Manifesto

While I not only know that there is no chance of my wishes coming true, but also that I'm not really going to do anything more than talk about it, here is what I think should be done in the USA.

My first point is what I consider to be the most important one.  The largest amount of debate and political energy is put into external matters.  That is things like economic and political power, or social issues such as religious freedoms and civil liberties, or activities organized around safety/fear (war, crime, environment).  While these clearly matter I have a belief that these are less important than what happens internally 1.  My belief in what should be done is based on maximizing the happiness of people, and I think that while external factors such as poverty really matter, they don't matter as much as your basic mental state.

What follows from my belief that the internal workings of the mind is more important than the external environment is the implementation of a policy that uses the best available knowledge to provide the best available response at the lowest cost. As far as I can tell meditation has a proven record of reducing stress, increasing happiness, and increasing social connectivity (a better positive view of strangers.)  Even relatively small amounts of meditation (say 5% of the time we spend watching tv) results in a happier, less stressful, more compassionate, more connected society.  Therefore, policy point #1 is mandatory secular meditation lessons in schools.  Children should be taught the skill of meditation and then adults can decide whether they wish to use this skill or not.

My second point is that policies based on a fear of others are rarely effective.  A military policy of pre-emptive strikes against perceived threats can temporarily degrade the ability of those threats, but over the long term tend to increase the actual threat.  Did the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq make the USA (and the world) safer? The evidence seems to suggest that those wars increased the number of terrorists and the situation in the area is worse than before those invasions.  When was the last war that clearly made the USA safer?  I would suggest that would be World War II.

Policy point #2 is to alter the US military's basic strategy to pure defense from direct attack, and a humanitarian projection of power.  What this means is that the US military only fights wars when the physical territory of the USA is being attacked or as part of a UN force (not a "coalition of the willing.)  This is actually a basic part of multiple international treaties which the USA has signed (although not necessarily ratified.)  The foreign policy element should be humanitarian assistance on a massive scale.  The projection of US power around the world should primarily consist of schools, roads, hospitals, vaccinations, food, shelter.  The basic view of the world with regards to the USA should be that it helps people.  I believe that the cultivation of this attitude would make US more safe than any number of wars.

Policy point #3 is a move to a criminal justice system based on community policing and rehabilitation.  The basic attitude of the US police is a violent conflict between criminals and the police, in which both sides are afraid of the other.  As a result US police kill hundreds of people a year, a number wildly out of proportion to similar countries.  US police genuinely believe they are under constant threat from civilians, but approximately 0.04% of police are killed in non-traffic related incidents each year.  Community policing is based on building trust and removing root causes of crime.  The biggest help to all of this would be the removal of guns from the population.  The presence of guns always increases the danger, and therefore increases the fear, which increases the danger.

At the moment the US criminal justice system is based on punishment, revenge rather than making us safer. The US incarcerates about seven times the amounts of people per capita as Europe.  This incarceration rate hasn't made Americans safer than Europeans.  The very point of incarceration is to make people miserable.  The point is to reduce happiness, and therefore evil.  There is necessary evil in the world and jail does work to deter crime, but as it is evil it should be used to the minimum necessary extent.  Let's just not incarcerate people who haven't substantially hurt anyone else.  Why should anyone go to jail for possession of a drug that they would just use themselves?  It isn't safety, we let people do dangerous stuff all the time.