point" and not hold individual decision makers liable for their actions. In both cases, the notion that a corporation is a legal entity separate from any of the citizens who operate it leads to grave injustices.

Two. The limited liability corporation stands in contrast to partnerships as a mode of doing business which is more expensive to create and maintain both in terms of money and the owner's time. For a small business, forming a corporation is unreasonably taxing and is often skipped for that reason, with potentially disastrous consequences for the business owner. Those disastrous consequences usually come about because a judge holds the business owner personally responsible for the actions of his employees or the misfortunes of his customers. Even if the business owner was personally responsible for the problem, unless its criminal it should be possible to tax that business until the actual damages are repaid.

Three. The term "limited liability corporation" should be a label for an agreement that has been executed by entrepreneurs and their investors, not something that is at all related to crimes or taxes or torts. If a family owns a business and a customer has a misfortune, they should be no more or less liable for the damages than a corporation would be.  But what often happens is that bigger businesses, by virtue of doing more business, if they have wronged their customers in some way when all the customers band together to sue the business is usually able to reach a settlement and pay less damages, and therefore it is less liable for a wrongdoing than a small business would be to a smaller group of wronged customers. This is unjust. A bigger business should not be made less responsible just because it is bigger.

Four. Large corporations have stolen from the public or from their customers astronomical amounts, acted fraudulently, bribed government officials, and were left unscathed or even allowed to continue doing business with the government and with the people they defrauded. It's absolutely disgusting. America is still suffering from echos of "too big to fail", of settlements of millions of dollars that represented only a small fraction of what was robbed, of corporations receiving bail-outs from the government while their executives continue to receive enormous salaries or benefit packages. The concept of the corporation has caused a great deal of harm to the public. Large corporations that are known to be harmful continue to exist.  If the persons responsible for the largest crimes in the history of the world were truly held responsible for their actions, and if the corporations that they managed were sentenced to repay the entirety of the damages they caused, then not only would we have justice, but we would also have a useful deterrent against future crimes. Currently we have neither.

So what I propose is to do away with the concept that a corporation is a legal entity separate from the people who own it. The government should treat all businesses equally in this regard: The structure of a business should not determine its protections and liabilities. Sole proprietorships and partnerships should have the same legal protections as corporations and corporations should have the same legal liabilities as sole proprietorships and partnerships. The liability of an entrepreneur to his or her investors should be determined by their agreement. If a large business commits a crime so large that it cannot repay the damages - then it must be disbanded; the assets seized by the state for sale and the proceeds distributed to repay damages; and all the responsible executives held personally responsible and imprisoned for some time.   In other words, all businesses are corporations, and all people are personally liable for their own crimes regardless of their involvement in a business.

Lighthouse Strategy for Winning in Afghanistan

This is our 11th year in Afghanistan and we don't have much to show for it. We built schools and wells, and the Taliban destroyed many of them.

We gave Afghans money and equipment, and the Taliban took it from them. We have also mistakenly funded Taliban supporters, sometimes because we didn't know about their affiliation and sometimes because we foolishly thought it would somehow help us.

We tried to control the entire country but ended up controlling only major cities. The Taliban have freedom of movement in many areas.

Our initial goal of punishing the Taliban government for hosting Al-Qaida was accomplished very early. The rest input time in Afghanistan has been wasted.

The Afghan people are no closer to freedom from oppression now than they were in early 2002 after our successful attack on the Taliban government. If we were to leave tomorrow, the Taliban is capable of returning to power and controlling the entire country.

While we spend billions of dollars to maintain our presence in Afghanistan every year, the Taliban's costs are minimal. While we try to build support for freedom with our construction projects, the Taliban tear down the people with intimidation, murder, kidnappings, and robbery - much cheaper than construction and security. The Taliban have the home field advantage. But we can change that.

If we want to win freedom for the Afghan people, we need to do it with organized, a scalable method. We need to demonstrate to all Afghans what life can be like without the Taliban presence. We need to win complete freedom and security in one location and then expand it. Instead of trying to control the entire country, at once, we need to focus on just one area, what would be known as Land of the Free, and offer free relocation to any Afghan individual or family who wants to move there. Other Afghans would see a desirable and feasible alternative to Taliban oppression and they would travel to live in the Land of the Free.

We would help them form a government and fund construction projects. We would insist on a minimum set of secular laws designed to maintain the integrity of the effort and advise their government and provide experts and educators to bootstrap a new Afghan society. It would be much cheaper to defend a small area and as it matures the Afghans living there could take over the security role and we can expand its border. Eventually it would be big and stable enough to withstand any Taliban attack on its own. Then we and the Afghans will have the home field advantage against the Taliban, who will find themselves becoming irrelevant as fewer and fewer Afghans will be left to oppress.

The Taliban can then spend the rest of their days living their ideal hypocritical pseudo-Muslim lives, raping and pillaging each other to their hearts content, and we can live happily ever after knowing we avenged the attack on 11 Sep 2001 and truly liberated many Afghans from the reign of terror imposed on them by the Taliban.

Truth

Truth is only that which accurately describes existence in the past, present, or future.

We must never tire of pursuing the truth.

2nd Amendment Purpose and Limits

I think the purpose of the 2nd amendment is to guarantee that the people have a right to defend themselves, even against a corrupt government if necessary. It's important for this to stay in the constitution so that people easily recognize any attempts to prohibiting them from owning weapons.

The 2nd amendment was written at a time when the weapons a man used to hunt or defend his territory were not much different than the weapons infantrymen carried into battle. Armies had cannons and grenades, but these were not used for police action against citizens.

Today, the weapons available to our military and police are far superior to those we use for self defense and for hunting, their training is excellent, and they have an operational and logistical capability unrivaled anywhere on the planet. What kinds of weapons should civilians have in order to defend against a (hypothetically) corrupt government and military forces with such strengths?

Clearly, it doesn't make sense for citizens to buy and store grenades, machine guns, tanks, cannons, and missiles. The safety and maintenance procedures alone can be a full time job (this is just one reason we have an active duty military force even during times of peace). Even if training on using this equipment were offered to any interested citizen, I would hesitate to be a neighbor to someone who stores bombs in their basement or back yard.

On the other hand, we should not arbitrarily limit the kind of weapons that individuals are allowed to possess. Our rights should not be subject to whims, knee-jerk reactions, or fashion. If we need to limit weapon ownership, it must be in a very deliberate, thoughtful way.

I think the distinction should be made between weapons that are useful against specific individuals and weapons that are "area weapons" or cause an amount of damage that is enough to destroy structures or injure bystanders and not just targeted individuals. So, using this guideline: clubs, knives, swords, pistols, and rifles are all weapons that are easy to target to specific individuals and in the hands of a reasonable operator are unlikely to cause harm to someone other than the intended target or to cause great collateral damage. So I'm intentionally discounting any occurrence of someone flailing a sword wildly in a crowd or shooting wildly into a crowd. However, grenades, rocket launchers, machine guns, and tanks are all area weapons and have a potential to cause great collateral damage and should be restricted to military use.

The police should be restricted to individual weapons the same as are authorized for individual citizens. If a criminal is using area weapons or explosives then the police must call the national guard for assistance. In this event, the national guard should not hesitate to kill the criminal if necessary to stop the violence. As soon as the violence as ended the national guard mission is over and the police resume their investigation.

If the deceased criminals had any possessions these may be used to repay some damages but unfortunately it's common for violent criminals not to own much. In this case the community should band together to support its victims, and be comforted by the fact that taxpayers are not paying any money to clothe, feed, and house (in prison) criminals who used advanced weapons to hurt others.