Ask HN: What's your most controversial or contrarian idea to improve the world? - gamechangr
======
steven_noble
Decriminalise all drugs. Not just on the demand side (purchase/use of drugs)
but also on the supply side (manufacture/sale of drugs). The goal would be to
decimimate the drug syndicates that hold entire communities to randsom under
regimes that are no less brutal than Isis. They use terror to control a
lucrative illegal trade. Instead of making these drugs illegal, strongly
discourage their use with policies like the successful measures that
Australian governments have taken to discourage the use of tobacco and
addictive prescription drugs and the successful measures that Portuguese
governments have taken to help the users of street drugs to put their lives
back together.

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DoreenMichele
Nutrition and lifestyle should be our first line of defense for health issues.

It seems like that shouldn't be controversial, but it apparently is. See, for
example, this comment that is downvoted and rebutted:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18270736](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18270736)

Expecting a billionaire to pursue a good solution is crazy talk? Because it's
too hard for a billionaire?

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mindcrime
Eliminate governments (as we know them today) and move to a stateless
society[1] with an individualist anarchist[2] style of self-government[3].

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_society](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_society)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualist_anarchism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualist_anarchism)

[3]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-
governance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-governance)

~~~
kleer001
Personally I'd love it, but in general most people are essentially spiteful
and lazy and won't self govern unless you force them, which defeats the whole
purpose.

This article gets into it:

[https://mystudentvoices.com/fyodor-dostoevsky-on-the-
irratio...](https://mystudentvoices.com/fyodor-dostoevsky-on-the-
irrationality-of-people-and-the-futility-of-utopianism-e7c651a64e5f)

~~~
gamechangr
I would like to see a city where there is way less government. I picture a
city in the desert like a new Las Vegas that had government backing as an
experiment.

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antoinevg
All laws should include the reason for why they were made.

~~~
mindcrime
If we're going to continue to have "governments" and "laws" as such, then I'd
propose that all (or most) laws should have an expiration date, and should
require renewal on some periodic basis. This would limit the impact of bad
laws, by making it easier to get them off the books (since now there are two
options: explicit repeal, or quiet expiration).

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Regardsyjc
I'm launching a physical consumer product, reusable cloth pads, but I'm going
to open source the pattern so people can make it for free too if they'd like.

My main goal is to fight period poverty so my thought process is that I didn't
want to limit my product to only people that could afford it- and the numbers
were not adding up to build a one for one model, so I decided that maybe open
sourcing the pattern at the same time might be the easiest and simplest,
occam's razor solution.

I plan on trying to disrupt by releasing an open source pattern with each
product. I think people deserve the right to choose and that the knowledge for
basic things like taking care of yourself as a woman or making your own
underwear if you want to should be free.

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hindsightbias
Take computers out of the classroom. Adopt a classical Greek curriculum until
maybe High School.

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jotjotzzz
Design with the earth in mind (environmental sustainability), and that food
and products must be thought of from creation, delivery (less carbon
footprint), to end-of-life cycle (eco-friendly/green packaging waste) in a way
that is good for the earth. This should be law.

I often feel bad when I open a package and see extraneous crap that will just
be thrown out. Our garbage will outlive us all. There is no need for that!

------
buboard
eliminate barriers to genetic engineering of humans

remove all borders and switch to governance that is not based on physical
proximity but shared ideas/values through online collaboration.

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archenemy
For any kind of work that takes place in an office (as opposed to
manufacturing or services), the default should be remoting instead of
commuting to that awful places.

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zzo38computer
Abolish copyright and patents. Many other laws also can be reduced, to have
more freedom. It isn't anarchy, but minarchy, which is minimal law system.
Some law is still needed, such as environmental protection, and a few others.
But, no world government; instead you can have separate governments but freely
to move between them instead of being blocked everywhere by the border.

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gamechangr
Regulate freedom of choice in food like they do drugs.

Set a standard of what is accepted. (like maybe it's only legal sell a
hamburger that has 500 calories or less).

People are literally killing themselves with bad food choices (like diabetes)
and then asking society to pay their medical bills.

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fiedzia
Control population to have less people.

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piocho
Stop using most of the smartthings. Most of them are totally useless.

~~~
buboard
what to do instead? A lot of civil society predicated on keeping crowds
occupied.

~~~
piocho
First, I deeply think that "world" (but first, your family/friends life) will
be improved with a real social life and not only with consumer goods. By
social life I'm not speaking of sharing the last meal you eat on instagram or
sharing your last training you've made with your connected watch :) There are
plenty things to do : go outside, meet people, read books (i'm not saying that
there are only good books and boring articles on internet, but just disconnect
from the phone/computer/smartthings), play with your kids instead of giving
them a connected ipad or phone, help others, and so on.

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HiroshiSan
Just wanna plug Peter Thiel's book Zero to One as it's based around a similar
question.

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kleer001
Increase foreign exchange student programs by 10,000 times, with subsidies for
low income children. Introduce broad city/county/state student exchange
programs.

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arunmp
Elect a government for the world through universal adult franchise and make
all the countries subservient to the world government.

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tonyedgecombe
Corporations shouldn't pay tax, people should.

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tomjen3
Don't.

People who have set out to fix the world in grand terms have resulted in the
20th century regimens of Hitler, Stalin and Mao.

Setting out to make our own life a little better through capitalism has
resulted in a world that is much, much closer to ending poverty[0],
eradicating polio[1] and just outright a better world.

[0]
[https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/poverty/](https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/poverty/)

[1]
[http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/polio/en/](http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/polio/en/)

