(2022-09-25) Zvi M Announcing Balsa Research

Zvi Mowshowitz: Announcing Balsa Research. What are the most important public policy changes America should make and how can we make them happen?

A focus on telling people how terrible and fascist Donald Trump is did not work well in 2016 or 2020 and is not the best way to keep him out of the White House in 2024. It will not help us prosper and overcome political differences

My new project, together with Moshe Looks and Alyssa Vance, is to chart paths forward to improve federal policy, and lay groundwork to implement those improvements. (Theory of Change)

Consider the pandemic. Our government’s actions these past two years not only failed to make the pandemic better, they often actively made the pandemic worse while spending trillions. Our response to a potential next pandemic, monkeypox, was similarly botched.

Elites have lost all credibility.

I also believe that almost all existing organizations (institutions) nominally dedicated to such purposes face poor incentive structures due to how they are funded and garner attention.

There is far more hope for improvement than almost anyone realizes. Lobbying when done right is remarkably cheap and effective. Secret congress can be productive.

Low-hanging improvement is often as simple as not restricting supply and not subsidizing demand.