Policy commentary from an econ, data science, and comparative politics perspective
(image via PennToday) Polarization is due to a simple thing: our voting system! The Founding Fathers did not desire nor expect political parties to form, particularly not a two-party system. After all, checks and balances between three branches of government do not work very effectively when one party is guaranteed control of 2/3 branches almost… Continue reading How Can We Heal the Crisis of Our Country’s Terrible Polarization?
Image from goodreads. This is definitely a tour de force on how political science ought to be done. That being said, unless you are a political scientist or a student of political science, it might get a bit too detailed and mathy for your taste. But if you are in one of those two groups, I consider… Continue reading Review of Votes from Seats
I stared at the screen in disbelief and wonder. This was all so much more than I could have ever expected or hoped for! It was so plainly obvious to me now what I had to do. But, let me back up for a moment… It’s the early 2000s. I was a software engineer in… Continue reading How I Joined Cal RCV
image via ImgFlip featuring characters from The Office. If you know my political leanings, it should be no surprise that I generally oppose government mandates or bans. One reason is that they often provoke a backlash. Social psychologist Robert Cialdini’s Psychology of Persuasion details numerous examples where people’s logical thinking switches off in favor of… Continue reading Against Mandates, In Favor of Personal Responsibility
The United States witnessed a renewed discussion on issues of racial discrimination, police brutality and criminal justice reform in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May of last year. While a number of issues came to the public fore, one issue that amassed tremendous amount of attention was Critical Race Theory (CRT). CRT is… Continue reading Understanding Critical Race Theory Through the Lens of Structural Determinism
A few years ago, the esteemed Chuck McGlawn argued against the temptation for libertarians to let someone pigeonhole our beliefs as being fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I do like his framing and also agree that it is important not to fall into the trap of letting our rather arcane and arbitrary two-party system dictate… Continue reading A Six-Step Program for Fiscally Conservative Social Liberals
Our current plurality voting system (aka First Past the Post) is one of the least fair voting systems in the world because it gives no voice at all to minority viewpoints. Indeed, even a majority viewpoint can be underrepresented if that side of the political spectrum simply runs more candidates, thus splitting the vote (i.e.,… Continue reading On the Fairness (or lack thereof) of our Plurality Voting System
For the past several years, I’ve looked far and wide for good ratings of media sources. Media Bias / Fact Check (MB/FC) is the best one I’ve been able to find. Indeed, every criticism of MB/FC that I have ever seen fails to mention a media assessment source that is better! That says it all… Continue reading How Trustworthy Is Media Bias / Fact Check?
Posted on my Facebook on January 7th, 2021, links and image added August 23rd, 2021. Image via CNN. I'd moved most of my political content to Twitter mostly so y'all would have less politics to deal with when you just want to see how your friends and family are doing over the holidays. Plus, I… Continue reading The Capitol Riots
It boils down to two main reasons: The problem is extremely difficult.The field of macroeconomics has been corrupted by politics. Regarding the first problem, it’s an issue of complexity. Just like molecules do not act like sums of atoms (and thus chemistry bears little resemblance to physics), humans do not act like sums of organs,… Continue reading Why Can’t Economics Accurately Predict the Timings of Recessions?
Perfectly Good Ink 