How political ideas become real

There are many legitimate reasons to criticize a politician's proposal. You can think it will be bad for you, bad for society as a whole, unworkable, too expensive, too invasive, etc... But criticizing a proposal simply because it "won't happen" since not enough other politicians currently support it is beyond idiotic. Sadly, though, this is the logic behind the criticisms -- coming from many Clinton-leaning pundits -- of Bernie Sanders' single payer health care plan.

At the simplest level, this is how political change normally happens: Someone comes up with an idea, which at first is often labeled radical. They manage to convince a few bold politicians to support it. If these politicians do well, they in turn convince more politicians to support the idea until there is enough support to change the law.

There was a time abolishing slavery among Western nations was seen as radical and unrealistic, given the truly massive, entrenched money involved in the trade. Yet a few politicians started to advocate the idea. Eventually that lead to a few more, and after a while the disgraceful practice was finally outlawed. Similarly, there was a time when women's suffrage was seen as radical and unworkable since it would depend on men voting to dilute their own voting power. Yet a few daring politicians backed the idea. They got more politicians to back the women's suffrage movement, and eventually we got equality. It has been the same story for basically every major policy change so far, and it will be the same story for any major changes moving forward.

While it is true that not enough members of Congress support single payer for it to currently be approved, the only way to get to that point is to encourage politicians who have officially backed the idea. Then, they will put pressure on other politicians to follow suit. That is why you elect a president who supports ideas you agree with. If you honestly don't think having the president advocate for an idea for eight years won't dramatically change where their party's congressional members stand on the issue, you haven't been paying attention. The New Deal, Civil Rights Act, the Iraq war, and same-sex marriage are all examples of the strong push of a President changing how their party and the country acts.

More importantly, if you claim Sanders' plan is "flawed" because it currently won't pass Congress, then you basically have to admit every single proposal from Clinton or Sanders is equally flawed. The chance of Democrats winning full control of Congress this year is extremely slim, and there is no way the Republican House will vote for any of their ideas.

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Don't overlook self-driving buses

The idea of self-driving cars gets a lot of attention. Even President Obama is calling on the government to spend $4 billion developing the technology. While these vehicles could potentially be a truly transformative product, there is relatively little discussion of the huge intermediate steps that will come first. I suspect the next big thing in transportation, well before true self-driving cars are widely used, will be self-driving city buses.

We are not far away from having cars that can drive themselves most of the time. While this would be a great convenience to many and a huge public health improvement due to the reduction in accidents, it would not be a truly disruptive technology. A car that can drive itself 90% of the time will still need a driver behind the wheel at all times, so the basic ownership/usage paradigm would remain. Getting to the point where a car can be trusted to truly drive itself 100% of the time requires figuring out how to deal with all of our country's dirt roads, heavily pot-holed roads, bad weather, and poorly labeled streets. These vehicles would need to be programmed to handle every mile of the millions of miles of roads in the United States before it will really change the paradigm.

Producing a truly self-driving city bus is a much easier challenge. You only need to program it to handle its one route that is just a few miles long -- a task made even easier if you combine it with bus only lanes. Without the cost and physical limitations of human drivers, cities could run more buses, more frequently, 24 hours a day, and on more routes.

Better, cheaper buses is not the sexiest idea. It doesn't generate as much interest from tech, media or political leaders --since none of them ride public buses-- but it could have huge implications.

To start with, it would improve the lives of millions of low income Americans who disproportionately rely on public transportation. It could also improve job prospects for people in poor areas by making it easier to access employment sites. Helping low-income people is only the tip of the iceberg.

More importantly, good public transit creates a feedback loop, and self-driving buses will probably be the easiest and most effective way to improve it. The better the public transit is, the more people  use it. The more people that use it, the more businesses and developers invest around public transit routes, which in turn makes more people more likely to use said routes. Already we are seeing an increasing desire for living in the city proper and walkable neighborhoods. Self-driving buses could significantly accelerate this trend, with big implications for urban development.

On sale at Amazon

My first sci-fi novel, Cobalt Slave, is now on sale at Amazon.

Cobalt Slave now on sale!

Cobalt Slave cover

My first science fiction novel, Cobalt Slave, is now on sale at Amazon! 

Cobalt is a basic element necessary for human life, and on New Eden the Public Health Department is the only entity with access to it. This monopoly over cobalt has given the Public Health Department the power over life and death, which has allowed them to rule the planet unchanged for a century. Yet with the advanced technology brought from Earth starting to break down, others both within and from outside see an opening to seize control. 

If you have enjoyed my blogging or my policy writing in the past, please consider checking out my novel and leaving a positive review. It is only $2.99 to purchase or you can read it for free if you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription.

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Cobalt Slave

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Thank you,

Jon Walker

Why Silicon Valley and the Bay Area make me so depressed

Ranch houses in San Jose

I'm spending Christmas vacation with my fiancee's family in San Jose, and while I'm having a very nice time enjoying the sunshine, the whole Bay Area always makes me very pessimistic as a policy expert.

Whether you claim to care about global warming, income inequality, and/or improving public health, what you should really want to see is a huge housing boom in the Bay Area based around building new walkable urban centers. The mild climate means houses and apartments in the area need to use relatively little energy for heating and cooling. The climate also means that if new communities were built densely enough, it would be easy for people to walk or bike to work, which is both very good for the environment and for individuals' health. Finally, more housing in the area would allow more people to take advantage of the robust local economy.

Since the Bay Area is full of liberals that claim to care profoundly about these issues and highly educated tech companies that say their goals are to improve the world with things like shared economy apps and green tech, a massive push for new urbanization in the region should theoretically have huge political support here. Yet despite the money, the need, and the space being here for such a change, it is only the lack of political will holding it back. For example the very wealth city of San Jose has less than half the population density of Philadelphia and if Oakland simply had the same density as San Francisco there would be room for an extra 600,000 people in the area. In fact, the Bay Area is producing new housing at a truly pathetically slow rate. Instead, people in the area are fighting more urbanization based on nebulous, selfish goals like preferring the look of ranch houses or just not liking change.

Even in a place where the people and companies claim to care about improving the environment, people aren't willing to embrace change or just aren't capable of building the local political will to back proven solutions. That makes me very pessimistic about the ability of good policy to win.

Cobalt Slave

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What if big brains are just too heavy to get to space?

I have an interesting possible solution to the Fermi Paradox. To put it simply, the paradox is that it seems there should be millions of planets that could support advanced life but we have seen no evidence of other advanced space faring life in our galaxy.

What if big brains are only useful on planets with significant gravity, but significant gravity makes it almost impossible for civilizations to build vehicles to escape?

Let's assume that, for the most part, the caloric cost of a large brain remains roughly the same regardless of gravity, but the cost of physically moving it would change dramatically. On Earth our gravity makes it worthwhile for many animals to expend a significant amount of calories using their brains to think before they spend calories on moving around, but low gravity could tip the balance the other way. Imagine an Earth-like planet but with half our gravity. There, using basic instincts combined with extremely quick reflexes might be the dominant strategy. With the cost of moving reduced, the value of thinking about the best action beforehand would be diminished.

On a planet with twice our gravity, it might make even more sense, in terms of evolution, to favor spending precious calories on thinking over moving. This would imply intelligent life would be far more common on larger planets, but the problem is every small increase in gravity makes it dramatically harder for intelligent life to build a rocket ship or a space elevator to get off the planet.

Maybe the Goldilocks level of gravity for the development of a space faring civilization -- heavy enough to encourage the evolution of intelligence but light enough to be able to easily build space vehicles -- is very narrow.

It is possible there are thousands or millions of civilizations out there which are effectively trapped in their gravity wells.

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