The Right is Wrong and the Left is Wronger

Philosophical Clarity and It's Absence

It strikes me that both the left and the right need a bit more consistency in their positions.  This is nothing new, but I thought I'd point out an area that is particularly glaring and ask the question that follows as a natural logical extension of the issue. 

It seems to me that on the right, who stereotypically oppose abortion because of the sanctity of life, they should own the environmental issue.  That is unless they are of the opinion that the unborn have a right to life on a polluted, resource depleted, world.

Similarly on the left, who stereotypically support abortion and any other method of population control,  they also support recycling, reducing, reusing.  For what?  Who are they preserving these resources for if not the future generations they are convinced the planet would be better off without?

If the right were honest and consistent in their philosophy they would be both, for all things green, and for eliminating abortion.  That way, those people they save from the abortionist would have a better planet to be born into.

 On the left, if honesty of philosophy and logic reigned, their position would be equally consistent.  Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die and we don't care what comes after so use it all up and throw it all away...Hey! I didn't say it made sense; I just said it was logically consistent. 

A Rose by Any Other Name

It is a long held tradition in politics to use nicknames as a ploy to belittle policies and personalities.    Reagan's implementation of the Laffer curve was dubbed "voodoo economics".  Recently members of the Bush administration became "Bushies" and worse, those who espoused agressive action against terrorists became "neo-cons".  The political gameplan, once the nickname has been applied, is to deride the person, or ideal using the nickname in a deprecating manner as often as possible.  Using Lenin's axiom "A lie told often enough becomes the truth".  So it doesn't matter that Reaganomics worked. It doesn't matter if all of President Bush's adminstration followed him philosophically.  It doesn't matter if the war in Iraq was necessary.  All that matters is that, in the main, political opposition to these people and ideas was given a "handle" to grab onto by the application of a nickname.

Interestingly, this seems to primarily be a tactic of the left.  What was the derogatory nickname applied to President Carter?  President Clinton?  My theory is that the right, in the main, has greater respect for the office of the presidency and therefore hasn't in the past stooped to these tactics.  This despite the fact that these tactics are demonstrably effective.  Did you remember "voodoo economics"?  Could you come up with a nickname that had been applied to President Clinton?  This despite the fact that Reagan's tenure ended twenty years ago and Clinton's ended nine years ago?  What does this say?

Because these tactics are effective and because the stakes have become so high, I propose that we begin to utilize those tactics of the left that are effective.  While President Obama has only been in office for about three months, he has been prominent in the public eye for about three years.  And while certain political opponents have tried to tag him with nicknames none have appeared to gain any traction.  "Obination" didn't seem to stick (though I liked that one and a $20 Trillion debt seem an abomination).  

As we search for the appropriate appelation for President Obama and his adminstration, there are some rules that must be followed for it to be effective:

        1) It has to be cute and memorable 

        2) It has to be short

        3) There has to be a ring of truth to it

I've thought about several and rejected several, one that seemed at first blush was "The Anti-Christ".  While it has a ring of truth to it (meeting rule 3) and it is short (meeting rule 2), it is in no way cute and therefore must be rejected. 

So one I'd like to propose is "Neo-NatSoc".  This is short for New National Socialist.  This is unfortunately, true (meeting rule 3) it is short (meeting rule 2) and it is memorable as a play on neo-con.  I know that there may be some trademark problems because it is owned by the "National Socialists" and they are a prickly crowd who aren't into sharing.  I also know that it is going to be difficult to brand a non-aryan such as Barak Obama as a National Socialist, but since words mean things and he is a trying to turn the Nation of the United States into a Socialist version of uptopia, it does seem accurate, no matter how distasteful.  So what do you think?  Does this work as a nickname that will stick and can be used to deride President Obama, or can you come up with something that will work better?

Modeling, Simulaton, and Snakeoil, Oh My!

I wouldn't normally speak about myself in a blog post and other than my opinions, in my posts, you would be hard pressed to learn anything specific about me.  Because at the end of the day my posts are about what I believe is right for the country, not about me or my life.  This post is different, what I am about to tell you is in no way meant as a boast.  Rather, I want to establish my credentials simply so that you will know that I know what I am talking about not simply from an opinion perspective, but from a professional assessment.

I have spent the last twenty years developing computer models, models that generally lent themselves to business modeling and forecasting.  I have done business planning, and stock market simulation, using Monte Carlo simulation, linear programming, best case, worst case, most likely case, scenario comparison, sensitivity analysis, etc.  My undergraduate degree is a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in "Decision Science" and my graduate degree is a Masters of Business Administration during which I did a great deal of work in quantitative analysis.  So when I tell you I am in expert in this field that statement comes with a significant amount of third party credibility, and real world experience.  When I make the following statements, I am not theorizing, hypothesizing or repeating what I read somewhere.  Rather I am telling you how a seasoned professional with twenty plus years of experience in the field is assessing the situation.

Recently, the Obama administration put forward their ten year assessment of where their budget for the upcoming year will, if unchanged take the country.  Their numbers differ by about twenty percent over the period in question (about ten years) from the numbers the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) came up with, when they analyzed the budget and forecast put forward by the administration.  Other than the size of the numbers involved and the ghastly deficits produced by this budget there is nothing particularly significant about the fact that the two models differ.  In fact, in a ten year projection relevant to natural systems such as markets a 20% difference is actually quite close and that makes the results that much more chilling (but the effects of a $20 Trillion national debt are the subject of future posts)

So to save you the four plus years of college and the many years of learning the trade there are some basic rules about modeling and simulation that will help you understand the point of this post:

1) Natural systems - markets, weather, etc. are far more difficult to model than synthetic systems (such as assembly lines or traffic patterns)

2) The greater the level of detail required of the model the less accurate the results are going to be.  In other words if you want to know if the economy is going to grow or shrink in 2010, that is far easier to predict than by precisely how much that in turn is far easier to predict that if a particular stock is going to go up or down and that is easier to know than how much a stock will go up or down.

3) Any model has a limited number of inputs that each drives the model in  a certain direction and among those inputs are some assumptions that the modeler makes each one of which has a different degree of impact on the results.  The amount of sensitivity can have significant impact on the model results even when the modeler makes seemingly modest adjustments to only one or two assumptions.

4) Lastly- anyone, no matter how much education or experience who tells you that they know precisely what will happen in the future, by a certain amount, because a model they built tells them so, is wrong, misapplying the tools, or lying.  If by chance they happen to be right, it is simply luck, not skill.

With that said, I want to change your focus from the budget to global warming.  If the budget guys can't predict within 20% of each other what the economy will look like in the next ten years.  And through tax policy, monetary policy, law making and regulatory policy they control many of the inputs.  Common sense should tell you the degree to which some quasi-meteorologist is going to be right.  Particularly when you consider that they are using essentially the same tools and mathematical techniques to forecast global warming over the next 50-100-200 years as are being used by the economist inthe administration.  I can tell you with 100% certainty that when someone says, “The median temperature of the earth will increase by 2 degrees Celsius by the year 2080 and that the increase will have effects A B or C" they are wrong, period. 

 

The earth may heat by that amount or more or less.  The affect may be A B or C or it may be K L or M.  When the weather changes (and it always changes, after all what makes you think the weather is the same now as it was 200 years ago?) will it be because the output of the sun changed, the orbit of the earth changed, the magnetosphere of the earth changed (think it's constant? Just look at the shifting patterns of the northern lights), the reflectivity of the changes of the earth changed over time. (due to deforestation) or that concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere went up?   The likelihood is that it was due to an interplay between all of these factors.  I am not saying that things won't change.  I am not saying that man couldn't be better stewards of the riches that we have been granted.

The point is, that the interplay of these factors is too complex for the weatherman to predict with any clarity what the weather will be a month from now much less with any precision, hell even tomorrows forecast has +/- swing of 4-8 degrees.  People forecasting 10-20-50-100-200 years from now, give me a break!  Modeling and simulation give you a best guess.  The snakeoil salesmen selling global warming never disclose the "guess" portion of the analysis, they state it as gospel and expect people to change based upon their guess. 

I just thought that during a period when the limitations of modeling were on display for all to see (administration/CBO) that it would be illustrative to hold up the admitted margin of error between the CBO and administration numbers and compare them to the infallibility being presented on global warming.  Since both sets of numbers are being built by people in the administration with an agenda, why are they right on global warming and wrong on the budget?  Or is it the other way around?

What Happened to That America Dad?

I am “Old School”. In a previous era I may have been considered macho. I prefer combat sports (boxing and mixed martial arts) to team sports (baseball and basketball). I prefer outdoor activities (rock climbing, whitewater rafting and camping) to video games. I prefer competition to cooperation, and may the best man win. All too often today, macho self-confidence is confused with “asshole”, “arrogant”, or “pig-headed” particularly when it entails any interface with the gentler gender. I believe that in this era of feminized, emasculated, gender-neutral, neutered, politically-correct, “my right to not be offended, trumps your freedom of speech” era, many men who would otherwise voice their opinions have chosen instead to be quiet and pine for a better yesterday. Yet, straight shooters who opt to solve problems rather than wring their hands over them, is exactly what we need.

One method of compensation I have adopted is to collect movies of a John Wayne, Chuck Norris variety. I prefer a simple life where problems can be dealt with head on. The other night, my family was deciding on a movie to watch, and I suggested, that because my son was studying American history and WWII that we watch Patton. The monologue at the beginning is famous and parts bear repeating. “Americans traditionally love to fight…” “Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser…” Within five minutes, of the beginning of the movie, my son turned to me with wonder and admiration in his voice and asked, “Dad, what happened to that America”? I suddenly got tears in my eyes, I hadn’t realized how far off the path we had gotten. My response was as accurate as it was politically incorrect, “Son, the last two generations in power have pissed away that America and I fear that if my generation doesn’t do something to reverse the slide, there won’t be anyone who remembers what was once noble and admired about cowboys and firemen and soldiers”.

It has become common in business literature and B School classes to deride the “charismatic leader”. To portray the team as paramount and the lone wolf as dangerous, this in the face of all of the facts. Some things to consider, Steve Jobs has saved Apple not once but twice. Microsoft has gone nowhere since Bill Gates backed away from his day to day responsibilities. When Dell got into trouble several years ago, the first thing they did was bring Michael Dell back. In Organizational Behavior they stress the fact that group decisions are often better than what an individual leader will come up with. This is after discussing “sub-optimization” and “group think” and failing to discuss at all, the time cost associated with group dynamics. Give me a decisive, informed, engaged, ethical visionary to a group anytime.

It is interesting to note the difference between Ronald Reagan’s first inaugural address and Barak Obama’s. Both inherited an America on the ropes. In each case unemployment was high and getting higher. Arguably in Reagan’s case the scenario was worse, interest rates were MUCH higher, and inflation was higher. I don’t know for sure, but is suspect in Reagan’s first thirty days he never claimed that they were in the worst economy since the Great Depression and I suspect he never used the terms "catastrophic", "crisis" or any other similar panty-waste, hand-wringing, pussy whipped, "I feel your pain", BS for what he saw, as a job that needed doing with an outcome measured in the quality of people's lives, NOT in how many poll percentage points a certain stance was worth. What we need in America today is more Patton’s and fewer Powell’s, more Apple‘s and fewer Lehman Brothers, more leadership and fewer focus groups.

The Immorality of (certain) Christians

Catchy title eh?  If I ever run for political office, this is the article my opponent will try to hang me with, but as you read it I want you to think about the logic of the article, not how it made you, as a Christian feel.

For the last 2000+ years, Christians as a religious class have believed that eventually the world will “end”.   Our shared belief that world will be perfected and that Christ will reign for 1000 years is interesting in itself, what happens after 1000 years?  Nevertheless, the details are window dressing.  The fact is, we believe the world will “end” but it is unclear what that means.  The planet will be destroyed? All life will be destroyed? Only human life will be destroyed?  All resources will be exhausted and we will move on?  Is the end limited to earth? Does the solar system end? Does the galaxy end? Does the universe end?  These are all interesting points to ponder but the answers drive some unhealthy behavior in the here and now.

The fact that Christians believe the world will end is nothing particularly unique to Christians and in fact, this is one belief that we share with the most atheist scientist.  They also believe that all life, human or otherwise will eventually be extinguished on earth.  They are more specific on the method (sun exhausts it’s fuel and goes nova, the earth collides with an asteroid of sufficient size, humans have a nuclear war of sufficient magnitude to create a nuclear winter, etc.)  But they are vague on the timeline, anywhere from next year to billions of years.  There is evidence that many Christians all the way back to Paul, have believed that the earth will end during their lifetime.  Therein lies the problem.

In 1 Cor 7 particularly verse 29 it is clear that Paul believes that Christians shouldn’t marry because time is short and they should be about the work.  The logic here is that the end is coming within their lifetime.  Most of us would agree, Jehovah’s Witnesses notwithstanding that the end of the world not only didn’t occur during Paul’s lifetime it hasn’t occurred to this point.  But if you believe that the end of the world will occur during your lifetime that drives certain behaviors.  What if none of the Paul era Christians, believing his misguided teachings, had married or procreated, because the end was imminent?

There is nothing specific within Christ’s teachings, Paul’s writing’s notwithstanding, that leads one to believe that the end of the world is inevitable within one’s lifetime.  Christ in fact was purposefully vague…no man knows…I come as a thief in the night…Despite that fact, history is replete with various sects and followings that were convinced the end was near. 

Earlier in the article when I mentioned “…resources will be exhausted…” You may have thought, oh this is going to be one of those rants…You were partially right.  I have written before my belief that the only ethical rate of usage of ANY resource is the rate at which the planet can renew that resource.  If one believes the end of the world is imminent (within the span of their lifetime) then it really doesn’t matter the rate of usage.  In no meaningful way are any of the earth’s resources that threatened.  However, all Christians in all of history have been wrong when they believed that the earth would end in their lifetime.  If you share that belief, what are the odds that you are right?  Isn’t it much more likely that the earth will continue beyond your lifetime and for generations after that?  If we take that view, should we be better stewards of the endowment of resources we have been blessed with? 

Let’s agree that it is, just as likely that the earth, and mankind with it, will continue for another 2000 years as it is, that the earth will end in our lifetime.   In such a scenario, we should base our fishing of tuna, our taking of timber, our consumption of petroleum at no more than the earth can produce.  If we adopt this idea as a the only sustainable, ethical manner in which reflect our stewardship, then the future Christian, 2000 years from now, will have just as much tuna, timber, coal and oil available to them as we do.  Isn’t that the only truly ethical way to treat our fellow (yet unborn) man?

The sky is falling!, No it's not!

Before proceeding please read the following article.  Article on insurance effects of global warming - Seeking Alpha  Note: I generally regard Seeking Alpha and its analysts/authors in high regard.  However...

Before I comment on the common sense of the”sky is falling, no it’s not argument” that seems to be the common thread here.  I have some questions for the author:

1)      H1 Climatalogical (temperature extremes, drought, wildfire) doubling, how does that affect insurance rates in coastal areas?  Any wildfire in Maryland I haven’t hear of? The Carolinas?  I know there have been fires in Florida, have they burned down any cities I’ve heard of?

2)      The trendline in the US thunderstorm graph doesn’t include 2006 & 2007 which would drive the trendline down significantly depending on the type of regression used.  Frankly, it appears they intentionally over fit the line to prove a point.  Do a simple linear regression on the line, adjust it for inflation throw in the fact that property values exploded during the last 10% of the graph and in inflation adjusted dollars I’m guessing, not much change.

3)      “Insured coastal exposure in Florida, for instance, was $1.9 trillion in 2004; by 2007, that number had risen to $2.5 trillion, with total coastal exposure in the US reaching $8.9 trillion, largely as a result of the boom in construction” Frankly, I’d expect better financial analysis from an article on Seeking Alpha.  Was the increase in value from building or from the bubble?  Will the bursting of the bubble, with a 20-25% reduction in value reduce this number back to $2.0 trillion? If it does, does the insurance company benefit from having the same premiums but lower exposure?

4)      A hurricane hit New York, what’s the likelihood?  Particularly of it being above Class III after having left the gulf stream thousands of miles behind?  This is a strawman argument, Nor’easters hit New York all the time, and the buildings are built for it.  Is there any record of a hurricane stronger than a class III hitting New York…..ever?

If you went on to read the comments about the article you would have seen an example of what is wrong with both the right and the left.  On the left "Global Warming" is a religion, not a scientific fact.  Particularly if you define "Global Warming" as an increase in the median temperature of the planet precipitated primarily by the activities of mankind such as burning fossil fuels.  On the other hand the right, seemingly out of defense of science and of strong desire to not take action solving the "wrong" problem advocates wanting more proof.

The glaciers in Greenland have melted? The North Pole will melt this summer? 

It is July.  After having introduced that much new water, how has the east coast escaped flooding?  I live in Virginia Beach 8 ft. above sea level.  If the Atlantic had risen so much as a foot, people all around me would have noticed the ocean in their front and back yards.  So much on both sides is taken as gospel without so much as looking outside or at Google Earth.  Seems to me that before believing someone who was telling me the North Pole was melting, I’d go look at a recent satellite shot. 

Turns out, North Pole still has some ice and my house is still 8 ft above sea level.  On the other hand, oil is a finite resource and isn’t renewing itself as quickly as we are consuming it.  It is unethical to use up all the petroleum when there are viable alternatives.  What are future generations going to think about us, when our answer to them about why we used up all of a finite resource is, “screw you we got ours?”

Privatizing Social Security or Eliminating the Neo-Slave Class

African Americans have been freed from slavery for over (depending on whom you ask 125 years), or so the story goes.  Today African American men under force of law and at the point of a gun, “contribute”  15% of their salary to supplement the lifestyle of old white women.   Perhaps that sounds like a lie, perhaps you think I am skewing the numbers.  How could that blatant a wealth transfer, defacto slavery (which I am defining here as involuntary servitude for the benefit of another), be allowed to exist in this day and age?  Because of the stereotypes put forth by the media the reader might think that this must be a Republican plot to plunder the poor for the benefit of the rich, right?

Actually no, it is primarily at this point a Democrat plot, Democratic because they are the party that successfully balked George Bush’s plan to privatize large parts of this racist plot.  Social Security was originally designed to help the poor as a safety net in retirement for those who weren’t able, for one reason or another to provide for their own retirement during their working life. Unfortunately, as is so often the case when the government gets involved, it is now a program that takes money from relatively poor minority men and gives it to the relatively rich majority women.  No longer is it a safety net for those who didn’t save, now it is a primary source of retirement income for too many and even the wealthy that have provided adequately for their own retirement are not means tested out.    

The primary problem I am describing in this post is, in a nutshell, that black men and white women don’t have the same life expectancy.

In the early eighties the Greenspan commission deliberated how to “Save Social Security” the strategy they settled on was to raise the retirement age.  This delayed the age at which citizens could draw full benefits and thus reduced the amount Social Security would disperse through that person’s lifetime and thus prolonged this Ponzi scheme for another 30 years.  Because black men have a life expectancy of 70 years see (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lifexpec.htm) and because if you make the wrong choice you don’t start drawing Social Security benefits until age 70, the average black man will never see any Social Security benefit.    Even if he were to choose to start drawing benefits at age 65, he would only see benefits on average for five years. After having paid into the system for on average 40+ years?  On average the African-American male doesn’t even have a statistical chance of receiving what could be considered a fair amount of interest on their money.

But white women do!  On average they live to be 81 years of age.  They draw full benefits for eleven years or partial benefits for sixteen years, in either case they draw out a far greater amount of money than black men do.  Adding to this disgrace is the fact that while women’s organizations are aware of this issue, they fight to preserve this inequitable system. To see where the National Organization of Women stands on this issue go here http://www.now.org/issues/economic/social/

Because white men and black females on average live to 76 years of age, their affect on the system is a statistical wash however; both of these groups are also required to contribute to the support of white women in the later years.  The inequity is not as pronounced, but it is still there.  This is really a story of how the real majority in the United States, white women (45% of the population) derives the cost of their retirement from the blood sweat and tears of the minority and uses their majority at the ballot box to ensure this inequitable system stays in place.

A fairer system would be one that rewarded people commensurate with their contribution and provided a safety net for those at the lowest reaches.  A system such as this would run far lower overhead and earn far greater returns.  Most importantly such a system would allow the contributor to own the account.  At this point, because you don’t own the money paid into Social Security, each person is robbed of the opportunity to pass the amount in their account on to their heirs.  If they pass away prior to exhausting the funds in their account, those funds could be passed to their estate and benefit those they felt were deserving.  As it stands now, when someone dies before receiving more in compensation from Social Security than they “contributed”, the system consumes the surplus and in the great percentage of situations this is the case with black male contributors. 

I envision a system where everyone is required to save 7.5% of their salary.  At the same time their employer would be required to match this 7.5% with another 7.5%. Like a 401K plan, the proceeds could be invested in a wide variety of options.  Under this plan 2% of the assets in the plan would be “taxed” to support those in the lowest 10%.  For illustration, I have created a chart that assumes someone start paying into the plan at age 22 and earn $30,000 with annual salary growth of 2.5% and 8% interest on average.  Age 68 a person could retire with returns on investment exceeding their income and still pay $24,650.10 per year to support someone else.  Because only the lowest 10% would qualify for benefits, 9 people would be supporting them.  The other 90%?  They would have enough savings to support themselves. 

I started off deriding the inequalities of the current system, is this one any better?  The same black man who dies at age seventy on average, is able to give his heirs almost $1.5 Million dollars.  The white woman who currently depends on the untimely death of the black man for her maintenance in her old age?  If she dies at the average age of 81 she is supported throughout her life and passes her heirs about $1.1 Million  if she lives longer, she will run out of money at age 91, a long time after the average and once she passes into the lower 10% others paying into the system would supplement her income.  Seems much more ethical all around.

How safe is ecommerce?

Everything we do on line is assumed to be secure.  Would we put our banking information, our brokerage account information, file our taxes, make purchases from Amazon and EBay, all online if we weren’t confident of it’s security?  Our unspoken assumption is that the architects of the Internet have made it so that only those who are supposed to be able to read data can in fact read that data and all others cannot.  The problem, from my point of view is that while this was theoretically true in 1998 when the typical person didn’t have at their disposal what would then have been considered a super computer.  Today computers are thousands of times more powerful and storage (which is important for brute force methods of decryption) is millions of times less expensive.  While Moore’s law has been at work over the last 10 years doubling the power and halving the price of computers every eighteen months.  There has been a similar rule (though I have never heard a name for it) at work doubling the capacity and halving the price of hard drives every six months!  All the while, the web browser we all use has been restricted by law to 128 bit encryption.  If you read academic articles on the strength of this encryption from ten years ago, people made statements like,”The sun will burn out before this will be broken”. 

We are working a project to determine if this is true.  The largest 128 bit number is about 3.4 e 38.  With e6 being millions, e9 being billions and e12 being trillions.  You can consider this to be a very large number based upon every day experience.  Problem is, that for computers to count that high and analyze numbers that big, the capabilities are being created where numbers that large are manageable.    We have been working against numbers that were posted by the Clay Mathematics Institute.  The first number 1020030004000050000060000007 was factored by us in 2.5 minutes. (I'm rounding, but you get the point.)  This number is 63 bits long and not too long ago, it would have been considered completely unmanageable.

One of the limitations we found was that the programming languages and the operating system itself had limits, the problem, from a security standpoint, is that programming libraries for arbitrarily large numbers are readily available online.  The Clay Mathematics Institute also posted the following number 51920810450204744019132202403246112884629925425640897326550851544998255968235697331455544257

Is approximately equal to 5.192 e 91 which is significantly larger than 3.4 e 38 that I said was the largest 128bit number

That breaks down into the following factors:
2158122193002952449690243008233157266924190689
24058327474941875553768074062128402939746847713

In binary bits the number is 305 bits...significantly more than 128 bits. It took us about 15 cpu days to factor this number.  We specifically limited ourselves to a couple of mid-range desktops and we overshot 128 bits by fifty or so orders of magnitude so that our results would resemble those achievable by a typical hacker with modest resources, a sophisticated education and too much time on their hands.  It is reasonable to assume that the technology as exists today, for a typical hacker to break 128 bit encryption in about 1 week. Couple this with the fact that the most secure encryption that is available through web browsers is 128 bit and my fear is that online ecommerce is in significant danger.  If not today, then in certainly by 2012 as Moore’s law and the unnamed law about hard drive space continue to chip away at the time required.  I advocate strongly, that we increase the amount of strength in the browser encryption to 512 bits or 1024 bits before 2012.

What is the single most important thing society needs right now?

Some will postulate that what society needs is an end to all religion, others a crisis of large proportion (personally I believe that would cause people to find religion). Some believe that the answer lies in more technology (renewable energy) others that we have more technology than we can use.

I believe we need a common scorecard.

When are the poor well enough off? What is the right amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? What is the “fair” amount of personal resource usage? I've seen people suggest that we need ethical education…I ask, "ethics defined by whom and encompassing what?" Is abortion ethical? Is incinerating 1 Billion Muslims more ethical than becoming one? How can people who are against abortion be for incinerating 1 Billion Muslims?

If we could pull off a common scorecard, then we could be measured against it. The poor had this percentage of world GDP per capita last year and they have this much this year (we are making progress, or not). We have made x progress toward that amount of carbon dioxide which will balance global warming against global cooling (we will have solved the problem in the year XXXX). We have agreed human life is sacred (Muslim and not) and it is ethical to preserve it at any price (or not).

Once we had a common scorecard and knew if we were making progress, then we have to answer the really tough question, "What are we making progress toward?" Simply breeding one increasingly numerous generation after another until we consume the endowment of resources we were granted until we reach a number large enough that the earth cannot sustain our numbers cannot be the right answer.

I propose that we need a framework for the human race similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In general we have met or can meet most people’s physiological needs. With the elimination of war for most of the Earth’s population, we have secured most people’s security needs. So now we need to work on social needs, esteem needs and self actualization needs.

I suspect that most people would agree to the following five as a good place to start: 1) Life is sacred and should be preserved 2) The pursuit of personal religious belief shall not be infringed 3) Personal property shall not be taken except though a freely agreed to exchange of value 4) One can consume the earth's resources only comensurate with the earth's overall ability to replenish those resources and with respect to one's fraction of the human race 5) The individuals rights end where the next person begins.  There are likely to be numerous additions to this list, but this is a start.

An Open Letter to Candidate Obama

Congratulations on cementing the nomination. In answer to your question, The President has several levers at his disposal which can assist in maintaining America’s competitiveness. Setting the national agenda for higher education, President Kennedy proved that if the vision is right, (go to the moon) many people will choose to become educated in supporting fields (engineering, science)

Setting a reasoned immigration policy. America should welcome immigrants. Not criminals and uneducated immigrants who will swell the ranks of the de facto enslaved, rather those that can contribute more meaningfully. It is counterproductive to welcome migrant farm workers (de facto slavery) and to force foreigners, highly educated at American schools as engineers etc. to go back to their country of origin after graduation.

A reasoned fiscal/monetary policy. Identify and communicate a target exchange rate after identifying a job maximizing rate of export and import. In order to accomplish this, the government must only spend in deficit, that amount commensurate with the target rate of foreign exchange.

A structured and publicized plan for energy independence, such a plan should include three elements increasing supply, decreasing demand and a conscious decision as to the value of the dollar. Increasing supply should include some increase in domestic production. I suggest reducing demand in two ways first increasing the amount of nuclear plants coordinated with non-renewing oil fired plants license to operate. The power plant suggestion is weak in that only 5% of America's electricity comes from oil in the first place.  The second way is a “Manhattan Project” to reward the first company to sell 100,000 alternative fueled vehicles with a $1 Billion bonus. Such a car should meet some minimum criteria: it should carry 2 or more passengers, more than 200 miles on a single recharge/refuel, and accelerate 0-60 in under 5 seconds, with a top speed exceeding 80 MPH, with an average selling price under $30,000.

Such an approach would unleash American ingenuity, jumpstart the alternative fuel vehicle market and reduce carbon emissions substantially. Such a program could be expanded to $50 Billion, $1 Billion for each state that has more than 100,000 such vehicles. This would put 5 Million alternative fueled vehicles on the road in a very short period of time.

Currently half of our trade deficit is due to imported petroleum; this initiative would also reduce the trade deficit and strengthen the dollar. This is the short list, I would be happy to discuss additional ideas with you at your convenience.”