Public Policy

I’m doing some research into how electronic options markets work - and specifically those used primarily for prediction purposes. I’m familiar with them (previously wrote about prediction markets and political contracts).

And not just terms they’ll understand, but terms they probably have memorized!

Ok, so this is just plain awesome. Generally speaking I don’t like blogging and just linking to something else, but I have to give it to Laura on this one: Disney fairy tales deconstructed (and reconstructed) to explain copyright, public domain, fair use, and a little history of the related laws. It’s a parody, it’s news, it’s criticism, it’s small compared to the cited works, it has no commercial impact on Disney’s original works, and it is absolutely, 100% brilliant.

Go watch it. Take the five minutes, it’s worth it. (If you’re like me and using some crazy operating system try the vlc media player).

Now, here’s what I have to say. Copyright is a big deal. Trademarks are a big deal. Patents are big deal. And yes in general intellectual property rights are a really big deal. We really need to protect them. Like, really protect them. Without the guarantee of profit from protected intellectual property rights we won’t have (much) investment in new music, arts, performance, technology, gadgets, and, perhaps most importantly, drugs. We like music, arts, and gadgets. We need new drugs. But we need old drugs too. And we need them at a reasonable price.

With PC World declaring Microsoft Demands Royalties for Open-Source Software we’ve now got a repeat of the RIAA’s sue our customers strategy!

Suing Your Customers

I use MSWindows, MacOSX, a variety of distrubtions of GNU/Linux, and even Solaris, HPUX, AIX, and other flavors of UNIX in my daily job. Daily. I am a Microsoft customer. I use several of their products beyond just MSWindows. And now microsoft is warning that it will sue me for using Linux. Does that make me want to buy more or less of their product? I’m not really sure, but somewhere in “marketing” is a rule like “treat your customers well”. Where does “suing your customers” fall? Is that somehow going to make me feel like I should buy more Microsoft products?

Perspiration, Innebriation, Desperation

So, now that we know Mr. Ballmer is a major perspirator and I imagine he must be drinking a lot given the almost complete failure of Vista. So now desperation. Why would you sue your customers. That just sounds like such a boneheaded move so the only way you might want to do that is if you are really really desperate.

The steady march of open source

In other news I haven’t used excel in a year and I just moved my laptop to Linux two weeks ago as did a coworker this past weekend.

Note: “sucks” is a pretty strong and immature word, but it’s the word to use online when you think someone has a bad idea. So, if that’s off-putting, get over it. Or start a “sucks sucks” site.

Recently I was asked what I thought of Angie’s List. Frankly, I had no idea. I was told it was a pretty neat list that has good ratings of local retailers. The idea is that you are looking for advice on a company to hire for a service (e.g. car repair) so you check Angie’s List and see the advice and ideas of other users who have used the site. It’s basically like Better Business Bureau, City Search, or one of thousands of other local directories. Many of these directories are broken: biased reviews, paid inclusion, incomplete information, etc. This is where Angie’s List claims to be different. They use “only” consumer generated content and require a “small fee” to keep the reviews unbiased.

The last elections went pretty poorly for Coloradoans who believe in the freedom to migrate. Being as I’m one of those people, I’ve had this idea kicking around to make a t-shirt that explains a little about the history of immigration and the “Mother of Exiles”: the Statue of Liberty. Last night I couldn’t sleep very well. So, I finally got down to business and made the shirt.

Inspiration: Your tired, Your poor

In Emma Lazarus famous poem The New Colossus she describes her personal interpretation of the Statue of Liberty. Lazarus’ brief poem captures many of the concepts and ideals that people have for America as a land of opportunity, a shining city on the hill where poor exiles from around the world can seek freedom:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

What great sentiments!

So, I decided to try to pay homage to Lazarus and to try to spread the message of the entire poem. I will shortly be a walking billboard for her message which rings so true and so important for policy in our time.

Get your own shirt

So, go get your own Mother of Exiles shirt.

As I’ve written before water policy is something that is frequently done in a relatively inefficient manner.

Here’s some more fun examples:

Keep Prices the Same, but Institute a Quota

This was the plan that Denver used a few years ago. They didn’t want to raise prices because some people complained that water is a basic human “right” and that you shouldn’t have to pay a ton of money for it. I can kind of agree with that, a certain amount of water is necessary in the world and since Denver’s water is a public utility company they should provide at least some water at a low rate.

So, they instituted quotas - if you live on the odd side of the street you can only water on certain days, you can only water for certain amounts of time, etc. They hired little water police to go around giving citations if you broke the rules. And people broke the rules often. I know I did because I’m frequently out of town on the weekends so I had to break the rules if I wanted to make sure that my yard got enough water. But the end result was that significantly less water was used.

When less water gets used and the price stays the same but the cost of policing and education goes up what happens? The water utility brings in less revenue and they have to do something…so they raised their prices. Which is what they wanted to avoid in the first place. So, they spent extra money on the enforcement and education programs and raised prices in the end. They also could have just announced that they were going to raise prices slowly over time and then let people adjust their own lives/gardens/usage patterns to deal with the increased prices, but then they wouldn’t have had to hire anyone extra or force us onto their watering schedule.

Keep Prices the Same, but Provide Subsidies

The NCPA had an article a little while ago titled CITIES REWARD ‘LIFESTYLE’ THAT CONSERVES WATER and aside from the fact that they use all caps in their titles, it was an interesting summary of subsidies in various cities that reward people for doing things which should reduce water consumption. Now, let’s think about this for a second. The water folks pay you to put in a low flow showerhead. So, if I put in a low flow showerhead, collect my credit, and then remove it. Has anything good actually happened? How enforceable is the plan? Give people a game and they will play it!

The subsidies that they give you are relatively simplistic: $100 rebate for a “low use washing machine”. However, low use washing machines vary in the amount of water that they use - one machine may save 20% while another saves 40% so the rebate amount should vary based upon the amount saved ,right?

One way to offer a subsidy that distributes the benefit according to the amount of water actually saved would be, you know, to raise prices. Because then when I install a washing machine that saves 40% I will save 40% of the money that I had previously spent on the washing machine usage. Ditto for the showerhead. With higher prices there is no need to hire a consultant to come into my home to check if my showerhead is low flow and no need for an enforcer to check up once every few years - I’m going to keep the showerhead because it’s in my own self interest to do so.

Raising Prices While Protecting Poor

Now, this is possible because Los Angeles did it about 15 years ago: use a tiered system. The first 100 gallons a day are a low fee. The next are more expensive. The next are even more expensive. Simple! If someone wants 3 acres of Kentucky Blue Grass in the middle of the dessert then let them have it and make them pay for it! If someone wants a rock garden and wants to shower once a week, let them roll around in a bucket of money that they’ll be saving. And the beauty of a tiered system with increased prices is that it requires no extra investment from the water department - no need to hire enforcers, no education or public relations program to discuss the right day of the week to water if you live in a blue house without shutters on the odd side of the street. People will figure out the smart thing to do because people are smart!

Unfortunately, as Stan says:

American society considers you to be basically a good person, but a little bit stupid.

From anecdotal reports (my sister in law) to traditional media outlets it seems everyone in Denver is complaining that voting went poorly. Denver City Auditor Dennis Gallagher said “Heads should roll”. Really?

Voting for the prepared

If you planned ahead more than 5 hours before the end of the polls, here were your options:

• Voting in advance - for the past two weeks or so you could have gone to several voting locations to vote and had no line
• Polling places had fewer voters than machines (at least mine did, and it was one of the ones with a 4 hour line as the polls closed)
• Absentee ballots - I’ve never actually used a voting booth, at least not since age 4 when my mom snuck me into her booth and let me pull the big handle. And why should I go to the polling center when absentee gives me the same vote on my time with no line?

In my humble opinion, this is a case of voters who didn’t plan ahead and use one of the many options available to them to make the process more efficient. Then when they had to site through lines they, of course, want to blame someone else. Democracy at it’s best.