roastpotatothief

So this exists. The goals are

• people get financial security by having more than one employer.
• people can change jobs and careers more fluidly. they can experiment with new careers without risk.

There is also an idea I've written about before, of everybody serving 1 year conscription in the civil service. (I now know this is not a completely new idea.) The goals are

• Give a critical mass of people insight into how the public service really works, what are the weaknesses and problems, what is it like to do these jobs. This could lead to societal improvement
• Allow people to try new careers
• Make corruption more difficult. For example if the police were routinely torturing people or record holders destroying peoples documents, it would be much more difficult to keep it a secret, with new uncorrupted people arriving in the office each year, observing all, and leaving again.

It is debatable if this should be optional. If it is not, it could delay people starting their real careers by forcing them to do a job they resent. Or it could be educational, changing peoples minds about their planned career path.

All of the above is good for individuals, for society, and for employers.

Now combine the two ideas. Like this:

Friday is designated an overwork day. Employees get a legal right to not work Fridays, for any or no reason, with a proportional salary cut.

Employers can hire new people to work Fridays only, with the eventual hope of poaching the employee.

Employees also get the right to 6 months unpaid leave. This can be used to try out working in the civil service or another employer.

This combined policy has even greater benefits.

It looks like the current government will not take action on the urgent issues of our time. The most urgent is climate change but it's not the only one.

Any maybe no future government will take action either. It's the nature of our political system that governments ignore long-term problems.

There is only one way to force them into action.

We must find a single issue with overwhelmingly popular support. Then we organise a national strike over it.

It must be a specific actionable realistic issue. For example

• A fair sales tax on all products which produce carbon dioxide or methane, in proportion to their global warming effect per kilo. This would include concrete, beef, fertilizer, fossil fuels, steel. The money shall be used to fund a cut in the general VAT rate. So these products rise in price and everything else, every less polluting product, drops in price.
• A boycott on Israel until it grants non-Jews in territories it controls equal civil rights.
• A ban on vulture funds owning housing.

First we need a public figure, or anyone influential or persuasive, to spearhead this action.

Who can do it?

It looks like the current government will not take action on the urgent issues of our time. The most urgent is climate change but it's not the only one.

Any maybe no future government take action either. It's the nature of our political system that governments ignore long-term problems.

There is only one way to force the issue.

We must find a single issue with overwhelmingly popular support. Then we organise a national strike over it.

It must be a specific actionable realistic issue. For example

• A fair sales tax on all products which produce carbon dioxide or methane, in proportion to their global warming effect per kilo. This would include concrete, beef, fertilizer, fossil fuels, steel. The money shall be used to fund a cut in the general VAT rate. So these products rise in price and everything else, every less polluting product, drops in price.
• A boycott on Israel until it grants non-Jews in territories it controls equal civil rights.
• A ban on vulture funds owning housing.

First we need a public figure, or anyone influential or persuasive, to spearhead this action.

Who can do it?

The technology exists to have cameras everywhere, and we should. Criminals avoid punishment because there is no evidence, especially when they are politicians or police or soldiers.

The obvious special cases are police body cams and dash cams, where some types of crime would stop of people knew they were surveiled.

The trick is to have total surveillance but also privacy.

HDMI is an existing technology where video data can only be transmitted once a secure key is provided. So video can be recorded by a box and encrypted on internal storage. It can only be decrypted and viewed if the user has a certain key.

This is perfect.

Secure encrypted video camera systems can be built cheaply, using existing technology. In general nobody will ever be able to view the recordings.

If somebody alleges a crime, the camera can be brought to court, where a judge can order the key to be found. The key will only be held by a specially elected group of officials who must all be present for the video to be viewed.

This way we can have both security and privacy.

Although it is possible HDMI could be hacked, even if this happens this system is much better than we have today. Today the surveillance is transmitted to many places and people insecurely. It can be used for many things. The recordings can even be remotely deleted after a crime is committed, which does happen sometimes.

I have proposed a way to control inflation.

1. For the sector of interest, require vendors to advertise price changes from one week in advance. They must also advertise the change for one week after the price has changed. For retail this means changing shelf labels.

2. vendors must also list the markup and the price peer kilogram.

3. any price change greater than a limit, for example 5% per week, requires informing the regulator and paying a fine.

4. Prices must be submitted to a searchable online database.

5. loyalty cards and other discount vouchers are forbidden.

Now for a normal economy, these measures all affect various limitations of a competitive market, discouraging profiteering and inflation. But could this also work to correct runway inflation?

Is there any other plan that could work?

There is this problem that farming is cruel. It's improving, but the improvements may never be really enough to make farming ethical.

Seafood farming is worse. The hunting of fish is devastating to ecology. But farming fish is already difficult and probably cannot be done humanely.

Instead, farmers can provide a habitat for the target animals, without fences. The habitat must be humane to ensure the animals stay. Those that do can be slaughtered regularly for food.

This farm is a net benefit for the environment, providing a habitat and thus helping the wild population. It meets the highest standard of ethics, in that the animals are leading their normal wild lives. It is more expensive than enclosed farming, but in the long run cheaper and more sustainable than hunting.

It would enhance the human diet and health by enabling farming of animals which cannot today be farmed, like octopus, shark. So it effectively stops exploitation of the oceans for these foods.

The only extra requirement is ensuring that wild animals don't all congregate there to be slaughtered, leading to extinction. This is tricky. Maybe a requirement to build two identical habitats, provide the same amount of food and shelter in each, but only slaughter from one. The population can be checked by a regulator the day before slaughter, and only the more sparse habitat is culled.

And of course species-specific restrictions are needed like, for migratory birds, no slaughters during nesting season.

Are the ministers completely ignorant of economics, or are they running a racket to transfer money from people to developers?

Also this https://research.uh.edu/the-big-idea/what-went-wrong/behind-closed-drawers-the-file-drawer-effect/

Remember, right wing people are just misguided left wing people. They have the desire and energy to improve their lives, but are going about it a stupid way.

They think that they can improve their lives by taking things from poorer people. Which is a reasonable thought. But it is wrong. If the immigrants are driven away, these protesters will become the poorest people, for others to take things from.

The only way to improve your lives is by improving everyone's lives uniformly, through left wing policies. This isn't just virtuous. It's virtuous only because it's economically sound.