If you are in the camp that is okay to watch things continue to fall apart for the next four months so that Trump can’t take credit for a turnaround and win the election, I urge you to reconsider. We do not want to see what December 2020 looks like if this country does not start pulling in the right direction right away. Winter is cold, people are jobless, gunslingers of every kind are rioting and, as of last week, the days are getting shorter — there’s just no time to lose.
We have one shot to break through the crisis of the century. We can only spend this post-COVID stimulus money ONCE. So we better spend it right. It has to be transformative. It’s sink or swim.
We had plenty of problems before this year, and we might have hobbled on with them through another decade. We don’t have that option anymore.
We’re going to work our way into the new world now with one blowout spending bill that busts open the gates on the “new-economy” with education and entrepreneurialism.
For the next six months, the current administration should prioritize:
1. Building black businesses — We can double African-American average earnings within one year by infusing entrepreneurial incubators like Harlem Entrepreneurial Micro-Grant Initiative with funding to make massive transformative change in their communities, and by working with states to remove licensing redtape.
“When you restore the black community, you are actually restoring America” Daffney Moore, St. Louis Opportunity Zone
If doubling sounds too ambitious, it’s not. According to MarketWatch, the typical black household has 1/10 the income of the typical white household. We’ll double it this year and we’ll double it again next year. (And the next year, and the next year.)
2. National investment in technical training — We can bring our economy ten years into the future within one year. In fact, this accelerated change has already happened due to COVID (see: Scott Galloway); now it’s just a question of whether we catch up to it or are left in the dust. By making significant federal investment in technology and science in middle-America cities, we can create high-quality jobs and innovation that benefit the entire country. By 2021, we could have 10 million newly-skilled programmers, data scientists, technicians, etc. who will begin to improve and add efficiencies to the businesses around them, improving their local economies, and go on to develop into specialists of this century’s most advanced in-demand skills. We can’t fight automation and we shouldn’t; but we can make everybody an automator. There is no shortage of work to be done.
Watch a replay of Jump-Starting America: How Investing in Technology & Science Revives Economies
3. National investment in citizen cybersecurity — It is an urgent matter of national security that citizens take control of their devices and data and are trained as soldiers against the daily attacks that are chipping away at this country. Military cybersecurity professionals across the nation could partner with libraries, schools, and community centers to hold classes in personal protection.
“If you aren’t a combatant, you are the territory.” Renee DiResta, The Digital Maginot Line
Campaign Promise #1: Replace the carceral industrial complex — The cost of keeping up the highest incarceration rate in the world is grossly understated. Mass incarceration is debilitating entire communities, and the U.S. is losing trillions in potential GDP because of it. The real cost is the cost plus the opportunity cost. By replacing the carceral industrial complex with a new machinery of incentives aligned toward outcomes we actually want, we will make the poor rich and transform the economy.
This is a National Security issue. Foreign money is like corn syrup: it’s in everything. Do you think that somehow doesn’t include police unions and the rest of the carceral supply chain?
Additionally/relatedly:
The CIA will be disbanded and the building repurposed. A worldwide architectural design and program planning process should take place. A new distributed intelligence organization will be organized.
The NSA will have to be repurposed and there will be opportunity for some FOIA citizen rights. It will be better to get ahead of lawsuits against the United States by duly dealing with citizen data (including appropriately distributing each data block / cell to its appropriate holder in an organized and secure manner, and decisions about how to care for the data of the deceased).
United States and foreign companies determined to be colluding with foreign nation (including: participating in censorship and silencing Americans abroad) shall be charged a higher corporate tax of a percentage commensurate to the company’s coerciveness of Americans, and corrosiveness to democratic principles of freedom of expression and other $AmericanValues at home and abroad.
Additionally, and to secure the previous and all future laws/rules: To aid future efforts in further government to citizen services and rights secured, all legislation shall be written using variables (such as a $PowerShell variable where $ denotes word as a variable). So when we say democratic principles we actually use $DemocraticPrinciples to immediately be reminded of the principles, each listed as an item in a recallable array. Using as many variables as is necessary for maintaining logic and clarity will help citizens stay aware, informed, and prepared to exercise their Sixth Amendment responsibilities. (Right now these are only exercised 5% of the time, partially due to unavailability of juries.)
Additionally and something to ponder: We should consider ideas to separate Laws from Rules where only Laws (eg holy laws, Ten Commandments style) are enforced with the full power of the state, whereas Rules (eg taxes) are just rules of the game. These Rules would have other means of enforcement (not-cops) that never include death or imprisonment-as-punishment; instead Rules would be enforced with paid-later penalties (understanding that the offenders are not in a position to “pay” now or they likely wouldn’t be in the position, whatever it is; payments should be in kind with the “crime” and never excessive); there should be no payments demanded by the state without viable pathways presented and opportunities to reform. This is just one way I can think of to prevent injustice and deaths like the death of Eric Garner and to replace police interactions with e.g. homeless. Instead of police, other qualified “players” “enforce”. These players do not come as a threat (no immediate demand), and these crimes are not of the mortal kind. See my article on Replacing The Police.
Campaign Promise #2: Replace disease care with health care. 3% of Americans are considered “healthy” by Mayo Clinic standards. (I can no longer find this source; please comment if you have a number and source. 3% as I recall meant no medications or ailments.) This means a huge amount of lost economic output and familial and societal brokenness. I hypothesize that there is something fundamentally and intrinsically backward about “negative services” (services that are purchased with the hope of never using them: like health insurance and the police). We need positive services that actively help us navigate this complex, low-trust world, services that help us live. We must align the incentives of insurance and medicine with citizen health. Citizen health will be extremely powerful for the economy. #ItemizedIncentiveAlignment #ReIncentForGood
Campaign Promise #3: Secure supply chains. The first way we’ll secure the supply chain is to grow American manufacturing, starting with electrical components — a small but crucial part of every item, and currently the bottleneck on home appliances and other out of stock items. The second way we’ll do this is to reduce demand for foreign imports by writing a repairability clause into all future trade agreements: henceforth, items shipped to the U.S. must be repairable or face a nonrepairability tariff. Engineers will write the rubric; it may include a removable chassis, replaceable (and purchaseable) components. This will have a secondary effect of growing the repair economy, which will help strengthen and distribute knowledge about manufacturing and electronics across every city in America, which will indubitably lead to much ingenuity and invention.
If you are a fiscal conservative and hate the idea of federal spending, well, I wager it’s how it’s been and it’s not going to stop now. The best we can hope for is that it’s spent in a way that 1) actually helps people 2) gives the world at least a little confidence in us. The success of the people and the economy is a national security issue. We don’t want to give anyone a reason to give up on us and call in debt early.
If anybody has a way to make real any of these ideas, please take them.
“I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.” ― Frederick Douglass
