It seems like there's a place for a party that's both socially liberal and fiscally conservative yet isn't as hardline as libertarian candidates. I'd like to reach out to all rationalists, freethinkers, etc. to highly critique this admittedly crude platform for such a political party.
Economic & Business Issues:
Monetary Policy
Keep the Federal Reserve, but have fully transparency via the CBO and/or GOA
Members on Federal Reserve Boards (especially open market committees) must not be able to return to the industry for 5 years after their term, may serve only one term, and must be closely auditted for 10 years after serving their term.
Financial Regulation
Increase transparency of financial institutions
All financial instruments must reveal the exact model for value including underlying asset models & assumptions – this will be public data. They need not reveal formulas (trade secrets), but customers must have the ability to model during & after purchase.
Implement long-term smoothed mark-to-market laws
No regulation on types of financial products.
Taxes
Decrease corporate taxes to lower bound of 1st world international levels
Move to bracketed system with no deductions, but lower rates. Flat tax maybe?
Local: move to land value taxation
Import / Export
Gradually remove all tariffs, quotas, etc. on all imported goods (sugar, steel, etc.).
Subsidies
Gradually remove all agricultural subsidies (corn, beats, etc.).
Government Spending
Transparency
All documents will be fully & publicly viewable online, unless secret. Secret documents may be opened by appeal of a sequestered jury of non-involved citizens.
PayGo
All spending will be budgeted on a pay-as-you-go basis, no deficit spending.
Employment
Unions
Remove majority takes all rule that establishes “union shops”.
Allow unions to form in any industry, etc. without any government permits.
Allow unions to be regulated by the Sherman anti-trust act (monopoly breakup)
Energy
Nuclear
Streamline nuclear energy permits w/ irrevocable long term guarantees to decrease risk for funding organizations.
Get Yucca Mountain up and running.
Increasing funding (refer to research policy)
Transportation
Ease restrictions on small automotive manufacturers (under 10,000 cars a year).
Remove most emissions and all fuel efficiency standards (refer to environmental taxing)
Communications
FCC
Mostly discontinue bandwidth auctions
Encourage as many open bands as possible with common standards (aka WiFi)
- Reduce government and military usage of bands.
- Encourage new technologies spread spectrum, band hopping, etc.
No “fairness doctrine”
Internet
Pass amendment for never taxing the internet
Regulate all ISPs equally (Cable, DSL, etc.)
Mandate 3rd party bulk plug in rates (ie, anyone must be able to buy bulk bandwidth from big guys to start a rival ISP or other)
Disband all NSA, CIA, etc. wide-net listening programs
Intellectual Property
Reduce patent term to a minimum of 2 years over 5 years
Ban: gene, software, business method, and research patents
Reduce copyright to 3 years
Broaden “fair use” right-to-clear biased against copyright holder
Common law or no-fee trademark registration, enforced like fraudulent name use
Research Policy
Increase all research funding
Repeal Bayh-Dole Act, all publicly funded research must be public resource for all to access free of charge.
Setup a national X-Prize and/or develop incentives to establishment of private ones
Social Issues:
Education
Federal: Move Dept. of Edu. programs into state management and reduce federal funding.
Local Level
- Employ voucher systems that give a tax credits to enable school choice.
- Encourage alternative education, home schooling, gifted programs, etc.
Increase school transparency (all expenditures must be public)
Repeal No Child Left Behind
No national tests (like NCLB)
Welfare
Simplify benefit structures
Consolidate programs
Decrease duration of benefits
- Reduce benefits over time
- Index to CPI
Health Care
Patent reforms (see IP section) that lead to better medicine and medical device prices
- Increase NSF, etc. funding (see research section)
Allow AMA, AHA, ADA, etc. to be regulated by the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
Reduce FDA hurdles and increase funding to streamline the approval process
Allow experimental medicine to be tried by consenting adults
Repeal HMO laws that benefit only the established firms
Reform courts frivolous lawsuits (damage caps, etc.)
- Repeal all federal, state, and local mandates for health insurance and benefit structures
Social Security
Private accounts, consolidate 401k and IRA into one account with no taxes on money put in or taken out (aka completely free).
- Current system minimal age to be indexed to the average death rate.
- A discounted pay-in system will be allowed per age bracket. This allows younger people to not be in the system at all and the older people may opt-out but not fully.
- Greatly reduce Social Security benefits for the lower and middle of the age brackets.
Marriage / Civil Unions
No federal law, state / local: allow gay marriage / civil unions
Crime
Thesis: mainly a result of socioeconomic conditions
Drugs:
Decriminalize at federal level, allow states rights their own enforcement
No federal prosecution
Stop “drug war” campaign
Treat as a medical condition
Gun Control
- Thesis: 2nd amendment is right for citizens to own weapons for protection against the government and all other enemies.
Maintain current instant background check system
Allow post-86 samples with tax stamp to anyone who passes check
Remove import / export regulations on small arms
No federal carry laws, state rights prevail
- Air travel
- Re-privatize TSA
- Vastly reduce of all federal security mandates for air travel - allow new models, but airlines must have full disclosure. Reduce duties to non-invasive metal & explosives scanning & detection.
- Disband "Air Marshall" program. Each airline will form their own solution.
- Revoke the Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act, and NSPD 51
- Consolidate federal crime & intellience depts.
- FBI, BATF, DEA, etc. will be folded into one organization with the task of enforcing laws within the boarders
- CIA, NSA, NRO, etc. will be combined to form our outward intelligence and community
- Homeland Security Dept. will be folded into the Dept of Justice and will work as an interface layer between both new consolidated department and the Dept. of Defense
Environment
- Thesis: much of the environment is a national issue with high externality effects. Therefore, we must employ regulations to protect all aspects of the environment, however benefits of each program must be weighed - no "feel-goodery", only real results
Emissions Tax System
CO2, NOx, SOx, etc. taxation
Recycling
- Repeal all federal government subsidies.
- Maintain most wildlife & plant protection programs - defund ineffective programs.
- Federal law is pro-choice per State's rights
- States may decide which position to take.
Foreign Policy:
Theses:
No preemptive wars – period.
- The more immigrants the better.
- Mostly open boarders.
Military Spending
Thesis: Quality over quantity
Vastly reduce production of 3rd generation warfare systems (F22, F35, etc.)
- Convensional forces will take on a defensive stance in purpose.
Increase funding to SOCOM, all special forces and 4th generational warfare systems.
- Reduce convensional force size of all branches dramatically (ie: well over 50%).
Current conflicts
Slowly remove troops from all occupied zones, work with local governments to smooth transition
“Terrorism”
Recognize that US focused terrorism is a result of occupation and poor geo-politics of the past century from before WWI.
- We must stop intervening into other countries', regions', tribes', etc. affairs.
Israel and Palestine
- Defund both sides - slowly for Palestine.
Stop all US geo-political influence.
- Defund both sides - slowly for Palestine.
Torture
Torture is defined to include any physical or mental hardship (waterboarding) & we'll be having none of that.
- Prisons open to oversight reviews with full FOIA access.
Military Commissions
- Repeal MCA 2003
Confine military commissions to uniformed troops & spies (defined as foreign non-uniformed units fighting US troops directly).
Civilian "terrorism" tried in civilian courts.
Uphold habeas corpus in all cases (charges & evidence must be produced)
Foreign Bases
Reduce foreign bases from 720 to 50 worldwide within 5 years.
International Aid
Stop all international aid to dictators, rebel groups, etc.
Very interesting.. we should discuss this sometime. The comment system will not suffice.
Posted by: Derek | July 22, 2009 at 11:51 PM
There are only a few points I'm not on board with - most of them minimally. For instance:
"All financial instruments must reveal the exact model for value including underlying asset models & assumptions – this will be public data. They need not reveal formulas (trade secrets), but customers must have the ability to model during & after purchase."
Things like this don't need enforced transparency. Laws like this just make the customer (in this case, usually a sophisticated customer) feel disproportionately secure about their investments and encourage overvaluing of the assets. If the seller of some asset with an obfuscated model wants to make any money, they're going to have to convince their customers of the asset's merit anyway.
You should put this on a google docs page though, and get a few people to collaborate on it. It'd be interesting to work on with a group - as there's going to be a lot more that could go into it, including rationalizations.
Posted by: James | July 23, 2009 at 10:05 AM
Oh also - you should check out http://lesswrong.com
Posted by: James | July 23, 2009 at 01:34 PM
James,
To be honest, I think the notion that consumers will overprice assets because of this in the long term is just silly. Markets normalize when any new change is added. Since everyone would have to use this system, aggregate asset prices would raise by the same rate (hence no "real" change). The current state of financial products is at an inefficient Nash equilibrium so-to-speak at which everyone experiences externality effects of overly opaque financial products.
Increased ransparency can sometimes have the effects of raising interest rates. Ben Bernanke made the same argument with auditting the Fed, however the reason there is because the Fed is doing risky shit that should be priced higher - if we all new what was under the hood.
A lot of the issues of these assets is that no one knows how all the esoteric language adds up to form value. If they could be modeled openly, the financial industry could predict their value far easier and would lead to faster clearing of said products.
Do you disagree?
Posted by: Nick Pinkston | July 23, 2009 at 11:28 PM
I do. Government endorsement of assets can definitely cause people to overvalue them. It's one of those behavioral psych things that tweaks peoples' rationality a bit. People feel protected, and underestimate the risks. If they can't understand the value of an asset on their own, they probably shouldn't invest in it.
I'd make many similar arguments as well. The FDA telling people what they can and can't ingest causes people to eat shit food (and way too much of it...) and take unhealthy (but "approved") drugs, for instance.
Posted by: James | July 25, 2009 at 01:06 AM
I think you might be misunderstanding me. Transparency, as I see it, does not regulate which assets can be sold - that's an approval process, and you're right to think that's a bad idea because it is. I don't want government endorsements either for the same reason you're implying of market distortion and beyond that regulatory stifling of financial innovation.
Transparency is actually the reason the HFCS products are priced less than their sugar-using counterparts. Yes, sugar is more expensive, but the market won't buy a higher priced & higher quality good unless they can actually tell that it's better. In food, they have a list of ingredients on the side. I always check the label to see if HFSC, etc. is in the food I'm eating - these are the benefits of transparency.
Your argument would say that the government approval of HFSC makes it priced higher, but the mainstream food market is all regulated meaning this premium comes with all food. HFSC products are priced less because it's lower quality.
I think that investments should carry a similar public disclosure of ingredients in the form of formulas, variables, constants, etc. They could still sell whatever assets they want, but you'd be able to more easily see what you were getting into. The issue with current language of these instruments is that the "secret sauce" is behind closed doors. You can't predict these assets if you don't know their composition.
You always hear about how complicated it is to "unravel" these instruments, and the reason is that you have get the seller companies to reveal the derivatives it's based on, etc.
The reason they don't open them now in a free market is because it's an oligarchy where everyone doesn't want to rock the boat, and it's very complicated to get a competitor in the market because of the high barriers to entry, both business and regulatory.
If transparency would be instated, I would guarantee that a website would come out that would have every product modeled (or have the ability to enter the formula) that would show you the risks in an easy way.
What do you think?
Posted by: Nick Pinkston | July 25, 2009 at 09:21 AM
So, I'm just browsing this because fuck it's long, but I'm surprised you want to open the borders to more immigration. I remember you talking about protecting sovereignty back when. Why the change?
Posted by: Seth | August 01, 2009 at 07:44 PM
And I guess I should specify that you were saying protecting sovereignty by tightening borders and limiting immigration
Posted by: Seth | August 01, 2009 at 07:46 PM
Yea, you are right. Back when I was very aligned to the Ron Paul campaign I was a closed boarders guy, but I've since recognized that it's another form of coercion. It seems that the only purpose it serves is slow cultural influx which has good and bad effects.
I can see issues with cultural influx, jobs moving out, etc., however I think it's a good thing. I think I'm biased toward immigrants because they're dreamer. They're trying to lift themselves up - unlike most of the zombies walking around in America today.
Therefore: Damn the boarders! Bring on the immigrants!
Posted by: Nick Pinkston | August 01, 2009 at 08:56 PM