America only has interests

Now that we've achieved a bit of financial stability, I went through and renewed some of the public good things that we have done in the past. Specifically, I sent donations to various public radio stations and production companies that we listen to:

• WAMU - our local station, 88.5 FM. It's operated by American University and is the home of Diane Rehm and Kojo Nnamdi shows.
• Radiotopia - production company for Love + Radio, Criminal, and 99% Invisible.
• Gimlet Media - production company for Reply All and Mystery Show.

And I'm thinking about politics. I haven't had to think hard about who I was going to vote for in the last two presidential elections because my candidate was clear and the other guy was just... awful. In the last statewide Maryland election, none of my votes went anywhere because all of the entrenched incumbents kept their jobs and the cool new people were barely a blip. And there was Anthony Brown...

But this coming election has its hype and I'm concerned about the hype overtaking the relative wisdom of crowds.

Wisdom of the crowd is when, statistically, massive groups of people guessing at some arbitrary number tend to get it right on average. Think of the big jar of jelly beans. Ask enough people--some guess high, some guess low--and the average tends to be very close to the actual number. Planet Money did an episode about this.

So there's some truth to the adage that America elects the president it deserves (attributed to Toqueville, but who knows?). Elections should, by the wisdom of the crowds, end up with the president for the times, and well, if only we could have guessed that the September 11, 2001 attacks were even possible, we wouldn't have picked Bush or Gore (or Nader, for that matter). But we couldn't imagine it back then and we didn't, so we've got the history we've got.

I digress. I am considering whether to actively support a candidate for president. On the one hand, I think it's WAAAAAY too early. On the other hand, I don't really think it's going to get better.

I lean left. I was raised in the space beyond left, where there is no right or left, but only monsters made out of hair and vomit. In other words, basically an anarchist. As I've gotten older, I've figured out a few things and I respect government on a certain level. It's a level that probably makes me more of a libertarian than much else, but I just don't like the libertarianism that also glorifies guns. I like freedom, I like the government not meddling much in the lives of people, but I don't think I care for everyone to be armed to the teeth. Rather, I think I like the more utopian libertarianism that is probably more like Ayn Rand would have espoused if she wasn't batshit crazy.

That is, I think I'd like something like an enlightened egalitarianism. I want a government that lets the people motivated to do something great to do that thing and that takes care of the people who are unable or unwilling to do so. If you have an idea, you can prosper. If you don't, you can at least expect a modest wage and decent health care. There would be an overriding principle about not doing harm to others, also. You know, to avoid murder and war and taking advantage of the less-motivated than you.

A tangent: in my job, I work on cases in the EB-5 program. This program allows affluent foreigners to invest in companies in the US in exchange for green cards. There are some pretty technical requirements, like the company has to create (full-time, meaningful, permanent) jobs and the investment has to last at least a few years--you can't just dump your money into a project, get your green card, and cash out. Most of the investors in this program are Chinese nationals who invest in large real estate projects. If they meet the requirements, two years after they get their green cards, we do a review of their application. If they made the investments and created the jobs, they get to be full on permanent residents and can apply for citizenship in a few years.

One of the EB-5 projects of note in the last few years was a little thing called the Barclays Arena in Brooklyn. You know, where the Nets play? Yeah. It can be a big deal. Other projects include wind farms, gold mines, hotels, condos, and lots and lots of other stuff. These projects are mostly organized by private companies who receive special designation from my agency. Our blessing really just allows these companies to participate in our program and raise money with the balanced promise of a possible green card at the end (but they can't really guarantee anything).

So in the news this week, Lobsang Dargey, a guy who runs an EB-5 company in the Seattle area was busted by the Securities and Exchange Commission for embezzling over $17 million for his personal use. I should point out that, in this program, if the investors' money is not used for creating jobs and according to the business plan, the investors can lose their permanent resident status after two years. This guy who was busted for embezzling investors' money is an immigrant himself (and a former Tibetan monk--wtf).

In the last few cases where EB-5 projects collapsed, the primary evildoer has been an immigrant himself. Anshoo Sethi, Joop Bollen, and now Lobsang Dargey (the former Tibetan monk). These guys are immigrants and they're making fortunes ripping off fellow immigrants. This former monk tells a story about how he's a self-made guy, an immigrant who pulled up his bootstraps and got really rich. But his bootstraps were just other peoples' bank accounts. They all looked at the opportunities they received, saw the holes or vulnerabilities in the system, breathed a sigh of relief that it didn't happen to them, and then turned around and thought about how many potential suckers are out there. It drives me nuts.

So my idea of a good society would have some protections to make sure that people like those guys don't take advantage of the rest of us. Be free, be safe, and be successful if you want to.

Pursuant to that, who among the presidential candidates will get us all closer to that? I've got to figure that out.

Now, one of the most beautiful songs I've heard lately.