Ray Woodcock’s Current Thoughts

The prices of goods and services should more accurately reflect their true costs.

Presently, for example, the price for a quart of oil is set by a merchant who, in turn, has paid a stated price to an oil company. Both the merchant and the oil company set their prices based upon relatively immediate inputs. For the merchant, there are costs of rent, wages to employees, electricity, and so forth. For the oil company, there are costs of production, storage, and transportation.

There is not presently any responsibility, built into the pricing, for the effects of consumption of that oil. If it gets burned, there is an unpriced cost to the atmosphere. If it sits in an abandoned garage until its container deteriorates with age, there is an unpriced cost to the soil, and possibly the water supply, that some of its nonbiodegradable ingredients will pollute. A different example is a bottle of alcohol. Its price should reflect the costs and benefits associated with its consumption.

In either example, somebody, someday, is going to pay a price, monetary or otherwise, for the transaction’s outcomes. That person will generally not have been party to the original transaction. His or her interests should be more fully represented in the transaction price. While it is impossible to predict all possible outcomes for a can of oil or a bottle of rum, it is not impossible to make progress toward a more responsible valuation of goods and services.

The 20th century, especially but not only in its second half, was a time of great liberalization of sexual practices. This liberalization had some benefits. It also brought some undesirable side effects.

A reasonable goal for the year 2100 will be to achieve more balanced and constructive outcomes in this area. One step in that direction will be to grant people greater freedom to vary in their attitudes and practices toward sex, according to their ages, beliefs, physical and mental conditions, priorities in life, and other characteristics — indeed, to accord respect to those who honorably decline to exploit every sexual opportunity.

Another step will be to place sex in context by encouraging friendships among people, so that they need not expect the persons with whom they are romantically involved to provide everything that they could get from a broader set of positive relationships.

Enhancement of positive relationships among people in various contexts (e.g., workplaces, communities, schools) may also moderate the general interest in sex: people do sometimes use sex as a way to get affection, when they might instead be getting that (often, in a more reliable form) through participation in a socially healthy environment.

The Protestant Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries introduced the idea that people do not need an intermediary between themselves and God — that they have, and are responsible for, their own relationship with the divine.  Similarly, democratic principles give people the responsibility for their own form of government, just as people are responsible for running their own lives, keeping themselves in good health, and so forth.  There are exceptional situations (e.g., sometimes a person needs a doctor); but on a day-to-day basis it seems to be recognized that people are motivated to do it better, for themselves, than someone else can do it for them.

Justice, however, remains mired in the Dark Ages.  There is this persistent belief that people need a specially trained black-robed figure, standing or sitting in an elevated place, to help them achieve justice.  The result is a court system that is extremely expensive (when you include the cost of lawyers and the processes of pursuing justice in this format), very slow, unavailable for practical purposes in most situations when justice is needed, and inferior in terms of the quality of its results in many cases, when decisions are essentially ignorant, too late, or otherwise unresponsive to reality.

No doubt there will always be a place for judges and lawyers, in large-scale and extremely complex matters of dispute.  But for practical purposes, justice needs to join religion, government, and other areas of life:  the power for justice needs to devolve from these judicial power centers back to the people.

This devolution — this redistribution of justice — will require ordinary people to learn new skills.  Just as the idea of praying directly to God may have seemed strange to some at first, so also the idea that you bear some responsibility for justice in your home and your neighborhood (and that you have some authority for that purpose) may feel odd.  But it will also begin to feel better.

The specific manifestations of this redistribution will vary at first.  In some places, people may be authorized to fight it out on their own.  In other places, as people adjust to this newfound responsibility and power, the seemingly wiser approach will be to form neighborhood courts or councils to respond to complaints.  The persons seated on those councils may be fellow residents of the neighborhood, on an elected, appointed, or rotating basis; they may be people who are hired for the purpose, who got college degrees or certificates in dispute resolution; or they may come from some other source.  In any case, people will have greater freedom to experiment and work out a solution that fits their needs, on the most localized basis possible, instead of having it imposed on them by the frequently abusive managers of an unresponsive, out-of-touch legal system.

Likewise, to the extent that physical force is required (e.g., to enforce decisions), neighborhoods may find that something resembling a traditional police or sherriff’s office is needed, or they may instead sign contracts for enforcement services provided by some outside company on a competitive bid.  They may use posses; they may introduce other innovations.  Instances of misbehavior or abuse (when e.g., one powerful person takes control of the justice-oriented machinery in a neighborhood) may be challenged in a formal court or elsewhere; but to the greatest extent possible, people should be allowed and encouraged to find solutions that fit their own needs, in this area as in others.

There should be an ad for a motorscooter, Segway, skateboard, or some other transportation device that uses the Talking Heads’ song, “Psychokiller.”  Not that it’s a great song to sell products, except maybe if you’re in an extreme sports kind of mindset.  Being of a somewhat green orientation, I would suggest the “cycle” that is supposedly done in by the advertised product should be a motorcycle, not a bicycle.

Why do trees sometimes drop all of their leaves at once?  Some trees, some years, lose almost all their leaves in a single day.  Why?

They should use bells after earthquakes.  They should tell everyone that they are going to strike the bell at regular intervals — every 30 minutes, say, or every hour, or perhaps as the situation requires.  That’s when they will stop all the power tools and all the rescuers will fan out and listen for noises from the trapped.  So if you’re under a pile of rubble, you save your energy, wait for the bell, and then yell or moan as you are able.  If some nearby church starts ringing its bells unsolicited, that would be a good time to stop the backhoe.

Written police reports frequently distort what was said at the scene of a crime or accident. Investigations would be more accurate if the original police report were made and retained in audio format. The report should be made available at a price, which could be reduced when someone (e.g., a party to the incident, or his/her insurer or paralegal) repays the police by giving them an accurate written transcript of the recording that could likewise be saved in electronic (e.g., PDF) format.

I have some stuff that’s not worth much. For example, I have a small adapter for use with a certain kind of computer cable. I hate to throw it away; it seems wasteful. Somebody really might need it. But it’s not practical to go to the time and expense of writing it up and posting an ad on eBay. This item, like many that people do offer to sell on eBay, is not likely to sell within a one-week auction window.

There should be a flea market website that allows me to list this kind of item. Ideally, it would be like a wiki, where users are able to create subcategories that more precisely define their particular item. No, as I think of it, the real ideal would be for someone to write software that asks questions, where users can add to the list of questions or selection criteria, to steer someone to the right place. “What are you selling?” “Adapter.” “Name one of its connectors.” “PS/2.” And so forth.

The flea market should charge a flat rate of maybe $1.50 per month per user (buyer or seller), for up to, say, a dozen purchases or sales per month (more for heavy users), with no additional fees. For that price, the seller can list as many items as s/he wants, using UPCs, ISBNs, or other part numbers or designators whenever possible.