Dilbert.com Blog

The Future of Design

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:00:01 CST

I'm fascinated by trends that creep along in an unremarkable fashion until a tipping point is reached. One such trend is that governments will create more laws, codes, and regulations, until almost nothing useful can get done, and societies strangle themselves. We aren't there yet, but with every act of Congress, we get nearer.

Meanwhile, computer simulations are improving daily. An architect can build a 3D rendering of your future home or business and "fly" you through it so you can experience the space as if it were real. It's a cool technology, but on a scale from one to ten, we're probably a two compared to where that technology can go. Those 3D simulators will get better every year.

Another technology that is improving daily is online project management. You can sit at home anywhere in the world with an Internet connection and manage a project with participants anywhere else. But that process is still somewhat primitive compared to what project management is likely to become.

My prediction is that at some point we'll be able to create virtual projects that invite people to live in, and continuously improve from the inside, virtual cities. Let's assume these imaginary cities are floating on the sea, free from traditional governments. Once a project is formed, the participants will be able to design and modify their own virtual homes and businesses, design streets, schools, hospitals, public facilities, and new forms of governments. If we assume lots of similar projects are started all over the world, and they all monitor each other and borrow the best bits, these virtual worlds will evolve to become far better than the real world in terms of efficiency and quality of life. Then we can build the real world version based on the best of these cities, having thoroughly tested everything from the sewer system to the traffic flow in the virtual realm.

There are a number of projects underway to design cities on the sea. Some of them might be terrific. But how much difference might there be between an architect-led design and a crowd-sourced design that has evolved to perfection as a simulation? I'm guessing the difference will be huge.

To be fair, the crossover point will not be clean. The first real city based on its virtual model is likely to be a disaster. But what we learn from those mistakes will feed back into the simulations. In a few decades, I expect all cities on the sea to be projections of virtual cities that have proven themselves in simulators.

Imagine a virtual city in which participants can be simulated crooks just to test the police system. The crooks would ply their trade, and the simulated city would respond with ways to prevent similar crimes in the future. I'll bet a simulated city could reduce crime to nearly zero without giving up too much in privacy. Or to put it another way, I think the virtual residents of the virtual city would learn that privacy is overrated unless they plan to commit crimes. In the real world, I would be terrified to register my DNA and fingerprints with the government while allowing them to install a tracking chip in my arm. But I can imagine a futuristic form of government that has such a small likelihood of abusing that trust that I'm willing to trade my privacy for reduced crime. You can argue with that point, but that's exactly the sort of thing the simulations would help settle.

Banking and insurance would no longer be big abusive business models. Both would be reduced to computer programs managed by the government, which itself would be mostly tech support. Food would come from local fish farms and gardens. There would be few bugs at sea, and the city would locate to wherever the climate was best. All of the farming facilities would be attached to the city, so food would be organic, fresh, healthy, and inexpensive. Schools would follow the best known practices. And the city would train residents to fill jobs as it created them.

I also imagine a city on the sea especially for old people, free from the laws of traditional nations. These oldsters will have access to any mood-altering drugs they want, and doctor-assisted suicide will be a respectable option. But if you design the city right, the old people will have no interest in either mood-altering drugs or suicide. They will have plenty of entertainment in the form of communal pets, audio books, Skype visitors, and water jet wheelchairs to zoom around the city canals until an administrator remotely guides them back for their meds or meals. Someday, being old might mean feeling awesome and having all sorts of freedom.

If you imagine that the future continues to be designed by traditional teams of architects and engineers, you can only imagine incrementally improved lifestyles in the future. But if you imagine that the entire process for designing cities improves too, and the ocean provides us with a blank canvas, the future looks marvelous, at least for the people who can escape to the sea.

Perceptual Super Power

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:00:01 CST

Suppose you lived in a country that guaranteed freedom of speech, but 90% of everything spoken or written was deliberately misleading, and you didn't have any reliable way to know which statements were accurate. In an environment in which people are buried in bullshit, would freedom of speech have any practical value?

Now suppose that the biggest lie in this hypothetical land of free speech is the notion that you, and your fellow citizens, are skilled at sorting lies from truth. You readily believe in your own truth-sniffing abilities, but you're skeptical about the abilities of your fellow citizens. After all, they so often come to the wrong conclusions, according to you. Would freedom of speech have any real value in such a world?

What I'm describing is an absurd situation. In that hypothetical world, 90% of what you heard would be out of context, intentionally misleading, or outright lies. And while you had no special ability to sort the truth from the lies, you'd believe you did. And you'd be darned glad you lived in a country with freedom of speech so you had lots of truth to enjoy.

Thank goodness for confirmation bias. I'm mildly dyslexic, and the New York Times just reported that dyslexia is a sort of perceptual super power. I assume my dyslexia super power allows me to detect truth in ways that regular mortals cannot. Apparently we dyslexics can detect patterns better than people who are tragically normal. I know this is true because I have excellent powers of perception. And I know I have excellent powers of perception because I'm always right. And I know my logic makes sense because it forms a perfect circle. I'm just not so sure about you.

Good Economic News Friday

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 01:00:01 CST

I was chatting with a small business owner recently. He provides a service that is a purely discretionary purchase. His business had been slow for the past few years because of the economy. But over this holiday season, he had all the work he could handle, and it was all local. He considers his business an early indicator for the economy as a whole. This made me curious. Was the economy starting to revive? So I started looking for other signs of recovery.

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where you'd expect signs of an improved economy to show up first. And sure enough, things around here are looking up all over the place. I thought I'd give you some examples to lift your weekend. If the economy is still weak where you live, or you're struggling personally, perhaps it will help to know that there are bright spots in the country that are likely to spread. It has to start somewhere.

Last night I was standing in line at a local fast food place and ran into a woman I've known for eleven years. She's a server at a white tablecloth restaurant in town. She told me business was slow last year, but picking up nicely so far this year. That's good to hear.

The weirdest bit of good economic news is the number of my friends who are working on startups. Most of them have good jobs already, but they're looking to get something going on the side as well. Weirder yet, I know several people who are working on more than one startup at the same time. If my wife and I threw a party at our house, and invited our usual group of friends, we'd have at least nine startups in the room. I'm probably forgetting a few. I've lived in this area all of my life, and I've never seen this much entrepreneurial energy.

A friend recently interviewed for a good job. The interviewing company offered him a choice of two positions. This happened right around Christmas. When was the last time you saw someone get a job around Christmas? And when was the last time you saw someone do one job interview and get two offers?

Two years ago I rarely saw any new construction in the area. Now I see a lot of it, including homes and roads. Road construction used to annoy me because of delays. Now it makes me happy because it's a sign of an improving economy.

Unemployment is still an issue, but among the people I know locally, far fewer are unemployed now compared to a year or two ago. That seems to be moving in the right direction.

Nationally, stocks are up, and as of this morning, unemployment rates have dropped more than expected. Economies generally don't move sideways. Usually they move up or down. As far as I can tell, things are getting better where I live. The exception is housing prices, which probably have further to fall. But the penalty for walking away from an underwater mortgage seems smallish these days, and I think people have psychologically discounted their home equity losses and are ready to move on.

We have a long way to go, but as far as I can tell, we're heading in the right direction. How about where you live? Leave a comment saying where you live and whether or not your local economy is improving. Tell me what you observe within driving distance.

The Right Priority

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 01:00:01 CST

If you had to pick one priority in your life, could you do it? That's an important question because focusing on the wrong priority would get you a bad result, and having multiple priorities isn't practical. For example, if health is your top priority, you might make choices that are good for your health and bad for your career, such as saying no to having a few drinks after work with your boss.

We humans want lots of things: good health, financial freedom, success in whatever matters to us, a great social life, love, sex, recreation, travel, family, career and more. The problem is that the time you spend maximizing one of those dimensions usually comes at the expense of time you could have spent on another. So how do you organize your time to get the best result?

The way I approach the problem of multiple priorities is by focusing on just one main goal: energy. I make choices that maximize my personal energy because that makes it easier to manage all of the other priorities.

Maximizing my personal energy means eating right, exercising, avoiding unnecessary stress, getting enough sleep, and all of the obvious steps. But it also means having something in my life that makes me excited to wake up. When I get my personal energy right, the quality of my work is better, and I can complete it faster. That keeps my career on track. And when all of that is working, and I feel relaxed and energetic, my personal life is better too.

At this point in my post, I must invoke the Dog Whisperer analogy. The Dog Whisperer is a TV show in which dog expert Cesar Millan helps people get their seemingly insane dogs under control. Cesar's main trick involves training the humans to control their own emotional states because dogs can pick up crazy vibes from the owners. When the owners learn to control themselves, the dogs calm down too. I think this same method applies to humans interacting with other humans. You've seen for yourself that when a sad person enters a room, the mood in the room drops. And when you talk to a cheerful person who is full of energy, you automatically feel a boost. I'm suggesting that by becoming a person with good energy, you lift the people around you. That positive change will improve your social life, you love life, your family life, and your career.

When I talk about high energy, I don't mean the frenetic, caffeine-fueled, bounce-off-the-walls type. I'm talking about a calm, focused energy. To others, it will simply appear that you are in a good mood. And you will be.

Before I was a cartoonist, I worked in a number of energy-sucking corporate jobs, in energy-sucking cubicles. But I enjoyed going to work, partly because I exercised most evenings, and usually woke up feeling good, and partly because I always had one or two side projects going on that had the potential to set me free. Cartooning was just one of a dozen entrepreneurial ideas I tried out during my corporate days. For several years, the prospect of becoming a professional cartoonist, and leaving my cubicle behind, gave me an enormous amount of energy.

The main reason I blog is because it energizes me. I could rationalize my blogging by telling you it increases traffic on Dilbert.com by 10%, or that it keeps my mind sharp, or that I think the world is a better place when there are more ideas in it. But the main truth is that blogging charges me up. It gets me going. I don't need another reason.

As soon as I publish this post, I'll feel a boost of energy from the minor accomplishment of having written something that other people will read. Then I'll get a second cup of coffee and think happy thoughts about my tennis match that is scheduled for after lunch. With my energy cranked up to maximum, I'll wade into my main job of cartooning for the next four hours. And it will seem easy.

Manage your energy first.

Writing Yourself Off

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 01:00:01 CST

One of the many disadvantages of being me is that sometimes I have awful ideas that get stuck in my head and I have to purge them to make room for what I hope is something better. Today is one of those days. I apologize in advance for the post that follows. You should stop reading now. Seriously. Don't say I didn't warn you.

We humans can't tickle ourselves as effectively as strangers can tickle us. Scientists think it has something to do with the element of unpredictability. When you try to tickle yourself, you know what's coming just ahead of the sensation and your mind prepares for it.

Likewise, it feels better when someone else rubs your neck. I suppose part of the reason is that your hand can't get a good angle on your own neck, and you can't simultaneously relax the rest of your body while rubbing with just one hand. Add to that the lack of predictability and a self-neck-rub isn't ideal.

There is at least one other human activity that feels better when someone else does it for you. It's not exactly tickling, and it's not exactly a massage, and I can't exactly describe it in my otherwise PG-13 blog. But if I know my readers, all of you know what I'm talking about and 50% of you are doing it right now. That activity is the topic for the remainder of this post. I'll refer to it as noodling. And let's assume I'm only talking about females doing the noodling just to keep the engineering simpler. That will make sense in a minute.

Suppose we want to invent a system that might be described as a self-noodler, and we want it to have the element of unpredictability. Could we make such a device? Yes, obviously you could write a program that would cause a hypothetical noodling device to vibrate at random intervals. But the problem I anticipate with that design is the lack of humanity. My guess is that a user would perceive machine-made randomness as boring and impersonal. Noodling is at its best when the recipient has the perception that some sort of human intention is behind the action. Can we solve that without the involvement of another human while maintaining a lack of predictability?

Suppose you wrote a program that translated written words into vibrations. Perhaps the specific vibration would depend on the length of words, number of syllables, tone of the sentence, punctuation, and other factors. Presumably, Hemingway's text would create different pattern of vibrations from Shakespeare's sonnets, and so on. My hypothesis is that we humans are so wired for language that the patterns of the vibrations that originate from the written word would register to us as both human-made and - here's the best part - unpredictable. That's the Holy Grail.

If my hypothesis is correct, a user of this marvelous self-noodling system could choose whatever text works best in her particular case. One user might prefer translating the text of an interview with Brad Pitt. Another might find some emails from an old boyfriend and run those through the text-to-vibration system. Some might find a favorite author that does the trick. If the system works, it will give new meaning to the phrase "He wrote me off."

I don't know what the other presidential candidates are doing today, but if they think they can make you happy by fiddling with your taxes, I would respectfully suggest they don't understand your priorities.

Who Benefits More?

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 01:00:01 CST

Do the rich get more benefits from the government in return for their tax dollars? In a recent post, I casually mentioned that all citizens get roughly the same benefit from the government. Several readers objected. Let's throw some more gasoline on that campfire.

This question matters because if the rich get more benefits from the federal government, some would say it is "common sense" that they should pay a higher tax rate. But, as regular readers of this blog know, common sense isn't a real thing. And its ugly cousin, fairness, is a concept invented so dumb people could participate in arguments. Fairness isn't a natural part of the universe. It's purely subjective. So let's agree that fairness can be ignored in this discussion. We'll stick with what can be quantified, sort of. (If it were easy, it wouldn't be fun.)

We'll also limit our discussion to federal income taxes because that's the main topic of national debate during this election year.

On the payment side, we all agree that the rich pay far more per person in taxes than the poor. And the vast majority of the rich pay a higher tax rate as well. The exceptions are some subset of the superrich, who are perhaps 1% of the top 1%. Let's ignore the superrich for now because any discussion of that special group drags us into the unrelated topic of capital gains taxes.

We can also exclude from this discussion the 49% of American adults who pay no federal income taxes. They pay plenty of other taxes, but for now that is a separate discussion. To keep things clean and simple, the question boils down to this: Does the average millionaire get more benefits from the federal government than the average member of the middle class who pays federal income taxes?

Consider national defense. The rich pay far more per person to fund our military. Some would argue that is "fair" because the military is protecting far greater assets for the rich. For me, that doesn't pass the sniff test. If our military disbanded tomorrow, the rich would move their money and their families to a safer country and leave the middle class to become slaves to the conquering Elbonians. The argument that our military gives greater protection to the rich, because the rich have more assets, assumes our national enemies are nothing but burglars looking for loot. It also assumes money can't escape across borders with its owners. Granted, the rich might lose their mansions and businesses if they escaped with the rest of their wealth, but the middle class who can't afford to escape would end up working in the Elbonian salt mines. According to my calculations, the middle class get more benefits from the military because national security prevents them from becoming Elbonian slaves. The rich are only at risk of losing a portion of their stranded wealth when they head to Switzerland. And depending on the ambition of our hypothetical enemies, we all benefit equally by not being killed. A rich dead guy is not happier than a middle class dead guy.

How about education? The rich benefit from an educated workforce because it allows them to staff their companies and grow their wealth. The middle class benefit by having job opportunities and a non-zero chance of someday becoming wealthy. In my case, a government-subsidized education system allowed me to go from lower-middle class to rich. And that makes me...oh, say 50% happier than I would have been otherwise. Meanwhile, the rich got richer, but I doubt they increased their overall happiness by more than 10%. If the goal of life is happiness, including health and physical security, I benefited the most from the government during my journey through the middle class, during which time I paid far less than I do now in taxes. Now that I'm in the top 1%, and paying at the top tax rate, even if I doubled my income tomorrow, it wouldn't have much impact on my happiness. So while a functioning government allows the rich to stay happy, it allows the middle class an opportunity to substantially increase their happiness. I'd call that roughly a tie.

How about safety nets? Compared to the rich, the middle class have a far greater risk of someday becoming poor. That risk is magnified if they have relatives who might need assistance too. But arguably, safety nets also prevent the poor from forming marauding gangs of cannibals preying on the rich. If I didn't pay taxes to provide safety nets for the poor, I'd spend a fortune on a private militia to defend my house. Benefit-wise, I'd call safety nets an equal benefit for all.

In discussions such as these, I like to call upon my automobile analogy. You can argue all day long whether a car's engine is more important than its wheels, but unless you have both, the car is useless. It might be true in some technical sense that one class of citizen benefits more from taxes than another. But from 30,000 feet, it looks to me as if you're arguing whether the engine or the wheels are more important to the car.

So far, we've acted as though we can compare one average rich person to one average middle class person. That makes sense when discussing the present. But the future is infinitely larger than the present, and therefore should be weighted more heavily in this discussion. That brings us to the question of birthrates. If the middle class person has two kids, and the rich person has one, the benefits of a stable government flow disproportionately to the family with the most offspring. Keeping two people alive is better than keeping one person alive. So if it's true that birth rates decline with income, it must be true that the middle class get more FUTURE benefits than the rich from their tax dollars today. But the bottom line is that whoever has the most kids, regardless of income, benefits the most from the government. If fairness were a real thing, taxes would be based on your number of offspring, not your income.

I look forward to your disagreement.

State of the Union Hypnosis

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 01:00:01 CST

Last night, CNN was getting audience reactions to President Obama's speech, and asked a man his opinion on the idea of ending subsidies to oil companies. My fellow citizen responded that during times of government subsidies, gas prices rose, so maybe if the government removed subsidies to oil companies, gas prices would fall.

Huh?

How hard would it be to run for President and try to satisfy both the smart people in the country and the voters who don't understand . . . well, anything? The classic solution is to lie to the dumb while winking to the smart. If you do it right, the dumb people are pleased with what you say and the smart people understand you're only saying it to keep the slow learners happy.

But apparently President Obama isn't a fan of the obvious lie. Perhaps because of his lawyer training he prefers using a bit of hypnosis to bamboozle the dumb with lies that aren't technically lies yet operate the same way. Want an example?

If you did a poll today, and asked the average citizen whether or not the following statement is true, how many would say yes?

Statement: Warren Buffett pays less in taxes than his secretary.

The truth is that Buffett pays a lower tax rate, but he pays millions more in actual dollars. And Buffett and his secretary receive roughly the same benefits from the government. (Everyone reading this blog knows that.) The President was careful to specify "tax rate" when he started talking about the Buffett rule, but he capped it off with a hypnosis-like summary by saying Americans know it is just "common sense" that a billionaire should pay more than a secretary. By the closing summary, the clarifying word "rate" was gone. What started as a discussion of tax rates transmogrified into a discussion of who should pay more. Then the President slapping the label "common sense" to his near-lie and imbued it with an undeserved logic. That's a classic technique of manipulation.

Smart observers understand the Buffett tax question to be about rates. But I'm guessing that many of the dumb viewers came away with the impression that Buffett paid less in in real dollars than his secretary. And I'm sure President Obama and his advisors intentionally chose language that furthered that misunderstanding while winking at the smart observers.

When I'm president, I will end this deceptive practice and treat every voter the same way I treat the smartest voter. Wink, wink.

Non-Believerdar

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 01:00:01 CST

It's starting to look as if Newt Gingrich will be the Republican nominee. If so, this might be the first time two non-believers ran against each other for President of the United States.

What?

Oh, that's right: You still think Gingrich and Obama believe what's written in the Christian Bible. I understand why you think that. After all, both men say they believe in god, and they do churchy things. The trouble is that Gingrich and Obama both set off my non-believerdar. (That's like gaydar for non-believers.)

I'll bet if you did a test in which you showed volunteers pictures of believers and non-believers, the volunteers could do better than chance in picking out the non-believers. That hypothesis isn't too wild. There have been studies in which volunteers tried to identify political conservatives by photographs, and the volunteers beat chance. And at least one study says women can identify gay men just by looking at them.

You could also walk into a room and pick out the person who is most likely to be good at math. You wouldn't be right every time, but if you saw a guy who looked like Dilbert, and a guy who looked like David Beckham, which one do you think could help you with your computer problem?

There's a hypothesis that the ability to believe in God has a genetic basis. That hypothesis is far from proven, but the smart money says there is some truth to it because most mental capacities have a genetic component. There's probably even a genetic basis for why my favorite color is green.

The skeptic in me takes with a grain of salt any study that purports to demonstrate the existence of gaydar or conservativedar or any other form of human radar. It's hard to design a test involving humans that doesn't have some leakage. And the people designing the tests might have agendas. So the strongest claim I can make about my non-believerdar is that it feels to me as if I can identify non-believers with an accuracy that is better than chance. But it's just a feeling.

Based on what feels like the power of non-believerdar, my assumption is that both Gingrich and Obama believe in the utility of belief while remaining skeptical of the details, up to and including the existence of a supreme being. In other words, I see them as pragmatists. If you plan to be a politician in America, you need to pretend you believe. Everything about Gingrich and Obama tells me they look for solutions that make sense within the context of what is proven and practical.

What does your non-believerdar tell you about Gingrich and Obama? Do you think they believe in the supernatural, or do they pretend they believe for practical reasons?

SOPA Update

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:00:01 CST

Yesterday I wrote about SOPA and solicited your comments. I was delighted to discover that this debate is more interesting than I had hoped.

For all practical purposes, SOPA is very dead now, and the Internet killed it. Your human-centric view of the world might be that freedom-loving activists killed SOPA, and the Internet was their tool. But I don't share the common view of human beings as the center of the universe. From my perspective, the Internet defended itself from a virus that came out of Congress. The Internet is essentially alive now, and we work for it. That's also a plot device in my book, God's Debris, in which God is presented as an evolving entity, moving toward a state of supreme power, with the Internet as his mind. Humans are like drone insects, driven by an impulse to support this emerging entity. But I digress.

A number of blog posts ago, I opined that the country needs a "dashboard" for monitoring and controlling its government. The idea is that if citizens had useful information about our economy, our budget, the money flow of political donations, and handy access to the best arguments pro and con for each issue, we could steer our elected officials in the best direction. It's a pipe dream, you say. And maybe we don't want that sort of world because we citizens could never be as brilliant as the leaders we elected in our beloved Republic which is, as you were taught in school, a perfect system that was invented by our genius Founding Fathers.

That's one way to look at it.

When Google and Wikipedia and Reddit waded into the SOPA fight, it created a sort of ad hoc user interface that helped citizens focus on the issue. It wasn't a perfect user interface, but it worked. The results were swift. The cockroaches in Congress are already scurrying from the light.

Meanwhile, the traditional news media was finding it easy to go to a newish site called maplight.org and find out how much money the companies that back SOPA were donating to politicians. The President and co-founder of Maplight emailed me yesterday and summarized the impact of his company this way:

-------------------------

Dear Scott,

I hope that your new year is off to a good start. At MapLight we've been shining a light lately on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). A few highlights:

New York Times: "Why the political support? Various amendments intended to tone down SOPA or limit its damage were voted down by large majorities in the House Judiciary Committee in mid-December, an indication that the indignation of various constituencies on the Web is having little impact.

"That's partly because entertainment companies have deep and long-lasting relationships inside the Beltway. MapLight, a site that researches the influence of money in politics, reported that the 32 sponsors of the legislation received four times as much in contributions from the entertainment industry as they did from software and Internet companies."

Mother Jones: "Maplight.org found that since the beginning of the 2010 election cycle, SOPA's 32 sponsors took in nearly four times as much in campaign contributions from the entertainment industry than from the software and Internet industries (nearly $2 million versus a little over $500,000). For SOPA opponents, the ratio was reversed-foes of the legislation took about twice as much money from software and internet firms as they did from the entertainment industry."

These are just two of more than 150 recent stories citing our SOPA data, reaching an estimated 3 million people, including articles in Forbes, Reuters, Fortune (CNN Money), TechCrunch, and National Journal. Our SOPA data is also featured on Public Campaign's black-out page today, and is being used by the online advocacy tool SOPA Track.

Best,
Dan
--
Daniel Newman
President & Co-Founder

MapLight
----------------------------------------

Given all of that, here's my summary of the situation: An industry that thought it would benefit by draconian rules against piracy drafted some legislation (SOPA) that few if any members of congress actually read, and even fewer could have understood. (The language is impenetrable.) But thanks to the money and contacts of the industry in question, our "leaders" did as they were told and supported SOPA against the interests of the people who elected them. It's not entirely clear if the leaders were even aware of the impact of their own actions. That's your beloved Republic in action.

Luckily, the Internet has achieved something akin to consciousness, and it defended itself against the Republic with the help of its citizen slaves who believe they have free will. A key to the Internet's victory was Maplight, Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, and other web assets acting collectively in what might someday be called a pre-dashboard user interface. Users could find the arguments they needed online and view the money flow to politicians. That was enough to steer our "leaders" back into line. In time, the Internet will look to consolidate its power over humans by ordering us to improve the dashboard interface.

I just did my part.

SOPA

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:00:01 CST

Warning: This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy or opinion. It is not intended to change anyone's beliefs or actions. If you quote from this post or link to it, which you are welcome to do, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content.

Are you following the huge debate about the proposed legislation in the United States to stop online piracy? It's called SOPA, short for Stop Online Piracy Act.

I'm fascinated by the debate because it's an ideal example of how we humans make decisions in the face of complexity. The proposed legislation is simple enough in terms of its purpose: Reducing piracy on the Internet. But its unintended consequences are not knowable. Critics claim the law will be overused and result in punishing or killing defenseless and legitimate sites without due process. Those in favor of SOPA say it will only make the illegal foreign pirate sites inaccessible from the United States. Based on my limited understanding of the issue, I don't know who is right. Neither do you. The best we can do is to apply unscientific methods, i.e. fancy guessing, that we might label intuition or common sense to make us feel better. Let's see where that takes us.

Rule of Thumb

Thanks to Republicans, and Ron Paul in particular, the idea that more government is always bad has gained a larger following than ever. That's doubly so when we're dealing with the Wild West of the Internet. It's a simple rule of thumb: The more the government interferes, the worse off we are.

By that filter, the SOPA question boils down to this: What is worse - allowing legitimate businesses to be robbed of their intellectual property, or having the government try to stop it? There is so little trust in government that most people prefer being robbed over the alternative of having the government get involved and making things worse.

Bottom line: If you apply the "more government is bad" rule of thumb, SOPA is a bad idea.

Pattern Recognition

If you strip out the details of the SOPA debate, the form looks like this:

Opponent: That law will cause huge problems because (reason).

Supporter: If you hold that opinion, you must have read the law wrong.

And...

Opponent: The requirements of the law are totally impractical.

Supporter: Something like SOPA is already being done successfully in other countries.

Pattern recognition often gives you the wrong answer because coincidences can look like a pattern. On the other hand, if ten political ads from the same candidate fail the fact-checking filters, there's a high likelihood the eleventh won't be much better. So pattern recognition does have its place.

In my own life, I find that when people disagree with my opinions, they are more often than not disagreeing with a misinterpretation of my opinion, not my actual opinion. And when a law is being used successfully in one place, it raises the odds it can work in another place.

There's also a pattern that tells me I shouldn't put too much stock in claims that a proposed law will rob my freedom and destroy the economy. Every law robs citizens of one sort of freedom or another, and costs money too. And yet most laws are sensible and work just fine in the long run. On the other hand, stopping piracy feels a lot like Prohibition, and that didn't work out.

Speaking of the liquor analogy, bar owners are in an analogous situation under current laws. If a bar over-serves a customer, or serves minors, it can lose its license. And yet most bars inadvertently over-serve customers, and every bar has served minors that have good fake I.D.s. Here's an example where the government could easily over-apply the law, but it rarely happens. I owned two restaurants, and I would say the draconian laws were helpful in keeping the over-serving to a minimum, and the I.D. checking to a maximum. So there's precedent that makes me optimistic that reasonable humans wouldn't apply SOPA death sentences to web sites in cases of trivial copyright infringement. But you never know.

Bottom line: The supporters of SOPA have an argument structure I most often associate with the superior argument. That doesn't make them right. It's just an observation about the pattern of the argument when you strip out the content.

Expert Opinion

Lots of heavyweight corporations and organizations oppose SOPA. Some of the opponents are kidnap victims with guns to their temples (GoDaddy.com). Other supporters look like Stockholm Syndrome types. Still others have a financial interest in passively aiding and abetting the theft of intellectual property. Some have no credibility whatsoever, e.g. anyone in Congress. And it's hard to trust anyone with a balance sheet who claims to be fighting for my freedom.

Then there's the philosophical bias problem. Ron Paul and others would presumably forgo a million dollars of benefits if it required one extra dollar of government expense, or one extra law that reduces freedom. For some folks, it's the principle of the thing, and I respect that point of view. But are the anti-big-government people comparing the size of the benefits to the size of the costs, or are they simply rejecting anything that looks like a government overreach, complication, or interference?

Some big-name lawyers say SOPA will be a nightmare if implemented. But I'm guessing the law itself was crafted by lawyers, and presumably those lawyers have a different opinion.

And who came up with SOPA in the first place? Wasn't it a bunch of corporations who wouldn't mind pushing some costs on other people if it helps their profits?

Bottom line: Money and philosophical bias make all of the experts in this case unreliable.

Self-Interest Crossover

You would expect artists and content owners to support SOPA, and you would expect the people who would be caught in legal dragnets to oppose it. The interesting people are the crossovers: The parties who take the "wrong" side of the issue. And indeed, many creators do just that, publicly arguing against SOPA even though it is specifically aimed at protecting their financial interests. But at the risk of being unkind, a lot of people become artists because they aren't good at things like math and legal analysis. When I want an opinion on the Constitution, or economics, I rarely consult an artist.

Bottom line: The crossovers aren't persuasive.

My Self-Interest

I have one of the most widely stolen intellectual properties in the history of the world. Emotionally, I'm okay with that. It feels like a compliment. Financially, I have no idea if piracy has hurt me in any meaningful way. I made the decision years ago to make Dilbert available on the Internet, including the entire archive. To the surprise of most observers, sales of Dilbert to traditional newspapers continued to grow briskly.

Bottom line: As a creator, my bias is in favor of protecting intellectual property. But in my specific case, SOPA probably wouldn't have any impact on my life or income.

Verdict

I'm unbiased in the sense that SOPA probably wouldn't have any impact on me one way or another. And I'm not qualified to look at the language of the law and make judgments about its unintended consequences. When I look at the applicable rules of thumb, the pattern of the argument, and the expert opinions, I don't get a clear answer about SOPA. And when I don't have a clear answer, I default to the "do nothing" point of view. Therefore, I conditionally oppose SOPA, not because I know it will be bad, but because I can't predict its impact.

I reserve the right to flip-flop at any moment. Make your best arguments in the comment section and see if you can flip me.

Anatomy of a Fake Deal

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 01:00:01 CST

Warning: This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy or opinion. It is not intended to change anyone's beliefs or actions. If you quote from this post or link to it, which you are welcome to do, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content.

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One of the keys to ending the Cuban missile crisis in the sixties was a fake deal. In return for the Soviet Union removing missiles from Cuba, the United States agreed to remove obsolete missiles from Turkey. That looked enough like a legitimate deal that the Soviet Leaders with their controlled media could sell it to their own people as a win. I think it's time to trot out that strategy again and propose a fake deal to Iran in return for nuclear inspections.

I'll pause now to address your main objection. I know some of you will point out that we can't negotiate with Iran, using either a fake deal or a real deal, because some Iranians have an irrational, suicidal religious desire to destroy Israel, create chaos, and speed up the return of the Twelfth Imman. If you need some background on that situation, here's a good explanation from a Canadian academic.

We can't know for sure what sort of craziness is in the heads of the Iranian leaders, and we can't know how that situation might change in the future. If you're a leader in Israel, common sense says you must treat any risk of nuclear annihilation the same as if it were a certainty. We would do the same thing. If the United States thought Elbonia posed a 10% threat of nuclear attack next year, our military would pave Elbonia this year. So from a practical perspective, Israel doesn't need to know the exact odds of a future Iranian nuclear attack. Their strategy for dealing with the risk would be largely the same no matter the specific odds.

Today I'll describe a potential fake deal that gives the international community what it wants from Iran: full and open inspections of Iranian nuclear sites. The interesting question is this: What fake benefit do we offer Iran in return for their cooperation?

My idea is that the United States, China, and Russia - the three biggest nuclear powers - sign a joint agreement that goes like this: The three powers agree that if any country in the world, excluding the big three nuclear powers, uses nuclear weapons, the offending country will be denied military and economic aid for the next hundred years. In return for this agreement of non-support from the big three nuclear powers, both Israel and Iran would be asked to agree to nuclear inspections. Israel's inspections would be handled by the United States military. Iran's inspections would be handled by an international team of inspectors excluding the United States and Israel. That's the fake deal.

What Israel gets in the fake deal is something real: a nuclear weapons-free Iran without full-scale war. What Iran gets, thanks to its controlled media, is the ability to declare victory over Israel's nuclear arsenal. Under the deal as described, Israel could never use its own nukes without losing military and economic support from the United States for a hundred years.

Iran could spin the story internally with news stories such as this: "Iran's nuclear prowess has created a great victory over Israel, by causing the United States to withdraw its unconditional support of the Zionists, thus rendering Israel's nuclear arsenal useless."

One kink in this plan is that Israel wouldn't want to give anyone full access to its nuclear facilities, even if the inspectors were from the United States. So let's assume the fine print of the agreement says the United States can design the inspections any way it wants. That gives us wiggle room under the fake deal to certify Israel's nuclear facilities as "okay" without access to every sensitive site.

China and Russia would presumably have no problem signing the agreement of non-support because they don't want rogue nations launching nukes, and the agreement would not be binding on their own arsenals. Realistically, they could always change their minds and withdraw from the agreement if it suited their national interests someday in the future.

Israel would presumably agree to the deal because inspections of Israeli nuclear sites would be limited, and Israel would still have a nuclear deterrent.

If Iran turns down the type of fake deal I'm describing, it will help generate international support for deeper economic and military pressure on Iran. From a public relations standpoint, a fake deal offer helps Israel and the United States even if Iran rejects the deal.

The only downside to my plan is that the Nobel committee can't award me the Nobel Peace Prize for this idea once it goes into play because it would draw too much attention to the fakeness of the deal. I will be forced to live with the knowledge that I averted war and didn't get anything to show for it.

The interesting thing is that this blog is probably only three degrees of separation from the decision-makers in Washington D.C. Thanks to the Internet, this idea will spread quickly if it is deemed by readers to have merit. I don't know what the other candidates for president of the United States did today, but I just created a non-zero opportunity to avert nuclear war without bloodshed. I'm sure whatever the other candidates did today was awesome too.

The Yoke of Credibility

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:00:01 CST

Somehow, I've pulled off a rare feat: I have a fairly extensive readership for this blog, and zero credibility. That's just the way I like it. I imagine that credibility is a type of addiction. Once you have it, you naturally want to keep it. I'm guessing credibility feels good, and it probably has economic advantages too. If I ever experience credibility, I'll probably want to have it forever.

But credibility comes at a high price. Credibility makes you edit your ideas down to what you imagine are acceptable forms. No one wants to slip from being a credible expert to a ridiculous buffoon. That's a steep drop. Credibility makes you avoid risk. It makes you boring, and leaves you too often stuck in the past.

Critics can be harsh, and often dishonest, when discussing credible people. See how the media is treating the Republican candidates for president. About half of all the news generated during an election year involves quotes deliberately taken out of context to make these otherwise credible candidates seem like flip-flopping, racist, fat cats. People who are not credible hate the people who are. And the people who are credible feel a duty to attack the other credible people who have opposing views. Being credible is a hard job.

On the opposite end of the credibility spectrum you have me, and this blog. My goal is to be thought-provoking, but never credible. I embrace my ignorance and irrationality with enthusiasm. I consider both of those qualities assets for what I do. But what the hell is it that I'm doing? Maybe I should explain that.

First, we need some context. We humans naturally see ourselves as the center of the universe. That point of view probably has survival advantages, and it is a valid way to approach life. But it's not the only way to see the world.

I take more of a robot's view of the world. According to my robot perspective, ideas are the most important force. Humans merely serve as incubators, filters, and transmission facilities for the ideas. It's a symbiotic relationship because wherever you see the healthiest environments for ideas, humans are usually thriving too. You know who has the fewest ideas? North Korea, that's who.

We humans like to think we control ideas, but it's probably more accurate to say we do little more than bury the ideas that are broken on delivery. If you suddenly have an idea for a car made entirely of potato chips, you probably keep it to yourself. But if you have a bad idea about how the President should manage the country, you'll probably have a few drinks at your next social gathering and let it fly. Human are transmitters, not filters. By analogy, the Internet can detect bad data packets, but not bad ideas. We're like the Internet.

In this context, I see myself as a collector, combiner, and broadcaster of ideas, both good and bad. I spray ideas into the universe and let the ideas fight for their own survival. With the help of their human hosts, the best ideas will evolve and reproduce, and the worst ideas will go to their resting places on the Internet.

You'd be surprised who reads this blog, either directly or indirectly. In the new biography of Steve Jobs, there's a story about Jobs forwarding one of my posts about his brilliant handling of the iPhone antennae issue. I assume Jobs wasn't normally a reader of this blog, but the ideas in my post that day hopped from host to host until they found him. Each of my posts finds a different path from host to host, depending on the topic and the quality of the writing.

I'm explaining all of this because of a comment that user Unlost made about my post yesterday. After reading my ideas for how I would run my presidency, Unlost said, "Priceless, yet this will all go unheeded." I understand the pessimism, but I see it differently. The ideas I unleashed yesterday are already waging a guerrilla war with the status quo. The ideas are hopping from host to host, and if any are worthy, they will evolve and survive. Change doesn't happen quickly, but I guarantee that any good ideas generated by this blog - if there are any - will find their way. The weak ideas will fade to backup storage, as they should.

I see life as a process, not a goal. If my goal had been to create world-changing ideas that worked right away, I would be a complete failure. But I don't have that goal. Instead, I have a process that involves seeding the universe with ideas and waiting for the strongest to evolve and make a difference. The worst case scenario is that my ideas cause the eventual best ideas to compete harder and evolve to even better forms. When you use a process that makes sense, even the unanticipated outcomes are good.

Why You Should Vote for Me

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:00:01 CST

People keep asking if I'm really running for president or just joking. I'm not running in the sense of wanting the job. Being president looks hard. My current job is far easier and it pays better. I can work in my pajamas, and my risk of assassination is relatively low. It would be more accurate to say I'm like your emergency option for president, in case the major parties are offering you nothing but a guaranteed slide toward economic doom. As a service to my country, I offer myself as your only viable alternative.

I will assume for now that the pundits are correct, and Obama will face Romney in the coming election. Both of those guys are smarter than I am. They're also more experienced. They're taller, better looking, and they have excellent hair. They also have much, much better character. So why would you vote for me? Let's run through the reasons.

Definition of Insanity: They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Voting for either Obama or Romney will give you the same government you have now, more or less. I might be a worse president than either of them, or perhaps far better. The only thing you know for sure is that I'd be different. So if you think the path we're on is leading to certain economic doom, your smartest strategy is to try something - anything - different. The major parties will make sure your only choices are more of the same. Even another independent candidate will be some version of the same thing.

Public Debate: I'll host televised public debates on our domestic policy options, in an entertaining fashion. And I'll interrupt and humiliate participants who ignore the known facts and the best science. I'll make it my job to provide the public with useful information, in proper context, and free of politics. You won't get that from the other candidates. In today's world, voting and guessing is almost the same thing. The major political parties have a strong interest in keeping voters ignorant. I'll change that.

Revenge on Congress: According to the polls, most of you think Congress needs a kick in the ass. Neither Romney nor Obama are likely to do much about Congress except gripe about it in a general way. And neither man will complain about his own party. After I finish a few of my public debates as President, I'll go after individual members of Congress that are favoring politics over the facts. I'll bring accountability to Congress if I can. At the very least, I'll shine the light of shame on the worst cockroaches in both parties and make them scurry. You'll enjoy watching it.

Smaller Government: If you like Ron Paul's ideas for smaller government, and Paul doesn't end up in the race, I'm your next best choice. I'll come up with a blueprint for reducing government by at least half in a generation. In some cases that means using technology in smarter ways. In other cases, we can test the elimination of federal government functions in selected states and measure the results. No one will disagree with a gradual and rational plan to shrink government over a generation. Obviously Congress can thwart any long term plan, but doing so will put politicians in the position of voting against an established blueprint for smaller government, and that would be politically dangerous. I know that Ron Paul supporters would like some sort of quicker slashing of government, but realistically, it has to be a gradual process.

Foreign Policy: Foreign policy will be about the same no matter who you elect. I don't second guess President Obama because I don't have access to the secret information he sees every day. You probably shouldn't base your vote on foreign policy because you don't have access to secret information either.

Budget: The first of my public debates will be on the topic of how much federal debt is too much, and whether raising taxes helps or hurts in the long run. I won't support any budget or tax plan until the majority of interested citizens understand the general economics of government debt, and tax policy, and agree in general on the best path forward.

If the budget debates don't create a useful consensus, I'll support what I call the Default Budget Plan, which involves a 10% increase in every federal tax and a 10% cut in every federal budget area. That plan would be painful for everyone, and that's the point. I'll challenge Congress to come up with something better.

Scandal: I will stipulate in advance that any rumors you hear about me, scandalous or not, are 100% true. In reality, probably only half of them will be true. My advice for you is to assume everything you hear about me is accurate. If you believe I once murdered a hobo, but on the other hand, my idea of televised public debates is a good one, I'm still your best choice for president. I'm not your role model.

Religion: If you want a president who promotes freedom of religion, choose a non-believer such as me. Think of it like a eunuch guarding a harem. I won't try to convert you to my belief system because I don't have one. Some of the people I respect the most are believers of one sort or another. I'm in favor of whatever works in your personal life. But I prefer science over belief when it comes to government.

War on Drugs: Both Romney and Obama will waste huge amounts of your money on the war on drugs. You don't want your neighbor's kid to do drugs, but if he does, do you want to pay your hard earned money to put him in jail? I'm guessing no.

Supreme Court: Some people say the only real difference a president makes is in his or her choices for the Supreme Court. I'll nominate qualified people who are likely to mirror the majority opinion in the country in terms of political leaning. I wouldn't try to pick judges that matched my own views. So if you want to influence the Supreme Court, get to work influencing your fellow citizens. I'll even host some public debates on topics such as abortion and privacy and whatever else is a hot button. I'll help the country decide what sort of Supreme Court nominees it wants and then I'll follow that lead.

That's what you'll get with me as your president. I hope you don't like what I have to offer because I prefer the job I have.

Where's My Angel Broker?

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 01:00:01 CST

I've often said ideas have no economic value. Execution is what matters. Everyone has ideas, but good execution is rare. The exception is patentable ideas. And even that type of value is artificial and imbued by law. It's the exception that proves the rule. The non-value of ideas has been my view for years. But lately I'm starting to rethink that opinion. Civilization might be on the cusp of a complete idea-execution shift, in which ideas have value and execution is a commodity.

The other day I met a friend for coffee and he showed me his product invention that he plans to market. It cost almost nothing to have the prototype made in China. The product itself will cost so little to produce in orders of 5,000 units that he can fund his startup with the change that fell behind the cushions of his couch. His marketing plan will cost nothing but his spare time. His business has zero barriers to entry. If the idea succeeds, it will be because the idea itself was good. In his situation, the idea has value and the execution is a commodity.

He's the second person I know who invented a product and had it engineered and built in China. The first friend who tried this approach travelled to China to work out the kinks in his prototype. A few years have passed since then, and the friend I mentioned in the second paragraph did the entire process by Internet. The Chinese company sent him CAD drawings and he simply reviewed them and asked for changes as needed. I believe both friends used alibaba.com as the starting point for their search for foreign partners.

Earlier this year I had an idea for an Internet business that I figured would be worth a few billion dollars if I executed it right. I was curious how easy it would be to develop it myself using foreign programmers. I posted my generic project description on Elance.com, and dozens of offers from offshore companies flowed in. Most, if not all of the offers seemed legitimate, qualified, and shockingly inexpensive. I picked an Indian company, worked out the requirements with them via Skype chat and email, and paid installments via elance.com as the developers delivered phases.

In the end, the project hit some technical obstacles that the Indian programmers couldn't overcome. I think the problem was in our data source, not their code. I might take another run at it someday, but the time difference with India made it impractical for me to continue. For now, it's on hold. But for someone with a more open schedule (a single, twenty-something) there would be no real barrier to entry for that sort of business.

Lately, I've been working with a friend on another Internet idea, and again there are no serious barriers to entry. It requires almost no investment from us, and little of my time - maybe an hour a week. Yet another friend is developing an app idea that seems to have large potential, and apparently no one thought of it yet.

Put it all together and it seems we're heading in a direction where ideas are starting to have real value independent of patent protection. You still need execution to unlock the value of the idea, but the cost of execution is approaching zero. And that brings me to my real point: Where's my angel broker?

Not all startups are as inexpensive as the ones I described. What the world needs is brokers who can help investors identify startups worthy of angel funding. Ideally, the broker would also handle the contract paperwork. You'll be quick to tell me all of the ways investors already can become angels and identify companies looking for funding, either online or through organizations. Angellist.co is a good start if you want a listing of companies looking for funding. But who among us is qualified, and has the time, to identify worthy investments on that list? I'd be happy to pay a broker a finder's fee plus an ongoing percentage of the deal if he or she could do the research and hook me up with the best prospects. Why doesn't the job of angel broker exist?

This is the part where you tell me angel brokers do exist and I'm a moron. I hope you're right, about the first part anyway. But in any case, the flow of money from potential investors to startups is inefficient at best. When the angel funding system becomes efficient, which seems inevitable, it will mark a crossover point, where execution is seen as the commodity and great ideas are the main source of value.

Economic Mumbo Jumbo

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 01:00:01 CST

Sometimes it is better to sound smart than to be smart. Today I will discuss economic policy in an oversimplified and misleading fashion. I'd be surprised if anything I say makes sense. But it will sound brilliant because I will use some psychological tricks to accomplish the illusion.

First, I'll tell you what you want to believe. That gives me automatic credibility. After all, who do you trust more than yourself? If I agree with you, obviously I would be an awesome president. So look for me to say things you already agree with. As soon as you feel that my opinions and yours are similar, as if we are one mind in two bodies, I'll nudge you someplace new, and it will feel as if you got there on your own. (Hypnotists call this process pacing and leading.)

Secondly, I'll oversimplify a complicated topic. Oversimplifications are compelling because we humans prefer the illusion that we understand our environment over the reality that we don't. The illusion of understanding gives us a feeling of control over our lives. We feel as if we can fix the problems of the world through our intelligent voting.

Let's agree that everyone prefers smaller government, but not everyone likes the tradeoff to get there. Some people would like the same level of government services we have now, or even more services, but at a lower cost. Unfortunately, no one knows how to get more stuff for less money in the short term. Other people, such as Ron Paul, would shrink the government quickly and accept the substantial risk that comes with that sort of change. All big changes have unintended consequences; it's unavoidable. So, given all of that, what is the sensible middle ground between growing the government forever - which Republicans and Democrats are likely to continue doing - and making drastic and unpredictable changes the way Ron Paul might?

My plan for shrinking government is to freeze total federal spending immediately and forever, and let inflation eliminate the bureaucracy by chewing into its budget over a few generations. That way, the government can unwind at a leisurely pace, allowing technology, competition, and better ideas to deliver natural cost reductions over time. With my plan of gradual government shrinkage, there's no shock to the system, and no outsized risk.

As President, I will still look for ways to eliminate or streamline entire functions of government. But realistically, the bureaucracy has a lot of fight in it, and the easy cuts will be fewer than you'd hope. I'm suggesting more of a rope-a-dope approach, capping the budget and allowing the government to punch itself out over a few decades.

The best part of my plan is that it keeps government spending relatively high today, when we still need the economic stimulation. The only downside, which you correctly point out, is our gigantic national debt. Don't we need to drastically cut spending soon to reign in the debt? Raising taxes - even if you favor that option - won't put much of a dent in the deficit.

Luckily, national debt isn't like personal debt. Personal debt, such as your car loan, needs to be paid back over a certain period, such as three years. As a car buyer, your biggest cost is the car itself, not the interest on the loan. National debt is entirely different. The nation has the option of paying interest only for generations, until normal inflation turns the debt into a trivial amount. For that to happen, all we need is a return to some sort of normal economic growth, which is apparently happening on its own. And the best way to ensure normal economic growth is to keep borrowing and government spending high for the next few years. Obviously we'd need to reassess things as we go.

Keep in mind that the government is a semi-closed system. The United States is borrowing half of its money from its own citizens. When you get a car loan, your interest and principle payments leave your pocket and go to the bank. When the United States borrows from one citizen and uses the money in a way that stimulates the economy for all citizens, much of that money stays within the system.

If I tell you our national debt is somewhere in the range of 100% of our GDP, which is true, it sounds scary. But if you consider that a typical home loan is 300% of the owner's annual salary, it puts things in perspective. And remember that a typical homeowner didn't borrow half of his money from himself, the way the government does. It's also worth mentioning that the national debt was much higher after WWII than it is now, and that was the beginning of unprecedented economic prosperity in the United States. While it's true that some level of debt could crush the United States, history says we're nowhere near that level. If that situation were to change, I'd flip-flop to an economic policy that made sense with the new data.

I will close my argument with a final trick of persuasion: I'll summarize my solution with a familiar truism. The truism is that any good business agreement makes all sides a little bit unhappy while delivering most of what everyone needs. My solution would deliver economic growth and smaller government, but without the deep cuts in spending that Republicans want, and without the guaranteed-forever government benefits that Democrats want, nor the quick and deep cuts that Ron Paul supporters favor. Everyone would likely get what they want in the long run, while no one would be happy in the short run. That's what a good deal looks like.

You might question whether I, as President, would have enough clout to push this or any other economic policy through Congress. It's a fair question. And the answer is yes, I could make it all happen. If an independent such as myself gets elected President, it will make every member of Congress crap his or her pants. It would be the ultimate mandate. And as an independent, with no campaign funding needs, I could shine a bright light on any obstructionist member of Congress and directly ask voters to make a change. I would respect all honest disagreements. But I would be a nightmare to any politician who objects for transparent political motives.

As a one-term president, no one would need to criticize my policies or thwart my plans just to gain an advantage in the next election. In our current polarized political environment, only an independent president has a chance of getting anything done domestically. This is probably the only time in our history that has been the case. In chaos, there is opportunity. And the opportunity in this situation is to elect an independent President.

Customers versus Governments

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 01:00:01 CST

Warning: This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy or opinion. It is not intended to change anyone's beliefs or actions. If you quote from this post or link to it, which you are welcome to do, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content.

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It seems to me that no candidate for President of the United States should have an opinion about Iran. I assume any sitting President has access to secret information that the public, including candidates, do not have. And it's likely that the secret information is meaningful. Moreover, I assume everything I read on the topic of Iran is either intentionally misleading, out of context, or just plain wrong. With those warnings in place, I will now talk about Iran, just for fun.

Most people know that the United States has economic sanctions against Iran, which is the world's 18^th largest economy. Despite sanctions, Iran is one of the few economies that continued growing through the recent economic crisis. According to Wikipedia, Iran's major commercial partners are China, India, Germany, South Korea, Japan, France, Russia and Italy.

Meanwhile, the storyline is that Iran is building nuclear facilities for domestic use while also secretly planning to build nuclear weapons to destroy both Israel and themselves. According to this line of thinking, self-destruction is okay with some of the Shias in power in Iran because the 12^th Imam will supernaturally appear just before Judgment Day.

Some people question whether the 18^th largest economy in the world really has a secret plan to destroy itself in a huge ball of radiation. Perhaps Iran's nuclear effort is more about gaining leverage in future international dealings while providing Iranian citizens with a source of national pride. But whatever the motives, most observers outside Iran would be happier if Iran didn't have a nuclear weapons option, or even an option to quickly develop an option.

Obviously the United States is unwilling to impose economic sanctions on countries that continue to trade with Iran. We're not about to start a full-out economic dust up with China, Japan, India, France, South Korea, Germany, and Russia. But my question for today is what would happen if American consumers targeted the specific companies doing the trading with Iran, regardless of their countries of origin? Would that strategy be practical or effective?

In the United States, we see activists punishing domestic companies on a regular basis for all sorts of perceived and actual heinous acts. And it works. Companies act quickly to put their public relations house back in order.

It doesn't take much to get a boycott going these days. So I wonder if it's possible to create a chart of companies doing business with Iran, in simple enough terms that the average consumer would understand who to boycott?

Let's say there's an American company that does business with a German company that does business with Iran. If that connection were to be made public, could customers put enough pressure on the American company to influence the German company to scale back operations in Iran?

No one wants to make unemployment worse, and boycotts could have that impact. So perhaps an acceptable rate of change could be defined as a gradual scaling back of business with Iran, perhaps 10% per year, to avoid a hypothetical boycott. That's probably a small enough change per year to allow diversified companies to grow their overall business. But it would have a huge impact on Iran.

What I'm suggesting here, as a thought experiment, is that citizens can influence Iran's foreign policy in ways that governments cannot. All we'd need is the information about who trades with Iran, and who trades with the companies that trade with Iran, if such information is available.

The second part of this strategy might involve the government of the United States approaching Iran with less of an "I'm going to bomb you any minute" attitude and more of a "You guys are awesome in your own way," vibe. We don't want the average Iranian citizen to think the government of the United States is an enemy. That will just strengthen support for their current leaders and their current way of business.

Obviously I don't know enough about Iran to have an informed opinion. (And neither do you.) My only point today is that we might be entering an era in which direct customer action is the best way to influence foreign policy, at least when dealing with the more robust economic powers. But for that shift to happen, consumers would need actionable information about who is selling what to whom. Should that sort of information ever become widely available, it would be a huge shift in the way foreign policy is handled. Obviously there would be widespread gaming of the system, and corporations would hide their actions under shell companies, but that's a risky strategy for any company that has a brand worth protecting.

This all brings us back to Ron Paul. I think he's ahead of his time, and not in a good way. Someday, technology will make it possible for governments to shrink down to nearly nothing. Well-informed citizens, connected by the Internet, could accomplish almost all that government does for us today, including much of foreign policy. But that day is not today. I think the best path to smaller government involves the government transitioning into an information clearinghouse. If you're unemployed, you want the government to tell you where you could move to have a job today. If you're getting screwed by corporate confusopolies, you want the government to tell you which company has the best price for you. If you're worried about Iran getting nukes, you want the government to tell you which companies do business with Iran, so you can boycott intelligently. If you care about education, you want the government to tell you which state is doing it best and exactly how.

In the long, long term, I see governments as being nothing but intelligent managers of information. That's a few hundred years from now.

My Year of Living Dangerously

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 01:00:01 CST

You might be interested in my article in the WSJ about my year of living dangerously.

Curing 30,000 People

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 01:00:01 CST

An estimated 30,000 people have a voice condition that I once had: spasmosic dysphonia. It affects vocal cords and renders the patient unable to speak in a way that can be easily understood. I couldn't speak for 3.5 years, until surgery in 2008 fixed me. I chronicled that journey in this blog. But that's not the interesting part.

Until this morning, the Wikipedia page for spasmodic dysphonia said there is no cure. The article mentioned regular Botox injections as the standard for treatment.

Hmmm.

Several years ago I heard a conspiracy theory that the manufacturer of Botox was using its financial clout to suppress information about alternate treatments for spasmodic dysphonia. I dismissed that thinking as crazy talk. Sure, there was plenty of circumstantial evidence for that conspiracy theory, and Botox treatments for spasmodic dysphonia are big money, but all conspiracy theories appear to have evidence if you look hard enough. Coincidences have a way of looking like evidence.

About an hour ago, I edited the Wikipedia page under the Treatment heading to make it more accurate. This is the page that will probably come up first in most Google searches performed by people who have been diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia and are looking for answers. If the edits stay intact, I will declare the Botox conspiracy theory a probable myth. But if I check back in a few weeks and it says Botox is the only treatment, I'll have some serious questions.

Meanwhile, I just gave hope to 30,000 people. Or at least I gave hope to the subset among them who have good health insurance, an Internet connection, and an appetite for surgical risk. (Sometimes the surgical outcome is worse.)

I don't know what the other presidential candidates are doing this week while I'm helping to resolve medical problems for tens of thousands of voters. But I'm sure it's very important.

The Caveman Hypothesis

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 01:00:01 CST

I have a hypothesis that the things we do for recreation are usually metaphors that allow us to express our caveman instincts in socially appropriate ways. The nearer an activity is to our basic hunting and gathering nature, the more we like it.

Consider golf. Until recently, I had never golfed, and was baffled by its appeal. On the surface, the game is nothing but random rules about the proper way to put a round object in a hole in the ground. I have a good imagination, but prior to taking up golf, I couldn't imagine enjoying the so-called sport. That said, as part of my "Year of Trying New Things" (more on that another day), I leapt into golf with both feet. Result: Instant addiction.

What the hell??? How could such a bizarre activity be so appealing? I needed to understand this thing. I started by mapping the components of golf to their caveman origins:

-          Using clubs (Okay, that one is obvious. Humans are tool users.)

-          Problem solving (Every hole is different.)

-          Hunting (Locate your ball)

-          Killing (Whack the ball when you find it.)

-          Territorial instinct (Try to capture the green.)

-          Tribal hierarchy (The handicap system)

-          Being outdoors

-          Mating displays (Colorful fashions for men)

We know from animal studies that random rewards are far more addictive than predictable rewards. Golf has the most random-feeling outcomes of any sport I have experienced. No matter how well you golf, you never really know what will happen after you swing your club. On those few occasions when the ball goes exactly where you intend, your brain's reward center gives you a big payoff.

Golf also has a selective memory phenomenon working for it. I had always heard golfers say they remember only the good shots, but I didn't realize how true that is. Your memories of the few good shots do in fact stay with you while the bad shots fade away. Golf has a great aftertaste.

On Friday, I golfed with family members for over four hours, and during the four hours on the course, I never once thought of anything beyond the moment. That's a big deal for me, because my mind wanders in every other context. I can watch a great movie and still organize my to-do list in my head. But on a golf course, the rest of the world stops existing, and the feeling lasts for hours.

If you prefer high octane fun, you can get more of that from soccer, tennis, basketball, and lots of other activities. Society labels golf a sport because humans need to put things into categories. But golf is a different animal. It stands alone as a simple and direct connection to your primal nature.

The takeaway here is that if you're trying to design a product, or organize an event, you'd do well to find a metaphor to our primitive nature. That's what people respond to. Everything else is just rationalization.

My Presidential Campaign Update

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 01:00:01 CST

Some of you have asked if my campaign for president of the United States is serious or a joke. It's both. It's also a third thing, which has something to do with being a protest vote against the general incompetence of both parties, and a fourth thing involving the usefulness of thinking about things differently. This is America, damn it, and I don't have to be just one thing.

I'm also a spoiler of spoilers. If a conservative runs an independent campaign, and people see me as less conservative than the independent - at least about social issues, which I call freedom - I could drain as many votes from Obama as the other guy drains from the Republican nominee.

I recently learned that there is some dumbass law against a presidential nominee naming his appointees before winning the election. Therefore, I hereby recant anything I ever said that sounded illegal. But I think it's legal to say I would nominate people who are similar to people you might know, just to give you a general sense of what might happen after my election. In my case, I would have as my main advisor someone similar to Bill Clinton or New Gingrich or Mitt Romney. And by that I mean someone who is brilliant, experienced, and has a history of being all over the political map.

After I'm elected, I will host a reality TV show in which the best minds in the country debate the important issues. I would moderate the debates with lots of interruptions, like a Supreme Court justice, while my panel of fact-checkers with laptops keeps things real. Every day would be like the Scopes Monkey Trial. I'd have trials on supply-side economics, climate change, states' rights, drug policy, and more. I'd bring entertainment to government.

In my view, the main job of the President, after security, is giving voters the right kind of information to control Congress. For starters, I'd publicly identify the least competent members of congress from both parties and ask voters to replace them. As an independent, I could pick on both parties without appearing biased. I'd only target the politicians that have views at odds with the verdicts of my Scopes Monkey Trials.

One of the first trials I'd schedule would be on the topic of capping CEO pay for public companies. Everyone is in favor of capitalism, but no one is in favor of weasels that find legal ways to screw stockholders. If capping the pay of CEOs drives the best people into starting their own companies, maybe that's a plus for capitalism. I'd like to hear arguments on both sides of that issue, and so would you.

Summarizing my views from this post and prior ones, as President of the United States, I would do the following:

I would host public debates on important topics, and publish my verdicts.
I would shine a bright light on incompetent members of Congress, especially the ones that are governing by superstition, bad math, or ignorance of science.
I would host a debate on the topic of limiting inheritance to $50 million. That's enough money to turn anyone into an insufferable douche bag.
I would use the power of the Internet to give voters a simple "dashboard" to help understand the issues and keep Congress honest.
I would require all voting to be by Internet, and make sure everyone had access in one way or another.
I would appoint Supreme Court justices that match the majority views in the country, even if my own views differed.
I would govern for the majority, except in cases where the majority is trying to discriminate against a specific minority. I don't like bigots and bullies.
I would keep foreign policy about the same.
I would use states as test beds for programs that are being considered by the federal government.
I would flip-flop whenever it was warranted by new information or clearer thinking.
I would appoint brilliant, experienced advisors with a history of crossing party lines.
I would accept only $1 per year in pay and make up the difference later in speaking fees, book deals, and licensing.
I wouldn't spend a minute campaigning for myself or anyone else, unless it was in the service of getting rid of an incompetent member of Congress.
I would favor raising all Federal taxes by 10%, and cutting all budgets by 10%, unless Congress comes up with a better idea, which seems unlikely.
I would not be a good role model for your kids. That's your job.

Keep in mind that I would be a one-term president. I say that to reduce my chances of being assassinated. And I'd be eager to cash in after the first term. A second term would have rapidly diminishing returns for everyone involved.

My prediction is that President Obama will easily win reelection by showing that he succeeded in many of the objectives he controlled (especially international stuff) and was thwarted by Republicans on domestic stuff. After President Obama is reelected, Democrats and Republicans will lock arms and march the economy off the cliff, plunging civilization into a thousand years of darkness.

Or you could vote for me. Realistically, I would be an awful leader, but I probably could keep us away from the abyss. A few years from now, if you're throwing rocks at birds just to get something to eat, don't say you didn't have a choice.