Why not host an online open source repository for better legislation with the actual details of its implementation already written? Tearing down the old system without having a model for a new system ready to go never ends well. Have each law/policy vetted and improved in an open forum before it's ever passed, and use AI as well as experts in the field to calculate the political, social, and financial consequences of that new law/policy as well as how it impacts other existing laws and policies. Plug in real world examples in various places of when something worked and see if it scales. Build into the law/policy that legislators should try stuff and then quickly update and change it once the holes are evident. If we build it, get the public excited about it, maybe the politicians will come? Call it "Legislight."
Yes, but I think you have to start by looking at what's there, and understanding what needs to be undone. I often see folks come in with their proposals for better policies without first understanding the clutter that must be cleaned out for those new policies to work. You have to clean up before you remodel. Otherwise you're just adding to the clutter.
Isn't this in part the purpose of the Abundance Network? Creating a venue through which abundance-focused candidates can discuss what's working in different localities, and try to replicate it in more places... I've talked with Misha about the idea of "ALEC, but for Good, rather than Evil."
(ALEC is the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, if you're not familiar. They help spread state and local policies like TRAP laws -- Targeted Restrictions on Abortion Providers, i.e. stuff like requiring women's health clinics to be outfitted as though they were hospitals, to jack up the cost and force many to close. Their goals are for the most part anathema, but their model, of working with think tanks and academics to identify what's advancing their goals, and then feeding bill text to people in a position to implement, is completely sensible, and I find it frustrating that liberals have not managed put together a similar system that operates with the same efficiency.)
Poor incentives mixed with leaden process is the recipe for dysfunction. You'd think both Democrat and Republican leaders would see fixing this as a winning issue because people deeply feel the potholes when they engage those services - why they don't is a mystery, except that Democrats want to crowbar "equity" into their bagels while Republicans want to strangle those bagels while still babies in the bathtub. There must be something better.
Harris 100% should be running on this -- her book Smart On Crime, from fifteen years ago, really holds up! She's been trying to tell allies on the left they need to take public safety just as seriously as they take other problems like climate change and healthcare, basically for her entire career. And that's a message that resonates with low-info voters. The _single_ thing we should want a swing voter to know about her is that she takes their concerns about crime seriously enough to _do what actually works_ to keep people safe.
I’m glad you’re doing ok and can pull larger lessons out of your experience. All I could think of while reading your post was “this is also the health care (so-called) system.” Layers of conflicting oversight. Absurd numbers of performance metrics (and incentives/penalties). Risk aversion. More documentation than real work. Non-interoperable data systems. Defeated professionals. If you find anyone who’s willing to tackle the meaningful levers of change and create the necessary uproar, please let us know.
And holistically rather than in isolation. I suspect rules and processes have a dark universe Metcalfe's Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law) equivalent: the complexity (and corresponding dysfunction) of a system is proportional to the *square* of the number of rules and regulations. Why? Because they start to interact with each other in expensive, hard-to-reason about ways.
Jennifer: I feel terrible that you had to go through this, but there is perhaps a silver lining in the way in the way that it has focused your attention on the idea of an abundance agenda for crime and safety, which is one of the issues I feel most strongly about.
Think an abudance agenda for crime and safety would be focused on simultaneously achieving the following goals:
- Reduce crime by increasing the likelihood that people who commit crimes get caught (note: this focus should be on BOTH violent crimes and less serious crimes like minor shoplifting, fare jumping, driving without proper tags, bicycle theft, etc.). This will likely involve both increasing police resources as well as innovative uses of technology.
- Reduce the number of people in prison by putting significant resources into alternative forms of punishment such as restorative justice and by providing more programs and resources for people suffering from mental illness or addiction.
- Decrease the recidivism rate for people who do go to prison by investing resources into making prisons safer, less controlled by gangs, better at offering people who want to change their lives upon release the supports they need, while also increasing the prison terms for the unrepentant and putting them into isolation.
As someone who is very interested in criminal justice reforms, I'm frustrated by the fact that the movement seems to be dominated by folks like Chloe Cockburn (https://justimpact.substack.com/) who are only interested in improving the criminal justice from the perspective of those accused of crimes and Radley Balko (https://radleybalko.substack.com/) who writes about the abuses of police.
To be clear, I do think there is some value in what both of these folks write about, particularly Balko whose series of articles about the retconning of George Floyd was a huge public service. Unfortunately, Balko is so critical of the police, both in what he chooses to write about and the tone that he uses, that I think it undermines some of the good he could be doing. Meanwhile, Cockburn, while usefully shining a light on some good alternative to the police programs, is so uninterested in either reducing crime or what happens to victims that I think she is actually a net negative force in the criminal justice reform movement.
I think for any criminal justice reform movement to be successful, it has to be at least as interested in reducing crime and better supporting victims as it is in improving the lives of the accused.
I remember covering hazardous waste disposal issues at UCLA in 1994, and I was shocked at the complexity, whereby the same item might be regulated by 3 or 4 agencies, depending upon the circumstances, so you could have one agency approve your work, and another one cite you for the same thing, and no one talked to each other, so intentional violators could easily avoid getting caught while well intentioned organizations could get creamed.
Why not host an online open source repository for better legislation with the actual details of its implementation already written? Tearing down the old system without having a model for a new system ready to go never ends well. Have each law/policy vetted and improved in an open forum before it's ever passed, and use AI as well as experts in the field to calculate the political, social, and financial consequences of that new law/policy as well as how it impacts other existing laws and policies. Plug in real world examples in various places of when something worked and see if it scales. Build into the law/policy that legislators should try stuff and then quickly update and change it once the holes are evident. If we build it, get the public excited about it, maybe the politicians will come? Call it "Legislight."
Yes, but I think you have to start by looking at what's there, and understanding what needs to be undone. I often see folks come in with their proposals for better policies without first understanding the clutter that must be cleaned out for those new policies to work. You have to clean up before you remodel. Otherwise you're just adding to the clutter.
Isn't this in part the purpose of the Abundance Network? Creating a venue through which abundance-focused candidates can discuss what's working in different localities, and try to replicate it in more places... I've talked with Misha about the idea of "ALEC, but for Good, rather than Evil."
(ALEC is the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, if you're not familiar. They help spread state and local policies like TRAP laws -- Targeted Restrictions on Abortion Providers, i.e. stuff like requiring women's health clinics to be outfitted as though they were hospitals, to jack up the cost and force many to close. Their goals are for the most part anathema, but their model, of working with think tanks and academics to identify what's advancing their goals, and then feeding bill text to people in a position to implement, is completely sensible, and I find it frustrating that liberals have not managed put together a similar system that operates with the same efficiency.)
Poor incentives mixed with leaden process is the recipe for dysfunction. You'd think both Democrat and Republican leaders would see fixing this as a winning issue because people deeply feel the potholes when they engage those services - why they don't is a mystery, except that Democrats want to crowbar "equity" into their bagels while Republicans want to strangle those bagels while still babies in the bathtub. There must be something better.
yes, there must be something better, and I think more and more people see that and are eager for it.
Harris 100% should be running on this -- her book Smart On Crime, from fifteen years ago, really holds up! She's been trying to tell allies on the left they need to take public safety just as seriously as they take other problems like climate change and healthcare, basically for her entire career. And that's a message that resonates with low-info voters. The _single_ thing we should want a swing voter to know about her is that she takes their concerns about crime seriously enough to _do what actually works_ to keep people safe.
+1000
I’m glad you’re doing ok and can pull larger lessons out of your experience. All I could think of while reading your post was “this is also the health care (so-called) system.” Layers of conflicting oversight. Absurd numbers of performance metrics (and incentives/penalties). Risk aversion. More documentation than real work. Non-interoperable data systems. Defeated professionals. If you find anyone who’s willing to tackle the meaningful levers of change and create the necessary uproar, please let us know.
Folks like Steve are on the right track: econ.st/4gaS5eI
We should support politicians who adopts these policies.
It is a matter of looking at each policy when made. "Does this pass a cost benefit test?"
Does not matter if the policy is nuclear reactor safety or building codes or zoning, or CO2 emissions reduction. Not "Does it do some good?"
And holistically rather than in isolation. I suspect rules and processes have a dark universe Metcalfe's Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law) equivalent: the complexity (and corresponding dysfunction) of a system is proportional to the *square* of the number of rules and regulations. Why? Because they start to interact with each other in expensive, hard-to-reason about ways.
Jennifer: I feel terrible that you had to go through this, but there is perhaps a silver lining in the way in the way that it has focused your attention on the idea of an abundance agenda for crime and safety, which is one of the issues I feel most strongly about.
Think an abudance agenda for crime and safety would be focused on simultaneously achieving the following goals:
- Reduce crime by increasing the likelihood that people who commit crimes get caught (note: this focus should be on BOTH violent crimes and less serious crimes like minor shoplifting, fare jumping, driving without proper tags, bicycle theft, etc.). This will likely involve both increasing police resources as well as innovative uses of technology.
- Reduce the number of people in prison by putting significant resources into alternative forms of punishment such as restorative justice and by providing more programs and resources for people suffering from mental illness or addiction.
- Decrease the recidivism rate for people who do go to prison by investing resources into making prisons safer, less controlled by gangs, better at offering people who want to change their lives upon release the supports they need, while also increasing the prison terms for the unrepentant and putting them into isolation.
As someone who is very interested in criminal justice reforms, I'm frustrated by the fact that the movement seems to be dominated by folks like Chloe Cockburn (https://justimpact.substack.com/) who are only interested in improving the criminal justice from the perspective of those accused of crimes and Radley Balko (https://radleybalko.substack.com/) who writes about the abuses of police.
To be clear, I do think there is some value in what both of these folks write about, particularly Balko whose series of articles about the retconning of George Floyd was a huge public service. Unfortunately, Balko is so critical of the police, both in what he chooses to write about and the tone that he uses, that I think it undermines some of the good he could be doing. Meanwhile, Cockburn, while usefully shining a light on some good alternative to the police programs, is so uninterested in either reducing crime or what happens to victims that I think she is actually a net negative force in the criminal justice reform movement.
I think for any criminal justice reform movement to be successful, it has to be at least as interested in reducing crime and better supporting victims as it is in improving the lives of the accused.
well stated for sure.
I remember covering hazardous waste disposal issues at UCLA in 1994, and I was shocked at the complexity, whereby the same item might be regulated by 3 or 4 agencies, depending upon the circumstances, so you could have one agency approve your work, and another one cite you for the same thing, and no one talked to each other, so intentional violators could easily avoid getting caught while well intentioned organizations could get creamed.
💯agree with your assessment.
Good use of Claude! 😃
I don't live in the Bay, but I'm rooting for better California governance one day. Thanks for publishing this!