My Ideas

One of the reasons I started / I maintain this site is that I think too much.  Every so often an oddball thought pops into my head, and it’s nice to express it, either in the hopes that it’s either a good thought worthy of being shared…or that it will serve as evidence for one day when I’m committed to the funny farm.

One of the mailing lists I subscribe to is for folks who have a fascination with borders, tripoints, and the like.  A recent discussion on the de facto border between Israel and Palestinian Authority territory on that list has turned nasty, for the usual reasons.

The subject of “what to do” about the Middle East is a nasty one, as there’s plenty of blame to spread around, a lot of history behind the current situation, not to mention the conflicting claims of entitlement to the region.

It’s that “conflicting claims of entitlement” that stimulated my nutty idea of the day.

I wonder, what would happen if, by international consensus, everyone were kicked out of the country, at least temporarily, and sovereignty were transferred to a theoretically neutral party with no prior claims to the region – the Dalai Lama, for instance.

The conflicting parties could be resettled elsewhere…or even be granted readmission to the region, provided they accepted governance by the new powers-that-be.

I know, it’ll never happen, and it would only aggravate the conflicting claims of title on property in the region.  But given the ugliness of Middle Eastern politics, sometimes you wonder if the situation is messy enough that if the parties involved can’t just learn to table past conflicts and quit antagonizing the other side (the only practical solution, unfair though it may be), the next best answer is to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch.

One of the threads in media-covered political discussion over the weekend has been the comparing-and-contrasting of capital gains taxes in McCain’s and Obama’s economic plans.   McCain wants to maintain the reduced capital gains tax level (along with the other Bush cuts) to maintain stimulation to the economy.   Obama wants to roll back the tax due to stimulation not offsetting the revenue loss.  Obama argues that capital gains taxes impact primarily the wealthy, while McCain rebuts that 100 million Americans had capital gains income.  Et cetera, so on and so forth.

Parallel to listening to that banter, an old bit of mental gymnastics dusted itself off and resurrected itself in my mind — the question of whether American business suffers from nearsightedness.  From a spectator’s point of view, it seems like many investment decisions and corporate operations are geared primarily towards optimizing quarter-end or year-end financials.  Yes, some effort is given to planning next year, but beyond that….

When you consider that many of today’s problems seem to be either aggravated by a focus on relatively short-term profits (consider oil-and-grain commodities speculation, or investment in mortgage-backed securities which didn’t look beyond the real-estate bubble), or are challenges with no quick answer (energy and food supply issues, preparing for the risk of climate change, the graying of America, etc.), the emphasis on short-term returns by investors seems to be in conflict with a societal need for longer planning horizons.

So, an idea has occurred to me — if politicians must muck around with capital gains tax, rather than debate maintaining or raising the tax rate, perhaps some thought should be given to altering the division between “short-term” and “long-term” capital gains.

Currently, gains on investments held longer than one year receive preferential treatment over gains on shorter-termed investments.   I wonder if shifting that division out to, say, five years, would maintain the incentive to invest, increase tax revenue, and perhaps incent businessmen and investors to put more emphasis on long-term results rather than the chaos and randomness of current-year numbers.

There has been quite a bit of discussion on many blogs and other media about what to do with the Florida and Michigan delegate mess.

Although I still think that a policy of “the rules are the rules; to change them retroactively would be unfair” is the best policy, it seems increasingly unlikely that political pressures would permit such a stance.

As a result, there are all sorts of schemes proposed on how to “fairly” seat the delegates from those two states. They range from letting the primaries and delegate rules stand as-is, without sanction (significant benefit to Clinton); to counting FL and MI delegates as half-votes; to enforcing FL and MI delegates to vote either a 50/50 split, or according to the national popular vote.

I offer one other idea: Permit Michigan and Florida Democrats to pick their delegations in the usual way, seat the delegates, permit them full votes…but do NOT require the individual delegates to be bound to vote for the candidate they would normally be pledged to.

To the extent that Obama may have been disadvantaged by actually honoring the pledge to not run in states violating party rules, he would have the opportunity to woo over a few of Clinton’s delegates, much as he likely would have fared a little bit better in those states, if he had actually campaigned there. And, of course, Hillary, could campaign to protect her delegates…or even sway a few delegates that would otherwise go to Obama.

It’s not as clean as holding a new vote, and changing the rules mid-campaign is still unfair to Obama…but this would have the advantage of allowing a reflection of popular sentiment in those two states, while giving Obama a chance to do something akin to retroactive campaigning in those two states.

Driving home from work today, I of course got a taste of the commentary associated with the 1 April Congressional event, where four Big Oil CEO’s were called in to be yelled at for making too much money (and investing too little of that profit into new energy).

Naturally, the pro-environment commentators mentioned the oft-mentioned concepts of windfall profits taxes and carbon taxes, as being ways to combat Big Oil from “taking advantage” of average Americans, and of getting Americans to pay for damage their wasteful ways are doing to the environment.

Now, I should admit that I am not a fan of a windfall profits tax.  Defining a “windfall profit” is a potentially daunting task, and it is the hope for exceptional profits that incent investors to risk exceptional losses.  I’m also not a fan of carbon taxes, due to wishy-washiness of measuring potential harm, and due to the likelihood that the government would waste the extra revenue.

(I’m apparently an evil humvee-driving capitalist for thinking such things.)

With that disclaimer aside…I got to wondering, what if the government sponsored a new capital venture firm, charged with assisting in the funding of new energy or conservation-oriented technology, in return, of course, for an ownership stake.

Initially, this venture capital firm would have the government as its primary investor and shareholder.  However, any windfall profits taxes or carbon taxes would instead be considered additional investment into the venture capital firm…in return for an ownership stake.   Rather than being true taxes, they essentially become mandatory R&D investments.

I could also imagine permitting voluntary investment into this firm.  Let individuals or corporations make, subject to reasonable limits, tax-deductible contributions to this new entity, again in return for an ownership stake.

I’d think that permitting this new entity some tax-advantaged status, given its semi-quasi-public nature, would also encourage this directed investment. 

And perhaps the firm could be chartered to exist for a certain period of time — say 30 or 40 years — with its assets (at that point, primarily in the form of shares in by-then-profitable ventures) distributed proportionally to the firm’s owners, with the government’s portion either being returned to the public in the form of a tax credit, or being used to (for example) supplement the Social Security trust fund.

I know there are probably various gotcha’s.  For example, to be effective, it would need to be run as a real venture capital operation…something that could be challenging given the government’s involvement, and given politicians’ tendency to meddle.

But it’s still an intriguing idea to me.

Seen in Insurance Journal:

The chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the Vermont House says he’d like lawmakers to consider lowering the threshold at which a driver is drunk behind the wheel from a blood-alcohol content of .08 percent to a lowest-in-the-nation .05.

Considering the volume of complaints when the threshold was dropped to 0.08% from the traditional mark of 0.10%, I’ve got to believe that there will be some pretty vocal opposition to any such move.

I have to admit that I have a certain bias on the subject, seeing as how the guy who hit my wife in her car accident six years ago had had a couple of drinks, but wasn’t legally over the limit.

Personally I’d like to see a multi-tiered approach taken to DUI laws, something like this:

• Let BAC at/above 0.08% be considered sufficient to deem a driver too impaired to drive safely.
   
• Let BAC of at least 0.05%, but less than 0.08% be considered evidence, but not proof, of being too impaired to drive safely. A citation for DUI would require other evidence of impairment, such as being at fault in a crash, or erratic driving behavior.
   
• For drivers of commercial vehicles, drivers under the legal drinking age, or drivers under restriction for prior offenses, adopt a no-tolerance limit of 0.02%, for hopefully obvious reasons.

It’s been over a year since the U.S., in its war against online sin, clamped down on online gambling by making it illegal for credit card companies to interact with online, international betting.

I was reminded as this as I pondered my current trip to Las Vegas, in which I’ve had to explain a couple of times why I haven’t gambled while here — namely, that pure games of chance in casinos hold almost no interest in me, because I’m all-too-aware of how the odds work, and that games where skill comes into play, I’m too cheap to develop those skills.

I suppose that playing cheap games online would be one way to gain that skill (aside from the risk of having to play bots, and the likelihood that skillful players would be drawn to higher stakes games than I’m interested in). But our elected nannies in Washington have made such educational opportunities rather difficult.

Thus, I started wondering — what if brick-and-mortar casinos set up relationships with the online gambling operations, with restrictions set up to control the abuses feared by the powers that be, etc.

So, I found it ironic that when I switched over to recreational surfing this evening, while killing time at the airport (free wi-fi, and available electrical outlets if you know where to look; woo-hoo!), I encountered (via Slashdot) this iTnews article describing one potential reaction to the U.S.’s puritanical stance:

The disputed concessions arise from Antigua’s victory earlier this year when the WTO ruled that the US violated its treaty obligations by excluding online Antiguan gaming operators, while allowing domestic operators to offer various forms of online gaming.

Instead of complying with the ruling, the Bush administration withdrew the sizeable gambling industry from its free trade commitments.

As a result, all 151 WTO members are considering seeking compensation for the withdrawal equal to the size of the entire US land-based and online gaming market, estimated at nearly US$100 billion.

I suppose that we should be thankful that the dollar isn’t worth what it once was.

Somehow, I suspect our fearless leaders will choose to ignore the threat somehow.

[Reposted; hopefully this time the tables are legible.]

Long-time readers of this blog are aware that I periodically enjoy pondering how the electoral system in the U.S. could be reformed to address certain shortcomings in the current arrangement.

Specifically, I have two pet peeves with how our elections operate:

• I dislike gerrymandering — the playing of political games in drawing representative districts so as to increase the odds of a particular party having a stable number of seats in a given state; and
• I dislike the idea of “winner take all” elections, which tends to polarize politics, enshrines the power of the two dominant political parties in the country, and seemingly stifles alternative ideas

I’m not alone in those thoughts, and various folks have proposed a wide array of ideas on how to address those shortcomings in our current political system, including suggesting algorithmic ways to draw legislative boundaries, as well as offering up alternative methods of vote-casting or vote-tallying to shake the tree of power a little bit.

However, I haven’t heard too many folks advocating my preferred idea…so I’ll share here.

For discussion’s sake, let’s assume that I’m talking about reforming how members of the House of Representatives are elected.   The logic could be similar for electing representatives to state or municipal governing bodies, or even to allocating votes in the electoral college.   With that aside, my idea is:

1. I’d like to see regulation/legislation that requires representative districts to be drawn such that the length of the boundaries of districts be minimized.   Doing so would inherently create “compact” or “square” districts that should tend to keep communities together, rather than these odd, long-shaped districts drawn to favor one political party or another.
    
2. I’d like to see an end, or at least a relaxing of the idea that each legislative district can be represented by one-and-only-one candidate, determined by a winner-take-all vote.  In the case of the House of Representatives, rather than electing 435 representatives from 435 districts, why not draw the 435 representatives from, say, 233 districts (minimum one district per state, but half-as-many “excess” districts, with the “excess” districts permitted to cross state lines)? 
    
3. Shifting to having potentially multiple representatives from a district doesn’t alleviate the polarization and the enshrinement of duopoly unless you limit individuals to voting for only one individual, and unless you permit candidates to run in multiple districts (presumably with a relaxation of any residency requirements).
    
   In such an environment, the highest vote-getter in each district would be declared elected.  Then, from the list of not-yet-elected candidates, take the top vote-getters to fill the remaining seats.   If a mid-term vacancy occurs, take the next willing candidate from the list (avoiding the shenanigans of gubernatorial appointments or special elections).

This scheme might be easier to understand with an example.

Let’s assume that we live in a jurisdiction with a 10-seat legislature, 10,000 voters, two major parties (”D” and “R”) and two minor parties (”G” and “L”).  Today, that legislature would likely take its members from 10 districts, where election results could look something like this:

(In the candidate abbreviations, the first letter represents the party, while the second letter represents a particular candidate within the party.)

Candidates R-A, R-B, D-C, R-D, R-E, D-F, D-G, R-H, D-I, and D-J are elected, giving us a legislature made up of 5 R’s and 5 D’s.   In aggregate, the legislature would look sort-of-kind-of like the political leanings of the entire jurisdiction (if the L’s are assumed to be like R’s, and the G’s are assumed to be like D’s), but it does have the unfortunate side effect of many voters potentially being unserved by the representative from their district.   Minor parties are completely unrepresented in the legislature.

Under my scheme, we could see that same jurisdiction divided up into five districts.  D’s and R’s would still run one candidate per district, but the G’s and L’s would each pick one candidate to run across all five districts.   The results would then look something like this:

With the votes cast, we have ten representatives elected: