more ways to change America

[mellowtigger]

In a continuation of yesterday's post...

Here are some more ideas of things to change or goals to set that would help prepare America for a long-term, sustainable, and generally better future.

11. Food. Genetically engineer within 10 years a plant that can produce nutrionally-complete food for humans. (Not calories, just nutrients. Using seeds and/or leaves, so that the plant can remain productive continuously rather than needing to be uprooted to harvest.)
12. Housing. Genetically engineer within 20 years a tree that can be grown (within 50 years) into a hollow living shell for housing 1-3 adults. (I suggest modifying the baobab, but some other large tree could work.)
13. Education. Create a public-domain resource for teaching material on all subjects from gradeschool to 4-year college degree. (Similar to Wikiversity and Wikibooks.)
14. Accountability. No counsel may earn more than twice what their client receives in legal judgements for any court case involving harm to the client (physical or mental).
15. Accountability. Any one (citizen or corporation) accused of any form of negligence may request a pre-trial "common sense review". A special jury (similar to grand jury) will review the situation to decide if the average person should simply "know better".  If they decide the accuser should have known better (hot coffee, cigarettes, etc.), then the trial ends before it even begins and the accuser has to pay a fee equal to what the court pays the review jury for their time.  At this point, the accuser may choose to forgo monetary rewards in their lawsuit and seek instead a judgement to force the accused to change their behavior.  In this case, the common sense review does not end the legal process; a normal trial is held.
    

There are other thoughts knocking about in my mind, but they're not firm enough to express yet.  I think I'm done with my list for now.  :) 

Comments

[kauko.livejournal.com]

On genetic engineering of food, I'll point you to the documentary The Future of Food, which looks at the food industry especially the genetic modification of food and the dangers of it.

[mellowtigger]

http://www.thefutureoffood.com/

Absolutely! I don't want corporations selling any genetic modifications of the stuff we've eaten for the last few thousand years or so. (I don't want them growing the stuff in the open air, either, to help prevent accidental cross-pollination with the wild strains.)

I do, however, want a single plant with massive genetic manipulations so that it could account for all of a person's nutritional needs. Create an altogether new plant species.

[kauko.livejournal.com]

Its scary what's going on with corporations and food, and even scarier that no one knows about it. Its not just the food industry, of course, its every thing in society that's becoming owned by large corporations (which by nature care only about profit and not about things like human beings, ethics, compassion, environmentally sustainable methods of doing anything....)

Personally, I'm not sure I'd want one plant with all that, I like my dietary diversity (and my expanding waistline does too :).

[mellowtigger]

*laugh* Yes, diversity is good. Just this morning, I was watching the garden in the backyard, wondering when the plump strawberries would ripen. And I occasionally nip a mint leaf to munch on too. I have no idea what happened to the oregano, though, as I haven't seen a single sprout yet.

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure where you're going with the food plant idea. My feeling is we need to find a way to (humanely) reduce the population of this planet to a number that can be easily sustained. ALL our major problems - pollution, clean water, sufficient food, housing and so on - are amplified by overpopulation.

[mellowtigger]

*ponder*

Think graham crackers. ;)

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

Heh... but in opposition to his views, I'd rather people be indulging in "self-abuse" than whompin' up more kids.

[pangolin.livejournal.com]

I have to back up kauko on the genetically engineered food bit. While the tree thing sounds kinda cool and is more likely controllable, any fast growing genetically engineered food poses at least one of two dangers.
A) if it gets into the wild (likely) it will wreak havoc with ecosystems. Heck, just transplanting an organism to a new environment can do this. For genetically engineered plants, all environments are new environments.
B) Corporate stranglehold/monopoly on food supply.

Just to be safe with the tree thing, I wouldn't even bother with genetically engineering it, I would just figure out how to coax some existing tree into the proper shape and grow a little faster. That is completely doable, but just requires resources and attention.

14. I think letting them earn twice is generous. I suppose this would still have some effect even with your previously mandated salary caps, though I'm inclined to mark it as half.

15. Is a nice idea, but our legal system is already overly bogged with process and bureaucracy without adding a grand jury for every nitpicking trial. I suppose that could work if citizens were required to spend one day a year on such a grand jury, and each such grand jury reviewed a number of cases in that day (and you could obviously have more than one grand jury going on at a time for a given area). The fee idea is at once a deterrent, but OTOH, persons that have genuinely been put upon shouldn't have to fear additional hardship because of the collective opinion of a group of legal newbs, which could easily happen in this situation.

And while I personally don't mind large corporations shelling out millions of dollars to individuals as a result of negligence, a slight better deterrent might be to limit the possible earnings of trials to legitimate medical expenses and such. To the extent that 'pain and suffering' payment is permissible, some conservative guidelines on how much for what could be established.

Also, while we're talking about corporations, never mind that your income restrictions would probably make them pointless, but I would probably make corporations not legal entities, at least, not in the sense where they seem to be legal persons like they are presently. So while members of a corporation retain legal rights etc, the corporation itself doesn't get to act as if it is a person. This probably requires some elaboration, but that's the basic idea.

[mellowtigger]

For safety's sake, we can find someplace safe to do the experimentation and long-term testing. I am, after all, building a Mars colony. :)

14. Yes, I'm very flexible about including additional rate cuts. The one time I was ever compensated for an accident (car), I got a 3-figure settlement while both the doctor and the lawyer got 4-figure amounts. It seemed very odd, since I was the one with the painful injury.