North American vs. Japanese zoning
I find these types of articles invigorating and demoralizing at the same time. I think the reason why, and something I've thought about a lot lately, is: what would it actually take to do something like this? It'd probably involve a series of steps like this to do _exactly_ this:<p>* Decide to run for office<p>* Raise an enormous amount of money, somehow without indebting yourself to private interests<p>* Convince a large amount of people to vote you into office<p>* Bring to bear an enormous amount of political capital to convince other people to enact these changes<p>That involves no small amount of luck and personal charisma. I probably have none of these things, so that leaves me out.<p>There are other methods that are potentially easier (the one that comes to mind is effectively paying off an incumbent politician), but I'd roughly guess that there's only a 40-60% chance to get the outcome you want. Even easier actions, like calling your representatives, I'd peg at 2-5% expected value. Voting is <0.1%.<p>Are these really our only options? Am I thinking about this problem wrong? Is this just the great struggle of human governance we've been trying to solve for millenia?