Ideas within topic government,international: (click suns to rate or comment on ideas)

1		To reduce plastic waste, charge, worldwide, a tax on plastic production at source (ethylene cracking?). Reducing, reusing, recycling, and replacing would then become cheaper than making new plastic.	E-mail
2		Highly populated countries like China and India, instead of forcing the people to have only one child, can have income tax (or other taxes) brackets depending on the number of children. This will have a good impact with out a hard rule.	E-mail
3		To prevent financial tsunamis, countries or UN should define companies that are "too big to fail" and assign a regulator to declare others that fall outside the definition, then put a public official on their boards and limit their leverage and risk.	E-mail
4		Companies charge huge fees to workers who migrate abroad for long-term contract jobs (as maids, construction workers, etc.). Instead, governments should arrange migration and contracts at low cost to let workers keep more of their meager incomes.	E-mail
5		2 satellites collided, spewing debris that threaten other satellites. To prevent crashes, a UN agency should track all orbiting objects and program a computer to predict their orbits and potential collisions. Satellites could then maneuver out of danger.	E-mail
6		To improve railway safety, install GPS devices and radio transmitters on all train locomotives. A computer at a control center would monitor all train locations and alert any trains headed for a crash, based on position and velocity estimates.	E-mail
7		Governments should pay for removal of discarded fishing nets snagged underwater. These nets last centuries, killing huge numbers of fish and mammals.	E-mail
8		Give every person in the world equal allowances to emit greenhouse gasses, and require large emitters to buy allowances from people on an open market. This will bypass countries and corruption and will benefit poor people.	E-mail
9		Since corruption and poverty can cause each other, it's hard for poor countries to climb out of poverty. To fight corruption, a country could volunteer to accept an outside (UN) commission and court to investigate and prosecute corruption.	E-mail
10		Permanent UN fund for disaster relief so that emergency aid can be spent quickly when needed, instead of begging and waiting for donations while people die. Fund it with regular dues or taxes. Now it's been created: CERF.	E-mail
11		Tiny CCTV cameras in cockpit of plane connected to a multi-channel digital video recorder. Store the hard drive in the blackbox. If the plane crashes, full audio/video recordings of the crew and instruments, passengers, & out-of-windscreen view.	E-mail
12		Banks that are "too big to fail" threaten the world economy if they do fail. To prevent banks from getting so big, government should force breakups or block mergers of banks/companies with assets or liabilities > 1 day of world GDP (0.3% of annual GDP).	E-mail
13		Send tsunami and other disaster warnings by SMS (short message service) so that people who don't happen to be watching TV or listening to radio at the moment can be alerted and can evacuate. (tornado, typhoon, cyclone, hurricane)	E-mail
14		Use an outer layer of tear-proof paper and an inner layer of inflatable bubble-wrap to make warm, durable camping tents or emergency shelters for refugees.	E-mail
15		In countries like India, income tax & sales tax are difficult to collect. To track all transactions, government could give debit cards to all people and card readers to all shops. No more need to print money, also saving government expense.	E-mail
16		To better predict the magnitude of technological improvement, such as increases in oil reserves, use a top-down approach (extrapolating overall statistics), rather than bottom-up (trying to predict technology). Moore's Law is an example.	E-mail
17		Divide problems into parts: behavior, knowledge, or money (there's often overlap). Then it would be easier to focus on the most efficient solutions. AIDS as example: b. to use condoms, k. to make a vaccine, m. to pay for drugs.	E-mail
18		To fight brain drain (poor countries losing precious funds teaching doctors, who then leave for more pay in rich countries), use education loans, to be forgiven by working in home country or repaid in cash earned from rich country.	E-mail
19		Hospitals in the developed world could donate and export their old redundant equipment and furnishings to developing world countries. In many instances last year's model is much better than none.	E-mail
20		Require that landmines be made with self-destruct mechanisms to make them effective for a time regarded as necessary for a military goal, but after that time ineffective via planned obsolescence or by broadcasting their presence.	E-mail
21		With >6 billion people on earth now, and ~30 billion in human history, don't you think we could find 50 or 60 of the brightest to figure out a way to eliminate the need for wars altogether? Maybe a permanent UN council?	E-mail
22		The rate of interest of World Bank & other development bank loans to a country/state should be in proportion to its population growth rate (along with other factors). This will act as an impetus to the govt. to try to reduce the PGR further.	E-mail
23		Let U.N. conduct annual essay/project competitions for students from developing countries to evaluate/improve the functioning of democratic institutions in their countries. Helps to spread awareness/critical evaluation.	E-mail
24		Commercial Grameen bank: a bank for the poor like the original in Bangladesh, but raising capital from conventional sources (stock and bond sales, deposits). The high repayment rate (98%) and spread may attract Wall Street investment.	E-mail
25		To reduce illegal drug crops, encourage organic farming of fruits, vegetables, medicinal herbs and flowers (exotic orchids) along with associated processing & packaging facilities, with assured buy-back under the aegis of UN. Couple with agri-tourism.	E-mail
26		To have a better, greener, & cleaner world, ensure that before each tree is cut, at least 5 saplings (per tree cut) of the same species have been planted in proximity and those have survived for at least a year. This can be made an international law.	E-mail
27		I would like to see a set of books written by some type of UN organization that is written for individual countries to show people how to eliminate human suffering and hunger and give the people in each country the motivation to do that.	E-mail
28		To increase world development aid, conduct an ad campaign in rich nations to inform people of the % of the national budget spent on aid, which is now actually much less than people think and much less than people say they would prefer.	E-mail
29		Wright brothers in USA started aviation 100 years ago. Let us agree that by 2103 that the poorest person alive in the world can afford to fly in airplane.	E-mail
30		The United Nations should organize boycotts of oil purchases from countries with too much corruption that diverts the oil revenues to the leaders and away from the citizens.	E-mail
31		Experiences with the EC indicate that a common market demands some level of legal, political and social harmony as well. Perhaps a solution to world conficts is to give opponents a stake in a profitable shared enterprise.	E-mail
32		Ayurvedic medicines and cosmetics from Himalayan village cottage-industries could be marketed to the western market through webstores as well as indirect distribution channels, fetching resources for the development of this region.	E-mail
33		Systemic corruption is partly due to inadequate rewards (compensation) for non-corrupt activity. Paying higher wages in areas where corruption is systemic will contribute to a reduction of the scale of the problem.
34		To prevent excessive patriotism, members of Parliament from one country should be deputed to sit in the parliaments of other countries for say 3 months in a year in an UN sponsored exchange program. This should make them understand the culture & language.	E-mail
35		To slow population growth, governments can pay bi-annual birth control incentive to all childless couples. Reduce the amount to 50% after the birth of 1st child and stop this incentive after the 2nd. Recover the full amount with interest with the 3rd.	E-mail
36		Let WHO & the government test every person of a country for AIDS within a week. Have the program repeated after some months. Do this in all countries within a year. Thus we can identify all AIDS patients. Easier to control AIDS with no unknown patients.	E-mail
37		Emergency plans are useless unless an actual test is conducted. National plans for dealing with pandemic outbreaks should be tested in as large a setting as possible. Percent of 1st responders who abandon their posts can be estimated from past disasters.	E-mail
38		To reduce road accidents, require speed governors on large trucks and buses to keep them from exceeding the maximum regional or national limit.	E-mail
39		The United Nations should maintain a volunteer army to quickly prevent genocides or impose peace if member states agree to take action. (UN,peacekeeping)	E-mail
40		To preserve forests, nations may contribute (in proportion to their greenhouse gas production) to a fund to pay "rent" to countries or regions in proportion to their forest area. The more forests they clear, the less rent they get.	E-mail
41		Take government spending on military for one month and redistribute it to programs to help the poorest people permanently better their lives, such as microcredit small business programs, child vaccination, clean water, and other development programs.
42		Wars are like earthquakes or other disasters: rare and intermittent yet devastating. Human nature, like plate tectonics, doesn't change, thus we can map wars over time to look for hot spots, like faults, and reveal causes.	E-mail
43		The United Nations was established to help maintain balance in international affairs. So why not pay closer attention to int'l genocide and ethnic "cleansing," by holding each leader--not nation--accountable? Treat them as separate entities.	E-mail
44		As the number of FM radio stations increases, like televisions, they could be tuned and memorized, or assigned fixed frequencies for broadcast. In doing so, with a remote handset we could flip channels as 1, 2, 3, etc. without knowing the exact frequency.	E-mail
45		To cap greenhouse gas emissions and fairly spread the cost, divide current emissions by the Earth's population, and let each country emit at that same per capita rate. Nations exceeding their limit must buy emission quotas from nations under their limits.	E-mail
46		Help hard working farmers in poor Caribbean countries by giving their produce preferential treatments in the American and European markets. Even equal treatment would be an improvement.
47		To conserve energy reserves, reduce pollution, and slow global warming, fund a worldwide program to extinguish underground coal and peat fires, which are huge in such places as India, Indonesia, and China.	E-mail
48		Reduce population growth by delaying marriage and procreation. Ask young men and women to serve others for a period of two or three years before marrying. Offer sixteen year olds real jobs and research opportunities, then suggest they marry at 25 or so.	E-mail
49		To increase donations to charity: since people like things named after them, build things in poor countries named after donors/sponsors (schools, health clinics, fish ponds, wells). Give plaques and photos.	E-mail
50		Checking visas could be made very efficient by a centralised database of applicants' details (with an iris scan, while issuing). When a person reaches an entry point to a country, a computer connected to the centralised network could validate the details.	E-mail