Global Disaster Insurance

Radar image of the ground changes due to the 2015 Nepal earthquake.

Rather than the patchwork of often ad hoc disaster assistance systems we have now, really all nations should be part of a global disaster insurance plan. This would provide is certainty as to what degree of response would be mounted so that planning can be done and in theory lead time could be reduced. It would force not only a systematic evaluation of all the risk factors each nation faces but also provide economic incentive to take preventative steps to lessen them. Too often a disaster occurs and obvious, generally inexpensive (relative to the costs of the damage itself) preventive measures come to light. It bears mentioning that a large part of any risk assessment would include the impact of corruption on general preparedness, again providing incentive for solutions to be found before such systems are needed. It is tempting to think this would be useful to only less developed nations, but many other faults, such as Boston's earthquake deficient buildings, could benefit from a sober assessment of the risks and the price of potential remedies, especially placed in a global context.

Note that there is nothing about this proposal that would lessen the opportunity for charitable foreign assistance. In fact, by better highlighting the problem areas and encouraging more efficient mitigation efforts it should vastly improve it.

The Supreme Consensus

The first U.S. penny touted science

I've posted about how to increase the influence of science in government previously but it was a complete overhaul of our entire democracy, so wanted to explore less drastic alternatives. Modeled on the supreme court, scientists would be appointed to assess the validity of laws, which would be required to cite research. If such research weren't available metrics and studies to gauge the impact of laws would need to be outlined, along with the necessary funding to implement them. An important detail is that this is not necessarily an all or nothing judgement in many cases, as proper risk management requires partial measures be taken in the face of insufficient evidence in order to serve as a hedge. This could be quite far-reaching. For example, a farm bill could be ruled unscientific because it does nothing to address climate change impacts. Inaction is not a way to circumvent reality.

Of course having a small number of experts opens itself up to the same personal failings the Supreme Court suffers from. A better method would be to utilize all those qualified in the relevant fields, possibly weighted by expertise, to provide a broader base. An approach the Supreme Court itself could benefit from and one that was at the core of my previous posting.

Skin in the Game

Picking just one quote for this post was not easy!

The post hoc rationalizations accompanying the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq got me thinking about ways to discourage conflict except in the most serious instances. Given the necessary (for classified source reasons) information gulf between our leaders and the general public, any such disincentive must occur at that level. I propose the following: a chance of death. Once the conflict is over, those in our government that voted for war should have to go through a lottery in which they may be picked for execution. The likelihood should be linked to the costs of the war (both human and financial) and perhaps any disparity on that score from what the public was told to anticipate. Obviously, such metrics would need to be very careful considered, and the exact details are beyond the scope of this post, which assumes for the sake of discussion that such a formula is possible. This measure would have a chilling effect on entering into war lightly and discourage optimistic portrayals of the sacrifice being considered. It seems entirely reasonable to expect those asking others to potentially lay down down their lives to risk their own.

A Measure of Success

538's estimate of state probabilities.

Came up with a way to measure 538's success in predicting the election other than a simple boolean for each state. All predictions are weighted by their certainty. A 50/50 estimate would thus count for nothing (it's worth pointing out that those calling the election a tossup were doing this...), whereas a prediction of 100% would yield a weight of 1.0. Correct predictions are positive, incorrect negative (538 got all 50 states right, plus DC). This weight is then multiplied by a state's electoral votes, summed, and then normalized on the range of the worst score (100% certainty on all, but getting them all wrong: -538) to the best (100% certainty, all correct: 538). Doing this gives 538 a score of .9485. Note that I treated states that award their electoral votes in a split manner as all or nothing for simplicity.

Baseline estimate of state probabilities

To provide more insight, a naive model was used to provide a baseline: all swing states estimated at 50/50 and all non swing states at 100%. This gives a score of 0.8977. This means that 538's estimate gets us 49.66% of the way from the baseline to a perfect forecast. Unfortunately, the data necessary to apply this measure to other forecasts wasn't easily available (and by "easily", I mean "with the amount of effort I was willing to put into this blog post"), but I grabbed some from a couple other sites.

PEC's last estimate map before the election.

Princeton Election Consortium's last posted data was in the form of a color map, so I extracted their estimates by examining the colors and they were clearly not that precise. Applying my measure, they got a score of 0.9429, and were 44.19% of the way from the baseline to a perfect forecast.

Simon Jackman's swing state estimate data.

Simon Jackman over at The Huffington Post had this estimate of swing states probabilities the day before the election. I couldn't find the non swing state opens, so filled in 100% for them, which almost certainly inflated his overall score. It worked out to 0.9544, and was 55.38% of the way from the baseline to perfect.

If anyone has other data (or better versions of the data I did use) I'd be happy to include it in this post. Here is the spreadsheet I used to compute the scores.

Bonus: I edited these maps that have been making the rounds since the election that scale state size according to electoral votes and population respectively to have purple shading that reflects the percentage of Obama and Romney votes. They don't really warrant a post of their own, especially since I didn't create the original maps they're based on.

Size proportional to electoral votes (1 square = 1 vote)

Size proportional to population (original image didn't include HI or AK)

Structured Compromise System

If one or more parties in a negotiation is unwilling to compromise, many decision making processes can grind to a halt; the current state of American politics being a prime example. What's needed is a framework that forces uncooperative sides to come to an agreement, while according each their appropriate level of influence. Rather than a series of small votes with an implied give and take linking them, all points should be considered explicitly together. Each party could propose actions to be taken, and would receive points based on their degree of representation which could spend to support or oppose each of these proposals. This process could undergo many iterations as each side determines where best to spend their influence. There would be no partial implementations, instead new, toned down versions of previous suggestions would be added to achieve this effect. For directly contradictory items only the highest scoring of them would go into effect, so the parties would have to split unrelated items up, rather than presenting them as a single action item. A limit to the number of proposals may be required, however, to prevent either side for complicating things intentionally.

By eliminating a series of small gated decisions, the ability to impede action is greatly reduced. Even if closely matched in point totals, differing priorities will make deadlock unlikely in most instances. The final point allocations would provide clear record of the weight each party places on various areas and help voters more easily see if they are being properly represented. This technique could equally be applied to compromises other than in politics and theoretically to any number of participants. Which chores each family member should do around the house, for example.

To prevent attempts to game the system by endlessly changing their point allocations, a tax on changes could be employed. In its most basic form, all changes would be penalized, but a more sophisticated one would allow all parties to alter their positions if they all agreed to do so. If only some wished to change, then the tax could be applied only to those parties. To clarify, in that case everyone would get to reallocate but those not asking for another round wouldn't be penalized. This would discourage huge changes but still allows the participants to come to an accommodation of each others priorities.

This system grew out of one I came up with to help with a software maker's survey problems. They would ask users on their website what new features they would like to see in future versions so they could gauge where to focus their development effort. Somewhat predictably, the users all voted for all the good features, providing little useful direction. I suggested each user get points they could allocate to various features, with the amount received varying by things such as forum participation, useful bug reporting, or number of copies of the software purchased. For reasons I've never quite understood, they weren't interested in the notion.

How bad can the electoral college be?

I was curious as to how poorly the electoral college could reflect the popular vote, so I whipped up a program to compute it (assuming only two parties). Below you see the map as it would need to be for the red candidate to win (yeah, yeah, I notice I'm showing the Republican candidate as winning unfairly, but that was just random). The best (or should that be worst?) answer involved all the districts of Nebraska and Maine voting together so I didn't need to split their electoral votes in the picture, although the program did explore those options. While there are some odd states voting together, for expediency I'll ignore that detail since it's not impossible demographic or political shifts could lead to such a result. In order to carry the red states with just over 50% in each, only 21.61% of the popular vote would have to be obtained (21.3% if you count the US territories which currently aren't represented in the electoral college). You can see many of the least populated states are chosen, maximizing the error. I knew the electoral college was bad, but this is astounding! To have a candidate defeated who had more than 78% of the vote would simply be unacceptable.


To force a tie you need just a slightly smaller percentage of popular vote: 21.52% (or 21.2% if counting the US territories).


Next I took the election results for each of the past three presidential races (the last three all used 2000 census data) and changed my program to look for the minimum subset of the electoral votes actually carried by the winner that still ensured victory. All three required less than 25% of the popular vote for victory (the 2004 minimum solution required 271 electoral votes, not just 270). We can also approach the inherent unfairness of the electoral college another way, by assuming each state's electoral votes per percentage of population is the same. This makes all states more equal, but the very "all or nothing" nature of the system would still allow victory with (270 / 538) * .5 = 25.09% of the popular vote, since you only need just barely over 50% of each state to win all its electoral votes. For this last calculation I ignored the proportional vote system of Maine and Nebraska for simplicity. The rough bottom line is this: a candidate for president can win 75% of the popular vote and still lose the electoral college.

2008: winner is in blue
270 electoral votes
24.0566% of popular vote actually required (includes US territories)


2004: winner is in red
271 electoral votes
24.33% of popular vote actually required (includes US territories)


2000: winner is in red
270 electoral votes
24.575% of popular vote actually required (includes US territories)

Choose Your Taxes

Research where subjects reported greater feelings of happiness if they gave money away rather than spent it on themselves, combined with that about how we respond to the perceived fairness of transactions, got me thinking that the impersonal nature of our social systems squanders the good feelings that come from our evolved altruistic tendencies. One idea to try and take advantage of this would be to allow a taxpayer to choose which part of the government his money goes to support. He can't choose the amount, just to what areas the funds go. To support unpopular government functions, a multiplier can be set so that money counts for more towards the amount you must give when you donate to them. Obviously the overall tax rate would need to account for this, but the popularity of the various departments will be fairly well established quickly. This approach would also require government departments to do a better job justifying their existence, which would help with taxpayer education and encourage transparency. If it could be made to work, the resentment taxes cause might be considerably reduced, being much more similar to the experience of donating to charity. It makes me think of the old system of police patrolling where cops would have a beat and they'd get to know the people living along it, which seems like a good example of a more personal approach to government services.

Proven Social Investments Should Be Exempted From Deficit Spending Limits

If only there were a well known maxim about this...

Originally posted on my private blog on January 25th, 2009.

Politicians have an unfortunate tendency to eliminate social investments in the drive to reduce short term deficits. Whenever you have a social program (or infrastructure investment) with solid scientific evidence behind it that it will yield far more in savings or revenue growth than is spent then it should be exempted from deficit considerations. It makes no sense to build a new school and then scrimp on insulation simply because the larger overall heating cost doesn't occur on this year's balance sheet. What's worse is that the ability to make such misguided cuts allows decision makers to avoid the more difficult, legitimate ones. The standard of proof for such investments would necessarily need to be high as this should not become a form of government wagering.

Civil Union for Everybody

Originally posted on my private blog June 21st, 2008.

The various efforts to ban gay marriage have me thinking about the issue and I believe the solution is quite simple: strip all legal ramifications away from religious marriage and make everyone have to get a civil union. The marriage ritual is essentially part of the party you choose to celebrate the legal connection you've just entered into and since it's such a loaded word, let's just strip it out of the equation. It furthers the separation of church and state as a byproduct, which is always a good idea anyway. Clearly my atheism has factored into this opinion considerably.

Should Financial Reform Have Come First?

The Obama administration has attempted to use the financial crisis as leverage towards tackling health care reform, but it's possible that financial reform should've come first. With the economy improving a lot of the impetus for reform is already waning and a recovery of some kind was not entirely unexpected. Additionally, all the expenditure on bailouts has made the discussion of further public funding of any large initiative more difficult. Health care under the current system is only going to get worse, so time isn't a factor on that score. These factors seem to indicate that regulatory reform should've preceded health care and we're already seeing a considerable retreat on my areas of reform. Perhaps the Obama administration was counting on continued high unemployment (as it's a lagging indicator) to keep up voter outrage and maintain pressure on legislators. Since large deficits and an aversion to spending will persist for some time, it may have been seen that there was no benefit to waiting on health care reform and capitalizing on honeymoon period popularity was the best strategy. I find myself extremely skeptical that their decision was the correct one.

Executive Pay is a Multi-Part Issue

There are several problems with executive pay as it currently exists:

1) Too great as a percentage of company expenditures
2) Rewards short term risk taking
3) Punishes failure unreasonably

I would argue that the first isn't a subject of typical financial regulation, despite the fact that it gets the most popular press. It's mostly a question of competition and efficiency, which I think should be addressed in another manner (bigger post to come, I promise). Linking pay to long term performance is discussed somewhat, and while there are a variety of mechanisms to achieve this, the important feature is that a sufficiently large percentage of compensation is to linked short term performance, which allows fraud and risky behaviour to prosper. The third issue receives the least attention and relates to the ubiquitous practice of "one strike and your out" seen throughout most of the financial industry. While many attempt to defend this approach as a feature of a true meritocracy, it ignores the effect of chance. Investing is far from an exact science and luck undoubtedly plays a huge part in success. By overemphasizing any mistake whatsoever, the reward incentives are skewed in an nonconstructive and possibly risky manner.

Barn Preservation

I frequently see dilapidated barns and was thinking that turning them into something useful could help preserve them. To that end, grants could offered to help convert old barns into self storage units provided they had a minimal visual impact and provision is made for their upkeep. Storage is a function which should fit in fairly easily and not cost very much to implement.

Bipartinsanship Through Efficiency

Originally posted on my private blog April 22nd, 2008.

It seems that the two major parties simply see-saw back and forth on domestic issues: the republicans want to reduce the role of government and the democrats to expand it. While so much effort is being expended on this futile struggle, actually improving the systems we do have seems to never get enough attention. This leaves us with mediocre systems that are highly inefficient, but I have a way to exploit this to bring about more bipartisanship. When systems are made more efficient, a fraction of the money saved would go towards extending services and the rest could go towards tax cuts. The exact ratio would vary from area to area and would be a point of serious contention, but if structured that way it would change the nature of the debate as you can only haggle over what to do with your efficiency gains after they've been achieved.

Was Going to the Moon Worth It? No.

A robotic probe could hit a golf ball on the moon much more cost effectively.

The fact that forty years on there's still serious debate as the whether manned missions to the moon were worth the resources compared to other alternatives suggests an answer: no. There's no sign that by the sixtieth or even hundredth anniversary there won't still be significant doubts about the Apollo program's overall utility and that illustrates how dubious its importance was. Historically, the space race came down to the development of ICBMs and a glorified international pissing contest.

Arguments about technologies developed because of the space program ignore the fact that the capital would've been put to use in other areas and constitute a broken window fallacy. Even if we do eventually wind up having a serious presence in space, it would be fallacious to argue that such early trips to the moon were especially necessary. In the case of exploration, robots are more effective and it's at least many decades premature to consider colonization. There is far too much basic research and development to be done at this stage and is analogous to going directly from inventing a kite to planning the Concorde. We should definitely do such research, but there are many other advances that have to happen before such extreme long range goals make any sort of immediate sense.

Proponents of manned space travel are reduced to arguing for it in public relations terms. This strikes me as an extremely weak position and a better way to obtain public support is to attain real results with modest budgets. The amazing discoveries from the Hubble space telescope and Mars rovers captivated the imaginations of millions and did so for a lot less investment and risk of human life. Space exploration should be treated the same as other scientific endeavors and be about substance, not style. Technologically, the moon landings were a triumph; a needless, wasteful, and wrongheaded triumph.

Independent Non-Profit Public Health Care Option

Much of the debate about health care reform has centered on whether or not to have a public option. Simultaneously some are arguing that it would be very inefficient, but at the same time be cheap enough to put private insurance companies out of business. On the face of it that seems absurd, but one reasonable objection I've heard is that a government system would be subsidized in a way that would give it an unfair advantage. Another expressed concern is that a public option's sheer size would give it bargaining clout to negotiate lower drug prices. I don't feel that's a valid objection as not only is that a good thing, but also private companies could in theory band together in their purchasing. I believe that the public option should be a non-profit business set up by the government, but then run as a separate entity. Its charter would direct its policies, but it would not have the onerous requirements of being a government agency. It should be allowed to fail if it performed badly, although initially it would require some public investment to become established. To further reduce the temptation for it to be bailed out and to add more competition, in theory multiple non-profits could be set up although that should probably be considered only after the first one was successfully in operation. I am developing a system for blending public and private activities in general and will post about it once it's more fleshed out.

It May Not Be Perfect, But Canada's Health Care System is Better Than Ours

One fallacious argument I hear time and again with regards to the inferiority of Canada's health system is that they have long waiting periods for many services. While true, this ignores the fact that overall Canada has a better quality of health, which puts such waiting times into proper context. It's the logical equivalent of an advertisement that touts a single aspect of their product as superior, but ignores all the others. Even worse such a stilted view completely glosses over that they spend so much less per capita on health care than we do (10% vs 17% of GDP and their GDP per person is about 17% less than ours, making our per capita expenditure roughly twice as much). If we adopted their system, funded to our levels, it would blow the doors off our current health care standards. This means their methods are superior to ours, but does not mean we can't explore alternatives. Since almost all modern nations beat the tar out of us on health care there are a lot of sources for inspiration.

Opposing Goals as a Method of Regulation

The rating agencies that failed so spectacularly during the recent housing boom have a serious conflict of interest problem: if they don't rate bonds highly, the bond owners will take their business elsewhere. Since they're funded by the companies whose products they rate, this is a serious problem. There are many proposed ways to address this, such as changing who funds them or basing rewards on prediction accuracy, but I was also thinking that requiring them to offer another service that creates a bias in the opposite direction could also work. If a rating agency were required to offer insurance on a product based on their own rating, then they'd have a powerful financial stake in its accuracy. Of course they'd need to have enough capital requirements to ensure their insurance was viable, and the two competing areas of business need to be roughly matched in value. This is fundamentally different than having third party insurance entities, because the rating agency has complete knowledge of the internal mechanisms used to arrive at their ratings. I feel a fundamental overall of the entire system is more appropriate, but still found this idea rather intriguing.

I couldn't think of a good picture to accompany this. Any suggestions?