Stidmatt

It is interesting how the US will extend visas to NATO allies, violate human rights in our immigration prisons, and perform warrantless wiretaps, arguing that they keep this country safe, despite no evidence these actions keep us safe, and some evidence they actually make us less safe…

But we absolutely refuse to mandate vaccines in school, claiming otherwise our freedoms would be violated (but not when it comes to warrantless wiretaps) even though the evidence is excruciatingly clear that vaccines save lives.

Wikipedia is definitely the most useful reference material ever created by people. It is the first and only encyclopedia to have truly global contributions, and I believe it is one of the greatest inventions in history.

That being said, there are people who want to trim it down because they want it to focus on things that they deem to be important. This starts looking silly on the surface and just looks sillier and sillier as we go down. I have a few ideas to refine Wikipedia policies to make it more robust and a stronger encyclopedia.

First of all, let’s talk about problems with the current deletionist policy:

“Notable topics have attracted attention over a sufficiently significant period of time“

This policy basically says that people shouldn’t be connected to a single event but multiple events. For example:

1. Guy Fawkes
2. John Wilkes Booth
3. Charles Guiteau
4. Leon Czolgosz
5. Lee Harvey Oswald

These individuals should have their Wikipedia pages removed according to this official policy because they are only notable for single events in history. A sufficiently significant period of time is clearly a very poor indicator of if a person is notable. This policy is so misguided that even Wikipedia doesn’t follow its own deletionist guidelines because these 5 pages exist.

 

The basic requirement of independent third-party sources is a requirement for every sentence of the encyclopedia and needs to be kept.

Many of the notability guidelines directly conflict with the “sufficient period of time” rule. The sufficient period of time rule should be discarded.

 

Almost any guideline for deletion is going to have exceptions, so here is an idea for a proposal that will allow people like Lee Harvey Oswald to have Wikipedia pages but prevent people from using Wikipedia pages to create their own personal biographies without any notes.

1. If an article is not an orphan, it cannot be deleted unless 10 independent active users with over 100 edits agree.
2. If over 10 independent registered users have edited a Wikipedia page, it cannot be deleted.
3. If an article has had an edit in the previous year, it cannot be deleted.
4. If an article has a link from at least 20 other pages, it cannot be deleted. If all of its links were created by one user, this policy doesn’t apply, and it should be deleted immediately.

So, if you have a random article about a person with no significant impact on history, no one has edited it in over a year and is linked to by any other page, go ahead and delete it. But if the page has links from other pages, and it is regularly edited by multiple users, keep it in the encyclopedia.

 

This retention policy is fair and flexible and will work across any topic.

 

Wikipedia naming policy

Wikipedia should have a clear policy for how to name articles.

For example, if we were to only use the proper name as the title of articles, the following articles should be renamed:

• The Commonwealth of Canada
• The United States of America
• The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
• Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. (and most biographical articles should be named this way)
• Dihydrogen monoxide

Sounds a bit silly, right? So a more reasonable naming policy should be to use the name which is already most commonly used in existing writing about a topic. Use only the first and last names of politicians generally, except when publications use their middle names. For basically any article pending a renaming, people considering a renaming should PROVE that another term is the more commonly used compared to what is currently used among scholarly or newspaper articles.

That being said, if an article is found to use names that are inherently biased to make the user doubt the existence of a topic (such as if one were to rename climate change “Global Warming Hoax”) even when an event is proven to exist in the article of the text, such a renaming should not occur. Moving articles to be labeled a “conspiracy theory” or a “hoax” should only be done when there is no sufficient proof an event actually occurred. If scholarly articles which refer to the topic do not refer to it as a conspiracy theory, neither should Wikipedia. The only things which should be labeled as a conspiracy theory should be things like the flat earth conspiracy, vaccine-autism connection conspiracy theory, and other ideas which are spread by people who wear tin foil hats.

On this, I agree with Wikipedia’s official naming policy full-heartedly and believe it should continue to be enforced by admins.

If we had taxed millionaires over the last 40 years a wealth tax wouldn’t be on the table.

The number of people who need public assistance wouldn’t be so dire if we had properly funded services which raise people out of poverty to the point where they don’t need public assistance over the last 40 years.

So I have been running several laptops for the last year or so. A friend gave me some surface books which he didn’t need, I have a Mac mini with an M1 processor, and a system76 Oryx Pro which has served me well for the last 5 years, but it isn’t as portable as it was when I bought it and the battery no longer can maintain a charge for as long as when I purchased it. The Surface Books don’t have very strong battery life, one of which is a standard laptop with an i5 processor which is basically a lap warmer, and the other one has an ARM processor, and its quite good honestly as a hybrid, but still has fairly abysmal battery life.

I also am going to get myself an iPad on contract with my phone carrier over the next couple of days.

So why I am going almost 100% Apple hardware? Well, a couple of reasons honestly.

First of all, Apple Silicon is extremely powerful without the power draw or heat of x86 CPUs. That is a very nice combination of features which I am a major fan of.

Second of all, again, the battery life of Apple Silicon is unparalleled in the market today. It is truly the best value available.

Third, the button placement of Microsoft Surface is absolutely atrocious. Apple puts their buttons one long edge, and one short edge. The Surface puts their buttons all over the place, so there is no short edge without a button, making it a major pain in the butt for setting up when I play music because I am either holding down the volume button or the power button. It is not useful for that purpose. Between the abhorrent button placement and the low battery life, the Surface just doesn’t seem like a good deal compared to the iPad. If Apple allowed users to load MacOS onto the iPad, it would be a Surface killer.

iPad has numerous advantages which makes me choose it over the competition. Android has such a short lifetime of support that it doesn’t fit my environmentalist desires. I have not bought a laptop in 5 years, and it is mostly because of declining battery life that I feel it is finally time for an upgrade. I don’t want to upgrade every 3 years, 5 years for me is a minimum unless if I am recycling unwanted computers. Android doesn’t fit this requirement for me. Apple’s hardware is just superior to the alternatives. The only thing the iPad is missing is the ability to port Linux to any older device, and while I know this is possible with newer iPads, it is not possible with the 2012 iPad which I have lying around. Yes, I know it is a 10 year old device, but the hardware still works, and if I could port Linux to it it would still be a useful device. Hopefully as time goes on Linux on iPad will continue to improve so I can port Linux to it.

So right now after looking at all the variables and options I could find, my needs were a laptop which I can easily travel with, which has a good CPU, a nice display, and enough RAM to fit my needs. The MacBook Air with the M2 processor appears to be the best deal on the market right now from what I can tell. I never seem to run out of RAM on my Mac mini, the only thing I might have added in was another 8 GB of RAM for 16 GB but I decided that given that I will need a good travel laptop in the near future. It was a tossup between the M1 Pro MacBook Pro and the M2 MacBook Air for me, and I decided to go with the MacBook Air over the M1 Pro MacBook Pro. Just make sure you get at least 512 GB of storage, because I have a Mac mini which I got at a steep discount at Costco last year, and you will run out of the 256 GB of storage in the base model very quickly. That right now is the big question I can see, is it worth spending more money for the M1 Pro chip or save a few hundred dollars to buy the M2 MacBook Air with 512 GB of storage. That is for you to decide. Either choice is going to give you an incredible amount of value for your money.

There is a lot of talk in libertarian circles about how everything would be better if we would privatize everything. Privatize the roads, privatize the railroads, privatize our electric grids, the government is inherently inefficient, and everything will be better.

Then they will inevitably point to Hong Kong (which Milton Friedman personally pointed to as a model for his vision) and Japan’s highly successful Shinkansen.

Let’s start with Japan, where the railroads are truly private. Well, first of all… Shinkansen was built in 1964 and its three most important routes were built before privatization. The lines which have been built by the private companies have been carrying far fewer people than the other lines.

But then there’s another kink in this entire philosophy, which can be found in the Railway Business Act of 1986

Article 7 (1) When the person who was granted a license of Railway Business (hereafter referred to as “Railway Business Operator”) intends to change the Basic Business Plan or the matters listed in item 8 or item 10, paragraph 1 of Article 4, the person shall obtain approval of the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, provided, however, that this shall not apply to the minor changes prescribed by an ordinance of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.

So much for economic freedom when a private business can’t even make a single service change without the government rubber-stamping it. But remember, this is the epitome of privatized rail in the world!

The other main case, and Milton Friedman’s favorite, is run by MTR Corporation Limited, which is 75% owned by the Hong Kong government and is able to completely control the decisions of the company. It’s organized more like Amtrak, far less like BNSF.

Pretty much every other country in the world with significant rail operations, with the exception of the US and Canada, has government-owned railroads.

Country	population	Area	freight in billion tonne-km	passengers in billion passenger-km	tonne-km per capita	passenger-km per capita	tonne-km per km2	passenger-km per km2
Bangladesh	172,073,828	148460		7.3	0.00	42.42	0.00	49,171.49
Nigeria	211,401,000	923768			0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Philippines	111,383,204	300000			0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Pakistan	225,200,000	881913	6	20.3	26.64	90.14	6,803.39	23,018.14
Spain	47,450,000	505,992.00	10.30	27.50	217.07	579.56	20,356.05	54,348.69
Australia	25,000,000	7,692,024.00	198.00	15.70	7,920.00	628.00	25,740.95	2,041.08
Brazil	214,240,467	8,515,767	267		1,246.26	0.00	31,353.61	0.00
Romania	19,186,201	238397	10	5.9	521.21	307.51	41,946.84	24,748.63
Japan	125,000,000	377,976.00	21.00	431.80	168.00	3,454.40	55,559.08	1,142,400.58
France	68,000,000	543,940.00	31.80	110.50	467.65	1,625.00	58,462.33	203,147.41
Mexico	126,014,024	1964375	126.9		1,007.03	0.00	64,600.70	0.00
Italy	60,300,000	301,339.00	21.00	52.20	348.26	865.67	69,688.95	173,226.83
South Korea	51,700,000	100,210.00	10.00	77.80	193.42	1,504.84	99,790.44	776,369.62
United Kingdom	67,000,000	242,495.00	24.40	80.20	364.18	1,197.01	100,620.63	330,728.47
Russia	146,000,000	17,098,246.00	2,596.00	129.40	17,780.82	886.30	151,828.44	7,568.03
Poland	38,139,000	312696	53.8	22.1	1,410.63	579.46	172,052.09	70,675.67
India	1,300,000,000	3,287,263	739	1157	568.46	890.00	224,807.08	351,964.54
United States	325,000,000	9,833,517.00	2,326.00	10.60	7,156.92	32.62	236,537.95	1,077.95
Switzerland	8,570,000	41,284.00	11.00	20.80	1,283.55	2,427.07	266,447.05	503,827.15
China	1,400,000,000	9,596,961.00	3,018.00	1,471.00	2,155.71	1,050.71	314,474.55	153,277.69
Germany	80,000,000	357,114.00	113.00	95.50	1,412.50	1,193.75	316,425.57	267,421.61
Ukraine	41,000,000	603,500.00	237.00	37.10	5,780.49	904.88	392,709.20	61,474.73

Data from Wikipedia

If you graph this data, you will find that the US doesn’t lead the country in either total passengers carried or in terms of total freight carried. Switzerland and Germany both beat the US in terms of total passengers carried, when controlling for population and it looks like a lot of America’s tonne-km is because so much is carried such a long distance through the west I expect which inflates our value.

That dot at the very bottom of the graph? That’s the United States.

It appears from this data that well-run rail systems like what exists in most of the developed world successfully provide both high levels of freight and passenger rail.

Then there’s the small fact that China (fully government-controlled) carries more freight and passengers than the US.

So, in summary, Japan is only a good example of a free market for rail if you think a corporation that needs to get every major business decision cleared by the government counts as a free market, Hong Kong actually has no significant private transport, and every other major rail country in the world which has good passenger and freight rail has 100% public ownership of the tracks. In my opinion, a private company that needs to get every business decision cleared by the government and was originally established by the government mandating how they must spend their money isn’t really a good example of a private company. It’s more like a public corporation (eg MTR, Amtrak, or Deutsche Bahn) that just privatizes the profits. True private companies, like Google, Berkshire Hathaway, Mcdonald’s, and Walmart, don’t need to go get every decision they make cleared by a government committee. I don’t think the companies in JR Group count as truly private companies but are more structured as public companies with privatized profits. There is no denying these essentially government-controlled corporations which just give their profits to private shareholders who have little to no real power over the company do indeed provide one of the highest-quality rail systems in the world.

Private monopolies will indeed under serve and overcharge.

Fascism takes the form of whichever ideology at the time best enables their ideas. During the lead-up to Nazi Germany, they called themselves social. They made an alliance with the Soviet Union (because it was convenient) and it furthered their goal. They surrounded their rhetoric with vaguely socialist wording, while all the time their main goal was always the formation of a totalitarian state. They never cared about economics as long as they could kill other people.

I almost never quote Hitler, for many obvious reasons, but in this case, he described the economics of fascism so succinctly, there really is no one else I can quote which makes their economic policy so clear. When you want to learn something in social sciences… go to the source.

“The basic feature of our economic theory is that we have no theory at all” ~ Adolf freaking Hitler

Today in America, the fascist movement has taken over the Republican Party, they wrap a thin veil of libertarianism and anti-government, anti-tax hysteria, and how the government is “coming for your money” so you need to elect them to power for their “small government” of a police-state surveillance system, travel restrictions, all the while those who are in power can walk away with government money through tax breaks, subsidies, and government contracts.

 

This is the basic fact of the economics of fascism and why it is so hard to pinpoint fascism as right-wing or left-wing on the economics spectrum. It is truly a syncretic movement when it comes to economics, and extreme right-wing when it comes to social policy). You can go spend years of your life reading through complex economic texts talking about the economy of Nazi Germany… and if that’s your thing, go for it. But all you really need to know is what is in the already existing Wikipedia Article, Economics of fascism. When you read through this article you will find that very succinct quote by that butcher of millions Adolf Hitler. He didn’t care about economic ideology, he was just a bloodthirsty monster. When hiding money in Swiss Banks and buying goods from American megacorporations furthered his goal of exterminating as many Jews, Roma, and queers as possible, he did business with American and Swiss corporations. When he saw Stalin massacre 14 million Ukrainians with no regard for life in the 30s he had no misgivings or hesitation of allying with Russia to further his goals of invading Poland, which had been a relatively safe haven for Jews for several centuries up to that point in time. He didn’t care about the means, he only cared about killing people.

We find the same thing when it comes to the modern Republican party. For programs they view as giving money to people of color, they rail against those economic programs with calls for austerity. When it comes to sending more money to the military, which then sells military-grade weapons to police departments which then disproportionately use those weapons against people of color, the Republicans declare the excessive military spending which buys weapons that the military doesn’t even have room to store as mandatory spending. They are libertarians when it comes to helping poor people, and socialists when it comes to further bloating already extreme military budgets. The Republican Party doesn’t really have a succinct economic plan nowadays asides from killing brown people and is becoming syncretic.

They do not care about the deficit, they have not truly cared about inflation or unemployment in over 40 years, and they only care about reaping as much money in this country for their rich donors as possible.

The economic theory of the Republican party is that they really have no economic theory at all.

But their social policy becomes more and more right-wing every year. I see no end in sight to their radicalization.

The Standard Deduction is bad for Democrats. The Standard Deduction gives Americans a choice… we can either deduct the standard deduction and then stop there, or we can choose to itemize our deductions one by one, but we don’t get the standard deduction if we choose to itemize.

So why is this bad for Democrats? Well, the reason is that Democratic states are more likely to support raising taxes like income taxes to support state programs and the SALT deduction cannot be used if you are using the standard deduction. I believe this minimization of the SALT deduction is the main reason Republicans doubled the Standard Deduction in 2018. This means that for most taxpayers we would be better off with a tax code that had a 0% tax rate on the first $50,000 of income and then be able to itemize the SALT deduction and other important deductions. Because of this, many deductions (such as the much-hated home mortgage interest deduction) cannot be used by many households until they are paying enough in home mortgage interest and state taxes over the course of the year to be greater than the Standard Deduction. This means for many middle-class Americans, the standard deduction means they pay more tax than they would otherwise. For the vast majority of taxpayers, the current system vastly underperforms a tax code with no standard deduction but no taxes paid on the first $50,000 of income for this reason.

The standard deduction is also very unequal in how it impacts the tax bill of people who use it. Let’s take a taxpayer who earns $30,000 a year, or a full-time $15 per-hour job. This person will pay around $2,970.40 in total federal taxes in our current system or 17% of their income. Removing the standard deduction and exempting the first $50k of income from the income tax means they pay only $1,860, basically only payroll tax into Social Security. For very high-income taxpayers who make $200k (assuming as a single individual) they see their tax rates drop from $26% to 20% (assuming no other changes) and for the ultra-wealthy taxpayer who makes $500k, their tax rate changes from 31% to 29%. Basically, replacing the standard deduction with 0% tax on the first $50k makes the biggest impact on the tax paid for low-income taxpayers. This would permanently benefit 99% of Americans. Unlike Republican tax cuts in the past, this change would be permanent.

This would cost the Federal government some money, but I would pay for it by reinstating the 70% tax rate for people who make over $1,000,000 per year, a 50% tax bracket on people who make over $500k, and 60% on people who make over $750k. 99% of Americans will never be impacted by this change. This would be the biggest shift in the tax burden for the working and middle classes in history. In exchange for this higher tax rate for the uber-wealthy, I would also remove the cap for the SALT tax deduction. On top of this, I would also tax capital gains as regular income which would mean retirees with IRA plans will benefit from the tax holiday on the first $50k of income they make. This compromise should make this entire tax swap deficit neutral if not even cut the deficit altogether while also putting money into working Americans’ and retirees’ pockets.

Another major impact of this will be how then how every American will have access to the IRA deduction, whereas people who take the standard deduction have no access to it. This is one of the simplest ways the Federal government can boost America’s savings rate, by making it so everyone has access to that critical deduction.

In short, this is a plan which will enable state governments to fund much-needed programs, reduce taxes on 99% of Americans, and also reduce the Federal deficit.

We are seeing a very dangerous precedent right now with the court case to undo student loan forgiveness. There are three main parts to this case that are very critical:

1. Laws don’t have to help everyone equally. Medicare for All is basically the only policy in that basket.
2. Bailouts are part of the American fabric.
3. The courts are nullifying clearly established law.

Equal access problems

So for the first part, if everything has to apply to everyone equally, then hurricane relief in Florida is unconstitutional. Federal subsidies for gas exploration in Texas are unconstitutional. Federal subsidies which prevent the South from falling into complete misery are unconstitutional. Federal subsidies which clean up coal mines in Kentucky and West Virginia are unconstitutional. They don’t impact me, so they are unconstitutional based on this Supreme Court’s logic.

Federal laws don’t have to apply equally to every person or every county in order to be constitutional. That has never been the case and is complete legal bogus. I doubt the Supreme Court will apply this new legal doctrine to all of these programs which benefit Republican states. That makes it not a doctrine but just an activist Supreme Court.

Unethical bailout argument

The whole argument that everyone needs to pull their own weight is antithetical to one of the main reasons our Constitution was written in the first place. By being together in one country we are able to pull each other up in times of need, and this has been the core of American democracy since 1787. This means that reconstruction would be unconstitutional under this argument. The Tennessee Valley Authority is now unconstitutional. FEMA is now unconstitutional and Florida now needs to be self-reliant and stop taking Federal aid when they get hit by hurricanes. If New Orleans is getting flooded than either Louisiana gets to pay to rebuild the dikes or rebuild New Orleans somewhere else. Same goes for Houston. These states need to stop taking Federal Aid because they don’t build their cities in ways which are resiliant to hurricanes if they are so opposed to bailouts. What about the PPP forgiveness program which gave billions of dollars to mostly rich bankers who then gambled the money on wall street? All of these programs are unconstitutional under the unethical bailout argument.

The pure hypocrisy of this one is just amazing. The Supreme Court has never before had any problem with giving a bailout to anyone. But as soon as it is student loan forgiveness, a program which is far more progressive than most of the other bailouts we have seen over the last decade they are up in arms about “ethics”.

Nullification

Congress spent this money, and they clearly put in a section of the law clearly stating that student loan forgiveness is legal.

The Supreme Court is nullifying a section of the US Code without any clear argument about why it violates the Constitution. Any section which they say violates this section will likely be just as easily used to nullify PPP loan forgiveness or FEMA saving Florida yet again the next time a hurricane hits. Student loan forgiveness is constitutional, which is why the Supreme Court shouldn’t make this ridiculous argument without opening up a massive can of worms about the supreme court’s legitimacy. If the Supreme Court can just strike down any law without any merit or real argument, it has become the most powerful branch of government, unaccountable, and dangerous.

 

What it really comes down to is the Republican Party is unable to win a majority of the vote in the modern American party system. They are legislating from the bench because that’s all they can do.

Playing with this idea that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon… one would expect a very high correlation between the federal funds rate and the inflation rate. Also for shits and giggles let’s throw in the price of energy in the United States.

Here are my correlation coefficients:

	CPI	Energy	Fed Funds
CPI		0.699622	0.714027
Energy			0.282622
Fed Funds

and what if we put in a 6 month lag?

	CPI	Energy	Fed Funds
CPI		0.467863	0.717891
Energy			0.282622
Fed Funds

Now… I don’t want to be brash here… but when I see a correlation of 70%, I don’t immediately think it must be a causal relationship like Milton Friedman claims. I think such claims are wrong, and this data shows that inflation cannot be an inherently monetary phenomenon.

Source:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=VxU2

If you try to look at the arguments for Brexit for any length of time with any basic understanding of economics, it doesn’t take long to realize the problems with all of them. With Brexit in full force are starting to see a decrease in wages, an increase in inequality, and a loss of jobs to European Union member states. They still haven’t dealt with the really big problem of having an open border on Ireland between the UK and EU, which threatens to reopen the troubles as soon as they deal with it. The solution has been an effective internal border in the United Kingdom, which is something countries just love to have!

So the economic arguments are all stupid, they always have been, they always will be, and the proof of their foolishness is just growing by the day.

What about the “loss of foreign power” argument? Well, let’s take a look at the recognition of Kosovo in this lovely map from Wikipedia…

 

This is clearly complete bogus. Nothing about the European Union requires each member state to have the same foreign policy in regards to external relations except when it comes to things like trade where they need to have consensus for obvious reasons.

There is only one more argument in favor of Brexit:

I predict the UK will rejoin the European Union in 10 years.