Thinking at the federal level, and mostly thinking about big stuff, but not claiming either choice is optimal. Explanation omitted because I don’t have time to explain everything. Not systematic; not optimized for tractability; unordered.
FDA reform.
Biosecurity: regulation of hazardous research + pandemic preparedness + promoting biosecurity research.
Medical licensing reciprocity (h/t Scott Alexander).
Hospitals: the federal government could better-coordinate hospitals and make them more transparent (h/t Scott Alexander).
Fund the IRS: auditing the rich cheating on taxes is an efficient way to increase revenue; see, e.g., Matt Yglesias. Additionally, replace private debt collection, which is quite inefficient.
Housing & zoning deregulation and increasing supply of housing (h/t Matt Yglesias).
Law enforcement & criminal justice reform: see, e.g., Eliezer Yudkowsky.
End corporate welfare: especially fossil fuel and agriculture subsidies.
Officials involved in legislation or regulation shouldn’t invest in specific companies, nor should their spouses, nor perhaps sufficiently senior staffers. Perhaps they should not invest in specific industries/sectors/markets either, depending.
Legislate Bostock v. Clayton County: explicitly make it illegal to discriminate in employment based on sexual orientation or transgender status. (I omitted some other obvious-to-me-but-controversial-sounding policies, but LGBT rights poll pretty well and I don’t think this would be as controversial as it might sound.)
Other areas where I have at least a vague sense that there are potential uncontroversial reforms: education, immigration, health insurance & prescriptions, animal welfare.
End “Buy American”. (Disclaimers: pet issue, relatively intractable.) 97% of spending by US federal agencies and programs goes to US firms (and often only for goods produced in the US with US materials), not because that is most efficient but because it is generally required by law. This results in significantly higher costs with minimal benefits for the US economy or national security (and may have negative effects on international relations). Miscellaneous made-in-US and made-in-US-with-materials-produced-in-US requirements exacerbate waste.
+1 to almost everything else suggested in this post.
I agree in part; I confess I was more thinking of the laxer “could be uncontroversial in a few years” standard (and more thinking of problems than policies). But at the least, I think narrow reforms in all but 5 and 10 could be uncontroversial. We don’t need to abolish the FDA or “Buy American” to make improvements.
Aside from biosecurity and possibly medical license reciprocity, I think these are all pretty controversial.
Without checking the numbers, I’m pretty sure at least some of 7 and 9 are also quite popular (and maybe part of 6, depending on scope and framing). And parts of 4 wouldn’t have opponents.
Edit in brief reply to korin’s reply below: I agree a little, and I apologize for not elaborating on solutions. But the following would all have few enemies if done well: make hospitals transparent, make hospitals better able to talk to each other, nationalize prisons, give body cams teeth, abolish qualified immunity, abolish bail.
I suspect part of why these seem uncontroversial is that they’re not specific enough. Everyone agrees that we should make hospitals/housing/criminal justice better, but if you actually propose a specific policy to do that it, will give money to corporate interests/be socialist/make things better for ‘bad’ people/make some subgroup worse off/etc.
Thinking at the federal level, and mostly thinking about big stuff, but not claiming either choice is optimal. Explanation omitted because I don’t have time to explain everything. Not systematic; not optimized for tractability; unordered.
FDA reform.
Biosecurity: regulation of hazardous research + pandemic preparedness + promoting biosecurity research.
Medical licensing reciprocity (h/t Scott Alexander).
Hospitals: the federal government could better-coordinate hospitals and make them more transparent (h/t Scott Alexander).
Fund the IRS: auditing the rich cheating on taxes is an efficient way to increase revenue; see, e.g., Matt Yglesias. Additionally, replace private debt collection, which is quite inefficient.
Housing & zoning deregulation and increasing supply of housing (h/t Matt Yglesias).
Law enforcement & criminal justice reform: see, e.g., Eliezer Yudkowsky.
End corporate welfare: especially fossil fuel and agriculture subsidies.
Officials involved in legislation or regulation shouldn’t invest in specific companies, nor should their spouses, nor perhaps sufficiently senior staffers. Perhaps they should not invest in specific industries/sectors/markets either, depending.
Legislate Bostock v. Clayton County: explicitly make it illegal to discriminate in employment based on sexual orientation or transgender status. (I omitted some other obvious-to-me-but-controversial-sounding policies, but LGBT rights poll pretty well and I don’t think this would be as controversial as it might sound.)
Other areas where I have at least a vague sense that there are potential uncontroversial reforms: education, immigration, health insurance & prescriptions, animal welfare.
End “Buy American”. (Disclaimers: pet issue, relatively intractable.) 97% of spending by US federal agencies and programs goes to US firms (and often only for goods produced in the US with US materials), not because that is most efficient but because it is generally required by law. This results in significantly higher costs with minimal benefits for the US economy or national security (and may have negative effects on international relations). Miscellaneous made-in-US and made-in-US-with-materials-produced-in-US requirements exacerbate waste.
+1 to almost everything else suggested in this post.
Aside from biosecurity and possibly medical license reciprocity, I think these are all pretty controversial.
Outside of LessWrong, everyone loves the FDA and how they “protect” us.
The IRS funding plan was discussed in NR (a major Republican media company): https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/11/when-it-comes-to-the-irs-bigger-is-not-better/
Housing reform would allow undesirable people to buy houses, and would probably make house prices drop.
Corporate welfare “creates jobs”.
etc.
Not saying any of these are bad ideas, but they’re not uncontroversial.
I agree in part; I confess I was more thinking of the laxer “could be uncontroversial in a few years” standard (and more thinking of problems than policies). But at the least, I think narrow reforms in all but 5 and 10 could be uncontroversial. We don’t need to abolish the FDA or “Buy American” to make improvements.
Without checking the numbers, I’m pretty sure at least some of 7 and 9 are also quite popular (and maybe part of 6, depending on scope and framing). And parts of 4 wouldn’t have opponents.
Edit in brief reply to korin’s reply below: I agree a little, and I apologize for not elaborating on solutions. But the following would all have few enemies if done well: make hospitals transparent, make hospitals better able to talk to each other, nationalize prisons, give body cams teeth, abolish qualified immunity, abolish bail.
I suspect part of why these seem uncontroversial is that they’re not specific enough. Everyone agrees that we should make hospitals/housing/criminal justice better, but if you actually propose a specific policy to do that it, will give money to corporate interests/be socialist/make things better for ‘bad’ people/make some subgroup worse off/etc.