Virtual America
Last edited Thu Nov 12, 2015, 09:12 AM - Edit history (1)
Frankly, I have no idea if anyone has or hasn't done any of this… But, if not, I'm wondering why some political science and economics think tank, or some university haven't as yet gotten their hands on a super computer, designed a complex political, socioeconomic matrix based on the US and set it up so that different fiscal, social and monetary policies could be evaluated and compared against each other.
We're saddled with this antiquated, completely illogical, hobbling and unaccountable faith based political system, that so many of us use to delude ourselves, rather than have any kind of effective tool to evaluate the quality (and freshness) of proposed governmental and economic policies within any semblance of certainty. Yet, whenever our shit tanks there really is no way predict with any reasonably acurate expectation that it was going to happen and we have no way to hold them immediately accountable for fucking our shit all up.
Basically, anyone in politics and outside of it can say just about anything and never have to be held accountable for their bullshit.
Who the fuck thinks of some plan that would cut taxes, raise both the cost and inaccessability of labor by mass deporting the undocumented, fail to the rebuild and maintain our infrastructure, not account for inflation and raise the cost of the military and not explode the debt and the deficit?
Where the hell do they get any of the models that claim that any of this bullshit will work? Don't we already have piles upon piles of empirical data that proves that these motherfuckers have no idea what they're blabbing about?
Given that data, what would it take to build a definitive statistical model to gauge the overall impact of their crazy ideas?
Our current process is so antiquated and vulnerable to charlatans like Trump, Carson, et al. No one ever has to make any fucking sense whatsoever and they don't.
Just once, I would love to see a predictive model that would evaluate their shit, by demonstrating the impact of their fucked up proposals, as in how they enjoy throwing sick and healthy people off of healthcare, beg for the continuation and escalation of foreign conflicts, the way they're all detached from the needs of the general welfare, insist on cutting taxes, so enamored with doing nothing about gun violence, devaluate people of color at every turn and ignore the need of women to have control over their own bodies, undermine labor unions and whatnot.
There's a lot to consider, as creating such a definitive, unbiased and effective matrix would end up being a daunting task. And of course, I'm sure that it would take quite a long time to code such a behemoth. But at this point, we really can't depend the critical thinking skills of anyone who thinks that Carson and Trump are even qualified to be president. (Not eligible, QUALIFIED.)
This is America, gawd dammit. Finding a better way to do things is our main sail.
= new reply since forum marked as read
No model can truly replicate a Black Swan (at least that I've ever heard of; how do you predict the unpredictable?) so it's effects would be...at best only 'under ideal circumstances'. Since 'ideal circumstances' in academic-speak is people's lives in real-world speak, that's too fine a line to cut.
IOW, it would work decently well for small policy changes, but the farther you change the model the less predictable it becomes (because you increase the number of change interactions, not to mention the general effect of entropy on any system). You might see if a .3% tax is beneficial, but not if changing to a Police State with Hab Housing under Democratic Rule a la Civilization 2 would be worth a look. 
