Readings for March 22, 2023

• 📚 Is it true? Is it necessary or at least useful? Is it compassionate or at least unharmful? 🔗- An excellent set of questions whenever you are trying to make a difficult decision. I don’t know if I necessarily agree with the result of that questioning in this case (her son and literary executor changing a handful of words in Ursula K. LeGuin’s books in future editions), but certainly a thought process worth having.
• 🚲🏛️ $1,500 electric bike tax credit bill reintroduced in Congress 🔗 - Would be awesome to encourage the adoption of alternative transit rather than switching everyone to electric cars (your commute isn’t going to suck any less just because the cars surrounding you are all electrics). But, since this might actually help people and improve the planet, I’d give it almost zero chance of actually passing.
• 🚔🖕🏼 As New York Pays Out Millions In Police Misconduct Settlements, Lawmakers Ask Why They Keep Happening 🔗 - Again, it’s a moral hazard problem. When the misbehaving entity (the cop) doesn’t end up as the party paying the penalty (the city aka the public does), where’s the real motivation to curtail the misbehaving? Have the police union pay the penalty. Or require the police department to carry insurance against these payouts. And absolutely fuck any future pension for the convicted. When the guilty party actually suffers a penalty, there is at least the possibility of justice.

---