Some policies seem like low-hanging fruit to benefit the US and its people, yet don’t get implemented. Why? It’s probably a combination of:
• political wars that pull things back and forth instead of moving forward
• voter confusion
• voters prioritizing other topics
• collective action problems
• they’re blocked by the few who are made worse off by them
• they are bad ideas, I’m wrong about them, or people’s values around them differ too much
Regardless of the reason, here are some ideas for what I would consider “low-hanging fruit” policies that would make things better:
1. Require regular mail to have a clearly labeled unsubscribe phone number or URL on the outside of the envelope, much like how we already require email to have an unsubscribe link.
2. Prefill all of our tax forms, and then simply send them to us to edit/approve. For many people, the U.S. government already knows what they owe! It’s insanely wasteful that they have to go through the lengthy and tedious process of filing taxes in that case.
3. Release everyone in prison for charges related only to marijuana possession or sale, and stop arresting for it. It is legal or decriminalized for some uses almost everywhere (except 2 of 50 states?). Yet somehow people are still in prison. The public is now pro-legalization.
4. Add a gradually ramping up corporate tax for air pollution (or cap & trade system) and pay this money immediately back to all people (directly or as tax relief). Air pollution has multiple negative externalities not properly priced in by the market.
5. Over time, ramp up regulations to prohibit keeping animals in a hellish nightmare, which is currently the normal life for most farm animals. The food industry secretly implicates most Americans in moral atrocities that most would be sickened by if they witnessed them. Most people are actually against the conditions that some animals are routinely kept in when they understand what they actually are.
6. Gradually switch some income tax to instead be collected via other more efficient/less distorting forms of taxation, for instance, a combination of (i) “land value” tax, (ii) tax on social signaling items (like super expensive watches/jewelry/yachts), and (iii) consumption taxes. Most economists agree that there are better approaches to taxing than we use.
7. Gradually remove tax breaks that incentivize things we don’t actually want to incentivize (unfortunately, there are many). E.g., the mortgage tax deduction on interest and the tax deductions employers get for health insurance. Instead, this money could be distributed to everyone while simplifying the tax code.
8. The law gets longer and more complex each year, is impossible for anyone to understand, and is expensive to comply with. This could be improved by requiring law removal (of matching length) when adding new ones, or creating a body to find antiquated laws and bring them to Congress to vote on removing.
9. Currently, sex workers are much more likely to be punished than those who seek their services, despite sex workers having a high chance of being impoverished/in a dangerous situation/exploited. All the major alternatives may be an improvement to the current system: decriminalizing, making legal and regulating, or flipping who is prosecuted.
10. Prevent gerrymandering. It’s a horrendous abuse of the political system, and both major political parties do it. It’s appalling that this still happens regularly. It’s not an easy problem, but mathematicians can design a set of requirements in setting voter district lines that make it much harder to manipulate election results. Or, a simpler solution comes from Nicholas Gruen: districting can be done by a randomly selected group of citizens instead of being determined by politicians.
11. For those terminally ill with a short, excruciatingly painful future, provide a way for those who want it to get assistance with painless suicide if they choose (after passing a psychological and medical evaluation). We subject people who are already doomed to die in pain to live for months or years in torturous circumstances, rather than dying in peace.
12. Right now, we have solitary confinement prisons, where people can end up being alone for years, amounting to torture that would drive most crazy. It should be totally banned or severely limited in duration (e.g., no more than 2 days per month).
This piece was first written on August 23, 2020 and first appeared on my website on June 17, 2026.
I agree with #s 2 & 8; all the others have problems.
#3: How many people are really in prison for “just” possession of marijuana, that are not plea deals dismissing other criminal charges to get a quick resolution? Take this away, and these deals would never have been made, so you’re talking about releasing real criminals due to public standards lowering, but only for the charge retained in the plea deal, not for the other crimes these people committed.
#4 Ramping up corporate tax rates for environmental reasons: This misses the point that corporations don’t really pay taxes; they collect them. This would amount to an unseen tax paid by the customers of these corporations, and unseen taxes are easier to raise in sneaky ways.
#5 Leave this to the state level, not federal.
#6 Sounds like an appeal to envy, which is not a sound moral basis for lawmaking.
#9 Nothing wrong with prosecuting both; legalization is the wrong approach, both morally and practically, as it increases the incentives for this “industry” which is generally negative toward women, making them a commodity.
#10 Stopping gerrymandering is a good goal, but none of the suggested proposals really makes districting neutral. Being a mathematician does not make one neutral, and as for random citizens, many (likely most) will lack the quantitative skills to know how to determine the fairness of a given districting plan, and once given this power, the citizens selected, having been given a specific political power, become de facto politicians themselves, and as with mathematicians, are not likely to be neutral.
#11 is murder and #12 amounts to coddling incarcerated criminals.
Most of these “fruits” do not seem so low-hanging, after all.
On #3, that may be true in some cases, but also, some people are stuck there for actual marijuana charges and shouldn’t be.
On #4, this is only sometimes true, it’s dogmatic to pretend it’s always true, it depends on the pricing power that the company has. Regardless, standard economic theory says that for negative externalities like air pollution it is still more efficient to tax it – the tax money can simply be returned to the people.
On #5, sure, state level works too, but why leave extreme suffering being created that is disaligned with most people’s values to the state level if it can be more effectively resolved at the federal level?
#6, has nothing to do with envy, these are more efficient ways to levy taxes that have a number of benefits.
#10, I think you’re misundersatnding – it’s not that mathematicians would decide on the districtig, it’s that they would develop the redistricting algorithm that makes gerrymandering much harder (if not impossible). It should be pretty doable with a little investment in the right algorithm.
#11, it’s easy to implement as very much not murder: providing tools for the person to take their own life if they choose. It’s suicide.
#12, not locking people into solitary confinement is not coddling – it’s preventing a form of social torture that is likely to make them increasingly unstable/in bad mental health which is not a benefit to society.
7: Why are you against home ownership? Do you really want everyone to be a renter? For small businesses, the cost of health insurance is roughly equal to what an employee would have to pay directly, and far, far more than big companies pay. Do you really want the employees of small companies to lose their health insurance or do you prefer socialized medicine like Britain, which according to a British friend with chronic health problems, is almost as good as British food?
8: Tying the passage of one law to the repeal of another is a great way for someone to block the passage of the new law. Suppose a powerful politician tied an animal anti-cruelty law to repealing the law against adults having sex with minors. What would that do the passage of the anti-cruelty bill? You might believe this type of maneuvering is impossible, but look at the bills that are popular in the public polls but which are currently languishing in Congress over procedural issues.
12: Many of the people in solitary confinement are there because they are the ones who prey upon weaker inmates. If they aren’t kept in solitary, how would you stop them from raping, beating, or murdering the other inmates or extorting money and other favors for not being abused physically?
7: I’m definitely not against home ownership – not sure why you assumed I was.
8: If “a powerful politician tied an animal anti-cruelty law to repealing the law against adults having sex with minors” then others would vote it down – obviously a bill like that wouldn’t pass. It would have to be tied to removal of a law that politicians are willing to vote out. The bundle of proposed bill and removed bill would need to be approved. Not really different than the current system except that it removes stuff (e.g., that is out of date, ineffective, widely disliked, or now irrelevant) instead of endlessly adding more stuff.
12: There are a number of options: (a) keep them in shackles (but still allow socializing) until they show good behavior. (b) more severe: keep them in their cell but let others socialize with them through their cell bars.
Quoting you from 7. “Gradually remove tax breaks that incentivize things we don’t actually want to incentivize (unfortunately, there are many).” Mortgage tax breaks certainly incentivize home ownership by making it more affordable, therefore, since you started “things we don’t actually want to incentivize,” I assumed you were referring to home ownership. What exactly is the thing associated with home ownership that you don’t want to incentivize?
8. I’m skeptical that there are many laws that a majority of lawmakers, or anyone else, wants removed. A lot of obsolete laws are simply ignored and no longer enforced. There is nothing currently stopping an unpopular law (or Constitutional Amendment) from being repealed. You’re certainly right that linking a new law to the repeal of a popular law would kill the new law, which is why I pointed out this downside that you ignored. Your proposal gives those interested in stopping a law from passage a new tool that they didn’t have before.
12. If you put the extremely violent in shackles and put them out among the general population, the odds are that their victims will take the opportunity for revenge. Keeping them in their cells but letting others (including their victims) hang out in relative freedom outside of their cells sounds worse than isolation.
If I remember correctly, you once said in one of your articles that too many people focus exclusively on the benefits of their ideas and never consider the possible downsides.
This list of ideas, with none of their downsides considered in your article, strikes me as a social experiment to see how many people would point out the downsides of your proposals.
Hi Dave. To reply to your questions:
“What exactly is the thing associated with home ownership that you don’t want to incentivize?”
People are taking on larger mortgages. If the goal is to incentivize people to buy their first homes, there are more effective and less harmful ways to do that.
” You’re certainly right that linking a new law to the repeal of a popular law would kill the new law, which is why I pointed out this downside that you ignored.”
I think you’re imagining this would work differently than I’m imagining. In my suggestion, the person/comittee proposing a bill (trying to get it passed) would also propose what is to be removed (not another politician who doesn’t like the bill).
“I’m skeptical that there are many laws that a majority of lawmakers, or anyone else, wants removed. A lot of obsolete laws are simply ignored and no longer enforced. There is nothing currently stopping an unpopular law (or Constitutional Amendment) from being repealed. ”
There are incentives now that lead to giant bloat in the size of the legal code, where unhelpful and pointless laws stay on the books for a long time without getting cleaned up.
“. If you put the extremely violent in shackles and put them out among the general population, the odds are that their victims will take the opportunity for revenge. Keeping them in their cells but letting others (including their victims) hang out in relative freedom outside of their cells sounds worse than isolation.”
I agree this is a possibility, but prisoners could also be given the option of whether they’d rather be shackled around others or kept in solitare. I predict the vast majority would choose shackled around others since solitate is for many people like torture.
“If I remember correctly, you once said in one of your articles that too many people focus exclusively on the benefits of their ideas and never consider the possible downsides.
This list of ideas, with none of their downsides considered in your article, strikes me as a social experiment to see how many people would point out the downsides of your proposals.”
You’re conflating two things: (1) my article not discussing the downsides, and (2) me not considering the downsides. I certainly have not considered EVERY downside of the proposals I put forward, but yes, I considered downsides before and while writing it.
For instance, before writing this, with 5, I considered (but simply didn’t write about) the cost of animal products. For 6, I considered people who would lose out on the proposition. And so on. Not every article should talk about both pros and cons – it depends on the purpose of the piece of writing. But yes, it’s very important to consider the downsides of things we think are good. I’m not perfect at it, but I do it a lot, and I strive to do it more.
I’ve thought about how successful a candidate might be by running exclusively on these low hanging items that most people agree on.
A few more I’d at to the list
13. Eliminate tipping. I’ve been in many countries without tipping expectations and often get more prompt and faster service. A smile from my waiter isn’t worth much. This is primarily constrained by the very few who would be worse off.
14. Taxes included in the final price. Not including it leads to deceptive pricing and sales tax is regressive anyways.
15. Actually enforcing anti-trust. We all lose when large markets are swallowed up by the few. Back in the mid 20th century, having a grocery store chain have 7% of the market was considered way too high. Unfortunately Regan put an end to competition here