Here’s a list of things that I think would not be controversial among economists and relevant experts but nonetheless seem very unlikely to happen any time soon:
Much more free trade—reduce friction, trade barriers, and tariffs. Consider payments to smooth out pain to short term losers
Greatly reduced zoning and housing regulations. Housing stock is artificially expensive (at least in most places in the US, especially the Bay Area) due to excessive local regulations and zoning.
Also no more rent control. Do you want to make sure there’s not enough places for people poor people to live? Because rent control is how you make sure there’s not enough places for poor people to live
Carbon tax. It’s the most efficient way to internalize the global warming costs. It’ll never be adopted because the price sensitivity to gasoline is way higher than it is to e.g. electricity, so one blanket number will piss off consumers too much
Greatly reduce drug approval costs. Accepting approvals from similar agencies overseas is one approach. Greatly expanded “right to try” rules might be another. A more free market approach might be best.
Also make almost all (actually all?) illegal drugs legal. The enforcement costs and social costs are ridiculously high, far higher than the benefits from the war on drugs
Payments for organ transplants. Supply is much lower than demand, and there’s no price signal or reason for people to create more supply, so lots of people will die from a lack of a kidney while everyone else has a spare
Charter schools/voucher schools. This might be more controversial among “relevant experts” depending on what group you think that is, but the arguments against are very poor and the arguments for seem much stronger to me
Get rid of ~all tax deductions. The mortgage interest deduction is regressive and distortionary. The employer-provided health care deduction is distortionary and locks people into jobs. I personally benefit a ton from the charitable deduction but it’s also regressive
Get rid of the corporate income tax. We want corporations to make money and invest it. Tax income to people, not to companies
Greatly reduce occupational licensing. Some of those may make some sense, but most are just thinly veiled job protection for the existing guild members
Shorten copyrights (35 years or life of the creator, whichever is longer?), shorten patents, no software or business method patents
I don’t think there’s a single explanation for why none of those policies seems likely to happen, though at least there’s substantial movement on the drug legalization front recently.
Of course there’s a single explanation: in a democracy, everyone gets a vote. Not ‘everyone’ knows enough about these subjects to understand why the experts are right. Moreover, in a representative democracy, there is a second layer where entrenched interests—who guard virtually everything you listed—get to bribe politicians to go against the preferences of their constituents.
I do have to ask about one issue on this list: regarding free trade. The argument has been made that China applies indirect tariffs to U.S. made goods. Specifically, by either (1) outright banning entire categories of good (no tariff, just ban) such as the Google App Store. (2) Subsidizing heavily companies making a competing product. So, for example, a U.S. smartphone chip vendor can technically sell their parts on the Chinese market without a tariff, but the Chinese domestic competitors to them get billions of dollars in subsidies and thus can price a comparable part for even less.
I don’t know how to deal with this other than the obvious, which is to fight China’s implicit tariffs with explicit tariffs. (which is what is being tried, albeit with a great deal of complaining)
I’m sure there are some hard cases wrt free trade, but we could move a long way towards much more free trade without worrying too much about the corner cases (i.e. allow tariffs on those cases).
Opt-out rather than opt-in. While I would rather cryonics were also opt-out, the point is that by default someone should be opted-in to be an organ donor unless they go out of their way to express a religious preference otherwise.
post humous or pre? Blood can’t be donated without side effects and pain on the part of the donor. While a deceased motorcylist doesn’t need those organs any longer.
So this is a different issue. Current medical establishment has decided to declare living bodies “dead” the instant something major breaks they don’t know how to fix. Someone is not actually dead for some period of time afterwards, possibly hours, where no possible technology could recover their mind after that. They also have the notion of “brain dead” where again everything else works and a large amount of the brain may still be alive but the wiring for breathing and a few other base reflexes is damaged. No way to fix that so off to the incinerator they go.
I strongly feel these processes are barbaric and may one day be seen as outright evil, but nevertheless, working within this framework, organ donation for the bodies that medical systems were going to destroy anyway does make sense.
A dystopian version would be some “rent a biker” scheme, where bikers could get free bikes, but when they die their bodies belong to the sponsor. Given lots of free bikes, it would become a popular hobby.
Here’s a list of things that I think would not be controversial among economists and relevant experts but nonetheless seem very unlikely to happen any time soon:
Much more free trade—reduce friction, trade barriers, and tariffs. Consider payments to smooth out pain to short term losers
Greatly reduced zoning and housing regulations. Housing stock is artificially expensive (at least in most places in the US, especially the Bay Area) due to excessive local regulations and zoning.
Also no more rent control. Do you want to make sure there’s not enough places for people poor people to live? Because rent control is how you make sure there’s not enough places for poor people to live
Carbon tax. It’s the most efficient way to internalize the global warming costs. It’ll never be adopted because the price sensitivity to gasoline is way higher than it is to e.g. electricity, so one blanket number will piss off consumers too much
Greatly reduce drug approval costs. Accepting approvals from similar agencies overseas is one approach. Greatly expanded “right to try” rules might be another. A more free market approach might be best.
Also make almost all (actually all?) illegal drugs legal. The enforcement costs and social costs are ridiculously high, far higher than the benefits from the war on drugs
Payments for organ transplants. Supply is much lower than demand, and there’s no price signal or reason for people to create more supply, so lots of people will die from a lack of a kidney while everyone else has a spare
Charter schools/voucher schools. This might be more controversial among “relevant experts” depending on what group you think that is, but the arguments against are very poor and the arguments for seem much stronger to me
Get rid of ~all tax deductions. The mortgage interest deduction is regressive and distortionary. The employer-provided health care deduction is distortionary and locks people into jobs. I personally benefit a ton from the charitable deduction but it’s also regressive
Get rid of the corporate income tax. We want corporations to make money and invest it. Tax income to people, not to companies
Greatly reduce occupational licensing. Some of those may make some sense, but most are just thinly veiled job protection for the existing guild members
Shorten copyrights (35 years or life of the creator, whichever is longer?), shorten patents, no software or business method patents
I don’t think there’s a single explanation for why none of those policies seems likely to happen, though at least there’s substantial movement on the drug legalization front recently.
Of course there’s a single explanation: in a democracy, everyone gets a vote. Not ‘everyone’ knows enough about these subjects to understand why the experts are right. Moreover, in a representative democracy, there is a second layer where entrenched interests—who guard virtually everything you listed—get to bribe politicians to go against the preferences of their constituents.
I do have to ask about one issue on this list: regarding free trade. The argument has been made that China applies indirect tariffs to U.S. made goods. Specifically, by either (1) outright banning entire categories of good (no tariff, just ban) such as the Google App Store. (2) Subsidizing heavily companies making a competing product. So, for example, a U.S. smartphone chip vendor can technically sell their parts on the Chinese market without a tariff, but the Chinese domestic competitors to them get billions of dollars in subsidies and thus can price a comparable part for even less.
I don’t know how to deal with this other than the obvious, which is to fight China’s implicit tariffs with explicit tariffs. (which is what is being tried, albeit with a great deal of complaining)
I’m sure there are some hard cases wrt free trade, but we could move a long way towards much more free trade without worrying too much about the corner cases (i.e. allow tariffs on those cases).
Yes but arguably this isn’t a corner case. It’s the majority of the trade that matters, to both the usa and china.
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Opt-out rather than opt-in. While I would rather cryonics were also opt-out, the point is that by default someone should be opted-in to be an organ donor unless they go out of their way to express a religious preference otherwise.
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post humous or pre? Blood can’t be donated without side effects and pain on the part of the donor. While a deceased motorcylist doesn’t need those organs any longer.
-
So this is a different issue. Current medical establishment has decided to declare living bodies “dead” the instant something major breaks they don’t know how to fix. Someone is not actually dead for some period of time afterwards, possibly hours, where no possible technology could recover their mind after that. They also have the notion of “brain dead” where again everything else works and a large amount of the brain may still be alive but the wiring for breathing and a few other base reflexes is damaged. No way to fix that so off to the incinerator they go.
I strongly feel these processes are barbaric and may one day be seen as outright evil, but nevertheless, working within this framework, organ donation for the bodies that medical systems were going to destroy anyway does make sense.
Maybe that would incentivize lab-grown organs? Which seems like a better long-term solution anyway.
Have autonomous vehicles crash at a rate adjusted to meet the demand for transplants.
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A dystopian version would be some “rent a biker” scheme, where bikers could get free bikes, but when they die their bodies belong to the sponsor. Given lots of free bikes, it would become a popular hobby.
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