If you were benevolent dictator, what laws would you enact?

OK, let's have this scenario. After a completely unexpected coup d'etat, you've just found yourself the new supreme absolute overlord dictator for life of the U.S.

Of course, being a dictator, first you consolidate your power by skewering your enemies on pikes, then building dozens of giant palaces across the country so you can be treated as a dictator no matter where you go. It's hard work...

But then, as you're having grapes fed to you in your newest 3,000,000 sq ft marble bachelor pad, something clicks inside you. You didn't become dictator so you could enrich yourself, though the perks of the job are nice. You did it to help your fellow Americans. Suddenly, you're a walking oxymoron - a dictator with a conscience.

So. This is your chance. If you were benevolent dictator, what new laws would you enact to help your subjects, who, as of now, are looking up to you and saying "PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!!!"

Hmmm...

A real, single-payer universal health care system would be a good start. All those rich insurance executives and pharmcos who've been denying health care to 50,000,000 Americans and killing countless more because their kidney dialysis was "not a covered benefit." OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!!! In place, HR 676 is a good start - expand Medicare to cover every single human being on U.S. soil. That's the goal. Raise the FICA tax if necessary to pay for it (or better yet, abolish the $96,000 cap on the FICA tax) but make sure every single human being on U.S. soil has access to good medical care. As dictator, I can be that ambitious.

Also, I'd ban monopolies. All of them. Any company that has more than say 70% market share over a particular good or service will be required to take action to end the monopoly. It's not a judgment on whether they're a bad business or a bad person running that business, it's a simple statement "Your business is a monopoly. Make it not a monopoly." Microsoft, for example, would be required to license their source code to a couple competitors, so say in addition to Microsoft Office and Windows, you'd also have IBM Office and IBM Windows, and Apple Office and Apple Windows (100% compatible with OSX!) Local cable companies, if they're the only game in town for cable TV and high speed internet, would have to sell some of their infrastructure, split off some child companies so they have competitors. The goal being that where there once was monopolies in particular towns, there aren't. Instead of going to The Cable Company, there would be four or five a customer could choose from.

In the same spirit, I'd ban exclusive marketing deals. That deal between Apple and AT&T so AT&T gets an exclusive on the iPhone? BANNED! OFF WITH THEIR HEADS! Same thing with the NFL and Electronic Arts - the NFL would be required to license to multiple video game developers, that way, there are more football games on the market than the latest crappy John Madden game.

OK, what benevolent acts would you make for the country if you were benevolent dictator?

They never get enough money. Under Bush, the Small Business Administration has actually run out of funds for loans they'd already promised most every year. Stupid.

The National Science Foundation needs money, too. Pure science gives us more than we know at the time. Time to really fund it.

I'd up the taxes on the rich but only to previous levels, nothing too much, or they'd all leave (heck, they'd all leave anyway).

And the crafts and fiber arts would become part of the school curricula again. :D

And schedule the elections.

I'm scared of all these happy dictators, though.

I don't want or need that kind of power. Before I left though I'd write even stronger civil liberty guarantees into the Constitution and make corporate CEO's personally responsible for their misdeeds. Tax the churches.

Out of Iraq! OUT!!! Order the generals to execute a well-defended, well-disciplined redeployment of all U.S. forces in Iraq back to the U.S., and allocate exactly the amount of money required to get it done.

Defense policy in general would be shifted to providing actual defense of the U.S., instead of pursuing pointless aggressive wars across the world, and would have the resources required to get it done without too much waste. That would imply that our military would be significantly smaller.

For that matter, we revitalize an art that Bush seems to have completely abandoned: Diplomacy. What a concept! Talking it out, even with those eeeeeeeeeeevil Iranians, and it's amazing what can be worked out when we don't act like sociopaths.

No more corporate welfare. Their tax breaks? Gone. Corporations from now on sink or float on their own merits and abilities to handle their own finances. If they can't make their business models work, we're not bailing them out.

More consumer protection laws. Revitalize the FDA, and put a brick firewall between them and the pharmcos to block conflicts of interests. The pharmcos will have to make their new medications conform to the old standards.

Repeal Tart Hartley, bring in new laws enabling unions to organize almost on a whim. Legalize secondary strikes again.

Withdraw from NAFTA and the WTO. Put in some modest trade protections. Nothing so harsh as Hawley-Smoot, but something to make trade actually fair, rather than a giveaway to the corporations, and a race to the bottom with third world countries. Mandate that countries trading with the U.S. comply with some rules - they have treat their workers right, they have to have environmental protections, they have to comply with safety standards. If they're not willing to do that, we cut them off.

And yes, I'd eventually abdicate and bring back proper democracy. But first, Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia? You've built all those black box voting machines? OFF WITH YOUR HEADS!!!

All elections after my departure from the position of dictator would be done with the Punchscan system (http://punchscan.org/) All the major political parties will be allowed to audit the election results, using Punchscan's open source, cryptographic auditing system, through each step of the elections. Any independent organization interested in auditing would be able to do so as well.

Get caught suppressing votes? Caging voters? Cheating in an election in any way whatsoever? OFF WITH YOUR HEAD!!! Yes, I'd make damn sure the new elections were fair.

Oh, and all election campaigns from this point forward would be publically funded. Every candidate gets allocated $N for their campaigns, that's all they can spend. No contributions from corporations at all. Any quid-pro-quo between a candidate and a 527 group, even indirectly, through 20 levels of obfuscation... OFF WITH YOUR HEADS!!!

A problem where, if you DID throw enough money at it, it WOULD go away.

I'd probably also impose regulation on the porn industry, license parenthood, vastly increase the money spent on education, and randomly choose about 10,000 households a year and pay off all their debts.

Oh, and start building wind farms and solar power plants like crazy.

. . . I'd abolish my office and run for parliament.

esp. marijuana, which as hemp could replace tobacco for farmers and allow law enforcement to stop being tool of oppressin etc...
outlaw the rightwing, burn all their books and shoot all loudmouths. tax stupidity (anyone vote for rw candidate would be taxed to death)
hang the rich!
a soon...

Drugs would be legal, but regulated & taxed. What do you mean by "regulated?" Regulate what goes in them, make sure they're pharmaceutically clean, no cutting with Drano, for example.

I'd set the legal age for drug consumption at 16 (including alcohol), but at the same time, have schools teach how to use responsibly. I'd also make it legal for teenagers, starting at the age of 12 to use, when supervised by their parents.

It would help the meth epidemic if those who were addicted to meth could simply buy it cheaply in the drug store, in pharmaceutically clean form. They wouldn't have to spend nearly so much money, so they wouldn't have to resort to theft and other crimes. Nobody would want to turn their house into a toxic waste dump and potential bomb by cooking meth in the kitchen. They could just go to the drug store and buy it. Good, clean stuff. Put a big red warning label on the hard stuff saying "WARNING! THIS SHIT WILL KILL YOU!" I'd also regulate the doses, so you'd have to really pop a whole bunch of legal meth pills to kill yourself, and make it clear on the bottle how many pills you'd take to get a potentially dangerous overdose.

Tax recreational drugs, specifically to pay for addiction treatment programs. The drug problem in this country should be treated as a public health problem, not a criminal problem.

Oh, and legalize and encourage industrial hemp. The cannabis plant has thousands of cool uses - textiles, ropes, food, biofuel, etc. It's too bad it's illegal to grow it.

ooomph is what gives the crackheads the broken puppet walking style :wow:
recently, reading about early victorian era crime, it was strange to find out the wealthy suffered even worse then others because of adulteration of expensive products- wine, for example, the fine quality stuff shipped from france italy etc would be watered down and then strychnine added to restore its kick! this was so common a practise it became a scandal, and led eventually to bonding and regulations- with attendent bureaucracys, which entailed taxing etc. it's just like today, with criminals running economies and global warming disaster coming on, it's the rich who'll lose their comfort and ease thanks to the very thing they support ie bush and harpy capitalism!
they say fools and their money are easily parted :)

First I'd require a license to have children; no more than 2 per human, per lifetime.

Part of the licensing requirement would be completion of college or high school and trade school, a job, and adequate housing.

I'd put an end to building housing tracts on open land, and put resources into building affordable, clean, safe housing for all in "smart" towns and cities.

Efficient public transportation, with no more private motorized vehicles.

High-quality health care and education for all.

Jobs for all who wanted them.

Major investments in sustainable energy.

Guaranteed housing.

Real, fresh, organic food produced locally. I'd outlaw sugar, gmo crops and livestock, and factory farms.

Libraries and schools fully funded, with abundant staff and resources, open 24-7 year round.

Guraranteed right to privacy.

Biological weapons and wmd's, tanks, bombers, etc. all destroyed and militaries disbanded. No killing firearms.

Should I go on?

Trade schools nationwide would be opened up, funded by taxpayer dollars, that would teach workers the central ideas of socialism, teach workers how to become entrepreneurs, and finally combine the two fields in a way that provides an effective, concise model on how to construct worker co-ops, firms owned and operated not by a few people but owned by the workers instead.

The goal is to transition the economy, step by step, towards an economy where workers have a choice to either work for traditionally structured firms or work for themselves in a collective co-op. Workers should be free to choose, and they should be free to form worker co-ops after given the tools necessary.

A labor bank will be established, subsidized by taxpayer dollars. The bank would operate much like any private bank, except it doesn't charge interest, as it isn't for-profit and is already run with tax dollars. This bank will offer grants and no-interest loans and financial advice to workers who wish to start a worker co-op enterprise. This is to help promote co-ops further.

In time, the co-op sector will grow to rival the private sector in size if not surpass it in size in terms of the number of workers involved. With workers having the tools necessary to liberate themselves from wage slavery, my work is done, and a transition to a democratic order will begin.