Dear Chicago, Welcome to the Chi-GUI Conspiracy

Introduction

I am running for mayor and I want your support. I have a lot to say and I don't really know how to say it. The world is hurting, are you? Personally, I'm doing great, I have lived a privileged life, lucky enough to not have too much while having everything I need. Lucky enough to study everything I think is important, to pursue my dreams. When I'm alone I'm dancing, having a great time. Seriously, by biggest fear lately is being too giddy to fall asleep (actual fear, not trying to be cute. It's 2:30am as I write this). But I hurt when other people hurt. I can't live in a bubble. I have a big imagination, I can envision how many people I can help if I achieve 5% of what I aim to, it's beautiful. But I can't lie to myself, I'm too honest and too logical. If I don't take the open shots I see, and dedicate myself on a daily basis, more and more of my dancing will turn to crying. That's why I am here, why I choose to sacrifice my peaceful, private life to put myself in the public eye. If you feel the same, please help. We have work to do.

Below you will find my Chicago Mayoral platform. These are my plans loosely described, I want to make sure all important topics are covered. That's priority #1. Editing is ongoing but some are still in note form. Please let me know if you have concerns that are not addressed or if you have any particular areas you want to see more of. I have a lot to say that is not here yet.

Please use this google forms link here to send me any feedback: https://forms.gle/xWV5H1nhWJWJynoMA

A couple initial definitions

Show

Safety First

Two easy wins here. Cameras on cops, and cameras on streets. First let's outline the rewards and costs, then 4 Truths them together.

1. I want to put cameras on every active duty officer, and to use that information as effectively as possible. The peak of what this has to offer is perfected policing, maximizing support to officers on the street. This means responsibilities get pushed to the command center whenever possible. If an officer is in a stressful situation, a heart rate monitor could have told HQ 5 minutes ago. The call center officer would guide the field officer, 'Coptana' if you will. Instead of just blaming the youngest workers in the system, why not expose the decision-making process and intervene at the appropriate level? Other city services can be tied in as well. The main costs here have to do with resistance to change and the loss of privacy to the officers. The cost of equipment should not be high, everyone is already walking around with a fancy camera in their pocket, I refuse to believe we can't bootstrap something cheap. So the primary effort on this item is to make this helpful and nice to use for officers.
2. Street camera footage can remain unseen for like 99.9% of the time. If we make an open source system that only lets the one approved algorithm run on it, then it stays 100% private. If the algorithm identifies a major crime or if the police are investigating a particular location, then the footage is reviewed. (You could opt into being notified if the footage on your block is used for something, and contribute your doorbell camera feed?) It could be a Ward opt-in by vote system. So while I believe the privacy concerns can be addressed on several fronts, the concern remains. Privacy relies upon proper implementation to avoid abuse.

4 Noble Truths Breakdown (in progress):

1. Where are we today? There is a deep distrust of police in Chicago and elsewhere. The officers themselves have trust problems and trauma from working in this stressful environment. We are at the top of spending per capita while also being understaffed by ~12% of our budgeted positions. The streets of Chicago are not private today, doorbell cameras line the streets. The workload on individual officers is too high, turnover is too high. Reporting on traffic stops is bad enough that I've seen several articles about it, avoiding paperwork that could be automated with an always-on camera. Progress seems impossible because of the police union's resistance.
2. How did we get here? ----police history lesson ------ fred Hampton, police union history? ---
3. What's ideal? Max safety, max privacy, highest quality of policing. I want other cities sending their best to be trained by our best (4money). Your data will be more secure because we will have an algorithm tracking all use of all files. No 'slipping in to peak at a file' undetected.
4. How do we get there? We get cops cameras, and we start working with them to find the best places to start intervening. If our main opposition is the police union, my solution is easy, just make the best thing ever for the police officers. Reduce the decision responsibilities and accompanying stresses of younger officers and create new jobs for officers too injured to return to the field but rich in experience, the ideal coaches. Let the world's best data scientists design some open source models for using the street cameras to support detectives and officers with as little human data exposure as possible. Any change to such a privacy system should require a ballot measure.

With the tech and density realities of our city, I propose that the only sane approach is to rely on an open-source system that has iterative development built into the design. If you want safety and privacy, WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY. You wanna bring new tech business to the city? Let's show we can lead. Traffic fines should never be seen as a source of revenue, I'm not talking about a red light camera for cash program. Automated fines could be minimized while maxing change in behavior. Like instead of running a red light and being notified a week later in the mail, you could opt in to a text-only system that lets you know when you have caused an infraction and your fine is reduced. If you repeat the same offenses, your fine should increase, eventually leading to a suspended license. Vote for me and there will be fewer people speeding crazily around the city, no more late night revving of engines and screeching of tires. Sound pollution should not be tolerated. It has a proven strong negative effect on health. And by nature, is not hard to track down.

Education

Childcare is the beginning. We need to support our parents, because they are the most important teachers in their children's lives. Stable households are able to spend more energy on their child each day. Like Minnesota's free lunch for everyone, I want free daycare for everyone in Chicago. Maybe it is only free for low-income families, maybe it is still half the price of current childcare options for everyone else, I haven't run the numbers yet. Here I only have comments about Noble Truth #3, the ideal, and #4 the direction we can start walking right now to get closer to the ideal. Parents are the #1 resource we have to work with, by volume and by impact on the children.

Teachers. I want childcare as a first step to helping teachers. The other contender for most important resource, good teachers. I want to maximize the % of the budget that goes to good teachers. I've heard people say you can't reason with the CTU, those people are playing the wrong game. I want to appeal directly to teachers. I want to reward the best teachers for teaching, I want some of them to focus on teaching other teachers, but ideally still teaching some classes. I want to give new teachers every advantage possible, to ease them in with the help of our best teachers. I also want to remove bad teachers and other obvious wastes of money. This obsession with whether or not we close schools seems like nonsense given I have never heard the stats being discussed. Seems like a classic network analysis problem to me, what is the trade-off betweeen closing or not for each case? We need these types of models made public. If you want to debate something like this, you need to have the data. Public debate can evolve when we put out tools that make it easy for people to use the same data. I want to make arguments a game of finding exactly where people disagree. I want to make public policy discourse about the ideas, not the people.

Chicago should strive to be the best place for new teachers. That's the value play. Young people willing to get into the teaching profession are a sacred resource we should respect and design around. We should set them up for success by incrementally increasing their load with continual guidance instead of burning out our talent to the point where they leave teaching altogether. Any initial costs are offset by the investment return, teachers stay and get better. The best teachers, instead of rising to some admin job, can rise to teaching other teachers. I would want to highly encourage the hybrid model where they still teach at least one regular class.

I want to invest in our teachers and our students. As I said before, the number one resource for our students are their parents. BUBI, described in its own section below, is for the parents. We can build stability for all, a warm bed and a full stomach at rock bottom. A single parent won't have to work 2 jobs just to get by. More parents could choose to spend their time with their children, to the benefit of all of us.

Since people probably want a direct answer on this, I don't want to get rid of any school model like charter or magnet schools. Maybe they need regulation changes, I have none to focus on now. I do believe neighborhood schools need more support. I think as we get good with public modeling, we start to focus on things like how far is everyone from parks, grocery stores, schools and stuff. This data will really reveal inequalities in the city investment. I believe in the competition that charter schools bring, but we need to be fitting them within OUR long term plans.

Transportation

More trains. In rush hour, trains should be coming every 5-10 minutes. The other day I arrived to Merchandise Mart and a packed platform a little after 5 on a weekday, and the next train didn't come for 20 minutes. Taking a train at rush hour should be a pleasant experience, not a stressful packing of people. The number of people commuting is not a surprise, any crowded route should get more trains. God forbid we over-serve the people.

North/South bike-only street

Smart traffic light overhaul, less pointless waiting

Camera system from earlier means fewer crazy people driving on the shoulder. And when you see them on the shoulder, you will KNOW that they are either going to the hospital in a hurry, or are helping fund our dear city.

All El signs will ALWAYS show the next incoming trains for each line they are serving. No notices or ads blocking the whole screen. All you need is a color and a number(minutes), there should always be space for them. (obligatory ads are literal brain AIDS and a consent violation)

Concrete-protected bike lane highways north-south and east-west. Track bike crashes and build more protected bike lanes wherever they seem needed. Map out the active cycling population of Chicago so we can get accurate simulations going and can optimize the bike lane making. This is where I need my Industrial Engineering brothers and sisters to step up and make us an open-source model of the city that anyone can interact with through various interfaces. I want to let people propose alterations based on the results of their changes to the model. Let local people find local improvements.

Carbon Check- it's like a carbon tax but it isn't a tax because the government gets nothing. We check how much harm people are putting in the air and we charge them. That money goes to a fund, and every month that fund is divided evenly between every citizen. Everyone bears the consequences of these actions, so everyone should be paid to compensate. This can immediately correct incentives. The result? The whole city is incentivized to destory the world less, at ZERO cost. It's just a transfer. This is simply fair, or more accurately, more fair than today. Because we will not be charging the full cost incurred by your gas use. We will be charging a fraction of the cost, and then dividing that fraction evenly. This may seem obvious or too easy, that's because it is the right idea. No more political bullshit, no paying the government. Pure equality. Massive gains with zero infrastructure changes. Do it. Do it now.

Long-term plan for Lakeshore Drive. Strategic landfilling for the people. We build more land at strategic places to expand Chicago eastward onto land that cannot be built upon. It's an investment that greedy politicians or developers can't spoil. We also reroute LSD westward as the rest of the transit wins allow us to reduce traffic. First LSD can be routed through the Columbus area, eventually down and out of the way like the trains there. The goal is to create a car-free connection between the city and the lake and all it has to offer with the parks as well. Wouldn't it be cool if someone could arrive at Millenium station and walk straight to Millenium park and onto the beach without having to worry about getting hit by a car? Our architecture is even more beautiful when you can safely look up to see it.

BUBI

Brains Universal Basic Income. Two Universal Basic Income plans supporting brains, our number 1 resource, hence BUBI.

First off, traditional Universal Basic Income, or General for GUBI. If we provide financial stability, we are providing Safety, we are enabling Education, we are giving people the power to choose the direction of their lives. Giving people money is simply the best way to help people in need because they know what they need. That's just a fact we've learned from studies, and developing policy otherwise would be ugly pride with no purpose. So we set up some sort of graduated system so you get less the more you make. One of the variables in that system is how much we contribute. We can set up a structure and start today, there is no minimum amount necessary. The base principle here is the equanimity of brains. GUBI is basically a well-defined bucket we can choose to allocate funds to, or people could donate to. Something you can trust, and seriously reduces the government's ability to mess things up. You know you will be directly supporting other people in your city who have less, and in fair proportion and minimal waste.

The top 10% in this country own 67% of the wealth, this middle class junk is just overdone storytelling. What about our most vulnerable brothers and sisters in this city? Everybody can feel safe when everyone IS safe. On your worst day, getting fired from a job or filling out job application #263, what if you knew that at the end of the day you would still have a place to sleep, plumbing, food to eat, and barebones healthcare? Could you live a little lighter knowing that the city had not only your back, but your family and friends' too?

The second UBI is more my own creation. It is an employment contract robot essentially. Do you have something you want to do, that will create value for the city? Chi GUI will hear you out and give a fair deal. So I could say, "I want to make phone apps for the city, I want to be paid X. I'll pay you back at rate Y." Chi-GUI (with human help) would decide the expected value of my work, and my ability to earn going forward, and offers new rates. So the variables are the job itself, the salary, and the payment schedule Y. A job that could contribute to everyone's health would help the person's petition, but they could request to do anyting, if the salary and payment schedule aligned with the person's expected income. That payment schedule would be like "if you are making over 50k, for every dollar you make, you will pay the city 5 cents." You can have as many brackets as you want, you could have a higher amount before you start paying back. At first, Chi-GUI is going to be super selective, it only has so much money to invest. It can start ruthless, where it hires good bets that ensure long term doubling return, inflation-adjusted. Each success would fund 2 more eventually. So at first, Chi-GUI is the shrewd investor, but as it grows it can give better deals. It still wants to profit though, because profit can go to the General Universal Basic Income.

We can be very selective with who we give money to at the start. I would propose a mix of prioritizing deals that will pay it forward manyfold alongside people wanting to work in professions we need. We could support teachers, nurses, nannies and other caregivers, by investing in their education and long-term health. This could be algorithmic, based on labor stats.

Housing

We need to define the ideal city block and make a new building code that reflects that. It can be dynamic to let wards have some flexibility, but we also need universal standards to avoid enabling NIMBY bimbly bullshit at every turn.

One minimum consideration is SRO's, single room occupancy housing. Homeless complain about homeless shelters not being safe or private. People get their already limited belongings stolen often. I'd like to see an SRO minimum for wards based on population size. It's a pathetic shame that we have these ongoing problems with homeless in parks. We don't need to engineer new solutions, we only need to bring back ones we've abandoned. It's like the Harold's Chicken rotating bullet-proof glass, a threat of violence is something we can work around. The Ewing Annex Hotel had a version of this.

Other things I care about

Land tax. No more property tax. Property tax is just so unbelievably stupid. Land is a limited resource, by owning it you prevent everyone else from using it. You should have to pay everyone for your continued exclusive access. Why should you be taxed on the improvements you have made to that land? It's garbage incentives. Switching will be a bit of a pain, but it won't be any worse than the mess that is property taxes today. Land value is easier to calculate, we can ease up on the bullshit. Affordable housing would go up because you would no longer be punished for building bigger on the same patch of land. But you know who will be punished? All those shitty landlords who have been sitting on land, waiting for the value to go up. Zero urgency. They will have to pay for their speculation.

Fred Hampton statue, somewhere prominent in the city. A plaque explaining how he was assassinated by the Chicago police, in a planned murder that included the FBI giving the police a detailed floor plan indicating where Fred Hampton slept. He was the potentially the best leader we have had, and the city has let his memory go improperly marked. Despite having murdered the man, the police abuse of Fred Hampton didn't stop there, the Fraternal Order of Police in Chicago helped block the renaming of a street after him. Not some bold change like renaming lakeshore drive, just one of the brown signs under the regular street signs. We have over a thousand of them, most go unchallenged, and most are not as deserving. They murdered him and his legacy, to let this injustice stand robs the city of a role model as well.

Reveal the stars of Chicago. Make the sky beautiful. Reduce light pollution from street lights by changing the design and updating the tech. Light going up into the sky doesn't help anyone, it can be as simple as covers. **insert guess here** # of stars that would be revealed as the fog is lifted. I know some changes would cut it in half, but what is possible might be much better. Also, the city will highlight a chicago star citizen or cluster of citizens each day alongside a stars gained count. A daily open mic of sorts. That plus a safety net of UBI, healthcare and housing guaranteed, we could transform the starving artist, relieve some of the stress that is actively taking years off the lives of the lower class.

Force Bears to stay and build a bigger stadium in the same area, give them any land they need and let them pay for and own the stadium. For however much the city gives up in the deal, the city gains part ownership of the Bears. So for every dollar in profit the Bears take home, the city would get a percentage. We can get some Chicago accounting firms to make independent guesses on the fair value of the deal. As a bonus, I want to see a player alumni ownership group. The team could really use some check on shitty ownership decisions, VIRGINIA!

I'll get us out of the parking deal theft. It was an illegal sale, I have a rant down below, just search for Redoma Sarl. I'm gonna venture a guess you haven't searched that name before, but that is THE PRIMARY OWNER OF OUR PARKING. 50.1%. You probably know Morgan Stanley and Abu Dhabi own the rest, 49.9%. Those important names decided to give a controlling interest of their money to this company no one knows anything about, including chatGPT. How fucked is it that you haven't heard this name before? I love to make up conspiracy theories, so I start feeling looney when I see things this batshit insane. Why did they give this mysterious company controlling power? Best case scenario, if you believe this sketchy nonsense: someone on reddit gave me a url linking directly to a pdf, on page 18 in a single column, it had the name Redoma Sarl. This, the shadiest interaction I've had on the internet, indicates they are owned by Allianz, a company on the German stock exchange. So best-case scenario, half our money is directly transferred to European stockowners. More on this at the bottom.

Chi GUI will hear all. Chicago LLM helps fascilitate everything it can for the city. At first it is a General User Interface for 3-1-1 and other bureaucratic endpoints. It could publish questions like an FAQ maintained live. You could ensure that people are heard and questions answered, or at least you'd have perfect stats on it. Any user that is registered with an ID or something proving they are Chicagoan could opt into shaping the bot anonymously by letting their words influence things like Chi GUI's vocabulary and accent.

Fuck Kanye first and foremost, fore making me do this shit, Nazi motherfucker. I want to save Kanye. "This prayer's for everybody that feel that they're too messed up, For everyone that feels they've said "I'm sorry" too many times, You can never go too far when you can't come back home again." Kanye West does not particularly deserve to be saved. But we are all family, everyone deserves a home to come back to. If Kanye stays lost, that's because we haven't shown him the way home. Imagine what Universal Basic Income could have meant for a young Kanye. Instead of the fear of being homeless, he could have focused on his career. He would have never needed to leave Chicago to begin with. If we could teach Kanye how to take care of his mental health, he would pass that on to many people. Keep in mind though, we aren't making a Kanye pitch, we are advocating for mental health. Getting through to Kanye is just a final test of our messaging.

Process changes

Ranked Choice voting. For everything, Mayor and School Board seem like an obvious start. Ideally, all elections have equal spending between candidates. I for one hate ads. Filth being thrown into our minds without consent. Your brain doesn't have defenses like a computer, you're continuously vulnerable to your context. The forefront of the modern science of the mind has been consistently been weaponized against other people for the sake of money. Ads are AIDS, literal brain AIDS. They use your brain's natural defenses to further their goals. I don't want to campaign on ads, I want to campaign on a broad coalition of people who want to accomplish the same goals. Hence the conspiracy. So please let me know what you think, or share this with someone who may be interested.

Too many things have been decided by greed or chaos, we need to demand engineering-based answers. We need to track what works and iteratively improve. Everything possible should be open source. We can mathematically prove that we are making the right decisions with an open process. Any popular competing idea can get its fair shot at proving itself. It's a way of fighting back against corruption by removing the human element at key junctures. It's also a way to combat past injustices, like how the auto industry stole American streets through propoganda and (lobbying)bribes. Use of public space is a pet peeve of mine. I want engineers optimizing how we can best share the space, not some bullshit status quo established by the most manipulative people of their time.

I will not seek re-election. I would much rather foster the growth of others and shine the light on their work. After 4 years of that, hopefully you guys get some good option to choose from (with ranked choice of course). If not, then I failed and don't deserve another term anyways. I only feel comfortable demanding the throne because I have put in many years of thought and I truly believe that these ideas will have a massive impact if I get the green light. I don't want fame or power, I'd rather not be recognized on the street. I don't think it's going to be a problem eventually, because once I cover up the light pollution and cut out the bullshit, you guys will be amazed by all of the stars that have been hiding.

My Qualifications

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(Bonus Parking Rant)

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