JustinIdea

How to create the next 40-year economic boom for the United States

2011-09-09T01:58:25-07:00

One word: Immigration.

Now is not the time for the United States to keep people out of the country. China and India are picking up a lot of growth and becoming more desirable places for people that want the excitement of a developing country with modern ammenities. They are creating and re-attracting more scientists and engineers than ever.

But the United States is also a very desirable place for it's relatively little corruption, ease of doing business, and the ability for people to reinvent themselves and create a new life. The draw of the US as a place of opportunity is something the United States shouldn't limit to 500,000 people a year, instead we should start opening the floodgates. For the next 20 years, we should let in 30 million people a year, and for the 20 years after that, we should let in 50 milion per year. In 2051, the population of the United States would be over 1.1 billion, rivalling that of India, China, and the continent of Africa. The United States is destined to being a second-rate world power to India and China? No thanks.

Crazy, you say? A republican government with democratically elected officials was a crazy idea 225 years ago, so why should we stop now?

Here are some cold, hard numbers.

In January, it was reported that of the 131 million housing units in this country, only 112.5 million are occupied. That leaves 18.5 million units of housing that are currently vacant. If 30 million people immigrated this year, we would no longer have a housing downturn. The only way for us to fill all the homes is to boost the population. Hello construction jobs!

In 1997, David Pimentel, professor of ecology in Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, reported that at the United States's then yield from grain output that the US could feed 800 million people. With additional gains in agriculture yields, we could feed many more. So for anyone that doubts the US's ability to feed all those people I recommend letting in, you are mistaken. For example, the EPA shows that 80% of all the corn, 30 million tons of soybeans (~46% of the entire yield based on 65 million tons), and 22% of all wheat produced in the United States goes to feed livestock.

Not only would the housing vacancy problem be solved and not only could we feed all those people, but by letting in an additional 800 million into this country we would also almost quadruple the demand in the domestic market. Imagine each year 30 million new consumers being added to the domestic market, that's almost like getting access to another California each year. Each year those additional people would need housing, food, clothing, transportation, and entertainment. We could go on the greatest building boom in history. 800 million additional people means greater density in our cities, more jobs to support the population growth, greater access to talent and entrepreneurial immigrants will drive more business innovation, and for the politicians in the audience who need money, more tax revenue.

Crazy? Sure. But allowing our country to have economic growth of 10% per year and fixing the housing crisis because we open the floodgates for immigration sure beats the current state of the economy. It would be crazier to think that the Federal Reserve could actually create prosperity, because in the end just like it's taught in Econ 101, economic growth consists of two and only two components: productivity increases and population growth.

Do we want to be the next Japan and have two lost decades? I don't.

Osama bin Laden is dead, but is the world really a better place?

2011-05-03T12:26:07-07:00

AP UPDATE - Osama bin Laden was unarmed when the US commandos shot and killed him.

AP UPDATE 2 - Only one person in the house was armed and shot at the special forces team, while 5 were killed. [Maybe the reason the government won't release the video is because they know it will look like more of a cold-blooded assassination than an actual battle.]

Two night ago I was down at Hotel 1000 with the fellow my Startup Weekend comrades at Madrona, which I must say was an amazing weekend with the great CityMat.ch team and Arianna did a nice write-up on our team as well. We went downstairs to the bar when Obama started giving his speech about how Osama bin Laden was killed by US strike team. Talk about a heavy weekend, everyone was kind of stunned. We had just finished a 54 hour startup-a-thon, with 15 companies being pitched and launched, and instead of being able to wind-down, we were all caught by a small piece of history.

Yesterday, I saw in the newspapers that people were celebrating by waving American flags in DC and other areas and chanting and cheering and Facebook blew up with people saying how great it was. I was caught off guard, and I know I wasn't the only one. Now if you imagine a courtroom where a killer has just been convicted, the grieving family of those who were killed will probably breathe a sigh of relief and have some measure of resolve that justice was served. They will also probably still be crying, much like what I saw from photos on The New York Times at ground zero with people who had lost loved ones.

For those that lost loved ones on 9/11, I don't hold it against them that they might feel that justice was served, but it was not those who lost loved ones that I saw in pictures or commenting with chants and cheers. Those that were cheering and partying were excited about the killing of a person who was the mastermind behind a plot that killed over 3000 innocent Americans. When the Green River Killer or Unibomber were put away, were those times to party? No, they weren't. They were times for breathing a sigh of relief.

What is there exactly to party about?

After 10 years, the world's most powerful military was able to finally pinpoint the person that masterminded the attacks and send in a strike team. One guy with a small group of guardsmen against a United States strike team. Do you really expect he would have prevailed? This wasn't the United States and Britain landing at Normandy on D-Day and pushing back one of the most powerful and disgusting military powers of the 20th Century, the Nazis. This was one guy and guardsmen in a compound with the world's most powerful military sending a strike team in. This was nothing to party about.

So why the cheers? Why the chants? Would we have liked it if people in the Middle East cheered during 9/11? No, we wouldn't have. We would have resented it. But, you say, this time it's totally different. Yeah, right. I heard the same thing during the housing bubble. That "this time is different." Sadly, it isn't. By chanting and cheering, we fail to learn from what happened on 9/11. 9/11 wasn't just a terrorist act. It was a statement. It was a statement by a small group of people who lived under repressive regimes sponsored by the United States that they had had enough. I do not condone the attacks on 9/11, nor do I condone the ruthless killing of 3000+ innocent civilians. But hasn't our government, by proxy and directly, done the same to others?

How about the human rights of our military partners? We get so excited about how we have womens rights that we conveniently forget about how our government recently signed a $60 billion arms deal with one of the most repressive governments on Earth when it comes to women's rights, our oh so "strategic military partner" - Saudi Arabia. Women in Saudi Arabia enjoy the same or lower level of rights that blacks did during South Africa's Apartheid and in the American South before the Civil Rights Act. And men and others? Try being executed if you are gay or having your arm amputated if you rob someone. But they're pitching it as a way for us to counterbalance a growing Iran. Haven't we seen this script before? Wasn't one of the worst allies in our history in a similar situation? Oh, that's right. We did a similar thing with Saddam Hussein by providing him weapons to counterbalance Iran all over again, and judging by history, that didn't turn out too well. And somebody will inevitably try to claim that for some odd reason, "this time it's different."

If our government is so quick to be military partners with people who actively crush both the economic and social freedom of their people, should we really be that surprised if one or a group of those people under the repressive regime, who has nothing to lose, takes out their anger on us? We really shouldn't be. What should be more surprising is that we get surprised at all.

So Osama bin Laden is dead, but is the world really a better place?

Obama actually had to publish his birth certificate?

2011-04-27T12:31:49-07:00

I can't believe it got to the point where Obama actually felt compelled to publish his birth certificate after the State of Hawaii had already said his valid birth certificate was on file. So a group of bigotted white people got all upset that a black person finally got into office.

Just to piss them off, it would have been funny if when Obama was inaugurated, he had gone to the lecturn and said, "Damn straight my middle name is Hussein." Put on a turban, and continued:

from theatlanticwire.com

Welcome to...The Black House of Allah, Mother F*****s!

from fobbdeep.com

Queue music praising Allah

Ron Paul has set up his exploratory committee for the Presidency!

2011-04-26T21:09:33-07:00

Since he's one of the few truly great politicians in office when it comes to being able to draw from lessons of history and apply them to current day predicaments, I'm excited that Ron Paul has taken the first step today in running for the Presidency again. Maybe we'll have a Paul/Paul ticket? :)

The Republican Party creates its own noose, but the Democrats don't apply it

2011-04-25T13:43:50-07:00

Politics are a funny thing. Highlighted by this article about California, we can see that California hasn't been doing too shabby -

having above average GDP growth from 1999-2009 compared to the rest of the country
taking home 50% of all venture capital dollars
it's budget deficit, while large, is still only 6-7% of its budget, and future pension and health liabilities are only 7% of its economy
not to mention bailing out the South, Midwest, and some of the West to the tune of $620 billion from 1981-2005.

So let's get this straight, California bails-out the country for a quarter-century and Republicans scream its a failed state? Yeah, right... If you want to see the tax data, it's supplied by the Tax Foundation.

Republicans claim they want to slash Federal spending, so why don't the Democrats let them? Let the Republicans shrink the Federal budget by 80%, abolish the income tax, the corporate income tax, and payroll tax. And do you know who will be better for it? Many of the states that reliably vote or are more likely to vote Democratic - California, New York, Illinois, Massachusettes, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon.

If the Democrats end up raising taxes to lower the budget deficit, then who will be worst off? Their own constituents.

No wonder politics often defies logic.

Proposed Modification to Rake's Discovery of Gem Tasks

2011-03-28T16:35:58-07:00

Background:

I'm building a Sinatra app with the orientdb gem, and I'm working on making a couple basic rake tasks, so that people using OrientDB and ruby can have access to database tasks like activerecord has. But since I'm not using Rails, I don't have railties and personally, I'd rather not have to require the files of all the tasks I could have access to inside the Rakefile.

Solution:

I patched Rake::Application, so that it would discover any and all tasks inside of the folder 'tasks' inside your gems load_paths. The cool thing about this is that it could make the need to have tasks inside a railtie absolutely unnecessary, because rake would find them for you anyway. The only requirement this introduces aside from a changed directory structure is Bundler.

I know gems currently don't necessarily use this format for placing their rake tasks, but if gems placed their tasks in [load_path]/tasks then non-rails users could access the great rake tasks they contain. [Update - new patch now finds all tasks in all load path directories, so there's no need to put the tasks in a specific folder.]

If you want to add the patch to your rake so that you can start using custom rake tasks in your own gems and discover all other tasks that your gems allow you to use, the code is below.

[UPDATE - Until the time when rake accepts the patch, you can now use the gem I made. In your Rakefile, just do the following. Railties are now unnecessary!]

====

#Rakefile
require 'rake'
require 'alltasks'

====

That's it!

The code for the rake patch:

###
# We are replacing Rake::Application.raw_load_rakefile
# This will be in lib/rake.rb for people that installed it via gem and in lib/rake/application.rb for people that have the repository
###

    def raw_load_rakefile # :nodoc:
      rakefile, location = find_rakefile_location
      if (! options.ignore_system) &&
          (options.load_system || rakefile.nil?) &&
          system_dir && File.directory?(system_dir)
        puts "(in #{Dir.pwd})" unless options.silent
        glob("#{system_dir}/*.rake") do |name|
          add_import name
        end
      else
        fail "No Rakefile found (looking for: #{@rakefiles.join(', ')})" if
          rakefile.nil?
        @rakefile = rakefile
        Dir.chdir(location)
        puts "(in #{Dir.pwd})" unless options.silent
        $rakefile = @rakefile if options.classic_namespace
        load File.expand_path(@rakefile) if @rakefile && @rakefile != ''
        options.rakelib.each do |rlib|
          glob("#{rlib}/*.rake") do |name|
            add_import name
          end
        end
      end

     ####
     # New Code
     ####
      # load gem rake files if Bundler is defined
      if defined?(Bundler)
        Bundler.load.specs.each do |spec|
          #look for tasks in the gem's load paths
          spec.load_paths.each do |load_path|
            if File.directory?(load_path)
              Dir.foreach(load_path) do |path|
                check_dir = File.join(load_path, path)
                if File.directory?(check_dir)
                  glob("#{check_dir}/**/*.rake") do |name|
                    add_import name
                  end
                end
              end
            end
          end
        end
      end
   ####
   # End New Code
   ####

      load_imports
    end

Obama is on the Wrong Side of History and Needs to Man Up

2011-02-01T15:16:21-08:00

[[UPDATE 2/1/2011 4pm: Obama just gave a speech that was aired on Al Jazeera saying that the Egyptian government should have a transition now, but I never heard him once mention the word democracy, unlike his 2009 speech in Cairo, where it was one of his central points.]]

When Obama was sworn into office, he used Lincoln's Bible. He tried to draw the parallels to Lincoln, being a Senator from Illinois and all. But one thing Lincoln knew that Obama doesn't is when to take a serious risk and be on the right side of history.

Right now the Egyptian people are demonstrating and wanting a democracy, yet Obama isn't willing to openly go out and declare to the world. As Al Jazeera has reported, Obama in 2009 in his famous speech in Cairo used the word democracy a lot, but now that he actually has the chance to take the stand, he isn't supporting the people in the Middle East that want democracry now. Obama apparently was all talk. If he wasn't all talk, he would get out and tell the the Egyptian people, "We completely support the opposition movement in Egypt. We do realize that while Mubarak has been in power, that he has been a great ally of both Israel and the United States, but Mubarak should yield his government and let the Egyptian people have the right to self-determine what they will do. We are willing to work ElBaradei and help in any way we can in the formation of the new Egyptian government. And while the Egyptian's continue to protest, we will be starting food aid shipments to Egypt, so that the Egyptian people can continue to weather the storm and do not have to worry about feeding their families. Hillary Clinton is also on her way and will be working with the Egyptian opposition and Israel."

Think about it, Tunisia was overthrown and it wasn't until afterward that Obama openly supported the opposition. There are also protests in Lebanon, where people want to have a democractic government. The reason why Al Quaeda can recruit in the Middle East is because the United States supports the dictatorships that suppress the freedoms of the people. If the US begins to support the opposition movements and pressure dictators that are being challenged to yield their power, then the US can destroy the one thing Al Qaueda has - the ability to make it out that the US is the cause of the problems in the Middle East for the average person in the Middle East.

But what about our ally in Saudi Arabia? If King Abdullah starts getting demonstrated against and knows how history is changing, we could cut a deal with him and let him come to the US in exchange for yielding the government to the people. We could have it both ways, show that since he gave support that we would bring him here (maybe he'd bring a lot of money and we could also cut the same deal with Mubarak), and also allow Saudi people know that the US cares about them, not just because they have oil, but because they are human beings that deserve to have their rights.

The United States for the first time would be able to deal with democractically elected governments in the Middle East that it supported and reduce the emotional pull that the terrorists in the Middle East now use against.

Now is the time to end the hypocritcal stance this country has had and show the people of the Middle East that we are willing to stand by them and the rights that they deserve, if they are willing to stand up to their governments. 2012 wouldn't be the end of the world. It would be the start of a golden age of peace. But if Obama doesn't have the guts to stand for democracy in the Middle East when it really matters, it will only harm America and give the radical Islamic groups in the Middle East more arguments as to why America is the Arab people's greatest enemy.

Wikileaks and the Obama Administration

2010-12-14T10:16:19-08:00

A couple days ago, I posted the following status to Facebook, which linked to a New York Times article about the Europeans criticizing the United States's response:

Obama tells China, Russia, and the Middle East to embrace democracy and transparency, but his administration is hypocritical when the same comes right back at him. -1 for Obama, +1 for Putin and the PRC

A well-intentioned friend questioned my response, and the following is what I wrote back:

Hi [_____]!

Thanks for the thoughtful reply!

As far as the cables' contents, I agree with the French position as well. I was greatly impressed with the thoughtfulness of the US diplomatic corp and how professional they are in their assessments.

Although whether the Europeans themselves are transparent or not was besides the point. If Obama wanted to take a stand for freedom of the press and government transparency in the world, he would come out and blatantly say, "My administration has so far found nothing illegal with what Wikileaks is doing acting as a press organization. They have the right freely publish leaked materials, no matter how embarrassing, as long as they do not aid in the capture of them. If we find they went beyond their right as a press organization, you will hear from the Justice Department." That is the moral high ground he should take, and it would reinforce the idea of the United States as the beacon of freedom for the world. It would also be in stark contrast to how Bush's administration conducted itself.

Like the Europeans, the +1 to Putin and the PRC is not meant to say they are morally better. It is because they have been pointing out how hypocritical American policy has become. If we are going to preach to be the beacon of freedom to move others towards, then we should hold ourselves to the same standard. We preach protection from invasive policing of the populace, and TSA authorizes virtual strip searches and invasive pat-downs. Instead of being innocent until proven guilty, they assume all air travels are guilty until proven innocent. We preach to China to let the market determine foreign exchange rates, and the Fed manipulates the currency to a scale that is only beaten by a country such as China. We preach that other countries shouldn't condone corrupt business practices, yet no high-profile bankers from the recent crash in the markets have been taken to court, even though mortgage fraud has been reported in the papers and any settlements have been a slap on the wrist.

I would love to see the United States take the moral high ground, which is why I was cautiously optimistic when Obama, became President [0]. I thought he would reverse the hypocrisy of the Bush years, but as of late, I don't see that happening.

In addition, Ron Paul made a great defense of Wikileaks, and why organizations like Wikileaks are necessary for freedom to exist.

[0] As shown in this blog post from when Obama had just been elected.

Character

2010-11-03T21:17:57-07:00

I know it has been over a year, but I thought the following quote in Consilience, which I am working on finishing, is great to reflect on.

True character arises from a deeper well than religion. It is the internalization of the moral principles of a society, augmented by those tenets personally chosen by the individual, strong enough to endure through trials of solitude and adversity. The principles are fitted together into what we call integrity, literally the integrated self, wherein personal decisions feel good and true. Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others. It is not obedience to authority, and while it is often consistent with and reinforced by religious belief, it is not piety. (269)

If Food Doesn't Require Insurance, Health Care Doesn't Require Insurance

2009-07-31T14:16:57-07:00

With all of the fuss in DC surrounding Congress working on sponsoring new health care initiatives, it doesn't seem like anyone has asked this basic question: is health care truly that critical? Here's the short question and answer - if you don't have health care for a year, will the average person die? No. Some people may, but most people won't.

Here's another way to look at it:

If you don't eat for a year, will you die? Yes, everyone will.
If you don't get water for a year, will you die? Yes, everyone will.
If you aren't able to shield yourself from the elements with shelter, clothing, and blankets will you die during the winter or get shade in the summer? If it gets very hot or cold, then yes, most people will, especially if they don't have a source of fire or heat in the winter.

So if health care is less critical than food, water, shelter, and clothing, but the average person pays for their own food, water, shelter, and clothing, is able to afford it, and has seen the cost of each of those items drop over the last 50 years, then why are people arguing that we need to require everyone to expand the role of health insurance and government in health care? It doesn't make any sense.

You don't buy food, water, shelter, or clothing insurance in order to buy these most basic necessities. Necessities, nonetheless, that you require in order to live and without which you will die. If the average person walking into a store or looking at homes did need insurance for these, it would make prices go up and make people starve and die, because they would waste time having to get approval from their provider to see if they could buy the apples that went on sale for 99 cents a pound. Sound familiar?

So if people can pay for their own food, water, shelter, and clothing, and small government programs like food stamps and charities, such as food banks, can provide the basic human needs we need without big insurance programs and mandates, then people should pay for their own health care, directly. If people paid for their own basic health care without insurance, you would see costs drop, quality increase, and everyone would be able to afford it and would get it. Insurance would be used just like homeowners insurance, in case something really bad happened.

If you want everyone to have health care and have lower costs for health care, people should be allowed to pay for their own basic health care and buy insurance for only things that are catastrophic.