The social security number can really be retired altogether. There already exists a form of national identity card in the US, and it's called the passport card. It contains all the information found on a passport except the visa pages, contained in the form of a smart card. It already has RFID capabilities. The only thing is that passport cards are not universal, but they can be if they are made free and the Government phases out social security numbers for passport card numbers in all contexts.
Digital signatures are enough to transact millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency. It's not that they are "not ready", it's that there isn't enough surrounding infrastructure for it. If everyone was issued a digital signature key embedded into the smart chips of their ID cards and every phone and computer came with the hardware and software needed to read and sign things, paper signatures would be the ones regarded with suspicion for not being digital and not the other way around.
The technology to embed digital signatures into smart chips on cards is already used on payment cards. We're just not making full use of the technology available to us.
The ideal set-up would be that everyone's ID card comes with a smart chip containing a private key issued by the Government. Everyone has a phone app that can sign and request signatures for messages. The public keys associated with any given identity can be freely accessed on some public database.
To sign a message, the card can be tapped against an NFC reader or inserted into a chip reader. This will cause the hardware inside the card to sign the message and return a signature to the requesting device. The requesting device must send the signature to a Government server in order to timestamp the signature and verify that the person who signed is the person they claim to be. The message itself does not need to be sent, just the signature and the hash of the message.
When your card is used to sign a message, you'll get a notification through the app on your phone. Allow for some short timeframe (perhaps 24 hours) when the signer can cancel their signature without excuse, so that unauthorised signatures can be quickly caught and cancelled and the damage limited. If your card is lost or stolen, reporting it as such will revoke the corresponding key on the database and any messages purportedly signed after the revocation date will be invalid.
This set-up would also allow for 2FA to be implemented easily by using a simple PIN scheme where users configure a PIN in advance and this PIN must also be reported to the server in order for the signature to be regarded as valid.
Cannot say why decimal time didn't stick, but a similarly-proposed semi-decimal calendar with 12 months of 3 weeks each of 10 days was abandoned in France solely because Napoleon didn't like it.
It was also designed to frustrate Sunday church attendance because Sundays being every seven days would usually fall on a weekday on a workweek based on a ten-day week. While Revolutionary France experimented with state atheism and then deism, it eventually returned to Catholicism.
France spread its decimal measurements (the metre, gram, and litre) to the countries that Napoleon conquered or tried to conquer, but by that time, France was well beyond the "stamp out all semblance of religion" phase of its revolution, so a calendar designed with the intent to stifle religious attendance in mind was never going to stick very long once the French had left those territories. Besides, doing maths on length, volume, and mass is something that people do far more often than performing those calculations on dates. Sure, it would have made some things more convenient, but I'm guessing that for most people, the ten-day weeks just stuck out like a sore thumb.
As for your family discussion, generally it's advised to avoid bringing up controversial topics because it almost never ends well.
That being said, I've found that the following statement is pretty universally agreeable:
Thompson led a company that was number one in the industry in denying coverage for routine and life-saving healthcare to people who had paid good money for and were legally entitled to coverage, meaning it's almost certain that multiple people have died as a result of the policies he oversaw the execution of in the name of profit. So while I don't condone murder as a method to solve problems with the healthcare system, it's difficult for me to feel any sympathy for the victim.
Lost, yes. Ready to risk everything trying to overthrow the Government, not so much. There's a reason we remember 6th January 2021 and not 6th January 2017.
Well, the first two (replacing first-past-the-post and eliminating the Electoral College) can be done on a state-by-state basis. There were ballot initiatives in a few states on the ballot in 2024 regarding instant-runoff voting. All of them failed, including one in Alaska that would have repealed instant-runoff voting and replaced it with first-past-the-post.
The Electoral College can be defeated using the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
Napoleon wasn't "appointed" as dictator by any legitimate government or by the people. He overthrew the Directory and the Constitution of Year III and made himself the dictator.
For one, the revolutionary sentiment isn't nearly as widespread as it was in 18th century France. Yes, it's true that many people are discontent with the current economic and political situation but the difference is that 250 years ago, the only outlet for discontent available to common people was to revolt, whereas in the United States and other Western democracies, a second option exists: the democratic political institutions. What this really means is that the right of suffrage and of elections has really sucked a lot of the will to revolt from the populace; it's easier to get what you want by participating in the democratic process than by revolting, or at least that's what a lot of people think.
In order for a revolution to start, you need to hit a critical mass of angry people motivated enough to risk everything to overthrow the system. The presence of democratic institutions like elections and referendums changes the maths and it makes it harder to convince people that they need to revolt in order to get what they want. In turn, it tends to mean that well-established democracies really aren't prone to violent revolutions from the bottom of the sort that topple totalitarian governments. Rather, the primary threat to democratic states actually comes from the top—that the people in charge will try to exceed their mandate of power and take over the government.
I don't know much about it but I know they put back the French republican calendar while they had control over the city, which I think was pretty cool.
The goalpost remains where it was at the beginning of this conversation. I claimed, and maintain, that requisitioning vacant housing units is not a good solution to the housing shortage.
What you're describing is not the goalposts moving; it's that you are attacking very specific peripheral claims without realising that if any of them are true then the overall conclusion is true. So when you attack one and I point out that another exists, you accuse me of moving the goalpost.
In order to be useful towards alleviating a housing shortage, housing units must be habitable, located where housing is needed, legally available, and in significant quantity, among other things that I can't think of immediately. If any one of these is false, the solution doesn't work. it is absolutely not useful in the slightest to suggest that pointing out holes in a solution one at a time is "moving the goalposts" and use that as a pretext to dismiss criticism of that solution.
It should not require explanation that for a chain of reasoning to be sound, you do not need to link to someone else saying it. I can adequately use your own sources to attack your conclusion.
Vacant housing that is for let or for sale is already on the market and will eventually be let or sold. Nobody wants to have an empty house earning no money but still have to pay tax and utility bills for it. If it really is priced too high, then nobody will rent or buy it and they will decrease the price until someone does. If you want units to become cheaper, you can't do it by mandate with rent control ordinances or by requisition (at least not the US without paying compensation out the ass). This would be like trying to swim upstream. The only viable solution to bring down the price in this market is to create more supply (by building more units) or to depress demand (by driving people out of the city).
Someone will upload it to the Internet Archive.