Artificial intelligence can answer questions, from individuals in the public, when experts, in various fields, don't have time for this kind of dialog.

I have been starting to use artificial intelligence to ask questions that arise from my unique perspectives about economics and to some extent about physics. Answers have been surprisingly useful. It's kind of like dialoging with experts.

I find that most human experts don't have the time to discuss these topics with me. Yes, I enjoy the discussions I have with ordinary people, both online and in person, but experts in economics and scientists tend to not have the time to dialog with people from the general public.

I am aware of the old phrase "garbage in, garbage out" when it comes to answers from machines, but the answers I am getting make good sense to me. I have posed a few questions in Google Search and AI comes up with a summery of answers that seem quite useful to me.

Over time, I'm planning to share results from some of these discussions.

Can Washington State's Climate Commitment Act survive politically as it continues ratcheting up as time goes on?

People often complain that Washington State has among the highest gas prices in USA. A big part of that cost is our Climate Commitment Act which, basically, taxes fossil fuel and funds things like improvements to public transit. I don't drive, myself, so public transit and bicycling is my means of transportation.

I think that tax is written so as to ratchet up each year as it strives to push us toward transitioning away from fossil fuels.

The law survived an attempt at the ballot, last year, to repeal it. Still, as it ratchets up, it may face more pressure to repeal. I got to thinking that if it faces a precarious future it could possibly be capped so as to not ratchet up, but remain in place at its present form. This could continue things that it currently funds at their current levels.

Due to pressure from the Republican Party to give up on doing anything about climate change, plus the continuing rising cost from the ratcheting, that law may face continued pressure to repeal.

Glad it at least survived last year's election. Washington State tends to vote more liberal than nationwide.

It still isn't my favorite idea as I think a simple carbon tax would be better. This is a cap and trade law which is more complicated, but still better than nothing.

Automation can do a better job at drawing congressional districts than people can.

One thing that automation may be better at than people is the drawing of district lines for congressional districts.

I remember hearing, a few years back, that someone wrote a computer program to automatically draw district lines on a map. Two main criteria used were even population between districts and compactness of the districts.

They put the population data and map into the computer and let if automatically draw the lines. Nothing is perfect and it may still take some tweaking, but people, especially politicians fail at this. Here is where machines might do a better job.

Even an independent commission may not be as good as a machine at this, even though I am aware of the term "garbage in garbage out." Still I think the machines might do a lot better.

Just cause nature changed climate thousands of years ago doesn't mean it won't hurt us if we cause climate change while civilization is here.

Some right wingers think that climate change is no problem because earth's climate has changed naturally for years.

Does that mean it's okay for much of Florida's homes and businesses to be flooded in the near future just because those same areas were under water 2.5 million years ago during the Pliocene Era?

Problem is, there are houses on that land now.

Back in the Pliocene, the houses and businesses were not there to care. Today, people might worry if their houses flood, or maybe their children and grandchildren will experience that.

What caused the warming in the Pliocene before humans walked this planet? I did some Google and AI searching. A period of volcanism may have touched off the warming along with other things. There were probably feedback loops; such as the melting of polar ice which caused the earth to be less reflective of sunlight. Panama may have not blocked the flow of ocean water between Pacific and Atlantic Oceans so circulation was different. Remember, this was millions of years ago; not just a few centuries during human times.

Nature can make some dramatic changes, but while our human economy is here, we'd rather the changes not happen in the near future. We are shooting ourselves in the foot if we cause warming to happen in the next few decades, but if we wait for nature to do it, which inevitably happens, it could still give us thousands of years for civilization to flourish.

Some right wingers may not understand the difference between geological time scales and human time scales that we use to run the economy, live our lives, write insurance policies, do what we think of as "long range planning" and so forth.

Map I found from Wikimedia commons.

A tariff is a more regressive tax than an income tax.

A tariff is a tax. It's like a sales tax on imported items purchased by American people and businesses. Sales taxes tend to be more regressive than income taxes.

Income taxes tend to be more progressive meaning the percentage of income paid in tax goes up for higher income people. A regressive tax means lower income people tend to pay a higher percent of their income in tax.

A bias against new development seen as for profit, yet reselling existing properties can be more profitable.

Building more housing is a way to address the housing shortage and affordability crisis. At the same time, lots of people are suspicious of developers thinking they are profit hungry. This drives some of the nimbyism against new construction.

I got to thinking that new construction may be less profitable than the reselling of existing homes and buildings that have appreciated in value. Existing real estate can bring big windfall profits. New construction is likely to be a more risky investment due to the cost of construction and the possibility of short turn market downturns soon after construction.

Reselling, sometimes even flipping, existing real estate seems overly profitable. This idea just popped into my head a few days ago while biking somewhere.

This idea relates to a thought I have about interest rates and the talk about the Federal Reserve. I've often thought that there should be at least two different interest rates rather than a "one size fits all" rate.

Couldn't there be a lower interest rate for creating new assets and a higher interest rate for reselling existing assets? This could help to curb speculation on existing assets whether they be homes or stocks and it would encourage the creation of new assets, such as housing. It's one thing that might make it easier to create more housing in areas experiencing population growth. also the creation of new sources of jobs.

Bottom line is new development may not be as bad for affordability as reselling of old developments in a housing market that experiences significant appreciation.

Lots of existing homeowners do benefit from market appreciation so that makes it easier to point fingers at new construction, thus driving some of the nimbyism.

Also, I realize that there could be more trust of new developments from non profits and systems such as Kulshan Land Trust than from private landlords, so there are several ways to think about this topic.

Maybe oil companies were not conspiring to hide climate change data in the past, but the Republican Party is conspiring to hide it today.

As people debate the past as to whether there was a conspiracy of fossil fuel companies to deny evidence of climate change, the bigger issue is today. Large segments of the Republican Party are saying "climate change is a hoax."

It's debatable if there was conspiracy, or just human nature's natural avoidance of inconvenience that drove the past, but today, the denial on the part of many Republicans is much more obvious.

Some folks will say, and have said in the past, that we should not rely on government incentives toward green energy, but instead rely more on personal choice to work. That does make some sense, but it seems like recently there is more blatant disregard for doing anything about climate change among Republicans.

I miss the days when people said that we should not panic about climate change, but we still need to address it by relying more on market forces and technological innovation.

Today, the rhetoric is more that climate change is a hoax. This is a harsher stance than even conservatives took in the past, for instance during George W. Bush's administration.

Populism more in denial than corporatism.

Problems with winner take all politics when the vote is so close.

If the popular vote margin wasn't so close nationwide, tactics to thwart the vote, such as gerrymandering would be less effective. Another problem in politics is zero sum thinking. When it becomes "winner take all" there is no compromise. One side or the other will take total power even when the vote is split more even.