Running thoughts

[archerships]

When I go running, I often daydream about ideas that I have rolling around in my head. Most of them are probably crap, but I thought I'd post them just so they don't slip away. I make no claims about their workability, originality, ethics, etc.

* Solution to the high cost of housing for students, homeless, etc: Train them to build liveaboard sailboats. Middle class families would let people build boats in their back yard, and liveaboard for 1 year. In exchange, liveaboard tenant must either a) given them the boat after 2 years b) build them a new one.

* Floating cities. Can you grow an island? Are coral reefs air tight? Use same materials used for artificial blood vessels to create large hollow spheres. As coral grows around it, the material is subsumed by the coral. Result is a living floating island. What about ferrocement spheres? Tubes? Boxes?

* Bad neighbor credit agency. Next door neighbors play loud rap music at 2:00 a.m.? Fight and scream? Leave a dismantled Chevy impala in the driveway for 6 months? Leave trash, garbage strewn on lawn? Build house shaped liked giant nude woman? Report them to Bad Neighbor Credit Agency. When moving to new city, you could check the credit reports of the surrounding houses.

* Ship obnoxious homeless (obnoxious = trespass, public defecation, belligerent, smell bad) people to autonomous communities in Nevada/Arizona desert. Train them to build their own house, grow their own food. If they refuse to work, let them starve. Send them for one month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year increments if they repeatedly offend.

* Politicians use taxpayers own money to fight against political reform. Libertarians don't (directly) get any money by fighting government, but pro-government forces benefit directly. Beneficiaries of libertarian efforts may not even be aware that they are being benefited, or even be born yet (future children who will have to pay off U.S. debt). Example: aside from ideological satisfaction, how is Jason Sorens going to benefit from FSP? Does lib. activism require vow of poverty? Solution: offer to buy bonds that pay off in percentage (say, 5%) of annual increase in real income over 10 years. If no "real" increase, bond pays nothing. If real income increases by $2,000/year, then bond pays $100/year. How to prevent cheating by bond issuer? Audit of random sampling of bond issuers?

Comments

[rah.livejournal.com]

Bad neighbor credit agency

Except for the loudness, this is what we here in Vegas have Homeowner's Associations for. ;-)

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Homeowner's Associations serve much the same function. But what I had in mind was a national organization like TRW or Experian. You might even have different classes of neighbors. For example, leaving a broken down Chevy impala might not be a bad thing in an "artists neighborhood".

[ex0teric.livejournal.com]

I don't quite understand the last one... can you clarify?
I don't get who is buying the bonds, and how they relate to political reform.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

The buyer = libertarian working for political reform.
The seller = person who wants real income to increase.

The connection between political reform and the bonds is that if libertarian political reforms are in place, one would predict that real income would rise. If real income rises, then libertarian activist makes money from the bond.

[ex0teric.livejournal.com]

Beautiful. You should be president, dude.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Yeah, floating city ideas have been around for a while. What's perhaps new is using ideas from artificial organ construction and permaculture to "grow" an island, rather than "construct" it. Check out patrissimo's journal if you're interested in 'seasteading'.

[missalicia1973.livejournal.com]

Have you read Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the
Magic Kingdom? Bad neighbor credit agency sounds like Whuffie.

http://www.craphound.com/down/

[crasch.livejournal.com]

No, I haven't read it yet. Thanks for the pointer. It looks like an interesting read.

[lemoncake.livejournal.com]

I would support the Bad Neighbor Credit Agency! I had to deal with some horrible neighbors for a while at my old place. Besides throwing parties on weeknights that would spill into common walkways without asking/telling any of the other tenants, they would stay up past 3am on weeknights and yell at one another while playing video games and playing really loud rap music and singing along (and they're all soooo white, so it's actually pretty funny). All of this wouldn't matter so much if they weren't assholes to the security guards that were supposed to enforce "quiet hours" from 10pm-10am, and didn't turn their music right back up the instant the guards left.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is precisely this kind of neighbor the agency would be intended to warn others of. Glad they got booted out.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

you reminded me of this, from Landsburg (I think):
if inequality is inherently bad, then since our children will be richer than us, we should borrow a lot of money from them by increasing the national debt.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Yes, but a) in principle, I think it's wrong to obligate someone to give others money, when they have no say in the matter b) is real income rising faster than the median amount owed by each citizen?

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

By the way, I think Landsburg intended it as "proof by contradiction" that it is not the case that "inequality is inherently bad". If it is, then we get this absurd conclusion.