Month: July 2016

“Shovel-ready” is dead and buried.

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The Common Problem . . .

Is that the Democratic party has not updated their model of government aid for the Digital Era. In the tech-driven 21st century, improving internet speed carries the same commercial benefits as paving or widening a road for better truck access did in the 1930s. “Shovel-ready jobs” worked for the New Deal. The first President of the United States elected on the power of social media might have had the good sense to make his “Big Deal” economic stimulus “solder-ready.”

The new plan is still based on roads, and where they go. Lease a portion of the right-of-way to a Tier 1 telecom provider, with obligations for minimum uptime and a pre-agreed growth rate for bandwidth. Wire I-81 down its entire length, then continue that connection down I-75. Syracuse University, Virginia Tech, the world-leading supercomputers owned by the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Georgia Tech and the rest of Atlanta, all linked by the fastest Internet connection available. One spur connection, less than 100 miles in length, would tie in NASA’s Space and Rocket Center at Huntsville. The political benefit is obvious. 89 electoral votes, with the possibility of adding Alabama’s 9. The technological benefit is obvious. Not only will this tie together many of the leading research institutions, but it would offload quite a bit of internet backbone traffic from the East Coast networks. The major difference would not be more available bandwidth, but lower latency. If two computers spend less time waiting to talk to each other, the bandwidth needed to support that electronic conversation can be freed up faster.

The Uncommon Solution . . .

Forget “Shovel-Ready” infrastructure projects and start thinking “Solder-Ready.” Government policies must reflect modern commerce, communications, and careers. Every time the government pays someone to move dirt, it needs to include a provision to move data.

Copyright 2016 by J.D. Lewis

Cops have watches; Watches have faces

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*Special Note: Due to ongoing events, active consideration on the current question has been extended.*
 – J.D. Lewis

The Common Problem . . .

Is that local police have surrendered the street corners to drug dealers and gang lieutenants. To improve relations and communication between urban police and urban populations, the most needed change is to give the police a recognizable face for each neighborhood, instead of the thin blue line all the time. Urban centers were safer places for everyone when there was a neighborhood cop who knew not just the neighborhood, but the actual neighbors. Police intelligence-gathering was an automatic process, because there was a trained observer walking the streets and watching who goes into which doors and comes out of which alleys. We can afford for inner-city cops to skip traffic duty 2-4 hours of their workweek.

Starting out, it may be four officers who all park at a community center or a neighborhood store, grab a cup of coffee and walk the neighborhood in pairs for an hour. For longer foot patrols, have three officers walking, and one in a cruiser to run communications between the walking officers and the patrol desk; the radio officer can also shuttle the walking officers to their cars if they are needed elsewhere. Eventually, it will come down to a single officer who climbs out of his cruiser and walks a neighborhood for an hour or two. It is a simple, but not easy, answer. It may take a generation or two, so departments need to implement it as soon as possible.

The Uncommon Solution . . .

People need to be able to say “the” neighborhood cop again. Even better, would be for them to say *our* neighborhood cop. That will take a generation or two. Traffic stops have their place, but police should be more than traffic cops. Foot patrols, and the resulting face-to-face interaction outside an enforcement or investigative context, will go a long way to putting an individual, recognizable face on the monolithic, mysterious force behind the system.

Copyright 2016 J.D. Lewis

Free Ride or Free State?

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The Common Problem . . .

Is that people look at government as good or evil. They tend to view it as either their best friend or their worst enemy. Government is always inefficient, because government, by definition, is about control and limitation in the interest of safety. The question is, what is the appropriate balance point between safety and self-determination? Unfortunately, this is one of those questions where 3 people will give at least 4 different opinions.

Opinion is a bad basis for policy in the first place, but it often becomes law through the force of public opinion. In this case, opinion cannot even provide a generally accepted answer. Logic is the only available answer to set the appropriate balance between safety and self-determination. So, do we make government a first response, last resort, or somewhere in between?

There is a case for government being the first response. Government can bring more power to bear on any given problem than any other entity, because it can always assemble more resources. With a gross revenue measured in trillions, and future revenues guaranteed through a monopoly on premeditated force, government can buy the answer. The question is, at what cost to the rest of society? Because of its very size, national government alters the supply-demand curve by any concerted action. That alone makes a good case for delegating powers to lower tiers of government. Greater accountability of and access to government institutions makes a better case for assigning government power to the lowest level with the budget and personnel base large enough to handle the job. This is the core ideal of federalism, many smaller units of government working for the narrow interests of their specific constituencies and ceding to higher levels of government only what powers they cannot effectively use themselves.

Even better, though, is for government to be the final resort. This is not because large corporate interests are inherently more moral or responsive; in the general case that is used to set public policy, they are not any better than government. They are, however, more easily avoided than government, if they become harmful to someone. Nor are small, voluntary associations such as co-ops, collectives, or syndicates going to be an effective alternative. For government to justify its existence, it must be large enough to do what the people themselves cannot do in voluntary associations. For government to meet its primary responsibility of preventing violence to its populace, it must be powerful enough to coerce compliance from those who place little or no value on peaceful coexistence. In short, there is no more trustworthiness or value in large corporations or small associations than in government. However, there are more options available in interacting with them.

 

The Uncommon Solution . . .

The balance between safety and self-determination lies in a government which follows the Hippocratic Principle: First, do no harm. If a government will limit its actions to ones which meet that standard, it can be trusted with sovereign power. Even such a government, though, should be a last resort. If another private entity does harm, the government can provide effective redress. If the government does harm, there is no other recourse.

Copyright 2016 by J.D. Lewis