Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Liquify earmarks

 How to spend $1.25 billion

VTDigger examines who benefited from Cares Act Funding: small businesses, farmers and housing groups.

Same as Cal Matters discussed. This from my Vermont source, same thing,'How to liquify earmarks'. 

The practice has been exposed by covid relief, but it has always been with us. The fundamental cause of government wobble. 

But what about idiot governors? McConnedll's point, and one of mine. We may not be able t overcome the idiot governors we elect, but revenue sharing depends on it.

The alternative is to keep this system, then include the Cal Matters and VT Digger instruction manuals, then let Alpha Zero or Watson handle the earmark sharing. Solve the problem one layer up from the liquidity layer.

Why not interactive AI for the governors? Think of an intelligent gamer of government flows, operated by IBM Watson.  The machine takes total government payments everywhere and determines the coherence with the Constitutional defined flow. The machine knows value chain.  Each governor, or anyone, can manipulate the machine as a game to minimize the volatility of government goods through a particular state.  The machine thus automates to the optimum policy choices for that particular state.  Governors can use the machine ex ante, before the earmarks are passed about, and collectively the earmarks chosen become the most liquid form possible, short of cash.

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