Blog on Ratings

Law Enforcement Oversight Board

2/17/2015

Update 4-18-2019: This post is four years old, and the full Violent Crime Mitigation System has become more defined. The oversight board has been given the name Law Enforcement Authorization (LEA). The LEA is one of the thirty Sectors and authorizes all people with governmental authority within the criminal justice system such as police, prosecutors, judges, prison guards, detectives, sheriffs, and anyone else with judicial or police authorities. There is a separate Sector for authorizations in the Foreign Protection System named the Military Authorization Agency (MAA). There is a Rating System for every Sector and an RA’s main power is informational and Rating Floors.

The 2015 post: With protest over police abuse (whether true or not) and the new digital age of spying and data collection, now is a good time for professional Rating Agencies (RA’s) that have real power to rate law enforcement. Every citizen would declare what RA they trust and that trust gives real power to the rating agency inspectors to dig deep into what law enforcement is doing.

At certain levels of abuse, they, the Oversight Board, would have real power to change internal affairs personnel or bring additional people in with real power to make changes. These inspectors would be highly trained and need to have law enforcement experiences with excellent reputations. These inspectors, with this great power, would need high ratings on themselves to ensure great professionalism and root out corruption.

Data collection is becoming a significant privacy issue and needs to be controlled. RA’s will have substantial power and the highest levels of authority to dig deep into everything law enforcement is doing. Private law enforcement companies will also be significantly monitored by RA’s as well. With great ability to gather information on people, RA’s would need to keep a constant watch to ensure lines are not crossed.

There are certainly legitimate uses for data collection. In the balance between allowing a guilty person to be set free and convicting an innocent person, it is vital that we give law enforcement plenty of tools to ensure the correct person is convicted of a heinous crime. We do not want a murderer to be set free to murder again or an innocent person to pay the price of a crime they did not commit. The more information available, the fewer errors will occur.

RA’s official inspectors will have the real power to put in measures to ensure the best practices in stopping abuses and allowing information and data collection to be used wisely. The very real and serious choice every citizen has in determining what RA they trust, will give that RA more power in these areas.

Ratings are Vital for Charities

1/13/2015

With Haley2024 reforms; instead of tax-supported welfare, people will be mandated to donate to charities. People will likely choose a Charitable Distribution Association (CDA) in which they agree. Ratings will be a factor. CDA’s ratings will reflect the ratings of the charities and Assessor Organization (AO) they fund.

There are many ways of looking at how well a charity does with the money they receive. Some just look at percentages of administrative cost versus aid given out. That is not nearly dynamic enough. Some administrators do a lot of work in the field, and a simple percentage does not capture the true help. Others give out a high percentage in aid; however, that aid is not the most productive in achieving the stated goals.

Charities require oversight. It is hard to determine whether money is spent well. Some look at the administrative cost; however, some administrators do actual work in the charity, thus misleading. If an administrator of a cancer research charity is an actual scientist doing real research as well as administrative duties, the numbers can look deceiving. How is it determined whether the aid is ‘doing the most good.’

Are high percentages of advertising worth it, if the ads bring in more money and gives an increased dollar amount to the people in need? Determining a rating is dynamic and subjective. All these questions among many more will be answered in many different ways by different people and groups. The structure of the Rating System requires many Rating Agencies, each with a different method or philosophy of determining worth, value, and even what is desired.

Volunteer Hours

Volunteer Hours will be rated. When many people hear about volunteer hours they might envision 15 highly trained professionals standing behind a table ladling soup to 4 homeless men. Not only would that be foolish and unproductive, but it would also undoubtedly receive low ratings.

While there would be a Rating Floor, the productivity of the volunteer hours would increase because of natural competition and the desire to productively help others. Many people would work extra hours in their regular job without pay to meet their volunteer hour requirements while others would just pay their yearly obligation. The beauty of this plan is that once someone begins ‘doing good’ they are more likely to give even more hours than required.

Assessor's Organizations

Assessor Organizations will be critical in the Rating System. These are people that specialize in determining a person’s or family’s needs. They examine when help becomes enabling and when those receiving aid, need to give additional volunteer hours. These people would be experts at bringing able-bodied people out of poverty and those challenged with disabilities, the self-worth of working up to their potential.

People when determining where to give there charity money or their volunteer hours would look at the Rating Agencies they trust and look at the philosophy of the CDA and charity and will make their choice of how they will help those in need.

Many people are shy about criticizing a charity because ‘at least they are helping.’ The Rating Agencies (RA’s) will have a job to do and will be able to inform the people with quality information with what CDA, AO, and charities are surpassing the others. Having roughly a dozen RA’s for the CDA Sector, the Charity Sector, and the AO Sector will give a wealth of quality information from many perspectives.

What is Rated

1/13/2015

The simple answer is that the only items mandated to be rated by law are items that are currently regulated. If the government is going to stop ensuring standards by regulating businesses, the consumers will need a way to determine what standards a business is using.

While it would be very likely that many rating systems would emerge on their own, I believe the structure used in this rating system would allow a wide variety of rating systems with many models. This structure creates some standardizations and ensures that every business would have ratings.

Currently, customer service or ‘a good job’ is not ensured by government regulations, these are taking care of by Angie’s list, Yelp, ‘the best of,’ Zagat among others. While these might dynamically be included in the ratings of the Haley2024 Rating System, the mandate is to only rate what is no longer regulated by the government.

Anecdotal and Advertisement

12/4/2014

This article does not intend to diminish any current rating organizations; many are well-meaning and try to give real, valid, and serious feedback about businesses and organizations. Trust is hard to build up; however, some rating organizations are created or co-opted by a business for the sole purpose of giving the business awards or cover for some adverse practices. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) is an excellent example of an organization that people trust. The BBB would likely transition to a CRA Organization that coordinates many Sectors.

Anecdotal

Anecdotal can be just fine; however, it is limited to the customer’s experience and the honesty of those collecting the data. The Rating System will use essential customer feedback; however, will go more in-depth.

Confirmation Complications

Few agencies put procedures in place to only get real feedback versus competitor’s lies or cherry-picked information. However, most do not. The Rating System will be well funded to have a quality system to capture real details.

Many people have heard about a TV report showing one restaurant with issues and someone’s complaint about that issue. True or not, this often does not give a complete picture of the business. There has never been a restaurant without an insect or rodent at one time or another. The big issue is how many, where and for how long. TV reporters often give a snapshot that can often be misleading by not putting everything into perspective with long term real evidence and comparisons.

Companies will frequently advertise that they have high standards in one area to improve their brand, thus sales. This can give a very incomplete picture of the company. The Rating System looks at the company overall and across more extended time frames.

Signs many businesses post regarding winning awards seldom cite the source where the customers can confirm the claim in a substantial way.

Externality Mitigation

11/9/2014

Externality Mitigation

Certain aspects of our economy are currently illegal or curtailed by regulations. They are trying to prohibit an activity that does harm. Often these regulations or prohibitions do more harm than good. The crime surrounding the evasion of the laws begin to affect others.

When people break these laws, they bring negative consequences to society at large. There are two common ways to deal with these issues, to prohibit or to allow. However, Haley2024 proposes a third way. Businesses could open up a wide variety of methods to deal with this issue. All companies wanting to do an activity that harms people that are not doing that activity or the general public needs to have a specific rating on externality mitigation.

First, Competitive Regulatory Agencies and the Rating System would need to be in place. The claim and evidence need to be submitted to the Rating System, that actions are harming the people in the transaction or society at large. If the evidence is strong enough, people or businesses doing the transactions would have to pay for mitigation.

Whether it is side effects of drugs, pollution, gambling, drinking, extreme sports, among others with negative externalities, programs would need to be funded such as A.A., gamblers anonymous, detox centers, or a medical fund to deal with injuries resulting from the risky activity. Each CRA would have to increase funding until a particular rating was achieved, thus motivating CRA’s to be very effective.

Pollution and the environment can be more complicated, thus not conducive to government regulatory control. Manufacturing, farming among other businesses all have adverse side effects on the environment. The balance of whether it is ‘worth it’ is very subjective. Having food, manufactured goods among others enrich our lives considerably, however, have an effect.

Competing Rating Agencies will look at EPA issues VERY differently. Everyone must put their trust, thus their power in a Rating Agency. The combined ratings will be influential in the marketplace because people will shun low EPA rated products. However, there would still need to be a fund for negative externality mitigation with low rated businesses paying higher amounts. This fund would help clean up the environment.

This rating would be very dynamic because it is challenging to determined counterfactuals in an ever-changing landscape. Governments could set different ratings; however, realizing too high of a Rating Floor could become counterproductive. Many states would experiment with varying levels of mandated rating levels, and that would be rated as well.

Many who drink or do drugs, desire to alter their mood and feel ‘light headed and forgetful’ as to take away their emotional pain. Right or wrong, the desire is there, and laws do not stop this activity. Currently, the FDA does not allow drugs just for this purpose.

With the demand for mind-altering drugs so common, there would be many businesses who would compete in creating a particular drug that achieves the desired effects with the lowest adverse side effects possible and without addictions. The competition would allow for safer drugs to emerge.

However, a fund will be set up to treat people who are harmed. The lowest rated businesses will have to pay larger percentages. Gambling, pornography, prostitution, among others would all fall under CRA’s and would need high ratings of mitigating negative externalities.

Rating Political Campaigns and Politicians Honesty

6/1/2014

Many policies currently regulated related to campaigns can be regulated by campaign Competitive Regulatory Agencies. Rating all the issues related to openness, limits and who can contribute among others would be critical for voters to have information and analyzing from Rating Agencies that you trust. Corruption and the appearance of impropriety would also be rated.

Click to watch the 60 minutes story

Target Credit Card Security

5/18/2014

There are those that are well read; they study a lot. However, without massive amounts of hours of digging deep into Target and all the others, they have little idea whether Target's identity security is more or less than Walmart, Sears, Kmart, or others. Many that pay close attention to the news have come to distrust the news for accurate information. Sometimes the information is correct; however, stated in such a way that is highly unfair.

Every restaurant will have an occasional ant, bug or rodent issue. Having a reporter only give his or her audience a list of insects of a non-advertising restaurant and not of a friend's restaurant can be totally truthful, however very misleading.

A news reporter could come on TV and state truthfully that there has been an explosion on the sun so big that it would swallow the entire state of Texas. He could further state that the scientist claims the effects of that explosion will reach earth in 8 minutes. He could give the amount of heat and the different forms it will take. He could be entirely truthful, and without providing context, he could cause a panic. The point is, the media can take things way out of context.

The Haley2024 Rating System

While we currently have 3 big firms analyzing financial risks, they are heavily controlled by the government.

Giving truthful information is only half of the story. Carefully analyzing the data is highly valuable and very powerful. Different people have different thoughts on how things need to be analyzed. Therefore, many different groups will analyze the data and rate. Everyone will pick which RA’s they choose to trust. Haley2024 Rating Agencies only answer to those that give them their trust.

Campaigning for Awards

5/18/2014

How well do these ratings really tell a consumer about the business they are considering visiting? While it would be difficult for a lousy company to win this award, there are real issues here. The competition for these awards shows that businesses will compete for reputation.

How does someone win? First, businesses have considerable campaigns for people to vote for them. There is Facebook with links, emails, ads, posters and other innovative methods to try to get the votes. Does the business with the best campaign win or the one with the most satisfied customers?

When someone votes, how in-depth are they researching? Mostly skin deep. How well do they know worker safety, HR issues, environmental protection, food safety, levels of insurance, levels of ethics, and a whole host of other concerns? These items are currently tough to determine, not just with the company you know, but also their competition.

Many will claim that much of this is not their business, that they just want the product or service. However, if people knew that employees worked in a dangerous environment, animals were routinely harmed, the disabled were not even given a chance, unnecessary polluting was not corrected or a host of other ills unseen by the consumer, many would choose another business that had better records on these issues.

The structure of the current system is that information is highly valuable to consumers; however, seldom collected and analyzed properly. The Haley2024 Rating System creates valuable knowledge that is easily disseminated widely. With mandated signs and cell phone apps, all people could scrutinize every decision. In the current system, the knowledge that would affect their overall rating is hidden. Under the Haley2024 Rating System, every business will be in competition for the best ratings on all the sectors of its business and will soon realize that they would have to discount their prices to compensate for lower ratings.

Who Regulates the Regulators?

4/26/2014

Rating Agencies and consumers would keep CRA's in check. If Competitive Regulatory Agencies cuts corners on standards, the ratings will reflect that quickly, and consumers would respond with less business to those businesses. Those businesses seeing a loss of business would put pressure to increase the standards back up to regain the market share.

Every business would have the right to change CRA’s to match their desire and business needs. No company or CRA would have the ability to go to the Rating Agency to lobby or bribe for better ratings because there would be too many Rating Agencies to deal with. Rating Agencies would be working for those people that give them their ‘trust’ and the more people giving trust brings in more money for the Rating Agency.

Did the Ban on Tigers Work? Who Will Determine?

4/26/2014

Many liberals would be wholly opposed to people legally allowed to eat rare animals. However, some people could rate it high if the population of these animals grows to meet the demand. Each person makes their decision educated by the rating agency they trust.

This is a significant issue showing why there needs to competing Rating Agencies.

http://www.mintpressnews.com/endangered-wild-cats-harmfully-bred-in-zoos-for-profit-not-protection/188482/

A white tigress Sameera walks in an enclosure followed by her six-month-old tiger cubs at Nehru Zoological Park in Hyderabad, India, Saturday, March 29, 2014. (AP/Mahesh Kumar A.)

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