Disaster prep and information (credit cards as ID?)

Five basic priorities in a natural disaster:

1. water

2. warmth

3. calories

4. cash

5. information

This is in order of priority ... before to the disaster happens. 

That is, the single most important item to have on hand in a disaster situation is a source of fresh water. 

In the aftermath of a disaster, the order is reversed.

After the disaster, the most important issue is personal information.

This involves zillions of passwords, and also personal information like birth certificates, marriage licenses, social security numbers, wills, trusts, deeds, etc. 

Recently, it was on the news that legendary singer Aretha Franklin did not write a will, and that this is going to screw up her family six ways to Sunday. Bob Marley did not have a trust or a will, and because his music just kept getting more popular after he died, that created infinite complications for his family. Not forming a trust or writing a will seems to be a common pattern among talented but uneducated people who become wealthy.

How to get people to sit down and do that kind of estate planning?

Perhaps fines could be imposed on those who do not have their act together.

People would pay a fine every year during their income tax preparation for not having a will or trust. 

It would not be a set amount, but a percentage of income.

Wealthy people, for whom having a trust would be most important, would simply shrug off a small fine.

For example, in Finland, speeding tickets are adjusted to income, and can cost a wealthy speeder over $100,000. They are putting the lives of others at risk and should feel the sting of punishment just as much as the little guy who gets caught speeding.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/world/europe/speeding-in-finland-can-cost-a-fortune-if-you-already-have-one.html

In fact, the Finnish “day fine” system, also in use in some other Scandinavian countries, dates to the 1920s, when fines based on income were instituted for all manner of lesser crimes, such as petty theft and assault, and helped greatly reduce the prison population.

The fines are calculated based on half an offender’s daily net income, with some consideration for the number of children under his or her roof and a deduction deemed to be enough to cover basic living expenses, currently 255 euros per month.

Then, that figure is multiplied by the number of days of income the offender should lose, according to the severity of the offense. 

What should the fine for not having a will or trust be set at? Say, 0.1% of annual income.

The average family income in the US is about $50,000, so a 0.1% fine on income would come to $50 per year for not having a trust. That's enough to hurt a little but not break the bank by any means.

In another example, the annual fine for a household with an income of $400,000 per year for not having a trust and/or will would come to $400. That sucks, but it is not onerous.

This might sound like yet another example of an intrusive "nanny state" trying to get people to do what they should already do on their own, supposedly much like a tax on sugary drinks. But the tax on sugary drinks is really a fee to compensate for the "negative externalities" that people's awful personal choices consequently impose on society (obesity epidemic). Likewise, fines for not having a will or a trust are really fees to compensate society for irresponsible personal behavior.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drink_tax

Advocates such as national medical associations and the World Health Organization promote the tax as an example of Pigovian taxation, aimed to discourage unhealthy diets and offset the growing economic costs of obesity.

Perhaps ideally, the information of whether or not one had a will or trust (and other information mentioned above, like birth certificates and marriage licenses) would be in a single ID, like the Estonian e-identity cards. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_identity_card

That may eventually come to pass.

In the meantime, it might be a good idea to use the materials at hand to have a reasonably secure way of securing personal information, the veracity of which would be vouched for by a credible institution.

That might be ... credit card companies.

In lieu of a government ID card that serves multiple functions, perhaps credit cards could be re-purposed for the task. 

When people sign a will in the presence of a notary or establish a trust with a lawyer, that information would be submitted simultaneously to the government and to credit card companies. 

When people do their taxes, they would submit credit card numbers that would confirm whether or not they had a will or a trust made out, and would accordingly be fined or not fined. (The revenue from the fines would in part go to compensating credit card companies -- and perhaps lawyers and notaries -- for this service.) 

Perhaps someday citizens could vote with their credit cards, from home or at ATMs. Corrupt politicians who manipulate citizens to vote for them would not only be guilty of voter fraud, but also credit card fraud. 

Import Estonia's virtual government (the ID system)?

The Estonian government is now 99% in cyberspace. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Estonia

e-Estonia refers to a movement by the government of Estoniato facilitate citizen interactions with the state through the use of  electronic solutions. E-services created under this initiative include i-Voting, e-Tax Board, e-Business, e-Banking, e-Ticket, e-School, University via internet, the e-Governance Academy, as well as the release of several mobile applications.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/estonia-the-digital-republic

"It's government is virtual, borderless, blockchained, and secure. Has this tiny post-Soviet nation found the way of the future?"

E-Estonia is the most ambitious project in technological statecraft today, for it includes all members of the government, and alters citizens’ daily lives. The normal services that government is involved with—legislation, voting, education, justice, health care, banking, taxes, policing, and so on—have been digitally linked across one platform, wiring up the nation.

Today, citizens can vote from their laptops and challenge parking tickets from home. They do so through the “once only” policy, which dictates that no single piece of information should be entered twice. Instead of having to “prepare” a loan application, applicants have their data—income, debt, savings—pulled from elsewhere in the system. There’s nothing to fill out in doctors’ waiting rooms, because physicians can access their patients’ medical histories. Estonia’s system is keyed to a  chip-I.D. card that reduces typically onerous, integrative processes—such as doing taxes—to quick work. “If a couple in love would like to marry, they still have to visit the government location and express their will,” Andrus Kaarelson, a director at the Estonian Information Systems Authority, says. But, apart from transfers of physical property, such as buying a house, all bureaucratic processes can be done online.

Estonia is a Baltic country of 1.3 million people and four million  hectares, half of which is forest. Its government presents this digitization as a cost-saving efficiency and an equalizing force.  Digitizing processes reportedly saves the state two per cent of its G.D.P. a year in salaries and expenses.

According to the following article, Estonia's virtual government is possible because it is a small, homogeneous country that is educated and technologically accomplished (Skype was invented there). The Estonians have taken pains to secure their state computer system because Estonia is a neighbor of Russia, which conducted the first known instance in history of cyberwarfare  against Estonia in April 2007.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20171019-could-estonia-be-the-first-digital-country

In fact, it was the trauma and destruction of the 2007 Russian cyberware that compelled the Estonians to create e-Estonia.

https://www.bbc.com/news/39655415

Non-Estonians can apply for "e-Residency" and become virtual Estonians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Residency_of_Estonia

e-Residency of Estonia (also called virtual residency or E-residency) is a program launched by Estonia on 1 December 2014. The program allows non-Estonians access to Estonian services such as company formation, banking, payment processing, and taxation. The program gives the e-resident a smart card which they can use to sign documents. The program is aimed towards location-independent entrepreneurs such as software developers and writers. The first e-resident of Estonia was British journalist Edward Lucas; the first person to apply for and be granted e-residency through the standard process was Hamid Tahsildoost from the United States.

An article from yesterday that explains so much more about e-Estonia, especially the ID system:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/e-estonia-what-is-all-the-fuss-about/

Since the concept was introduced in 2002, 98 percent of Estonians own an ID card, which is the key to using all the digital services and getting the most out of them. In Estonia, when a person is born, they're assigned a personal ID code -- it's compulsory to have one.

For further context, there is no data kept on the Estonian ID card. It's a PKI system, whereby users authenticate themselves with PIN one and seal the deal with PIN two. There's a public key and a private key on the microchip, but no data.

This is how citizens access all of the services.

"One of the principles in enabling this is the once-only principle -- any time you submit any type of data to the government, they shouldn't ask for this data again," Särav explained.

"The government knows my name, where I was born, which school I went to, so if I apply for university, get a job, give birth to a child, they don't need to ask the previous information about me again.

"We have distributed databases and have those databases talking to each other ... there's a machine-to-machine exchange, and I don't need to resubmit any data again."

Another principle is called digital by default, which means the introduction of any new service is to be done digitally.In Estonia, if an individual wants to register a new place of residence, authentication is performed using the digital ID, and the individual can update their information in less than two minutes.

A digital service to the Estonian government is a fully digital end-to-end service with no phone calls, office visits, or physical paperwork.

Another element Särav pointed to as helping with the success of the concept of a digital government is truth by design; individuals own their own data, companies own their own data, and the choice is left to them to determine who else gets their hands on it.

Logging in to Estonia.ee allows the individual to see who is accessing their data.

"Medical professionals can see my medical data, when a policeman stops me they can see my driver's licence data, also if I have insurance, also if this is my car in the first place, etc," she said. "Only if you have granted them access -- it's always consent-based."In Estonia, you can also open a business in 18 minutes -- it holds the world record for this -- with the information pre-filled as the government has a single view of the individual. 

These services are not only open to Estonians, however. In December 2014, the country opened up its digital services to the world, meaning anyone can become an e-resident of Estonia. Since 2014, more than 40,000 people from 150 different countries have been granted Estonian e-residency. They have established over 6,000 companies in Estonia.

Could this Estonian ID card be adopted at the state level in the US?

That is, the Estonian government would be contracted out by state governments to set up a system for ID cards, and this would include the use of Estonia's blockchain servers (located in their embassies worldwide). The services that could later be associated with the ID cards could be added later at the discretion of state governments. 

In the meantime, the process of getting a state ID in the US would be streamlined. One could take all of one's paperwork to a notary and have it validated, bypassing one of the bottlenecks in getting a state ID. Later, those with state IDs could easily get an e-ID.

Battery swapping and disruptive innovation?

Battery swapping is the mechanical replacement of a drained battery. This is a less orthodox way to recharge an Electric Vehicle.

The most (in)famous battery-swapping venture was the Israeli company Better Place, which was founded in 2007 and went bankrupt in 2013.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_(company)

A demonstration of Better Place's battery swapping:

A Tesla doing the same kind of battery swapping, but with infinitely more razzle-dazzle:

This technology is not established, and thus involves the old conundrum of the-chicken-or-the-egg. Which should come first? Swapping stations? Or the EVs built swappable batteries? Neither the auto makers or the station developers want to assume the risk of being pioneers in a non-existent market that would be so dependent on other players to develop.

Also, what would be the uniform standard for batteries between various developers and auto makers?

It could be that battery swapping would work better among fleet vehicles. This is because there would be a certain uniformity within a company. That is, a business with fleet vehicles would have its own swapping stations and vehicles and its own standards.

For example, here is battery swapping for a van. The mechanism is a guy using a forklift. The swap is quick and efficient.

No, it's not as glamorous as when Tesla does it.

It's not just the forklift that is banal. So is the delivery van.

But the banality of a delivery van as an EV resonates with the notion of "disruptive innovation". This is when a cheaper, inferior, less glamorous product finds a niche, improves over time and comes to dominate the mainstream of a market.

Rather than electric cars -- especially high-end luxury electric cars -- the EVs that fit the description of disruptive innovation might be electric buses and electric scooters.

Here is an electric bus getting its batteries swapped out.

A scooter getting its batteries swapped.

One option for electric cars is a battery-loaded trailer that serves as a range extender.

One problem with a trailer for a car is that it is awkward, both aerodynamically and in terms of maneuvering, especially while parking.

Another problem is that the battery trailer just doesn't look cool. Tesla has the right idea putting elegance first 

when it comes to cars.

But a battery trailer just might work for electric buses and certain trucks.

Swapping a trailer full of batteries would take seconds. It could be done manually by almost anyone.

There might be a more interesting way to attach a battery trailer to a truck or a bus.

This would be “truck platooning”, in which a lead truck controlled by a driver is followed by a series of self-driven trucks that are synchronized with the lead truck.

The battery trailer in the case of truck platooning would not be latched onto a vehicle. Rather, the battery trailer would itself be an autonomous truck following behind the lead bus or truck. There would be a recharging cable linking the two vehicles, but nothing more.

In the case of buses, following peak morning traffic hours, some buses would remain in commission, picking up and dropping off passengers. As the buses went about their rounds, an autonomous truck would recharge one bus at a time. This would recharge those buses in preparation for their deployment during peak evening traffic hours.