19
0

Patrick's Platform


 invite response                
2017 Feb 19, 6:18am   277,690 views  317 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (61)   💰tip   ignore  

Copyright
Limit copyright to 20 years like patents, with no renewals, because renewals just protect the profits of Disney and other wealthy lobbyists.
Make DMCA takedown abuse a felony because it is used to stifle free speech.

Corruption
Issue massive cash rewards for exposing illegal or unethical behavior by government officials. Turn the rats against each other.
Ban congressmen and their family members from owning individual stocks, to stop flagrant insider trading like that by Nancy and Paul Pelosi.
Ban all levels of government from attempting to influence public opinion aside from direct quotable speech by specific elected officials; government should respect and reflect the will of the people.
Make it a felony for any elected official or government employee to knowingly lie to the public, or to materially misrepresent facts to the public the same way it is a crime for members of the public to lie to government.
Require all laws — like vaccine mandates and insider trading bans — to also apply to members of Congress without any exemptions.
Aggressively rotate out DC politicians with term limits before they can fully develop their corrupt networks.
Make a point of bringing in total political outsiders as often as possible.
Forbid everyone at the FDA or family members from ever working at any pharma company, and forbid all pharma employees or family members from ever working for the FDA, until the FDA is eliminated and its functions transferred to the states.
Make all government expenditures, down to the dollar, without exception, easily available for public inspection.
Hire the elderly, who often know how things work and have a lot of available time, to watch all public contracts for excessive spending and corruption.
Require all retail establishments including cafes and restaurants to clearly post all prices, any item without a price being free as a penalty.
Overcharging at checkout also makes the item free as a penalty. This especially applies to "out of date" menus in restaurants.

Crime, the Law, and Prisons
Openly address the extremely disproportionate violent crime rate by black men relative to all others, instead of hiding it.
Abolish all "hate crime" laws because they inevitably result in unequal application of the law, favoring some groups over others, and violate the First Amendment. We already have laws against crime.
Implement public honors and a large cash reward for anyone who captures and flogs a looter or shoplifter.
Require all police to wear functioning bodycams at all times when interacting with the public or prisoners, all video to be used as evidence.
End civil forfeiture because it is theft by government.
Ban private prisons because they bribe judges to feed them more prisoners.
Legalize marijuana at the federal level because it is less harmful than alcohol.
Allow free speech for all prisoners so that we can learn about injustice.
Segregate prisons by biological sex. No men should ever be imprisoned among women, nor women among men.
Define "right to a speedy trial" to mean that a verdict must be reached within one year of imprisonment, defaulting to innocent.
Compensate those found innocent for their unjust time in jail. The money should come from the budget of the agency which imprisoned them.
End selective enforcement of laws by DAs. We should have minimal laws, but they should be enforced 100% of the time to avoid cases like Hunter Biden's never being charged with running the Biden Crime Family bribery racket.
First-time criminals should be given the option of flogging rather than imprisonment. Imprisonment creates hardened criminals who learn bad habits in prison.
Anyone who instigates a lawsuit and loses should have to pay his opponent's legal fees so that the suit itself was not a financial punishment. This is the law is most of the world already.

Discrimination
Forbid government from counting or classifying citizens by race.
End racism by refusing to talk about it, as Morgan Freeman suggested in his famous interview with Mike Wallace.
Prohibit any special access to government services regardless of a person's status, wealth, or payment.
Eliminate all government favoritism or exclusion of citizen by race; therefore no Affirmative Action, nor exclusion of whites or Asians from any programs.

Education
Offer a basic citizenship, numeracy, and literacy test for a high school diploma, administered by the US Office of Weights and Measures.
Fund college with temporary income share agreements, not loans, to give colleges a true motive to help students.
Let middle school and high school students test out of any subject and study whatever they want on their own, so they don't waste their time.
Require any university which gets government funding to award class credits and degrees purely for passing objective tests, no classes required.
Require elementary, middle, and high school classes on how to avoid getting trapped in debt.
Create state-level virtual universities of the very best teachers and classes, online, free for all students of any age.
Allow school choice, where parents can spend their tax money on any school in the state, public or private.
Promote practical education, such as plumbing and HVAC, but also promote reading the Latin and Greek classics, especially in the original languages.
Require middle school and high school courses to teach what rights are guaranteed by the Constitution, and how to sue for them.

Food
Make is a serious crime to introduce any insect-based food for humans without prominent warnings on the food that it includes insects.
Ban all seed oils as not appropriate for human consumption because they are poisonous, especially rapeseed oil, aka "Canola" oil.

Foreign Policy
Put compensating tariffs on foreign goods from countries with lower wages or lower environmental standards, to protect the US manufacturing base.
Seek national economic self-sufficiency in all necessary goods like oil and medicines so that the US may never be extorted by a foreign country.
Impose an absolute ban on dual citizenship, because it always creates conflicting loyalties. China prohibits dual citizenship for this reason.
Stop sending taxpayer money to Israel. They can take care of themselves.

Freedom of Speech
Create a Constitutional Amendment explicitly prohibiting all levels of government from "advising" or influencing any media on what to report or suppress.
Prohibit discrimination in hiring and firing based on political activities outside of work.
Revoke all laws against "hate speech" because such laws violate the First Amendment.

Homelessness
Require mandatory prison time for hard drug use, because most homeless are addicts, and former addicts testify that enforced sobriety in prison saved them.

Immigration
Issue permanent shoot-to-kill orders against anyone invading US borders. This was normal in all parts of the world until recently.
Make everyone who enters the US illegally permanently ineligible for citizenship, green cards, employment, and welfare, except for any who help to convict and imprison their own employers for employing illegal labor.
Build a wall along the southern US border, to protect low-wage American workers from illegal competition.
Deport everyone who entered the US illegally. Exception: grant US citizenship to any illegal alien who gets his employer convicted of employing him and imprisoned. This would be yet more effective than a wall.
Mandate federal prison time for all employers of illegal aliens.
Eliminate all H1B and similar visas unless the incoming worker is paid at least twice as much as an American would be for that job, to prevent, eg, Facebook's abuse of H1B.

Infrastructure
Give official federal priority to fast and cheap rail transit to city centers as in Europe, in place of subsidies and favoritism for highways and airports.
Attempt to re-achieve US energy independence to help keep us out of foreign wars and to improve our balance of trade.
Officially disparage and refuse to grant permits to sterile modern architecture because it is merely cheap shit pretending to be classy.
Return to classical public art, perhaps with subtle new touches. Refuse to spend money on crappy modern public "art".
Create pedestrian-friendly and completely safe town squares with fountains in every town, with a particular emphasis on introducing young people to each other.

Leaf Blowers
Ban gasoline powered leaf blowers in dense residential areas. They pollute with dirty engines, blow dust around, and make a lot of noise.

Legislation
Restrict the commerce clause’s interpretation back to what it was before the 1937 Supreme Court case "National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp." This reversal would greatly reduce the size of the Federal government.
Eliminate all regulations and rules. There must be only laws enacted by elected representatives of the people, and never any regulations and rules created by unelected bureaucrats.
Require lesser authorities to defy unconstitutional laws and orders.
Prohibit all "states of emergency" because they are used to subvert the Constitution, as was done in the Wuhan Virus scamdemic. We should be ready for emergencies at all times anyway.
Create a Constitutional amendment to explicitly state that no part of the Constitution may be suspended ever, for any reason, for any amount of time.
Anyone attempting to suspend any part of the Constitution for any amount of time, especially for an "emergency", shall be guilty of a capital offense.
Require all federal laws to be read in their entirety by all legislators before they may vote on them, to discourage lobbyist-written bills.
Require all federal laws to be clear enough that a 12th-grade education is sufficient to understand them perfectly, for more public participation.
Limit bill length to 30 normal-sized pages of normal sized font, for more clarity about what is in the bill, and more public participation.
Promote the principle of very few laws, very well enforced. "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." -Tacitus.
Guarantee the right of the president to fire anyone within executive branch at any time, especially long-time "civil servants" like Fauci.
Eliminate anti-competitive imposition of "safety" costs on small businesses because those laws are almost all written to benefit large businesses.
Require 20 year sunset provisions for all federal laws, requiring a new vote on whether the law is to be continued after it expires.
Allow the public to vote to revoke the corporate charter of any company which they feel has abused the public, companies like Pfizer.
Publicly post all bills two weeks in advance of Congressional vote, to give the public a chance to read them.
Let the president have a line item veto.
Repeal the poorly-named "Patriot Act".

Medical Care
Repeal the PREP act. All vaccines and other medical products must come with unlimited liability for manufacturers at all times.
Establish a Constitutional ban on lockdowns, mask requirements, and vaccine mandates. They must never be allowed under any circumstances.
Prosecute everyone involved with the creation of Wuhan Virus, especially the mass murderers Fauci, Collins, and Daszak.
Prosecute everyone who abused his or her power to mandate the dangerous and ineffective mRNA injection, whether in government, schools, or workplaces.
Require short clear written presentation of all non-emergency medical costs before treatment for market discipline of medical costs.
Absolve all patients from legal liability for medical care bills whose costs they did not agree to in writing in advance of treatment, aside from emergency care.
Require all emergency medical charges to be limited to moderate fixed prices by law, because there can be no market in emergencies.
Require medical insurers to give a coverage response to a proposed non-emergency medical bill within one day, again to control medical costs.
Allow import of prescription drugs from Canada and from every other country because the import restrictions are a scam to boost profits.
Make it a felony to offer doctors or other medical providers payments to recommend any drug or treatment.
Ban the practice of charging higher prices for the same medicine or treatment when the patient is uninsured. See image below.
Establish a Constitutional right to visit in person and hug any relative who wants visitors in a hospital or nursing home with no exceptions for any disease on either side. It must be their choice alone, never an administrator's.
Prohibit all hospitals and nursing homes from benefitting financially from the deaths of their patients, as they did with the Midazolam Murders.

Mens Rights
Ban kangaroo courts in corporate HR and University Title IX departments to protect men's rights.
Mandate paternity testing at birth to give all men the certainty which encourages paternal care. Eliminate all child support obligation for a non-biological father unless he legally adopts the child.
Require courts to assume that a woman of age, voluntarily alone in a bedroom with a man, has consented to sex.
Grant equal post-conception rights to men.

Military
Eliminate the US Army and instead require mandatory training and arming all sane non-felon adult male US citizens to defend US territory ONLY, organized into well-regulated militias.
Implement a mandatory death penalty for anyone who deliberately attempts to send US troops off of US soil.
Create a constitutional amendment prohibiting interventionism; American soldiers must never fight except against invasion of America, per George Washington's advice.
Ban gays from the military because they are corrosive to morale and because they spread the disease of homosexuality there, not to mention anal warts.
Ban trannies from the military because they are mentally ill.
Eliminate NATO, because Europe is not America.
Close all US military bases in foreign countries.
Create a Constitutional amendment prohibiting all interference in the affairs of foreign countries, especially sending weapons.

Money
Define the US currency to be one ounce of 0.999 pure silver, to be called an Ounce. Silver by weight worked well for thousands of years.
Prohibit the creation of any term for US currency except weight of 0.999 pure silver. So "pound" is OK for a pound of 0.999 pure silver, but "dollar" and all other such non-weight terms are to be prohibited because they can be redefined to devalue to the currency.
Require every business and government agency to accept silver metal by weight as payment.
Establish a Constitutional right to pay all debts and taxes with physical silver by weight, so that everyone can preserve savings as silver metal.
Ban all taxes on buying or selling silver. Such taxes are punishment of those who try to avoid being cheated by the Federal Reserve.
Forbid businesses from requiring payment in any form which can be blocked by government, the way Canada blocked the bank accounts of legitimate protestors who opposed deadly injection mandates.
Create a Constitutional prohibition on political discrimination as a reason to deny banking or payment system access.
Require classification and prominent marking of all non-metal payment instruments as "Not money, only a debt, MAY DEFAULT", because they are merely debts.
Eliminate the requirement for anyone to ever accept or pay with paper money because all paper money eventually becomes worthless.
Legally define all banking as either storage of silver for a fee, or participation in the bank's lending risk and bank run risk in return for an interest payment.
Eliminate the Federal Reserve entirely. Let the open market set interest rates at all times.
Limit the annual federal budget by Constitutional amendment to 1% of GDP with no exceptions, especially not for "emergencies".
Completely and permanently eliminate the national debt. Require the federal budget to be paid out of current revenue, similar to the "Swiss brake".
Ban asset managers, especially Blackrock and Vanguard, from voting the underlying shares that they don’t own but are merely managing.

Privacy
Create an amendment establishing a Constitutional right to privacy because it is not perfectly clear from existing law that we have this right.
Prohibit all levels of government from collecting or holding information on any citizen except as absolutely necessary for census, taxation, criminal investigation, or driver's licenses.
Prohibit the federal government from monitoring the activities or location or even knowing the home address of anyone not currently accused of a specific crime. So no mass license plate reading or cell phone tracking without a warrant naming the specific person and the crime.
Require all private people and companies which collect or distribute home addresses and phone numbers to prominently display all of the owners' home addresses and phone numbers, and all similar information they collect. That is, demand equality of exposure.
Prohibit airlines and other transportation from demanding identity papers. Everyone should be able to travel anonymously, as we did before.
Prohibit websites from including 3rd party javascript, especially that from Google or Facebook, without a prominent notice that every keystroke or mouse movement etc is visible to Google or Facebook and that those sites may have altered the page content. It's spyware and most people are unaware of it.

Real Estate
Completely eliminate the mortgage interest deduction and all policies which serve only to keep houses expensive, because they cripple new family formation.
Aggressively implement policies which drive down the price of a house as much as possible, to give young families space to rear children.
Prohibit all foreigners, including everyone with any non-US citizenship, dual citizenship, or any foreign passport, from owning any land in the US.
Require notarization and publication of all bids on real estate to slow down the routine fraudulent bidding by realtors.
Require a publicly advertised price for a house to be a legally binding offer to immediately sell at that price, the same way it is with toasters and all other goods.
Prohibit government loan guarantees of all kinds, particularly housing or college loan guarantees, because they simply raise the cost of housing and of college.

Regulation and States Rights
Eliminate all federal government agencies outside of the military and commerce; everything else belongs to the states, as is written in the Constitution.
Eliminate the FBI, CIA, NSA, NIH, FDA, and CDC in particular, with their functions transferred to the states, as is written in the Constitution.
Allow girl scouts to bake their own cookies at home.

Sex
Strictly separate multiple-person bathrooms for men and women, whether a person is mentally ill with the fashionable "trans" disease or not.
Ban gay men from adopting, since the majority are gay because they were molested as boys, and then frequently go on to become molesters themselves.
Ban gay men from being alone with boys, ever, because most gays were created through homo-pedophilia.
Ban the sodomy or trans flag from any property funded by tax money, however indirectly. Only official government flags may be displayed.
Define the promotion of homosexuality or trans ideology to children as child sex abuse.
Revert the classification of transsexuality to be the mental illness which is obviously is.
Revert the classification of male homosexuality to be what it really is: a contagious life-shortening mental illness.

Schools
Ban the rainbow sodomy/pedo/trans flag from all schools.
Require middle and high school courses in law, taxes, personal finance, insurance, coding, cooking, home repair, car repair, self-defense, survival skills, etiquette, public speaking, and stress management.
Require daily weight lifting and running in PE classes at every level including publicly funded universities.

Taxes
Eliminate all income and sales taxes, to be replaced with Georgist land value taxes and import tariffs.
Swap the current maximum tax rates on income from work vs capital gains until Georgism is implemented and income tax eliminated.
End Prop 13 in California, to be replaced with a land value tax, with zero taxes on buildings.
Prohibit sales tax on used property which was already taxed when first sold. Ultimately eliminate sales tax in favor of a land value tax.
Prohibit all public sector unions, especially teachers unions and prison guard unions. Government workers may not unionize against the people they serve.

Voting
Make Jan 6th a national holiday honoring the political prisoners who protested the 2020 election fraud.
Arrest Pelosi, Ray Epps, and the other FBI goons of Jan 6th for conspiracy, entrapment, and incitement to violence.
Prosecute everyone in the DOJ who fabricated charges against the election fraud protestors entrapped by Pelosi and the FBI.
Eliminate all voting machines in favor of paper ballots alone because it is insane to give centralized control of the totals to Dominion and similar companies.
Eliminate mail-in voting or drop boxes; have only paper ballots with photo ID in person at a local school on that one day only, counted by each party.
Require proof of US citizenship with photo ID to vote.
Publicly fund all congressional and presidential campaigns.
Set term limits for Congress: 6x for the House, and twice for the Senate, so 12 years each, maximum.
Require a roll call vote in both houses of Congress on the verbatim topic of any petition with more than 10% popular support, without amendments.

#politics

All of this could be classified as paleoconservatism



How you can help

Post this platform everywhere on social media. Tell friends about it.

« First        Comments 24 - 63 of 317       Last »     Search these comments

24   BayArea   2017 Feb 19, 12:52pm  

Absolutely legalize cocaine, no question

25   Dan8267   2017 Feb 19, 6:59pm  

rando says

It's the physical spot on earth.

The Earth's core is molten and rotating. That physical spot is in constant motion. Make them choose between the sacred latitude and longitude coordinates or the sacred land. They can't have both.

We could move the land and the holy buildings to some nice spot west of Europe or Africa and give Israel ten times the land it currently has. I think the Israelis are practical enough to appreciate that.

The fact is that the Muslim world is not ready to grow the fuck up and accept living around Jews. It's just not happening.

26   Dan8267   2017 Feb 19, 7:00pm  

BayArea says

Absolutely legalize cocaine, no question

Why should the possession and use of any drug be illegal? How does throwing drug addicts in jail help cure addiction? Sweden has the right model. Swedish models are usually quite beautiful.

27   RealEstateIsBetterThanStocks   2017 Feb 19, 7:30pm  

Booger says

Remove tax incentives for having children.

28   RealEstateIsBetterThanStocks   2017 Feb 19, 7:33pm  

legalize prostitution

29   Patrick   2017 Feb 19, 10:03pm  

RealEstateIsBetterThanStocks says

legalize prostitution

I don't feel very strongly about that either way. I can see that prostitution has some real harms, like psych damage to the prostitute, and spreading disease. But otoh, people should be able to fuck up however they want as long as they are not hurting others.

Dan8267 says

Why should the possession and use of any drug be illegal? How does throwing drug addicts in jail help cure addiction? Sweden has the right model. Swedish models are usually quite beautiful.

Again, if people want to fuck up their own lives, they should have the right. But otoh again, some drugs are pretty damaging and hard to resist once the user is hooked. On the third hand, the drug trade and the drug war itself are massively damaging, mostly because the drug are illegal. The only one I'm absolutely sure should be legal is pot.

30   GNL   2017 Feb 19, 10:08pm  

Patrick says

I want Patrick.net to help do some truly useful politically incorrect things. I'm trying to come up with a list of very simple clear campaigns to make or change laws. Here's my initial group:

  1. mandatory paternity testing at birth with zero child support obligations for non-biological fathers unless they voluntarily adopt the child
  2. a ban on corporate HR and university PC kangaroo courts; no firing or expulsion unless government court determines law has been broken
  3. proof of US citizenship as requirement to vote
  4. mandatory jailing (not fines, jail) of employers of illegal immigrants for 30 days per violatio and seizure of any farm who's owner who uses illegal labor knowingly
  5. short clear written presentation of non-emergency medical costs before treatment and universally fixed costs for emergency treatment
  6. single payer healthcare, no private insurance companies
  7. publicly funded congressional and presidential campaig...

Oh Patrick, how quaint. Simply makes too much sense and takes money out of the pockets of those in control.

31   indigenous   2017 Feb 19, 10:17pm  

You have quite a laundry list, could it be summed up by saying you after individual liberty?

32   Patrick   2017 Feb 19, 10:23pm  

Yes, I was just trying to summarized them, and they are mostly about liberty, about not being manipulated, trapped, marginalized, and exploited.

33   indigenous   2017 Feb 19, 10:25pm  

A red pill type of a deal?

I first heard of you from Chris Martenson, he has a similar purpose.

I have since decided I disagree with him about peak everything, which has proven about peak oil.

34   Patrick   2017 Feb 19, 10:35pm  

I actually met Christ Martenson. He's a smart guy, but he was just very wrong about oil.

I first read in The Skeptical Environmentalist that we're actually proving more reserves per year, every year. It's just harder to get at.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Skeptical_Environmentalist

35   indigenous   2017 Feb 19, 10:39pm  

Not to mention how quickly technology is changing and alternative sources, e.g. fracking is only the beginning which (I believe) in effect has made the US independent on oil. Which has been a goal (the mandate of the dept of energy, BTW why do they exist then?) for many decades, really mind blowing that hardly even is mentioned.

Chris is an example of how the scientific method gets it wrong.

36   CBOEtrader   2017 Feb 19, 11:58pm  

i want women to buy the first drink in a bar. I'm worth it dammit!

37   BayArea   2017 Feb 20, 5:51am  

rando says

Yes, I was just trying to summarized them, and they are mostly about liberty, about not being manipulated, trapped, marginalized, and exploited.

rando says

mandatory paternity testing

should we change the paternity testing statement to "if either party requests" ?

38   Dan8267   2017 Feb 20, 8:04am  

BayArea says

should we change the paternity testing statement to "if either party requests" ?

An often cited reason for legally requiring a man to submit to paternity testing even if he's not agreeing to raising the kid is that the child has a human right to know his or her family medical history, and this right trumps the privacy of either parent. Well, wrong information is way worse than no information. If a child thinks his parent is one person, who's family has a history of heart attacks, when it's really another person, who's family has a history of cancer, decisions made on the basis of that false information could cost the child his life and also endangers his children and grandchildren who also receive incorrect medical history information.

So yes, paternity testing should be mandatory. There is no downside unless you consider revealing affairs to be a downside.

39   BayArea   2017 Feb 20, 8:12am  

I understand what you are saying, but subjecting people to "mandatory" testing in the case that no party involved needs, wants, or is requesting it seems too far?

40   Dan8267   2017 Feb 20, 9:07am  

BayArea says

I understand what you are saying, but subjecting people to "mandatory" testing in the case that no party involved needs, wants, or is requesting it seems too far?

Not today when your family medical history affects treatment and your genetic code is used to determine if you match a crime scene.

I'd be more concern about civil rights involved in mandatory DNA testing people arrested or convicted of crimes and storing their genetic code in databases forever than in parental testing to safeguard against bad medical decisions and preventing paternal fraud.

The actual procedure of paternal testing has essentially zero costs and is completely non-invasive.

41   Patrick   2017 Feb 20, 10:14am  

Dan8267 says

So yes, paternity testing should be mandatory. There is no downside unless you consider revealing affairs to be a downside.

It has a number of very beneficial effects:

1. Women will know about the testing and not even be tempted to try to deceive a man about paternity.
2. Men will know for sure that a kid is theirs, and will feel more attached to their legitimate children simply because there is no doubt, from birth.
3. The health info that Dan mentions
4. Men would not be forced to look distrustful by requesting a test. That in itself could destroy a relationship.

What is the reason not to do it? To protect women's "right" to deceive and exploit one man to raise another man's child?

42   MMR   2017 Feb 20, 10:44am  

Dan8267 says

Voting is a right, not a privilege, and that right cannot be taken away

Agreed with list except this one:

Yeah I don't think people on welfare should be allowed to vote until they get off welfare.

43   RC2006   2017 Feb 20, 8:31pm  

Wow Patrick i agree with it all, time to run.

44   Dan8267   2017 Feb 20, 8:32pm  

rando says

What is the reason not to do it? To protect women's "right" to deceive and exploit one man to raise another man's child?

That's exactly why people oppose it, although they won't admit it.

45   Dan8267   2017 Feb 20, 8:33pm  

MMR says

Yeah I don't think people on welfare should be allowed to vote until they get off welfare.

This country was founded on the principle of no taxation without representation. Your proposal would require rejecting that principle. Even those on welfare pay taxes: real estate taxes, sales taxes, and sometimes even income taxes.

46   justme   2017 Feb 20, 10:19pm  

Good list, Patrick. There is probably about a handful items that I disagree with or would like at least to modify, but overall there is a lot of good in there. I'll sleep on it, think it over for a while.

47   joeyjojojunior   2017 Feb 21, 4:58am  

"That's exactly why people oppose it, although they won't admit it."

I'm not really against it, but I can think of one reason why people would oppose it--who pays for it? Even if it only costs $10/test, that adds up pretty quickly.

48   Patrick   2017 Feb 21, 7:14am  

We already have certain tests required by some states:

Phenylketonuria (PKU) is a genetic disorder. It is routinely tested for during the first few days of life. In many states the test is required, and is frequently done in conjunction with several other tests, such as: Galactosemia, Thalasemia, etc.

Not much of a problem to add this.

49   joeyjojojunior   2017 Feb 21, 7:21am  

"Not much of a problem to add this."

Of course it's not a problem. My question was who pays for it?

50   Patrick   2017 Feb 21, 7:27am  

Who pays for the other tests?

51   joeyjojojunior   2017 Feb 21, 7:31am  

"Who pays for the other tests?"

We all do really through our health insurance. So this would be another added cost to everyone.

52   Patrick   2017 Feb 21, 7:34am  

It would have massive beneficial effects on paternal investment in and attachment to their legitimate children, and would save many men from paying for children that are not their own.

53   BayArea   2017 Feb 21, 12:51pm  

rando says

Dan8267 says

So yes, paternity testing should be mandatory. There is no downside unless you consider revealing affairs to be a downside.

It has a number of very beneficial effects:

1. Women will know about the testing and not even be tempted to try to deceive a man about paternity.

2. Men will know for sure that a kid is theirs, and will feel more attached to their legitimate children simply because there is no doubt, from birth.

3. The health info that Dan mentions

4. Men would not be forced to look distrustful by requesting a test. That in itself could destroy a relationship.

What is the reason not to do it? To protect women's "right" to deceive and exploit one man to raise another man's child?

I've thought about it some more and you and Dan convinced me. I'm on board

54   Allin   2017 Feb 21, 1:34pm  

Two points:
1. With respect to #26, I absolutely disagree with the taxation of inheritance. An inheritance is earnings which have been taxed at least once already. In the case of inherited goods, they have been taxed twice already.
2. Any reform of the tax system would have minimal effect since the federal government does not depend on federal taxes as much as it depends on the Federal Reserve for it funds. This way we are continually taxed without noticing it.

55   Patrick   2017 Feb 21, 2:01pm  

OK, so what to do about the Federal Reserve?

Eliminating the national debt seems like it would neuter the Fed, and that's point 34.

Still working this out and may change the points around more.

56   justme   2017 Feb 21, 3:45pm  

rando says

Eliminating the national debt seems like it would neuter the Fed, and that's point 34.

Not so sure that would be sufficient. FRB does not necessarily depend on the existence of public debt. Private debt can also be accepted as reserves (which is how "money" is created). That is essentially what Quantitative Easing (QE) did -- it increased the amount (quantity) of debt instruments that FRB would accept as reserves, and it also reduced the QUALITY requirement so that also less solid stuff like MBS (Mortgage Backed Securties) was accepted.

Upshot: FRB must be directly neutered, not indirectly by denying it public debt. It is not sufficient.

57   Patrick   2017 Feb 21, 3:47pm  

Should we have no central bank at all? Who then would be the lender of last resort?

Are there any countries without a central bank?

58   justme   2017 Feb 21, 4:01pm  

You can't do without a central bank.

The most essential function of a central bank is to keep the regular banks honest (don't laugh, please :)). A central bank is needed to do that. FRB clears and nets out all interbank debts and payments by assigning ownership/claim on the various banks' reserves that are on deposit at the FRB. That's what's supposed to keep the banks honest. If one weak bank runs out of reserves because the reserves get paid to another bank, then that weak bank had better be able to raise capital quickly, and deposit that capital in some acceptable form (treasury bonds, gold, some acceptably solid debt instrument) at the FRB. Or else the weak bank is, well, bankrupt.

In practice, the FRB is not doing its job properly. All kinds of crap is accepted as reserves when there is trouble, as in 2008 and the aftermath.
I would say that easily 99% of the population do not understand how this works, nor how it is supposed to work. I did not myself for many years. Anyway, I don't want to start a gigantic discussion about FRB or central banks in general, but the above IS the essence of it. All the other machinery of the FRB is just sleazy financial machinations used to protect banks and impose losses on the general public.

59   Patrick   2017 Feb 21, 4:08pm  

justme says

Upshot: FRB must be directly neutered, not indirectly by denying it public debt. It is not sufficient.

OK, so what do you mean by "directly neutered" then? How would you do it?

60   justme   2017 Feb 21, 4:14pm  

FRB would be neutered if it was ONLY allowed to be a clearing house for interbank debt and payments, and every single transaction of the FRB in that regard should be out in the open, including the daily reserve balance of every client bank.

FRB would then not be allowed to extend credit, not allowed to conduct open market operations (buying and selling debt), therefore not allowed to manipulate interest rates, and not be allowed to regulate the fractional reserve ratio,

That would be a pure clearinghouse central bank. An honest system.

61   Patrick   2017 Feb 21, 4:18pm  

What about bank runs? Should there not be a way to create credit to keep bank runs from collapsing the whole banking system?

62   justme   2017 Feb 21, 4:24pm  

The problem of bank runs was the (very convenient) rationale for starting the FRB in 1913. No more bank runs (hah!). But then it turned out that FRB morphed into a monster that always privatized the profits and always socialized the losses.

How do you prevent bank runs? By enforcing a low fractional reserve ratio, strict lending standards, not forcing abnormally low interest rates, and thereby not blowing bubbles that burst, and cause bank runs.

All of this is simple in theory, but in practice there is always someone that will try to benefit from corrupting the system. That's why the system must be transparent and highly constrained.

63   mell   2017 Feb 21, 6:27pm  

On the subject of healthcare a base emergency single payer coverage may be ok, but there should be options to both opt out and add on via private insurance. Private insurance by itself is not a bad thing, it actually works well in many countries that have a combo model (e.g. Germany) as long as you allow free market competition. Enforcing the Clayton/Sherman and RICO acts is as important if not more important than the type of insurance. Even a completely private model would work as longs as these are enforced and there is full price transparency.

« First        Comments 24 - 63 of 317       Last »     Search these comments

Please register to comment:

api   best comments   contact   latest images   memes   one year ago   random   suggestions   gaiste