One Billion Americans is a Book by Matthew Yglesias. I try to put some of his arguments in my own words for your debate!1) Initial Cost: Zero dollars. Get the quantity that liberals want, but let conservatives run it. We can tax immigrants higher. They won't mind. If they are making 5 times their salary they could make in the other country, then we will tax them more. If they don't want to, they don't have to. Lets do all the low hanging fruit first. The English speakers, the people with skills that we need. 2) Timeline:We would grow between 2.5% over the next 50 year, or 5% over the next 25 years. 3) The zones to be designated for the influx of some 600 million people: We would try to move them as much as possible to the dying towns and cities all across America. 4) From where would you draw your immigrants?Liberals chose the quantity, conservatives chose the qualifications in order to get a real compromise. The goals is American power, not charity. We can also do charity, but that is not the prime goal. We can debate what will result in the most benefit to America, but we would like to brain drain evil places. The goal would be to rally freedom loving and democracy loving people from all over the planet to be prepared for when Chinese citizens are on average just as wealthy as European and American citizens, so they don't get to dictate the future of the planet from an authoritarian repressive society that doesn't value freedom or democracy. The goal would be to draw the citizens that would integrate into American society the best. We can debate what qualities get what points, but we would prefer English speaking. However, we don't need to be afraid of freedom, and markets that draw people who are poor. It is better to employ them within our country, than to send jobs over seas. 5) A melting pot? Less politics of grievances resentment and us vs them. Unity. Integration not separation. All believers of democracy, freedom, and well regulated capitalism are welcome. E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.  (the motto of the US). Liberals need to show that they are proud of democracy, freedom, the progress we have made, and our common hopes and dreams. We are not so different, and should not exaggerate our differences. If they emphasize our shared destiny, our common humanity, we will be less concerned about fragmentation, isolation, and internal hatred. 6) Will the 600 million immigrants have sufficient teachers, medical personnel.We get to choose who we let in. We could only let in teachers or medical personnel. If we only accept teacher or medical workers it will help, not hurt, our access.

The party would support candidates that tie their outcome to different open online cost benefit analysis.   These don't currently exist, but we could build one.   We could start out by averaging all the costs benefit analysis we can find. Economist, the congressional budget office, the office of information and regulatory affairs, the office of management and budget, think tanks, colleges, and other organizations do them. We should start out with arguments why some are better than others. The strength of our pro/con arguments why some costs-benefit analysis are worse than others, would lower their score.   Eventually we could copy all their costs, benefits, and risks and provide arguments why should assume they will be bigger or smaller. We would scale the costs, benefits, and risks by the quality of the arguments supporting or opposing them.

We would identify the pro/con as dollars saved or spent (e.g. for a tax or environmental policy), lives or hours saved or lost (e.g. from building a road). They could keep the existing pro/con argument format for reasons these costs are: 1) more or less likely 2) should be larger or smaller, or would 3) help or harm more or less valid interest.

For example, in order to solve the middle east conflict you have to meet the valid interest of each party. However, it seams some on each side want only to dominate the other, destroy the other, and revenge past wrongs. These are obviously "less valid" interest, for those who want long lasting peace, who and want mankind to inhabit the galaxy. On the other hand, the desire to provide for your family, to live your life in freedom are more valid than the desire to dominate others. Reason demands that we: 1. Identify valid interest, 2. Conduct a thorough, open, on-line cost benefit analysis for each policy to maximize the outcomes that support the valid interest of each partyIn order for this to work we must outline, for each policy or problem, the likely interest of each party. Then you simply create a scoring mechanism to rank interest validity. Believing something is logical is the only valid reason to support it. Observation teaches us that conflicting groups have a mix of valid and invalid interest. Good policy is simply identifying valid interest for each effected group, and selecting policies that maximize benefits associated with valid interest of the involved parties.  People support things for all sorts of invalid reasons. For example people seek to have psychological moral clarity. They want to oversimplify everything into black and white and good and evil. Evolutionary psychology enplanes why we divide the world into us and them. We form groups and have political party affiliation. We defend our guy when they do the same thing as the other side, because they are our guy. Its the same thing when we watch sports. The ref only makes bad calls against us. And when they make a bad call against the other side, it only partially makes up for the mountain of bad calls against us. This is of course, confirmation bias in action. We support policy because of liberal guilt, virtue signaling (on the right and left), the desire to be seen as tough, or good, or kind, or the desire to respond to negative aspects of our parent's world view, or "our brother who makes better money, but at least I'm not from the evil political party like he is". Its just all emotion self delusion, posturing, political laziness and issue crossover, childish temper tantrums, and emotional apes patting themselves on their back, unless your using logic to promoting the outcome of a cost-benefit analysis. The fact that we don't have dispassionate policy analysis is the greatest failure of the modern era. Examining the interest and motivation of each side, and evaluating the validity of these motivations is the only path forward. 

Kialo is a website that uses this design. Create needs to adobt this format, or we will be left behind:https://www.kialo.com/

p   In the movie "Moneyball" the GM used statistics to determine what players are really good, similar to how this website is starting to give scores to different ideas. Before Sabermetrics recruiters would share their feeling about if a player was good or not, or had potential... there was very little or poor math used to evaluate players. Sabermetrics changed the course of baseball. It brought sanity to decion making. It brought logic to the sport. It brought a national leage championship to the Red Socks.  We all have stupid beliefs in our heads, similar to coaches before sabermetrics. Once this website really gets going, with good math to represent the true strength of an idea, the world will never be the same. 

This is my site:  http://richardsantorum.blogspot.com/

The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a new religious movement or other group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. There are different levels of bad "cults". Very bad ones result in suicide, like Jim Jones. Mormons aren't really bad, they probably stress too much about sin, but they really aren't hurting themselves much more than Catholics, or any other religion. They are, statistically, well educated about religion in general, but have not been told the truth about a lot of their religion. This is unfortunate, but it is better that people learn about Mormonism, by curiosity about Mitt Romney, out in the open, hearing news people talk about it in a an open, public dialogue, than privately with Mormon Missionaries.  The primary definition of the word cult in most dictionaries is "a system of religious worship." Certainly, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches a system of religious worship. They try their best to worship their Father in Heaven and his Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ. They honestly think they are being good, doing what Jesus wants. They honestly think they are growing in their ability to love, and follow the commandments. Instead of looking that them as weirdos, who are our enemies, we should look at them as friends who need our help.  The word cult means nothing specifically, because the word has so many different definitions. However, it does accomplish the verbal equivalent of spitting on someone's beliefs.  If the Mormon Church was a cult they would be secretive about their acts and beliefs, but in fact there are 53,000 missionaries and 12 million members all over the world who will tell you all about Mormonism if you ask them... and even if you don't.

75% to 85% of reporters self identify themselves as democrats. People who go into journalism have the luxury of not caring about making a living. These artsy types don’t want to be constrained with putting food on the table. They want the government to take care of all of these so they can sit around and talk about how smart they are. "Indeed, the media elites covering national politics would be indistinguishable from the Democratic Party except the Democratic Party isn't liberal enough. A higher percentage of the Washington press corps voted for Clinton in 1992 than did his demographic category: 'Registered Democrats.'" -- Ann Coulter, P. 56  http://www.mrc.org/biasbasics/pdf/BiasBasics.pdf           

Reasons to agree I have to pass a drug test to work. I hate work. I wish I could get money for doing nothing. If I have to pass a drug test, to have the honor of working, people should have to pass a drug test, if they want free money. Like a lot of folks in this state I have a job. I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit. In order to get that paycheck, I am required to pass a random urine test, with which I have no problem. What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don't have to pass a urine test. Shouldn't one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because I have to pass one to earn it for them? Please understand, I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet. I do on the other hand have a problem with helping someone sitting on their ass. Could you imagine how much money the state would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check?????  You could save money, by giving random drug test, once a year. It doesn't cost that much money to give drug test. People who REALLY need help, will stop drugs. This will help their life.     Reasons to disagree It cost money to give drug test. That's all I got... Did I miss anything?

"CHAPTER I The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians.... Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie. In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat. 

Slippery slope arguments say that one thing is bad, because something similar is bad. If we can't talk about one thing at a time, but are always changing the topic to something else that we would rather talk about, then we will never address the real decisions that we face. If we never address the problems that we really face, we won't solve them, and we will go to war, and cause the world to explode. 

So you find ways of tying your difference performances on this website to different attributes of a massive multiplyer game. The game is called Battle Field of Ideas, and similar to Inception you go into people's dreams and literally fight their bad beliefs.  I kind of envision this secret group of people that lives among us, but they can go into our brains, but if they die in one of our dreams they really die, and this girl doesn't like it because she feels it is cheating when you convince them of something they believe, by defeating their arguments in their dreams... that that is what made Columbus sail to America, someone was trying to kill him by getting him to sail of the corner of the world by defeating in his dream all his beliefs that the world was flat... but her sister joins a cult, and she has to go into her sister's dreams and wage war with all the cultist... It could be a regular sexy girl kick butt fighting movie like Tomb Raider etc, but she practices her intelectual debates, in her Sister's dreams, by trying to win philisophical debates online, and that by doing better online she can advance (and you can advance) in the video game. Or we could create a system where ideas compete in a survival of the fittest-tournament. We could use this website. We would start by letting the popularity of different ideas be used as the strength of an online role-playing-game’s character. Much like ever quest. Why would I do this? Because I believe that we should create a system where ideas can compete. This would be a way that people would be interested in the success of an idea.For example, any of the suggestions on this web site would work. A game player would go looking for the idea that he thought was the best. Then he would try and convince as many people as he could to agree with him, during the duration of the game… Maybe a tournament would last a couple of months…To accomplish this, first you have a web page where people debate issues. Then you track the popularity of a couple hundred different particular ideas. These popularities will be represented by the percentage of people who agree or disagree with that issue. You then let these percentages represent different characteristics of a particular character in a role-playing game. For example, this game would work much like Ever-quest, an online multiplayer computer game. However in Ever-quest characters have different pre-programmed strengths. In this game, maybe once a day, your game would download the strengths for your character from our database. This web site would be ½ discussion board, ½ video game. I’ve been thinking a lot about evolution. Businesses and species evolve because they allow for a system of survival of the fittest. We need to come up with a system where ideas can compete. To do this we should track idea’s popularity over time, much like stocks are tracked. We should also make people want to be involved in the war of ideas. So why not make a video game out of it? However I am bringing up lots of different issues, and we should just do one at a time…

People who belong to our political party promice to follow reason. They promice to use an algorithm to make political decisions. Follow reason right?  If we allowed one idea's score to be used to support another idea, and each reason becames its own idea, with its own set of reasons to agree and disagree, and created an idea for each bill (proposed law, etc), and dinked around, and tinkered over the next years, we could run a nation with this website. There is no better way to examine an idea, than to examine each side, and give a score based on the quality of reasons.   Just think about these quotes: "Facts are meaningless. You can use facts to prove anything that's remotely true. Facts schmacts" ~ Homer Simipson "No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the sum of his knowledge."~ Ayn Rand “A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking .”~ Steven Wright "It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true".- Bertrand Russell

Obama "supports full civil unions and federal rights for LGBT couples". What is a "T" couple? 

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_pimp Poverty pimp or “professional poverty pimp” is a pejorative label used to convey that an individual or group is benefiting unduly by acting as an intermediary on behalf of the poor, the disadvantaged, or some other “victimized” groups.   Those who use this appellation suggest that those so labeled profit unduly from the misfortune of others, and therefore do not really wish the societal problems that they appear to work on to be eliminated permanently, as it is not in their own interest for this to happen. The most frequent targets of this accusation are those receiving government funding or that solicit private charity to work on issues on behalf of various disadvantaged individuals or groups, but who never seem to be able to show any amelioration of the problems experienced by their target population. Some even suggest that that if profit were eliminated as a factor, greater steps in the alleviation of the oppressive situations could begin to truly occur. http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/poverty “President Obama has been a lifelong advocate for the poor. As a young college graduate, he rejected the high salaries of corporate America and moved to the South Side of Chicago to work as a community organizer.” Obama shouldn’t pat himself on the back for “rejected the high salaries of corporate America and moved to the South Side of Chicago to work as a community organizer” unless he can point to improvement in their lives, because the way he explains it, it sounds like he did it for himself more than for him… after all it did lead to him becoming president, right? Not a bad career path, so that he can put his own kids in private school, and his wife can fly all over the world staying in posh hotels, telling us all how much they care.  

Obama was wrong, in 2010 to spend $167.5 million on the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Publicly financed art is too easily censored The federal government is too broke to be spending money on the arts.  The arts in America get enough money from the private sector that they don't need money from the federal government. The Federal Government should only fund things we are OK with putting people in Jail, if they wouldn't want to pay their taxes for those things. For instance we can require people to pay their taxes to fund roads, because we all have to pay our share. But it would be wrong to put someone in Jail just because they didn't want money to go to a particular project. It doesn't matter that it only costs a few dollars per citizen, because there are thousands of government programs that you could use this logic with, and they all add up after a while.  No citizen should be forced to fund someone else's hobby. Its not good to spend money on the arts, just because the Government spends money in other stupid ways.  Vermont Arts Council Executive Director Alexander L. Aldrich said " Every State SHOULD invest in the arts sector simply because it makes good economic sense". Of course he as the State's "ARTS COUNCIL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR" is going to say this, but it doesn't make sense for us to just take the word of someone who's job depends upon our agreeing with him because he obviously has a vested interest. Anything from him should be taken with a grain of salt, because his opinion is going to be highly biased. But lets set aside his bias, and look at what he said. He said: "Every State SHOULD invest in the arts sector simply because it makes good economic sense". He didn't specify which type of arts the states should invest in, he just said that all investment in "Every State SHOULD invest in the arts sector simply because it makes good economic sense". So no matter how much money, or which type of art you invest in, it will make good economic sense. Quick! Stop the press! If this is true, we should spend 100% of Government's money on the arts, because it is a "makes good economic sense". 

Reasons to agree: Although it is not the governments responsibility to "create" jobs they can tweak policies that increase employment.  When the private sector is not creating jobs, the government should find temporary jobs to keep people productive. Obama should have created more short term government jobs to put people back to work.  Obama has focused his efforts on an anti-jobs, anti-growth agenda that has significantly expanded the role of the federal government. When the economy was falling apart, Obama worried about Healthcare, which should have not been his first priority, especially as it didn't save any money His actions have only succeeded in creating more of the uncertainty and obstacles to investment that threaten the economic vitality of our nation  Reasons to disagree: Its not the governments responsibility to create jobs.      

Catholic Charities stuns state, ends adoptions In a stunning turn of events, Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley and leaders of Catholic Charities of Boston announced yesterday that the agency will end its adoption work, deciding to abandon its founding miss. This is a press release from that time: March 10, 2006 DEFENDING RELIGIOUS LIBERTY, ROMNEY TO FILE BILL EXEMPTING RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS FROM GAY ADOPTION REQUIREMENT Calling it an issue of “religious liberty,” Governor Mitt Romney today said he plans to file legislation to permit religious institutions to perform adoptions without violating the tenets of their faith. Today, the board of Catholic Charities voted to stop doing adoptions because of state law which requires that gays be given equal consideration for the placement of children. Because of the Church’s teaching, Catholic agencies may not provide adoptions to gay parents. “This is a sad day for neglected and abandoned children. In this case, it’s a mistake for our laws to put the rights of adults over the needs of children. While I respect the board’s decision to stay true to their principles, I find the current state of the law deeply disturbing and a threat to religious freedom,” said Romney. “I ask the Legislature to work with me on a bill that I will file to ensure that religious institutions are able to participate in the important work of adoption in a way that always respects and never forces them to compromise their firmly held beliefs,” he said. Romney’s bill would authorize religious organizations to provide adoption services consistent with their beliefs by creating an exemption from the state’s nondiscrimination laws. All Massachusetts adoption agencies are licensed by the state Department of Early Education and Care (EEC). In addition, since 1977, the state Department of Social Services (DSS) has contracted with Catholic Charities to provide special needs adoption services to children with severe emotional and physical needs. Currently, the waiting list for children in DSS care awaiting adoption is close to 700

Reasons to agree: A defining characteristic between compound polygamist and inbreed hillbillies is that both groups have more children than they can provide for. The typical compound polygamist and inbreed hillbillies both tend to marry very early: often girls are married before puberty. The typical compound polygamist looks like an inbreed hillbilly because both groups have had problems with inbreeding. The typical compound polygamist looks like an inbreed hillbilly because both groups wear home made clothes that are out of fashion. The typical compound polygamist, like inbreed hillbillies are geographically isolated from the larger society.  Hillbillies live in remote rural, mountainous areas of the Apalachian mountains, while Polygamist Mormons tend to live in Rural, remote, isolated mountainous areas of Utah and Arizona. The typical compound polygamist, and inbreed hillbillies have less formal education than the greater society as a whole. These very large similarities lead to hundreds of other smaller similarities as to the way the live. Their societies are often closed and suspicious of outsiders. Their low level of education results in them not having access to technology. They are very independent, as far as making things themselves, etc. They both would have home births, home remedies, and distrust of professional doctors. This is not to say that there are not exceptions. Of course some people that fit the hillbilly description live in upstate New York. And of course there are some well read, educated, independently wealthy women, who have access to jobs, have a liberated mind frame, etc.  

  "America cannot continue to lead the family of nations around the world if we suffer the collapse of the family here at home". ~Mitt Romney Reasons to agree: 1.       Our country is less able to compete against China and India if our children come from more broken homes. 2.       Children of divorce or that are born out of wedlock  are more likely to    a.       be addicted to drugs    b.      commit crime.    c.        be juvenile delinquents    d.       rape.    e.       get pregnant out of wedlock themselves    f.         be divorced Books that agree: 1.       Guilty by Ann Coulter  

People should fear American power because during the Cuban missile crisis, the Soviet Union and USA came very close to destroying the planet Reasons to agree: % Unanimously, the Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed that a full-scale attack and invasion was the only solution. They agreed that the Soviets would not act to stop the U.S. from conquering Cuba. If our president would have listened to his military leaders, he would have destroyed Soviet nuclear missiles, and killed soviet solders. The soviets would have responded. The anger within their population would have never let Gorbachev ratchet down the hostility.   Because the USA came so close to nuclear war during the Cuban missile crises we proved to the world that we can not be trusted to pick good leaders.  Because the USA came so close to nuclear war during the Cuban missile crises we proved to the world that we can not be trusted to make good decisions.  Reasons to disagree: % America did not almost destroy the planet during the Cuban Missile crisis.  It natural to fear and resent powers that you can't control, but judge us by our history. We never tried to take over the world like France, Germany, Japan, or the Soviet Union.   The world wouldn't have been safer during the Cuban Missile Crisis if America's military was weaker.  I did my reasons that I was able to come up with by myself here, instead of below, because when I did it below I was accused of trying to rack up points. I don't know what I think, and so I have come up with my understanding, and hope that we can brainstorm together reasons to agree and disagree.