Dear Chicago, Welcome to the Chi-GUI Conspiracy

Introduction

Below you will find my Chicago Mayoral platform. These are my main plans loosely described, I want to make sure all important topics are covered. These are not highly edited or very specific yet, maybe even obtuse and silly. I'm currently researching urban design. 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.

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

A couple initial definitions

Safety First

Two easy wins here. Cameras on cops, and cameras on streets. I'm an engineer, any good work needs both a good target and good implementation. What I propose here are two systems. The first monitors all active police. Think about this, I just went on Twitch and selected a random game from the front page, "DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO". I scroll down past 100 different live streamers and streamer 101 still had 6 viewers he was actively interacting with. The streamer is not paying Twitch, there was a 30 second ad. We have the infrastructure to let anyone in the world stream for free. Streaming cops doing their jobs should be easy.

Cop body cams should be an amazing tool for them. Every cop should have support all the time. Experienced cops who can't work in the field anymore can provide live support to other cops. It can even be like a call center, all officers can have their heartrate monitored alongside sound and video. Here are some potential scenarios:

1. A gunshot sounds. The microphone on all officers and our new OpenSourceSpotter system installed on our new street camera system all hear within a radius, and they triangulate the source. All nearby officers are instantly connected with a hotline connecting to each other and the call center.
2. An officer's heartrate spikes, the call center is alerted. An experienced officer is immediately connected to the officer in the field, and they can talk through the situation. The call center can also alert other officers in the area, and coordinate with other resources like firefighters, paramedics and mental health professionals. This system ensures that in stressful times, we are truly maximizing our ability to support our officers. No fucking around, we have to use our tools to their max, this is no place for pride or status quo bias.
3. An officer sees something suspicious, he taps a button on his shoulder and he is connected to HQ. Chi-GUI (our LLM, described later) would have a special mode for police that would be based on all files the police has on memory. It could provide some context or answer questions. i-Robot Will Smith would take issue, but it's nothing we can't engineer safeguards around. Updates to how data is used would have to be approved by public vote. And all official uses (as in not private citizens) are recorded in the audit history. Auditors could scan that for abnormalities or specific instances of interest. Have some of the auditors audit the others and you have tied the knot.

This means police officers will monitor themselves, so instead of judging individual cops, auditors will be monitoring the call center itself. They can provide live objections, presented through the police chain of command. Other services could work with the officers based on the call center info. Individual officers shouldn't be allowed to mess up, this system highlights the coaching and puts the responsibility on the superior officers.

Street cameras, the streets of Chicago aren't private. No one wants to be on camera all the time, but with clearly-written open source software, we can guarantee that all video is only seen by human eyes if it is related to violent crime or if you are objecting to a ticket. The program to punish bad drivers can be extremely forgiving, like basic violations start with a $5 fine that can be waived if you reply to a text saying you will watch your speed or something. We only need to charge enough to change behavior, NOTHING MORE. What if you knew that anywhere in the city, people are driving safely? Isn't that fucking worth something? WE CAN MAKE THIS HAPPEN. Technology has given us most of today's world, and we are still massively underutilizing it, especially in government. Vote for an engineer. I'm tired of hearing screeching tires or revving engines at night, and it's basically absent in my neighborhood relative to the ones who have it bad. I will make it stop, if you give me the opportunity. If they don't stop, the punishment goes up.

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 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. (I think this is a good first step for helping parents, but more education and support is a good avenue to explore further)

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? THIS IS WHAT WE NEED. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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. (Alongside it, the city could highlight a chicago star citizen or something? each day with a stars gained count (count based on changing X lamp posts per day))

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.

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.

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 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 behind wasted artificial light.

My Qualifications

(Bonus Parking Rant)