How to make the government work effectively
I think the need to government reform is clear to most people. Our government is ineffective. We've had a succession of bad governments. It's likely that any future government will also be ineffective.
The government hasn't the power to make honest and effective changes, because it is beholden to special interests. It balances its commitments to its allies, with its chances of losing the next election.
So the best policy, the only realistic policy, is to serve the donors and special interests, then do some crowd-pleasing in the election year.
I would argue (though I thing this next bit would be controversial) it is not this government's fault, to work this way. It is the fault of our governance system that compels them to work this way.
Many people have good plans for electoral reform. For example. The ideas are thousands of years old. The structures are well establis
Tomorrow is the anniversary of the 1916 rising
What's the best way to mark it?
- I just assumed that would be easy, that you would have one instance with no actual content. It just fetches the wikipedia article with the same name, directly from the wikipedia website. I guess I didn't really think about it.
- I guess that's a design choice. Looking at different ways similar issues have been solved already...
How does wikipedia decide that the same article is available in different languages? I guess there is a database of links which has to be maintained.
Alternatively, it could assume that articles are the same if they have the same name, like in your example where "Mountain" can have an article on a poetry instance and on a geography instance, but the software treats them as the same article.
Wikipedia can understand that "Rep of Ireland" = "Republic of Ireland". So I guess there is a look-up-table saying that these two names refer to the same thing.
Then, wikipedia can also understand cases where articles can have the same name but be unrelated. Like RIC (paramilitary group) is not the same as RIC (feature of a democracy).
I do think, if each Ibis instance is isolated, it won't be much different from having many separate wiki websites. When the software automatically links you to the same information on different instances, that's when the idea becomes really interesting and valuable.
Great song that I'd nearly forgotten about.
This is a great project. I had the same idea myself, and posted about it, but never did anything about it! It's great that people like you are here, with the creativity, and the motivation and skills to do this work.
I think this project is as necessary as Wikipedia itself.
The criticisms in these comments are mostly identical to the opinion most people had about Wikipedia when it started - the it would become a cesspool of nonsense and misinformation. That it was useless and worthless when encyclopaedias already exist.
Wikipedia was the first step in broadening what a source if authoritative information can be. It in fact created richer and more truthful information than was possible before, and enlightened the world. Ibis is a necessary second step on the same path.
It will be most valuable for articles like Tieneman square, or the Gilets Jaunes, where there are sharply different perspectives on the same matter, and there will never be agreement. A single monolithic Wikipedia cannot speak about them. Today, wiki gives one perspective and calls it the truth. This was fine in the 20th century when most people believed in simple truths. They were told what to think by single sources. They never left their filter bubbles. This is not sustainable anymore.
To succeed and change the world, this project must do a few things right.
- The default instance should just be a mirror of Wikipedia. This is the default source of information on everything, so it would be crazy to omit it. Omitting it means putting yourself in competition with it, and you will lose. By encompassing it, the information in Ibis is from day 1 greater then wiki. Then Ibis will just supersede wiki.
- There should be a sidebar with links to the sane article on other instances. So someone reading about trickle down economics on right wing instance, he can instantly switch to the same article on a left wing wiki and read the other side of it. That's the feature that will make it worthwhile for people.
- It should look like Wikipedia. For familiarity. This will help people transition.
That's probably what will happen in the end. Using old familiar idea, because it is familiar.
But that's not what I'm doing here. I'm interested in new and more effective plans, even if they are not familiar and are unlikely to be used for that reason.
How could that work, on a practical level? Would it work better than what I have proposed?
Dog control
The issue of better regulation for dangerous breeds of dogs is starting to get a bit serious right now in Ireland. This is one where the solution is simple, but might not be easy for governments and councils to see.
Many people cannot control their dogs. But those people still bring their dogs to public places. They don't understand that this is a problem.
They don't have the discipline to train their dogs. Or they don't have the time or interest. And nobody is forcing them to do so.
People propose many solutions, like banning certain dangerous breeds, enforcing muzzling, licensing, etc. These solutions are familiar, but wrong. They punish educated dogs and savage ones alike.
Being a good dog or a bad dog does not depend on breed. It is true that some breeds are harder to train, and some breeds are more dangerous when untrained. But any dog of any breed can be raised to be good or bad, safe or dangerous.
Dogs must be banned from all public spaces, unless muzzled and leas
Thanks, internet stranger. I'm glad to hear that you think this has some value.
All the details are up for debate and possible improvement. But in this first draft of the idea:
Will people be forced to fill it in every year?
Only if they want to decide where their money goes.
Will they fill it in at all?
If they don't fill it in, the fee goes to the RTE.
Will there be a default selection? Like all to RTÉ, or maybe an even split between all options?
All to RTE.
If people don’t have to make a selection every year, will they just choose once and never update or change it because it’s a hassle?
That's a good idea. You could have an option to inform the revenue of your preference just once, and it will be recorded forever, or until you change it. That way, people don't have to fill out a tax return every year.
The government incentive to leave homes empty
I only heard about this because I know someone who is thinking of availing of it.
Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant
This could be a big part of the reason for the housing shortage, because so many homes are being left empty in order to avail of this grant.
Why would they want to do that?
The right way to fund the RTE
The RTE needs money from the public each year to run. But
- Direct funding by the government gives the government too much influence over content.
- Funding from the licence fee is not secure because many people don't want to pay, since they discovered all the money-laundering and theft going on in RTE.
- Advertising does not make the RTE enough money.
The funding model should also give the RTE an incentive to behave better in the future. It must be a source that can shrink in proportion to RTE's continuing misbehaviour.
The best way is to add a an extra charge to everyone's annual income tax bill. It could be 50€ per taxpayer, to replace the existing 160€ per household. People who don't pay tax don't pay the charge. So this is more progressive than the TV licence fee was.
On the tax declaration form, there is a multiple choice. The taxpayer can choose whether his fee should go to the RTE or somewhere else more deserving. If he ticks several boxes, the fee will be split between seve
Can special lightbulbs end the next pandemic before it starts?
For private business the tickets are to fund the business. But for public transport they are never expected to cover the costs of the business.
It is run as a public service, not to make money. The function of tickets is to prevent overcrowding.
That's why in well designed systems, the price is different at rush hour, and for high traffic routes and times.
I don't know anything about montpellier specifically though.
If you care, but you're not willing to try to make a change, then toy are worse than those indifferent people.
I disagree. Polls always show strong support for these kinds of measures. This shows that they would vote for such policies of given the chance.
IMO the problem is that there is no direct practical way for the people to force the government to take action.
Today and for the foreseeable future, no real progress on clumsy change is happening. Nobody had any stronger ideas than this one.
Even if I am wrong. It's worth a try.
Thanks that's interesting. It is not really a carbon tax through. It only applies to certain fuels. For example does not apply to jet fuel (ATF) nor shipping fuel (HFO). It does not apply to other significant greenhouse gas sources like fertiliser, concrete, beef.
It does show that this type of tax is workable, and shows a good way to implement it.
Forcing the government to take action
It looks like the current government will not take action on the urgent issues of our time. The most urgent is climate change but it's not the only one.
Any maybe no future government will take action either. It's the nature of our political system that governments ignore long-term problems.
There is only one way to force them into action.
We must find a single issue with overwhelmingly popular support. Then we organise a national strike over it.
It must be a specific actionable realistic issue. For example
- A fair sales tax on all products which produce carbon dioxide or methane, in proportion to their global warming effect per kilo. This would include concrete, beef, fertilizer, fossil fuels, steel. The money shall be used to fund a cut in the general VAT rate. So these products rise in price and everything else, every less polluting product, drops in price.
- A boycott on Israel until it grants non-Jews in territories it controls equal civil rights.
- A ban on vulture funds ow
Forcing the government to take action
It looks like the current government will not take action on the urgent issues of our time. The most urgent is climate change but it's not the only one.
Any maybe no future government take action either. It's the nature of our political system that governments ignore long-term problems.
There is only one way to force the issue.
We must find a single issue with overwhelmingly popular support. Then we organise a national strike over it.
It must be a specific actionable realistic issue. For example
- A fair sales tax on all products which produce carbon dioxide or methane, in proportion to their global warming effect per kilo. This would include concrete, beef, fertilizer, fossil fuels, steel. The money shall be used to fund a cut in the general VAT rate. So these products rise in price and everything else, every less polluting product, drops in price.
- A boycott on Israel until it grants non-Jews in territories it controls equal civil rights.
- A ban on vulture funds owning housing
He was working three full-time jobs at Meta, IBM, and Tinder. His bosses didn't know.
It's an interesting the gradual technical changes, from bullets to gas to bombs to depravation of water. They must measure big improvements in efficiency, measured in number of deaths per dollar and per day. Imagine of a report from a recent study on this got leaked!
polar bears. it's the only animal that likes to eat people. daily life is just too safe and dull.
Simple? It would be easier to have some time per night when the streets are not lit.
It is useful to have lots of stupid laws. It makes people feel powerless and frustrated. It means the police can always find excuses to persecute you.
The technicalities of the individual laws are not important. It's the psychological effect of the whole body of laws on a people.
A divide has emerged between the price of new builds and second-hand homes, writes Paul O’Donoghue.
Are the ministers completely ignorant of economics, or are they running a racket to transfer money from people to developers?
The October 7 attack was a shock to the system in Israel that made clear there is no military solution in Palestine.
How easy it is to publish a false hypothesis: people were nearly a year-and-a-half younger after listening to “When I’m Sixty-Four”
Yes you couldn't change something so widely used. Look what happened with python 3.
Fortunately there's already a tradition among Git users of building a UI on top of the git UI. My project is just a slightly better version of those. It lays a simple sensible interface on top of the chaotic Git interface.
Three researchers have found a long-sought way to pull information from large databases secretly, moving us closer to fully private internet searches.
Git is a great invention but it has a few design flaws. There are too many ways to confuse it or break it, using commands that look correct, or just forgetting something. I ended up writing simple wrapper script codebase to fix it. Since then no problems.
Right vs left
Remember, right wing people are just misguided left wing people. They have the desire and energy to improve their lives, but are going about it a stupid way.
They think that they can improve their lives by taking things from poorer people. Which is a reasonable thought. But it is wrong. If the immigrants are driven away, these protesters will become the poorest people, for others to take things from.
The only way to improve your lives is by improving everyone's lives uniformly, through left wing policies. This isn't just virtuous. It's virtuous only because it's economically sound.
The discovery earlier this year of the “hat” tile marked the culmination of hundreds of years of work into tiles and their symmetries.
So option 1 then.
If the pay is less than the dole then yes people will not take the job. Or if there are alternative higher paying jobs. Today we have full employment which suggests the the second one.
This is the most tenuous point. Maybe I should have omitted it, because the argument is just as convincing without it.
It's the ideda that drug use is partially a symptom of widespread depression. You've seen the effect where building a skate park reduces petty crime and suicides and drug use and other mental problems. Improving people's society improves people's lives which reduces rates of misery which reduces things like drug use. It's an observation that is widely made, and makes sense, but I'm not sure how thoroughly it has been researched. Forcing developers to include in their developments things like skate parks, employment, open space, cafes and pubs, etc, reduces rates of all problem behaviour.
Worker shortages
Why can't employers find enough people to do the work of society? There aren't enough people available to work as teachers, vets, bus drivers, etc. All these common, essential jobs are going unfilled in large numbers, leading to problems in the functioning of society as a whole.
And this despite rising poverty levels forcing ever more women into the workforce, and high immigration rates increasing the relative number of people of working age.
So what are the adults of Ireland all doing, that they're not available to do these jobs?
https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-lfs/labourforcesurveyquarter22021/employment/
Well for a start, 15% are working in "motor vehicles". This sounds too high. I'm sure this industry does not need so many people. It's the same number as work in "human health".
How can this number be reduced, to allow more people to work in more valuable jobs?
- Extra tax on high earning jobs like "motor vehicle" tradesmen? This could be used to fund highe
Fionn mac Cumhaill's defence of Tara against Aillén mac Midhna
The Medieval Irish text, Modern Irish version and English translation of The Colloquy with the Ancients
10 solutions to the housing crisis
Someone asked me what the government should be doing differently about the housing crisis. I ended up with this list. So it's not exhaustive.
I think all of these are necessary to have a functioning housing market which (1) allows people to live in peace (2) builders to work productively to produce useful housing (3) stop investors gouging people (4) allows people to easily move house when they need to (5) allows people to choose to rent or house as suits their needs without huge costs.
But if any one of these is enacted it will tangible improve many people's lives. Some of these I have already written about before in more depth. Others I will write about soon. I understand that most readers won't see the value of these without a lot more explanation.
- zoning offices vs housing in areas which lack them
- incentivise appts w amenities instead of big houses (planning law depends on local need for cheap housing)
- big tax per land area (or per house) & big UBI/subsidy for each