government – My Mental Model

Taxing the wealthy won’t work. A cryptocurrency might. (Part 2)

Taxes are for putting money in the hands of the government, not the citizens.

The more taxes the government collects, the more resources they control. The more resources they control, the closer we get to the original problem: too many resources in the hands of too few. I think that just about all of us agree that there needs to be a more functional distribution of resources but it’s not as simple as taking resources away from the wealthy. Especially if you’re shifting those resources to the government and not the people. Let’s not forget that we have a government which is more likely to see value in socialism for corporations than socialism for citizens.

If our goal is to put resources back in the hands of more people, maybe there’s a more direct approach.. A way to accomplish that outside of the government. Maybe there’s the potential for a currency which bypasses tax and simply redistributes itself without the potential for a corrupted middle-person like the government. Perhaps a cryptocurrency with an automated distribution curve that ensures nobody ever receives less than a basic cost of living. Because how does that benefit the society as a whole? They require inefficient social assistance programs which require tax dollars anyways.

A lot of people see how much we’re struggling right now and think that it’s because wages need to rise. Well, that might not help if the cost of living continues to rise more quickly. What we really need to do is recognize that income is only relevant when compared to what we spend our money on. We could all be billionaires and it would mean nothing if the average home cost a trillion dollars. We need real a benchmark.

Right now, our poorest people receive so little support and so few opportunities, that their environment does a better job of keeping them where they are as opposed to helping them rise above their circumstances. That needs to change. Our baseline should be an environment that lends to creating successful people, not one which holds them back. Based on that, being poor would mean that you could still afford: A comfortable living space, healthy food, quality clothing, transportation, broadband internet and a smart phone, education, savings, and a disposable income. Imagine that, our least fortunate being given every opportunity to make something of themselves and live a good life. Do you have any idea what that would do to our nation’s productivity? That alone would increase the nation’s average IQ by double digits and slingshot us into the next industrial revolution.

Lets’ say that the average income needed to produce that lifestyle was $50,000 per year. Sounds steep? In 2018, total household wealth topped $100 trillion. That’s about $300,000 each across 350 million people. If it only costs $50,000 per year in resources to ensure that someone has every opportunity to become their most productive self, that’s starting to sound like a downright brilliant investment. As they spend that $50,000 in resources throughout the year on things like rent, or professional services, or education, or eating out, those resources simply flow to others within the economy based on free market principles. This still leaves plenty of resources left over for a strong middle class, and plenty still, for the most productive geniuses among us. And let’s not forget that when the lower and middle class have savings and a disposable income, they can invest in the great ideas of others, whether that be big companies they like, or good friend with a great idea.

If you could tie that distribution curve to a basic cost of living and a basic standard of living.. with the idea of promoting competition with a well resourced diversity of thought, and reaping the rewards of a meritocracy of ideas.. I think it could absolutely be something special. But it’s not without it challenges.

When I come up with an idea like this, one of the first things I ask myself is how I would undermine it. Generally speaking, if I could, then someone else would. Like how would someone buy into this cryptocurrency? If it’s like any other foreign exchange, what would prevent someone from buying 1 dollar of the currency, and then having it topped up to $50,000 through an automated rebalancing while they keep the rest of their money in USD? How would the currency even know who to rebalance it to? And how exactly are you ranked in this distribution curve? I don’t see how this would work without other pieces in play.

One of my most successful strategies in devising solutions to problems is thinking outside the box. I know it sounds cliche, but I also think it’s relevant. When we’re talking about a functional and effective distribution of resources among a population, just about every solution we’ve come up with includes making adjustments to the current tax system. That means using the government as a mandatory intermediary and decision maker. Considering that the government has managed to rack up $22 trillion in national debt with no plans of reducing it, maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe they’re part of the box that we have to think outside of. But what if outside the box is uncharted territory? Well… a blank canvas usually requires some innovation and a willingness to create something new.

For a cryptocurrency to functionally redistribute resources across it’s users, it would have to know who they are. It would need a fair and accurate mechanism to evaluate their merit to determine the level of resources they should have access to. I’m tempted to say that’s a whole new set of problems… but perhaps that’s not the right way to look at it. Perhaps it’s a whole new set of solutions… ones which together, form a new platform for organizing wealth. Perhaps we’ve taken our current platform to the limit of it’s efficacy… a society in which we know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Perhaps next up, we can devise a system which cares about the price of nothing, because it understands the value of everything.

While not without its challenges, this concept has one rather remarkable advantage. A currency like this, if feasible, could be remarkably popular among the masses. If they chose to adopt that currency in a mainstream manner, it would destroy the value of the USD. The top 1% who would avoid a currency like this at all costs, would see the value of their estates drop dramatically.

Politics/Finance Need New Metrics

I just got a notification from Yahoo finance (a surprisingly good app), “Nobody has a clue what’s happening: Bumper jobs growth after Poloz calls economy disappointing.”

It’s not the first time I’ve heard a stat suggesting that job growth and unemployment are at their best numbers ever. Not the first time I’ve heard someone refer to the economy as disappointing either. What I personally find disappointing is the comment that nobody has a clue as to what’s going on.

Let’s start by pointing out a few key facts. Wealth has systematically shifted from the many to the few. Cost of living has grown several times faster than wages. Full-time work no longer guarantees a living wage. The majority of North America is now living paycheck to paycheck. Automation has replaced most unskilled labor. Millennials are the most educated generation yet. Student loan debt is at an all time high. Depression is at an all-time high. Drug use is at an all-time high. Suicide rates are at all-time highs.

Damn right we need new metrics.

Every time someone says unemployment rates are at all-time lows, I get rather frustrated. It’s only part of the picture. The idea of a job for everyone who wants a job is a great idea. But you know what else has a 100% employment rate? Slavery. The difference between the two is that with employment, you’re paid for your services and can choose to work elsewhere. And that you’re responsible for your own cost of living. And if nobody is willing to pay you a livable wage, that’s your problem.

Where I live, someone came up with the stat that it cost a little over $300,000 in annual income to support a middle class lifestyle. This was defined as owning a modest home, 2 cars, 2 kids, university educations, and annual vacations. The average household income here is about $75,000. The unemployment rate takes none of that into consideration. We could have a 0% unemployment rate and the city would still be filled with people who couldn’t afford to buy a home, raise a family, or any of what we have come to understand as basic entitlements. Perhaps home ownership isn’t something we should feel entitled towards.. perhaps the same with having a family. But then I ask why we’ve had to give these up, and it just doesn’t add up. Then I ask what happens if we just accept it.. and it’s not good for anyone.

First things first, we have to agree on what we’re all aiming for. I think the most universal answer to that is happiness. Everyone just wants to be happy, and for those who prefer things like power.. well.. they have the current system. If happiness is the goal, we need to start focusing on the metrics that are most closely correlated. Two things that we know of that are strongly and negatively correlated with happiness are cost of living and debt. While breaking unemployment records, North America is also setting new records in debt and cost of living. That seems to tell a story: The average American is educated, overworked, underpaid, in debt, and losing hope.

Tell me again about how great our unemployment rates are.

Or maybe recognize that an unemployment rate is only part of the equation and that equal attention much be paid to the rest. First would be the alignment between the skills of your workforce and the jobs they’re in. If you have a nation of computer programmers, scientists, and writers but your job market is filled with part-time customer service jobs, you did it wrong. Second would be whether or not your workforce was being fairly compensated. If you have a low unemployment rate and most of most of your workforce can’t afford a basic cost of living, you did it wrong. Third would be how well prepared your workforce is for the future. Jobs are being lost to automation at an increasing rate and we’re likely approaching an economy where AI and robotics will be able to handle 80% of the existing jobs within the next 20 years. If you’re bragging about anything that’s happening this year without preparing for that future, you’re doing it wrong.

You see a lot of stats when you read articles or watch the news. We use them to try and understand what’s important.. but in the process of doing so, we seem to have lost sight of what’s important. It really is about being happy. Imagine a national happiness index being reporting on quarterly. Imagine politicians seeing that number as their most important metric. If you knew that increasing the cost of living would lead to stress and unhappiness, why would you celebrate a real estate boom? If you knew that the bottom 80% of Americans only own about 7% of the stock market’s value, would you really be celebrating a booming stock market?

How about this stat, a ratio of healthcare spending against military spending. Let’s be honest about it and see how much we’re willing to spend on healing people versus harming people. Or let’s push that a step further and compare military spending to humanitarian spending. How much money are you willing to spend on helping versus hurting. I can just about guarantee that would be a far better foreign policy than what we’ve seen play out of the last 20 years.

What about a stat that shows up how much tax large multi-national corporations are paying? Something that takes all sources of government funding into consideration so we know just how much of their operations are subsidized by tax-payers. Military defense contracts anyone? What about major tax breaks for fossil fuel companies..

We gotta have something that covers national debt too. A big deal was made of this years ago but the story got stale. Now we have a president who was notorious for running up debt and bankrupting businesses. As a result, in a matter of a few years, the country’s single largest expense will be it’s debt payment. Maybe we need a catastrophe more than we need a metric on this one.

The whole point of statistics is to reduce a great deal of information down into key points. When done well, those key points illuminate the important parts of what should be an ongoing conversation. Unfortunately, we now have stats for the sake of stats. And it’s no longer a conversation but an argument. It’s not a pursuit of the truth or a more accurate understanding of the situation, it’s a tribal battle for power in which stats are only used to support your argument or undermine theirs. I wish we could get back to the same side of the table.

True Meritocracy

The world is a crazy place. It’s probably always been a crazy place, but something’s different right now. Something’s starting to boil over.

A war is being waged between how things have been done, and how they could be done. It’s tradition versus progress. People are afraid. The future is uncertain. If you have it good, change isn’t so appealing. But most people don’t have it so good – so change is coming.

One thing we all seem to agree on though is the concept of a meritocracy. The best person for the job should get the job.. Seems straight forward but I don’t think we really appreciate what that really looks like. In a meritocracy, opportunities are only earned, no longer given.

I consider myself someone who has fought hard for almost everything he has, but I’d be foolish if I said that I had earned all my opportunities. I went to an inner-city high school that probably had the lowest graduation rate in the city. Most of my friends lived in the projects while my family was middle class. When grade 12 came along, they were barely considering college. Meanwhile, my dad kicked my ass into gear, paid for biology and math tutors, and even a guy to help walk us through the application process to universities. That didn’t mean that I wasn’t working my ass off, but still.

And the idea of being able to afford university? My grandparents set some money aside for that. It didn’t cover the full ride, but it let me come out of university with barely any debt. I know I’m intelligent, I know I’m capable, and I know I have a strong worth ethic, so perhaps I earned an opportunity at a university education – but how many other intelligent, capable and hardworking people never had that opportunity? How many of them are working dead-end jobs because they weren’t given the same opportunities along the way that I was?

In my mind, in a meritocracy, resources and opportunities flow to those who are most deserving. So how does one determine who is most deserving? It’s a function of efficiency – If you’re going to do the most with the opportunity, you deserve it most.

In the case of post secondary education, it’s not a matter of payment, access, or even intelligence, it’s a function of who will do the most with that education. How many times have we seen people end up with a bachelor’s degree only to find out that it had nothing to do with what they wanted to do with their lives? How many times has someone who would’ve turned that degree into a bright future, been turned down?

In the case of jobs, how often have we seen friends hired over strangers? I’ll concede that familiarity and trust are important factors to consider when hiring, but the inside track is real. How many times have mom or dad made a call to one of their friends at the firm to get their kid set up? How many other kids who were more qualified were turned down because of it? And here’s the crazy thing, is the kid who got hooked up really better off?

How often do we see kids pushed into careers like accounting or law by their parents, only to discover that it’s not aligned with them at all. Sure it comes with a decent income and some degree of job security, but if that’s not their gift to the world, they’re holding themselves back. If they could make the effort to tap into their inner-genius and align themselves with what they were born to do, not only would they probably make a lot more money, they’d probably be a lot happier too. And for bonus points, that would now free up a spot in their previous profession for someone who was born to do that.

And now we arrive at one of the most interesting and currently relevant oversights of a meritocracy: Inheritance wouldn’t exist.

If you googled: great leaders who come from wealthy families, you might be surprised to at what it returned. Not much. If you do, you’ll notice that google tries to auto-complete the query with ‘nothing’ instead of ‘wealthy families’, the second suggestion is ‘poverty’. This query returns everything you would expect it to. Is that a pattern worth observing?

If you’re born into a wealthy family, are you more or less likely to encounter obstacles and experience adversity? Are you more likely to be given your opportunities or earn them? How likely are you to experience sacrifice? How likely are you to think of your own self-worth as an extension of your family’s success? How likely are you to have a skewed perspective of who you are and what you can offer the world? How likely are to you see equality between you and someone who isn’t as nearly well off?

Maybe this is why Warren Buffett, perhaps one of the most grounded billionaires of all time isn’t passing his billions along to his family. Not because he doesn’t like them, but because he thinks it’ll do more harm than good. Personally, I think one of the best things you can do for your children is to help them discover their own success.

Back at the banks, part of my role was to help devise estate plans for my wealthy clients. More often than not, they were great people who had worked hard their entirely lives to build what they had. Most were philanthropic, but almost all wanted to leave the majority of their estate to their kids while paying the least amount of tax in the process. From their perspective, they earned the money and should be able to do as they please when they pass away – it was about freedom of choice.

So is freedom of choice at odds with a meritocracy? I don’t think so. On first glance, someone might think that my suggestion would be a 100% estate tax with the proceeds used to fund something like free post secondary education. I don’t think it’s that simple. It would be too easy to invest your estate into a business or other asset, and gift that asset to your heirs, only for them to sell it and receive an indirect inheritance. Rules create loopholes. They need to be self-motivated to do it. We have to convince the rich that their families are better off without all the money. It needs to be logical, and it needs to be their idea.

So why is passing your fortune through to your kids so important? The average price of a home here is about 20x the average household income. The cost of living is high across that board. What that means is that the only people who can afford real estate are people who already own real estate, people who in the top 1%, and children who receive financial assistance from their parents. Under the guise of a free market, we exist in a scenario where only the wealthy and their children are capable of buying real estate.

You can only own property if your parents owned property – that’s downright feudal.

But how are you going to convince those parents not to help their kids? I’m sure the parents would much rather spend that money on a vacation home or their favorite charity, but they’re deeply invested in the future of their children and will gladly sacrifice some of their success to see their kids get ahead. But what if they didn’t?

A market will go up when there are more buyers than sellers. A market will go down when there are more sellers than buyers. When the well-off are funding the real estate purchases of their kids, they’re creating buyers. They’re effectively raising the market price on everyone. If they were willing to let their kids experience the realities of an unbalanced market, you’d be helping the market find its equilibrium – where an average income could afford an average home. But they’re scared. They don’t trust the system, and they definitely don’t trust that the system will look out for the best interests of their kids. So they take matters into their own hands and take care of their family at the expense of others. Do I blame them? No, especially because I don’t think many of them make that connection. Caring for your offspring is one of the most powerful instinctual drives we have, including protecting them at the expense of others. So how do we move past it then?

Government as it exists now, if they ever came around to it, would want to put rules in place. There would be regulations, and taxes, and other nonsense that would be more likely to shift wealth to the lawyers and accountants than to the people who would make the best use of it. The movement towards a meritocracy needs to be a movement of the people, and it may have already started.

Warren Buffet and Bill Gates spent some time over the last several years speaking with their fellow billionaires about the impact of leaving their wealth to their families. They’ve made progress. More than 150 billionaires have already publicly pledged to give half their fortune away, including Zuckerberg who pledged 99% of his Facebook shares. Just about every self-made billionaire will have a keen eye for investments so what does this really look like? How is this connected to a meritocracy? Does it stop at the billionaires?

When you’re looking to make an investment, the first thing most people ask is how much will I make? I would ask, “of what?” Investing is not financial by nature, it’s much more dynamic than that. When these billionaires are looking to invest, most aren’t simply writing a check to their local chapter of United Way, they’re looking for the best return on their investment. So what are they getting back? I’d guess it varies on a case by case basis, but I think above all else, they’re looking to put those resources behind those who will do the most with them. How many women are there in the world who are capable of so much more than the opportunities afforded to them today? How many children die from poor health care before they’re able to contribute to society? How much of the world is still off-line and unable to see beyond their own horizon? These kinds of investments might create a return of capital, they’ll almost definite return some warm and fuzzies, but the real genius is the return that’s created for the rest of the world.

Think of how many women there are in the world who are operating at their full potential. Now compare it to how many women in the world who will never have the opportunity to work, let alone at something that they were born to do. Now multiply that number by how many neurons there are in the average brain and you’ll arrive at the world’s largest untapped source of brain power. You could say something similar about most people living in poverty. Imagine the power of bringing those minds online. Imagine what the world would look like if we were all afforded the opportunity to tap into that inner genius – that’s the foundation of a meritocracy.

Does it stop at the billionaires? I hope not. They can’t do it alone. They need our help. They have the money, but we have the power – we just don’t know it yet.

Win the Next Presidential Election With This One Weird Trick

I was tempted to throw in the /s but it’s true. Seriously.

It wasn’t the republican right that elected Trump. It wasn’t the democratic left that let Hillary down either. It was the American people who made themselves heard. Trump was elected as a giant fuck-you to how America governs – justifiably so.

It was a fuck-you to career politicians with fake smiles and fake laughs.

It was a fuck-you to wall street influencing monetary policy.

It was a fuck-you to the oversensitive and irrational alt-left.

It was a fuck-you to partisan politics and the inability of politicians to get anything done.

It was a fuck-you to the wealthy elite.

And perhaps most importantly, it was a fuck you to a lack of honesty and transparency between a government and the people it serves.

Trump may just be the best thing to happen to American politics in generations, in the same way that a bull is great for a china shop. Bull wrecks china shop, owner realizes nobody buys china anymore and uses the insurance money to open a dispensary. I think a lot of the people who voted for him already knew this, but if there was any doubt… he’s worse than a career politician, he’s the wealthy elite’s racist grandpa. One of the first things he did was cozy up to wall street. He’s just as irrational and oversensitive as the alt-left. With republican control over the senate and house, he still can’t get anything passed. Bipartisanship is worse than ever. Finally, and most importantly, Trump has probably solidified himself as the most dishonest politician in American history. For anybody looking at this objectively, he’s the one you send in to undermine any remaining confidence in the American establishment.

So by the time the American people are ready to elect their next president, what are they going to be looking for? The same thing we’ve always wanted…

Honesty and Transparency.

Seriously. That’s it. We’re just going to want it that much more after all this nonsense. Run a campaign under the premise of releasing every confidential government file ever held. Moon landing? Release it all. JFK? Release it all. 9/11? Release it all. Area 51? Release it all. Every god damn piece of information that the government has – make it readily available to the public. Maybe it all amounts to very little, but at least the public would regain their confidence in their government. Or maybe we find out that the government hasn’t been as honest with us as we would’ve liked and we have an opportunity to rebuild that trust with a proper foundation.

Electing someone we don’t know to run a system we don’t understand isn’t exactly the best example of democracy but it does remind us how important honesty and transparency is between a government and its people. Without good information, we can’t make good decisions and if we aren’t equipped with the information necessary to elect good leaders, where exactly does that leave us? And yet honesty seems more scarce in politics than in any other profession. Maybe this is what happens to lawyers when they don’t have to worry about perjury anymore.

We need to move beyond this idea that being uninformed makes us safer. We need to move beyond this notion of the government taking measures to make us ‘feel’ safer at the expense of being less informed. We need the government to stop treating us like kids and start treating us like equals and that starts with telling us WTF is actually going on.

I’m putting some brain power towards figuring out how to build an honest democracy that just doesn’t just hold itself accountable to the public, but also engages the collective thoughts and wisdom of its people on a regular basis. I’m making progress.. might be ready in time for Mars.

Let me try something..

Anyone remember that scene from Old School where Will Ferrell steps up to debate ‘The Ragin’ Cajun”, James Carville?

Curious enough, something similar happens to me from time to time. Some people say that I’m articulate and well spoken but I may just be well rehearsed. When I’m discussing something that I’ve given a lot of thought to, I’ve already had those conversations numerous times in my own head. Perhaps that’s why my mind wanders when I’m giving speeches. Perhaps even more curious, it’s often this state of mind which tends earn me that ‘mic drop’ moment.

Anyways, I had one of those moments in the shower earlier and I thought it might be worth writing down. The debate question is:

What’s the real issue in American politics today?

Going into blackout mode…

This isn’t a black versus white thing, this isn’t a rich versus poor thing, and this isn’t a left versus right thing. This is what happens when politics becomes more important than governance. This is what happens when a duopoly of power prioritizes the short-term success of their party over the greater good of the people they’re supposed to serve.

The American people have democracy, but in a democracy where you’re asked to elect someone you don’t know to run a system you don’t understand, what exactly are you asking of your people? In an election process that requires billion dollar campaigns, who do you expect to be influencing those candidates? In a system with such obvious fundamental flaws, why do we keep expecting different outcomes?

When we start to notice what’s happening though, rather that acknowledge our mistakes and work to solve our problems, we’re given someone to blame. If you’re rich, blame the tax raising democrats. If you’re poor, blame the heartless republicans. If you’re middle America, blame the coastal elites. If you’ve lost your job, blame the immigrants. If you’re a liberal millennial, blame the white man. It’s all utterly ridiculous because when someone understands how interconnected we all are, it’s very easy to see that we’re all in this together.

The American people want freedom. That’s the freedom to be whoever we want to be and love whoever we want to love. That’s also the freedom for businesses to compete without unnecessary regulations. The American people want lower taxes, but don’t mind paying them as long as they’re spent well. The American people want someone working 40 hours a week to earn a livable wage. The American people want to stop invading other countries. The American people want affordable access to health care. The American people agree on almost all major issues, but through the spin cycle of politics and media, everyone’s divided without even really understanding why.

The universe always finds it’s equilibrium. Just after Trump was elected, I said this may be a good thing. Not because he’ll be any good at his job, but because he might just be catastrophically bad at it. Just maybe he’ll lie more than any politician ever has. Maybe he’ll flip flop all of his policies. Maybe he’l have temper tantrums so frequently that people question if he’s mentally fit enough for office. Maybe he’ll let his racist undertones influence policy. Maybe all the shady stuff that he’s done in the past will come to boil over during his presidency and we can finally have a complete meltdown of the confidence in our government.

Maybe that’s when we stop paying attention to them, and start paying attention to each other. Maybe that’s when we start to drive our own rhetoric around the values that got us here in the first place. Maybe that’s when we’ll finally open our minds to what government could be.

Fuck the Rules.

Think about the last time you were driving. How fast were you going? Was it at or below the posted speed limit? If you were like me, you were going with the flow of traffic which is usually about 20% over. Despite a blatant disregard for the law, millions of commuters get to and from work every day without any intervention from law enforcement. Why?

Natural order supersedes civil law. People are driven to pursue efficiency and it’s usually achieved through a group effort. Collectively, we decided that the speed limit was too low and that we could safely operate our vehicles beyond that range. Since we’ve done it collectively, and have demonstrated its success, law enforcement has conceded this victory and have effectively decided to focus their efforts elsewhere. I find it curious that the laws have not changed to reflect this, especially considering that cars have become far more agile and much safer since current speed limits were introduced. Perhaps they’ve assumed that if they increased the limit to what we actually drove, people would simply drive 20% above that and it would be chaos. Maybe. Maybe we find that natural balance between speed and risk on our own.

Another perspective, well known by the tinfoil hats, suggests that this is done on purpose as it gives a government direct control over its population anytime it’s deemed to be necessary. If a cop wanted to pull you over, he could start with the fact that you were probably speeding. If you were driving the limit while everyone else was speeding, well now he’ll pull you over for acting suspicious. A well-known lawyer wrote a book about the idea that the average American professional broke several federal laws each day. This wasn’t because of a lack of morals, ethics, or competency, but because the rules, laws, and regulations were so numerous, broad or vague, that it was nearly impossible to do your job without breaking some set of rules.

While I think government and law enforcement largely recognize the system and understand how to exploit it, I don’t think it was purpose-built nor do I think most governments work with the goal of exploiting their people. If you think about why rules are put in place, it’s usually to retain power or to promote efficiency. When a king decided that only his bloodline would rule, this helped to protect his power. When slave owners decided that slaves didn’t have rights, this was to protect their power. When men decided that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote, it was to protect their power. While it still does happen, I suspect that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to introduce laws for the purpose of retaining power. If I’m not mistaken, those types of laws rely on a lack of access to information and the internet seems to have undermined that quite nicely.

What about speeding though? That law doesn’t do much in the way of consolidating power in any direction does it? Of course not… I don’t think. That’s a law designed to promote efficiency. The idea is that we want to maintain a healthy flow of traffic, with as few accidents and injuries as possible. Not difficult to understand and most would agree that it’ a sensible solution – so why does almost everyone break that limit? Well as it happens, we’re capable of finding that equilibrium on our own. Once upon a time, when cars were heavier and couldn’t stop as fast, back when they weren’t loaded up with airbags, back when there weren’t seatbelts, those speed limits may have represented that equilibrium – but we’ve since evolved.

We actually have our own criteria for setting a speed limit. We want to get from point A to point B in the least amount of time possible, without causing an accident, and without being pulled over by law enforcement. As it turns out, we’ve identified that this new equilibrium is usually about 20% over the posted limit, and it’s why so many of us get frustrated when we’re being obstructed with someone who is only going the limit or just below.

So rules are good as long as they’re promoting efficiency then right? No murdering is a good rule because it decreases our population’s mortality rate, time spent thinking about being murdered, and resources spent not getting murdered. Net result is more people with more time to think about things besides being murdered – makes sense. Consider this though, if murder wasn’t against the law, would you? For those that have, was the law an effective deterrent? For those who it did deter, would they have done it had they known they wouldn’t get caught? What I’m getting at is that the law isn’t driving our sense of right and wrong, that’s something you find on the inside.

So we have these internal drivers that help us pursue efficiency and internal drivers that help us understand right from wrong. I think they overlap and when I’ve refined this idea, it’ll certainly be its own blog post. Until then, follow me on the assumption that our concept of right and wrong is based on our understanding of efficiency. It’s why speeding doesn’t feel unethical unless you’re creating a dangerous situation for others.

So back to murder. It’s a concept which is almost universally understood to be unethical or immoral. Why is that? Well there’s an emotional perspective, an intellectual perspective, and a societal perspective that most of you will already be familiar with, but here’s my perspective from the side of efficiency. I don’t think murder is inherently right or wrong. If you were given a chance to assassinate Hitler prior to the holocaust, would you? Someone who did would likely be considered a hero. Someone who refused may even be considered to be immoral by the masses. But what if you were only given an opportunity to kill him prior to him doing any harm? What if you were given an opportunity to murder Hitler as an infant? Quite the ethical conundrum.

From the perspective of efficiency though, I don’t think it’s that simple. The most efficient approach would likely be some level of early stage intervention. I know I’m probably one of the few to suggest this, but imagine if Hitler’s passion, intelligence, and charisma were better channeled? Not only would we have avoided a second world war, Hitler was probably capable of making a very positive contribution given the right circumstances. All that said, in a universe of infinite possibilities, there are bound to be scenarios where murder is the most efficient option. Where I’m sitting on this currently, is that while murder can be ethical or the most efficient course of action, it rarely ever is. How many of us have the wisdom necessary to know which lives are worth keeping and which aren’t. How many of us would you think are entirely incapable of making a positive impact on the world when surrounded by the right people? I think the answer is barely any and I think those are probably the biggest reasons why this exists as a social rule, regardless of law.

Finally, the fun part. I was trying to come up with a law that was already in place, which embodied efficiency. I couldn’t. Then the lightbulb went off. I suspect efficiency is like an exponential curve, meaning that you can always become more efficient, but in most cases you can never become completely efficient. Effectively, there’s *always* room for improvement. The purpose of a rule, is to dictate behaviour. That rule may dictate how to behave in a highly efficient manner today, but what happens when our behaviour evolves beyond that construct?

The more rules we take away, the more we’re allowed to be ourselves. The more we’re allowed to be ourselves, the better we can understand our maximum utility and the value of others. The better we understand each other and ourselves, the better we are at working together towards a common goal. The better we work together towards a common goal, the more efficient we all become.

Best laws ever ‘put’ in place? Allowing people to govern themselves. Allowing slaves to be people. Allowing women to be equal. When you remove laws and regulations, allowing us to be what we should be, amazing things happen.