Thoughts & Ideas posts page 3

Taxes: Income Tax Simplification of Forms

in

Usonian income taxes are crazy complicated and a pain to deal with. They shouldn’t be, especially for normal people: Only people performing complex income related activities should have any need for a tax accountant. There are so many modifiers to promote certain behavior and demote other, but it is very inconsistent and confusing and irrelevant stuff often has to be read through by people for whom it doesn’t apply. Promoting behaviors is good, but it needs to be simplified drastically.

Continue reading post "Taxes: Income Tax Simplification of Forms"

Post-Suicide Q&A

in

It would be nice if you could field questions after killing yourself. Then maybe people could understand why and perhaps be better able to handle others in similar situations who might be considering offing themselves as well. You can write up all that you want before you off yourself, but you can never really know what people would actually ask or who would even be interested enough to ask. There are many nuances in conveying information, and you probably won’t be able to convey your messages in exactly the way that the people you are sending them to need them to be to truly understand what you are trying to say. There can be no follow up questions, which are usually very important for homing in on what the asker wants to know and the answerer wants to say. And of course there is no guarantee that the people who you are sending those messages to or who want to know some answers will actually read them. Reading can be quite tedious, especially the voluminous amounts that a suicidal has to convey and the great boringness it most likely has to most other people. It is, of course, also tedious to write, and you probably in the end just won’t right all you want to before you go through with it. Most people probably have some hope or feeling that it won’t actually happen, and the last bit where they are sure it will happen, they are in poor condition for writing profusely and well. There is, of course, no way to really implement this idea, just thinking.

Socialisms: Government Provision of Essentials

in

This is somewhat a revisit and modified version (probably a better one at that) of an idea I discussed earlier. The revisit is in part because of the recent health care legislation. Some argue that health care is a “right” not afforded to some, something that everyone should be given regardless of income on ethical grounds. I’m not sure why health care is considered more essential than food, water, shelter, etc, but it is certainly where a lot of money is spent and made.

The government will provide relatively bare essentials deemed required for survival. These will include food, water, shelter, clothing, protection, education, occupation, health care, and probably some others that I can’t think of. They will be provided in whole by the government, directly, no intermediaries such as with food stamps, medicare, etc and with no fees. Provisions will be bare essential: For instance, food provisions will be limited to calculated nutritional need, and there will in theory be no overuse possible. The government services will be minimums, and will not place any limits on private provision of them that will favor the government provision. Quality will range from mediocre to craptacular, not only to follow real world precedence but also for providing incentive for folks to work hard and obtain better services from the private sector.

Teacher spot reports for knowledge check

in

School administration would on occasion randomly choose some teachers to write a report. The report would be either a short (1-2 page) paper that must be written on the spot with little or no resources, or a longer (perhaps 10 pages) research paper which they will have a specified period to complete and can use any resources they want.

The topic of the paper would be randomly assigned, asking how they apply or could use certain educational principles in the classroom. Some possible topics might include how the teacher uses or could use Piaget’s or Vygotsky’s theories, positive reinforcement, levels-of-processing theory; how do they handle the different learning styles of students; what implications a recent educational news story might have for them; how do they apply technology in the classroom; or a more general question like how new educational theories have shaped their teaching styles.

The check would help ensure that teachers are paying attention to and using both well established and new educational theories to hopefully provide the best education they can to their children. Educational theories often are adopted slowly or aren’t translated well into teaching styles. There is a whole lot that can be done to improve the education system just by fully implementing the recommendations of the vast available knowledge pool of educational learning theory.

Appropriate living place service

in

To help ensure people can easily move to the country best suited to them, there would be a program which all countries could choose to join. Joined countries would have buildings that citizens interested in moving away or even just seeing if there is something better could visit.

A counselor would be provided. The citizen would discuss their political, social, religious, and other wants and views, and the counselor would talk to them about the countries seeming most appropriate. The counselor would then give them guidance in how to research and choose a country as well as how the country moving procedures work.

The citizen would be given access to a computer database with political and social characteristics, news, geography, and all sorts of information about all of the participating countries, with advanced searches available.

After researching the countries, the citizen would talk to the counselor to make a final decision. If the citizen decides to go through with the move, the counselor would tell the citizen everything they need to do to proceed with the move.

The counselor would meet with a counselor from the other country to start the process toward citizenship for the citizen. This process should be an agreement between the two countries plus the citizen that would help ensure both success and safety for both the citizen and the new country. The process should be relatively quick and easy, with important records provided from the originating country so the destination country can more easily do background checks.

Some countries might only do exchanges, have number limits, or have certain stipulations on the citizens they will take, though the movement of citizens must be generally relatively free and easy.

A similar but simpler version of this service could be provided for intra-country moves, helping citizens find the best city or place within a country for them to live.

Education done like work flex-time

in

*** reasons
scheduling classs around work, home, and other parts of life can be very difficult
especially when a rigid schedule week after week is required and
required classes frequently have few available scheduling options
long, fixed terms mean students must plan in advance and be scheduled for months

*** possible implementation characteristics
* semesters
no more fixed semesters or similar fixed periods
students attend lectures, office hours, etc. whenever they want
each lecture, etc is offered at one of many pre-scheduled times
students can pick and choose which time they want to go
times and frequency chosen based on previous demand
student must attend a certain set of lectures, plus perhaps some from an optional collection
can take as long as they want to complete a course
take tests/evaluations/projects when they feel they are ready
tests given in a testing center where they can be taken any time
monitored, students from many classes take tests at once
much harder than current tests to give flexibility in determining competency
getting 50% of the questions right probably good target normal grade
one on one type evaluations scheduled with prof for most convenient time
at least as important as tests
profs spend time with student determining their capabilities
projects are like homework, but larger and with a more defined purpose
projects last a certain duration, must be finished by a due date
some longer and bigger, some short and small
groups projects will require students signing up, running once a quota is reached
competencies rather than grades
not fixed
students can keep going until they achieve desired/required level of competency
profs decide competency based on tests, projects, evaluations, time spent with in class and office-hours
many profs involved, whole department perhaps
no homework per se normally
in class, supervised work only most of the time
perhaps some courses will have some continuity between some lectures with coursework given between
required to be taken in a certain order
should be rare
projects will be the majority of work done outside of class
Office-hours/tutoring
Some students obtain and undertand information in certain classes very easily while other students need a lot of help.
Part of profs time will be spent in an office hours / tutoring like teaching methodology where students are encouraged to seek assistance from the profs
in a larger capacity setting than an office.
An entire class should be able to show up and be handled in this setting.
Possible student activities would be private study with occasional questions to prof or longer discussions with prof about certain points.

Presidential Advertising and Funding

in

The advertisements on the TV and radio and the costs associated are crazy and huge, and one item that helps prevent smaller parties from entering the political game. The money for these adverts coming primarily from donations, these donations sources have become a large point of contention.

I suggest that we eliminate all advertising by campaigners in these traditional advertising mediums. All other forums of communications that are currently used would then be expanded in power. Speeches and appearances, campaigners, candidate websites, and the debates should all be given more power.

The debates in particular need to be improved to allow more even representation of competing candidates and their ideas. Each candidate should be timed during the debate for how much they’ve said. This includes words spoken during or interrupting others’ speech. At the end, during their final statements, the other candidates should be given the time to even out their total speaking time. And the presidential debates should always include at least one third party candidate, the most popular probably. This will bring in an additional voice to attempt to break up the polarization in the discussion between only two voices.

Both the costs of campaigning and the needs to receive all that money through donations must be reduced significantly. All that money could potentially be used for better purposes.

Other mediums should be better at providing information than the more stagnant campaign adverts on TV and radio.

Objective File System

in

This is a modification of part of a previous post.

each file is stored in two databases: the normal hierchical db and an objective db. The hierarchical db is used for speed and for compatibility with current file systems. The objective db is used for metadata and other information less critical to basic file operations.

The objective db contains much of the metadata (non file operation related stuff). Each file type is an object type in the database, inheriting from the basic file object or one of its children. Each file type will have its own attributes as well as actions related to it. The actions may consist only of OS functions related to it, may also include application calls, and could even include user/other created scripts and functions related to the file type. The actions would provide the data from the file to the system or other function that is necessary for it to operate (functions and applications would all have a defined standard interface to them).

the opennest market

in

In democracy, each person gets one vote equal to every other. The votes are basically free, but some rules must be set up to ensure this. The free or open market is somewhat considered to be democracy of commerce. To take this to the extreme:

There would be a number of businesses equal to the number of citizens, each business owned and run by exactly one citizen. There would be no employees. All needs of the business that could not be completed by the owner would be outsourced to other businesses, surely creating the need for a lot of very specialized businesses. Government oversight would be needed to ensure that no mergers or pseudo mergers occur. Every business runs on its own, with no collusion, and any interactions with other businesses must be proper business transactions with dollars exchanged for goods or services and the best value chosen from multiple candidates. Each business would be required to turn, or attempt to turn, a profit, and that profit would be the sole income of the owner. Oversight would also ensure that there were a number of a given type of businesses in a given geographical region.

All of this should create somewhere near the largest amount of competition possible, and really test competition’s ability to create low costs, innovation, and good quality.

This system would certainly have many problems, especially in enforcement, but can serve for analysis of the openness of markets and the rules affecting them.

An interesting modification of this system would be to force all of this at the initialization of the system, but then remove all oversight. This would somewhat mirror the entire human history relating to economic issues, except that it would certainly go very fast. Mergers would happen all over until large companies would be formed.