How to stop terrorist attacks

When looking at the 9/11 attackers, a few things seem pretty obvious to me in terms of ways we actually could have prevented the 9/11 attackers.

The first thing that needs to happen is they can’t have a safe haven anywhere in the world, and any countries that are safe for terrorists to host their training camps need to be heavily scrutinized. Stabilizing regions like Afghanistan is a matter of national security.

Reducing the reasons why someone would want to attack another country is a tried and true method to reduce terrorist attacks. Programs like the Peace Corps and USAID are effective anti-terrorist tools.

Saudi Arabia reissued passports to the terrorists before they came to the United States. Countries like Saudi Arabia which are known to harbor financiers of terrorism need to be heavily scrutinized and their citizens need extra scrutiny by the State Department before they are granted visas. Not just Saudi Arabia but all Gulf States.

When someone is reported to the police to be supporting terrorists, take them seriously.

Visa-free entry for democracies which we share criminal record data with is a reasonable policy that doesn’t endanger American lives. The ESTA would not have hampered any of the 9/11 highjackers. Visa-free entry for all European Union citizens and other allied democracies. ESTA does not prevent terrorism.

Countries with developing economies and very low rates of terrorism should not have large barriers to travel to the United States.

Visa refusal rate and overstay rate have little to do with countries that are the most likely to be the source of violent terrorist attacks. I am doubtful visas are an effective tool for reducing terrorist attacks.

Conflict breeds more conflict. Hatred breeds more hate. The path to world peace is through communication, trade, dialogue, and building friendships across nations.

References:
Foreign Aid as a Counterterrorism Tool: More Liberty, Less Terror?

Biden should not run

This is the current polling for Biden across the country as of today according to https://www.racetothewh.com/biden.

This is very very bad. He is on par with Trump in terms of net approval.

Yikes. Even after everything Trump did, Biden has done such a bad job getting his message out and working with Congress that he is slightly below Donald Trump in approval polls. He has failed to give his supporters anything to latch on to, and for the relatively small wins we saw in Build Back Better they were overshadowed by the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan (which happens to be when his approval dropped 15 points in 2 months), the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the failure of the United States to provide Ukraine sufficient support to repeal the fascist invaders, and now with the onslaught of Gaza which is just further alienating voters who he needs to win in order to win the presidency, particularly people of color, Biden is looking likely to lose the election next year.

Biden should just not run. I know there is only a month to go, but at this point, his defeat is all but certain except if there is an absolute miracle in his approval rating over the next year.

His polling is on par with where Donald Trump was at the end of 2019. He is less popular than Richard Nixon was in 1971. The only two presidents who compare to his polling numbers at this point in the first term are Trump and Carter. Every other president since Harry Truman has better polling numbers than Biden does now.

If we check betting pool odds Trump has been leading Biden since September.

Trump led a mob to attack the Capitol building. The Democrats should be beating him handily. The President should have been able to make a case so clear that he is better than that absolute traitor over the last year that it shouldn’t even be close. Biden has failed to do this very basic task.

This election should be a slam dunk for the Democrats, but under Biden, it is not.

Biden passed Build Back Better which included some good marginal wins. But on top of this abortion is now outlawed by the Supreme Court in many states. While this is not Biden’s fault, he will get the blame for it from voters. We abandoned Afghanistan to the terrorists, Biden is one of only two Presidents in history to ever truly lose a war, the other is Nixon. He has failed to defend Ukraine. He has supplied Israel with as many weapons as possible which are being used to kill civilians in Gaza. His losses far outweigh his wins.

An important part of being a politician is you need to provide as many reasons for people to vote for you and make as few decisions that anger your base as you can. Biden has routinely done the opposite. Biden has routinely given voters reasons to not like him, with an unhealthy and delusional obsession with compromise with people who want our country to fail, along with losing wars, while also his wins have been so marginal and gradual that there is no big win that is making people’s lives better that he can point to which undermines his failures in Ukraine, Israel, and Afghanistan. He has given everyone something to hate. This is a terrible way to run a country, but a great way to lose elections.

Trump should be buried by anyone the Democrats nominate. Biden has very little charisma and many of his policies are out of touch with what the majority of his voters want. We are seeing this in the polls now.

There are plenty of Senators and Governors who would be able to easily beat Donald Trump.

Biden should not run for reelection.

References:

https://www.racetothewh.com/biden

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating

Why I have a website

The reason I have a personal website which I own is pretty straightforward.

I can use any HTML tag I want
I can upload images of any size, and share those images uncompressed with my readers. You have a better experience here than on Medium, Reddit, or Facebook.
I have full control.
If I write something a company doesn’t like, no one can take it down.
It gives me the freedom to do anything I want.
Since I am using a VPS I can make subdomains and run multiple programs on my server.
It is a fantastic learning experience.
Everyone should make a personal website.

You keep more ad revenue than on a website someone else knows.

My code is cleaner than if I were to use some whizzy wig bloatware like Wix. If I want to change something later, it is much easier with WordPress than any other blogging software I have ever used.

Now what you need to do to start, is do the following steps:

  1. Buy a domain name. It’s not very expensive, but it is the first thing you need to do. While you can make a website with a subdomain of something like wordpress.com it is better to own your domain. I bought mine on Dreamhost.com and I absolutely love their service.
  2. Start with a shared hosting plan, Dreamhost has good prices and good service. It is affordable and easy. It will automatically spin up your server for you, you don’t need to know a lot.
  3. Eventually, you will find your server feels sluggish because you are using a shared hosting plan. You will want to upgrade and that means you will want to move over to a Virtual Private Server. I use Ionswitch which gives me amazing service at very good prices for the industry. Now you have full control over what you do and can do basically anything you want.
  4. If your website’s traffic becomes too heavy for your VPS you can move to having your server on a rack which gives you even more control. I have not gotten to this step yet.

that’s how to start your own website in my opinion, and this is why I choose to write my things here instead of on another service.

Pull All Aid from Israel

I have a bachelor’s degree in political economy, which included multiple classes on foreign relations.

Israel knew of Hamas’ attack a year before it happened. Netanyahu ignored the information in a manner very similar to how the Bush administration granted visas to the 9/11 attackers. The response has been disproportionate, has focused on non-military targets, and has created a million refugees. These are war crimes on par with the brutal invasion of Ukraine.

Israel has had countless opportunities to avoid this terrifying situation. Israel set up Hamas originally and continues to tacitly support them in the background according to numerous high-ranking Israeli sources.

Israel has created a refugee crisis of historic proportions in Gaza, massacring children, bombing apartment buildings and hospitals, and other war crimes on par with what their ally Russia is committing in Ukraine.

After this latest report in the New York Times, it is obvious that the United States is assisting Israel in committing War Crimes which were defined in the aftermath of the Holocaust, and that the extremist Likud government does not share any values with the American government, least of all the Democratic Party.

I find it disturbing that the United States government is so hesitant to give Ukraine the aid they call for to repel the fascist Russian invaders from their land, as they rape and murder innocent civilians across Ukraine, but when Israel directly ignores reports from their intelligence agency about an incoming attack from Hamas and then respond by striking non-military targets the United States gives them everything they want, even as they violate treaties which the United States drafted and is a party to. This needs to be reversed.

Slava Ukraine.

References
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack-intelligence.html

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/netanyahu-israel-gaza-hamas-1.7010

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/07/30/how-israel-helped-create-hamas/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123275572295011847

Pensions are not insurance

A common motif on the American left is that Social Security is not an investment, it is insurance, as are pensions offered by the state to their employees.

It sounds good, but it shows a deep misunderstanding of what insurance is. This mindset and lack of what insurance actually is probably also contributes to our utterly absurd health care system, and how we underregulate all forms of insurance. It contributes to people overbuying life insurance, an absolute cash cow for scam artists like Dave Ramsey, and people then underinvest in assets. This helps keep people who don’t understand the system poor while also concentrating the wealth in the hands of the unethical who profit from such mistakes.

So what is insurance?! The primary motive of insurance is to prevent absolute ruin on the occasion of an adverse event. People have lives, and sometimes accidents happen. You need to see a doctor after a climbing accident, you get into a car crash, your house burns down and you lose everything, or your bank goes bankrupt and you need your cash in order to live. These events are unpredictable, they do not happen to everyone, but when they do they can be absolutely devastating. But everyone will have an adverse event happen to them at some point. The problem however is you cannot predict which accident will happen or when to whom. A savings account alone is not enough for such events.

This is where insurance comes in. We all pay into a giant pool of money and when these random events happen the insurance pays out our claim so that we can continue our lives and not suffer for years after an event which we are not at fault for. Insurance helps flatten the curve of spending, so we can better budget for them. On top of this issue, these are events that can happen when you are 30. They can happen when you are 80. Because of that randomness, you cannot simply save your way out of a house fire. Insurance is a necessary part of life. You don’t just need insurance, you need good insurance.

Important side note incoming. Unless you are a professional in the financial services industry, you should absolutely have a trusted personal insurance agent with a fiduciary to you who is not tied to any one particular insurer. I have a degree in economics and some experience in the financial services industry, and I have a personal agent who I have a fiduciary with. I recommend this setup to everyone.

Another vehicle insurance can provide is that it can help an individual negotiate pricing against a powerful monopoly. Health insurance does this because as a group we can negotiate lower prices with drug insurers. The bigger the insurance pool, the lower the price. Single-payer and public option plans save their participants the most money. Health insurance is unique because not only does it negotiate lower prices, but also it protects against a wide array of adverse events. This is why mandatory public health insurance for every individual, or a public option, is a very reasonable policy. Having copays, food standards, and health saving accounts as well can be good policies that lower the risk not just for the individual but society as a whole.

Insurance can become a complicated topic, but these are the basic ideas I learned in my public finance class in college, among a few other classes that touched on the topic. If it is a random, adverse event that can be very expensive, insurance is probably worth it.

Retirement on the other hand is not adverse, and it is not random. It should happen to everyone who lives long enough, and it is possible, and practically easy to plan for. This is why government or private insurance pools are generally successful when it comes to house, fire, property, and health insurance, but insurance is not a viable instrument for retirement. Since it is not insuring against an adverse event, Old Age and Survivors “Insurance” is not actually insurance. It’s a long-expired government handout that transferred money from the Greatest Generation to the Lost Generation. Since then it has been a net loss for every generation since. Properly run insurance is never a net loss outside of a major event like a hurricane.

Please stop calling pensions insurance. They are not insurance.

It was never about American lives

On 11 September 2001 America was attacked by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists composed of 1 Egyptian, 1 Lebanese, 2 Emiratis, and 15 Saudis. 19 of these terrorists had visas which were granted to them by the Bush/Powell Department of State. All but one were in their 20s. All of them had previously existing ties to terrorist groups.

As a result of this attack one of the most obvious results was the United States implemented security at airports and banned dihydrogen monoxide from planes. We also implemented visas on every nationality in the world except for Canada, Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands. For most NATO members and a few other nationalities, they got an eVisa instead of a B visa.

The claim is that this was done to save American lives. But I don’t believe this. The right claim that the terrorists attacked America because they “hate our freedom”. On this point, I actually agree. The world was very easy to travel between democracies at this point in time, air travel was and still is becoming more and more affordable for the average person. The result of the 9/11 attacks could not have gone better for the terrorists.

  • Increased restrictions between safe democracies fuel an us vs them mentality. It is easier for demagogues to overstate the pros or cons of other countries when you have never met someone from there and have never traveled there. This feeds political extremism, endangering liberty.
  • Implementing further barriers to travel is easier once you have started down that path. It is politically hard to jump straight from “show up with a passport” to expensive visas which take months to process through bureaucracy.

When it comes to actually blocking the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 however, nothing except for the added security at airports would have actually caught any of the terrorists who have actually attacked us in the last 50 years.

The cynical part of me believes another attack has not been seriously attempted because the terrorists achieved their goals.

So if the goal is to save American lives, the 9/11 Commission almost certainly failed in its mandate set by Congress.

More proof of this is how murder and suicide by guns have killed more Americans than 9/11 every year over the last 55 years. If the government’s purpose of restrictions following 9/11 was simply to save American lives we would have joined the rest of the free world in basic gun reform decades ago.

A line chart showing that the U.S. saw a record number of gun suicides and gun murders in 2021.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/

All of this makes it clear that the 9/11 Commission did not take its declared responsibility seriously but instead just randomly rattled off a Republican wish list of laws that would not protect America from terrorists but instead alienate us from our friends.

Every time the Republican Party has had the opportunity to actually save American lives by even simple things like requiring a license to own a gun they routinely oppose such measures. That would actually save American lives. But they oppose it completely.

They never cared about saving American lives. That was never the point.

They instead embraced the proposals made by George Bush’s appointees which gave him an excuse to push for fascist legislation which makes us less free and more isolated every day.

That is the point of the 9/11 Commission report.

Visa free travel for all OECD

Another step backward for democracy, another victory for dictatorship as Brazil is ending visa-free travel for Americans. Brazil visa requirements for US citizens

It is common knowledge at this point that Putin has been supporting right-wing politicians such as Donald Trump, David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Viktor Orban, and Marine le Pen. Putin wants to see the European Union dissolve, the abolition of free trade and travel between democracies, and show that the only way forward is his antiquated dictatorial oligarchy.

To secure these ends, these politicians over the last 22 years have been hard at work attempting to dissolve the alliance. They do this by sowing distrust and discontent. Orban, the right-wing government of Austria, and Erdogan block the most obvious NATO expansions. Merkel blocked letting Ukraine into NATO, even before the Orange Revolution. The Bush administration issued visas to NATO tourists, despite the absolute lack of evidence that there was a problem with NATO tourists to begin with. Every single 9/11 attacker was a legal visitor in the United States and was issued a visa by the State Department despite having already been involved in terrorism and having traveled to Afghanistan since 1996. The reforms made since 9/11 would not have stopped any of the 9/11 attackers from attacking the United States. I hope that after the next time they attack us because they will absolutely attack us again, we will actually think about effective measures to stop terrorism instead of knee-jerk reactions that harm our alliances. The cynical side of me thinks that the reason they have not attempted another large attack on American soil is because they got what they wanted. American liberties have been reduced, visa-free travel has been almost fully eradicated except for Canadians, and the Taliban is in control of Afghanistan. Mission accomplished.

The system to expand visa-free travel to the United States is slow and bureaucratic which makes it harder to expand visa-free travel to countries as they improve. Expanding visa-free access requires uneducated customs agents to accept the majority of visa applications from countries they know little to nothing about in rushed decisions. This is not a reasonable way to form policy. This is by design.

There are now many countries that have full visa-free travel to the European Union, where they consistently cause no trouble at all, which require expensive visas to visit the United States. This is a step backward for the free world. It is a step towards oligarchy and dictatorship.

I do not believe that the imposition and expansion of visas by itself will inevitably lead to dictatorship. I also believe that it is impossible to fully slide to true dictatorship without the imposition and expansion of visas.

It is right and good for a country to want to expand visa-free access for its citizens. If a country wants to make it more possible for its citizens to travel abroad, it can use more effective methods. The United States has the C-2 visa which allows a foreign diplomat from a hostile regime to only come to this country for a limited time and only travel within a limited radius of where they are allowed to travel. What countries should do is a similar regime for countries that do not give visa-free travel to their citizens. Holders of diplomatic passports, embassy workers, and select wealthy business people from the hostile country (hostile in this case means they do not offer visa-free travel) will have visas valid for a period of 1 week, non-renewable, and expensive for the hostile government to pay for. They will be limited in the area they are allowed to travel in and will be monitored at all times. Ordinary passport holders might still have free visa-free travel to the visa-issuing country, but government workers will not until visas are lifted for all non-criminal citizens.

On the other hand, embassy workers and official passport holders from countries that offer visa-free travel will have the ability to travel wherever they want while in the country as long as they are employed by their government with no restrictions beyond normal security rules.

I think this is a more reasonable way to expand visa-free travel around the world. I think it is a paramount issue for all freedom-loving people in the world. It is an essential and effective bulwark against dictatorship.

The poem First They Came is a brilliant and moving poem, but it gets one thing wrong. The Nazis didn’t first come for the socialists…

They first ended freedom of movement.

 

I believe the OECD should expand to all countries that have a better democracy score, press freedom, and corruption perceptions than the worst-performing OECD member. This will lead to 94 member states of the OECD across every inhabited continent. The OECD can then build systematic standards for increasing integration across member states, along with clear guidelines on how countries are able to accede similar to what the European Union has. As clear benchmarks are set for reducing tariffs, travel barriers, work permits, and other protectionist measures in response to domestic improvements such as clamping down on corruption and improving the environment to work and do business, this can be a serious mechanism for the OECD to be the major force for good in the world. There will need to be a mechanism to expel a member if they violate basic standards in the worst-case scenario, and this will provide very tangible consequences for voters if they elect a demagogue hellbent on destroying democracy. The consequences can be seen very clearly in Brexit. With increased global collaboration this will be the most important forum in the world to tackle challenges such as climate change and increase dialogue beyond what we have today at both the government level and people-to-people dialogue. The OECD is already one of the greatest organizations in the world in collecting and distributing essential data which is used by experts to improve the lives of ordinary people. I believe it can be so much more.

Defund the police

Last month i went to a funeral for a dear friend of mine. They were shot by the police because they were having a schizophrenic episode. They should still be alive.

As I scrolled through my Instagram feed this morning the first thing I saw was a video of a 32 year old high school teacher being tazed to death. His crime? He had a car accident and needed medical attention.

Neither of these should have happened. We need to defund the police. Free transit reduces opportunities for people with disabilities and people of color to be murdered. We need first responders to events like these to be social well trained workers who are focused on the actual need, not soldiers with little education. Police shootings are avoidable. You just remove the police from the majority of what they are used for.

I’m tired of hearing crying parents because their child was shot. I’m tired of watching people be killed. It’s evil. It violates the basic principles of human decency. It is wrong.

End the modern Triangle Trade

Republicans complain about how we have an “open border” and how Biden needs to “deport thousands of illegals” among other things. This nonsense is going to increase in the lead-up to next year’s presidential election and is going to become nauseating.

The reality is that the history of the drug war started in 1971 when Republican Richard Nixon was in office, and the drug war over the last 52 years has completely failed to reduce trade in drugs, instead only reducing the tools we have to track down violent criminal gangs which destabilized entire countries.

Today a triangle trade exists, where the United States sells guns to Mexico, Mexican cartels transport drugs up to the United States, and drugs are produced throughout Latin America from Colombia up to the United States. Guns are very easy to acquire in certain US states, like Texas, and the consequences are felt across the continent.

The violence created by the criminal drug cartels then convinces people to move to the United States to work, which is where the calls to just send people back to Mexico (and other countries) come into play.

But simply sending people back without dealing with the problem is not going to solve the problem.

For 20 years the United States has used deportation as its only weapon against the drug cartels. It is the least effective tool we have, and it doesn’t deter immigration from Latin America to the United States. It is like trying to cut down a tree with a herring. To quote King Arthur, “it cannot be done.”

What we can do is sever two legs of the triangle trade in full, which we have complete control over.

The first thing is we can decriminalize drug use and make it so people can get medical treatment without fear of incarceration. This will reduce the demand for drugs, pushing down the price, and reducing the benefits of being engaged in the drug trade. This will bankrupt many drug cartels, which are businesses. Reducing the revenue of drug cartels is the most effective strategy. This is an economic war and we need to use economic tools.

After reducing the imports of drugs to the United States by reducing demand, we need to then cut down on the exports of firearms to Mexico. The way we do this is to require everyone who purchases a gun in the United States to have a license, pay for insurance, and be a citizen of the United States before they are allowed to own a gun. This will significantly reduce the ability of drug cartels to purchase guns in the United States, and it won’t be as easy for them to fight back against Mexican authorities.

We need to see the drug trade as an economic war, not a military-based war. Military-based solutions have been tried for half a century and they have failed. It is time for the United States to reduce drug trade using economic tools, which will actually work.

My favorite Douglas Adams Quote

I love deadlines, I love the whooshing sound they make as they pass by

This is by far my favorite quote by Douglas Adams and is probably one of the best pieces of advice for life, politics, and finances I have ever heard.

When you have a goal of something you want to do, like “I want to buy a house soon” it is better to go start the process now, instead of waiting for it to fall in your lap. Things never fall in your lap. When you see something that needs to be done, you need to just do it.

If you are planning a good policy to solve an important problem, the sooner that policy can be implemented in practice, the better. If given a choice between “We will be 100% carbon neutral by 2050, though we don’t know how we will do it” and “we will start putting a price on carbon today which will reduce emissions today and on into the future” it is very clear which policy is better.

Similar to this quote by Douglas Adams is the importance of making SMART targets. Goals need to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely.

Let’s score several policy ideas by these SMART targets

  • 100% carbon neutral by 2050 (a popular goal): 24/50
    • Specific: Doesn’t state how much to reduce carbon emissions in 2023, 2/10.
    • Measurable: Same problem: 2/10.
    • Achievable: Definitely. 10/10
    • Relevant: Yes, we need to do it. 10/10
    • Timely: The timeline is too long. 0/10.
  • Carbon tax which will increase annually at a specified rate to reduce emissions, with adjustments if emissions do not match annual targets. (Basically Initiative 732) 50/50
    • Specific: Yes, it is very clear how much the tax will be every year which directly determines emission decline: 10/10
    • Measurable: Yes, we know how much the tax will be every year, and we can measure our progress every year. 10/10
    • Achievable: Definitely. 10/10
    • Relevant: Definitely. 10/10
    • Timely: Yes, it has a plan which clearly states what will happen every year. 10/10.

Policies need to be clear about what amount the policy will be using and when it will be using it. It cannot just have a deadline that is too far off to be able to accurately judge if you are making enough progress every year.

 

In your personal life, a goal could be “I want to save money for retirement” in which case the easiest thing to do is set up automatic payments every paycheck to your 401k. If you are looking for a job, set a goal for how many people you will talk to and how many applications you will send in every day. This follows the SMART strategy and doesn’t just set an arbitrary deadline which will be easy to miss.