Obama wish list
For all its flaws the election in the USA has one great point, the whole world talks about it, or at least the English speaking world. I’m a Brit - well actually I am part of the Yorkshire republic, but that is another story - so I don’t get a say in the November the 4th election, however most of these problems apply to Britain as well. There is a lot of hope being placed in Obama, I’m hopeful he is elected and it seems near certain that he will be, but until he walks his talk and starts to effect real change I will remain a cautious supporter. Here are the top 10 things I hope Obama sorts out in the next four years. It’s a tough target, I’d like to make it tougher, but it’s unrealistic as it is, I’ll be impressed if he just gets a few of these sorted out. These are not necessarily exactly what he has stated he will do, but I think he is largely moving in this direction.
- Political process.
a) Voting fraud. Corruption is a bit like bacteria, provide an environment for it and soon enough it will be colonized. Regardless of whether or not the situation with electronic voting machines has already swung elections, there is a ripe environment for corruption and it needs cleaning up. All voting equipment should be made using open source hardware and software with transparent auditing to prevent tampering. A more sophisticated electronic solution could be developed that is secure and anonymous and verifiable, however this would be a bigger task. Please at least stop up the leaks. In Britain we have a similar problem with postal voting, but the situation is not as dire; still, there are so many ways we could use modern technology to shore up the security of the vote. (I’ve written about it myself, and again)
b) Lobbying. We have our own problems with money corrupting and biasing government process, as the current Mandelson/Osborne situation demonstrates once again. However in the USA, it seems even worse with the government being run by commercial interests taking public office. Bush/Chaney and the oil industry having been a great example but the current obvious conflict of interest lies in Paulson working for the treasury bailing out the very company (Goldman Sachs) he used to work for. There needs to be a much stronger separation between business and state in a working democracy, as there is an obvious conflict of interest that encourages corruption. - Economy
Lets face it, it’s shot to pieces. I can see two main reasons for this shoddy state of affairs. Firstly a lack of sophisticated (not expensive) regulation, that has allowed unrealistic speculation to bloom to gigantic bubble proportions - and then *!pop!*. However this is simply a problem within the current economic paradigm, under which there is a greater problem of how the free-market externalizes the waste and resource streams, causing them to drop off the radar and cause all sorts of major problems such as peak oil and global warming. The best solution I have found to this problem is to move to a steady state economy, where instead of incentivizing more and more resource use, we incentivize more sophisticated usefulness of a fixed resource base. The USA would benefit from this as they have no chance of competing with Asias in product economy - they have too many people who will do manual work for a lot less than the average American. A steady state economy would play to the strengths of the USA ( and the east would do well from it as well). The problem would be convincing the world of this. Who better than the USA, they would need to be a key player in re-writing the rule book for the WTO, IMF and international trade in general. (I think my hopes for Obama to do this are ambitious in the extreame, I put it here because I dearly hope he does.) - Media
A free media is central to a working democracy. ‘Free’ means that the general public have a chance to say what they want about whatever they want to anyone who will listen. Media is power, if it is monopolised in too few hands it has no chance, especially if that monopolised media is presented as fair and balanced when it is clearly not. There are plenty of accusations around of the media twisting stories to gain maximum viewers, thereby gaining the highest ad revenue. The Internet has been the saving grace of current times but steps need to be taken to ensure the freedom of the traditional press. Essentially they need demonopolising, currently just six corporations own most of the media in the USA. In addition, the freedom of the interenet needs to be preserved, net nuetrality and freedom of speech must be preserved. Australia has recently installed a system not all that dissimilar from the great firewall of China, this needs to be stopped. - Climate crisis
This item is really at the top of my list of priorities, if we can’t stop it, then it will cause utter chaos with hundreds of millions, if not billions, of refugees. The only reason it is number 4 is because without action on the first three items I don’t think we have a chance of tackling this one, moving to a steady state economy is a particularly important part of the solution to global warming as it would inherently place ecological limits on all pollutants. We need to do much more than this though. We need to incentivize new technology on every front possible and at the same time transform the way we live our lives so that we are no longer a burden to the eco system. This is doable, it is only the lack of will, both public and political that is preventing us from tackling this. - Energy
Most of our energy is generated from non renewable resources - fossil fuels, not only is this adding to the climate crisis but many of these fossil fuels are nearing the peak of production - they are reaching the point of maximum production capacity, in some cases because the resource is severely depleted and in others because although there are abundant remaining resources they are energetically and economically too expensive to utilize. The renewable energy sector needs to be incentivized and invested in far more than it is now - in both research and deployment. - Education
Education in the UK is in a terrible state, but from all I read on the internet, it is worse in the USA. The essential problem is that when you judge education achievement on simple tests rather than incentivizing education it incentivizes students passing the test and schools corrupting the process to do better in league tables. It has resulted in kids today being significantly less clever than those from before. A more sophisticated methodology of judging education success needs to be employed, but this only the start of the problem. The educational establishment tends to teach kids what to think rather than teach processes of thinking that lead to creative individuals. A bunch of robots is the last thing we need, especially in a steady state economy, we need to revitalise creative exploration, not just in the arts but in the sciences as well. Further more, critical to our society is development of people with values that can push society forwards. At present society is centralised on rational/reductionist values and these are precisely the values that ignores the waste and resource streams, we need to move forwards to create a society that has more pluralistic/relativistic values, education needs to be rebuilt around developing these values. - Health
This problem is very different in the UK, but the solution is essentially the same. People can not help the lives they are born to, but they can help how they look after themselves. We need to incentivize people to look after themselves at the same time as providing health care for issues beyond peoples control. Emergencies should be free with no questions asked. For illness, a more complex approach, where self inflicted harm through over eating, smoking etc is dealt with differently - not just ignored as that does not solve the problem in society. There also needs to be clear and fair limits on the budget for treating illness.
The relationship between pharmaceutical companies and health care need to be re-thought. There is a clear conflict of interest that invites corruption: It makes better financial sense to develop medicines that keep people coming back for more than medicines that cure everything quickly and cheaply. We need to develop a system that changes this and incentives not just the health of the patient but the quality of life. In addition, non pharmaceutical approaches need to be more thoroughly researched and where there is good evidence they need to be used. E.G. A paper has recently been published showing that the Alexander Technique is a very effective treatment for chronic back pain. The Alexander Technique has been around for over a hundred years, yet it is only now that this has been confirmed; this happens because there is no control over teaching the Alexander Technique, no patents or copyrights and therefore the market economy does not incentivise its investigation. - Technology
I think that one of the greatest problems that the current economic paradigm has brought is still not really recognized. It is very centered on progress in the present and does not really care about problems it creates for the future. Global warming is one very good end result, but there could be many more subtle effects that we are just not noticing. Most of the systems that our society depends upon, from the eco system to the complexity of our own bodies are chaotic systems, and these systems are all interlinked. It is impossible to predict all the interactions in a chaotic system, it is like predicting if it will rain on my house one year from now; it is mathematically impossible. Yet we are developing new technologies at breakneck speed. I am not anti technology, I just see a problem that needs to be adjusted for. One solution would be an institution, with the necessary funding and power to take action, to constantly look for unexpected interactions in the technologies we develop through modeling and statistical correlation. I want us to take command of our genetic heritage, to create nano machines that can cure any illness, but we need to get there safely and the free market does not incentivize this, it is just too short sighted.
In addition we desperately need a rethink of intellectual property laws. We need to think up a way of incentivising research and development without locking the insights of that development down. A steady state economy goes a long way towards this. - Military
Just get out. Out of everywhere. Stop being the bully boy.
I know; who are we to talk. We need to stop being your sycophant. - Global peace. Yeah, a tough order, but Obama is the man, lets give it a chance.