You wake up on the morning on the 20th of January to find that you are now Donald Trump, on the day of your inauguration as president. (Investigation reveals there is another you still practising medicine in Michigan as normal fwiw.) As president, what do you do with the powers available to you? How do Congress, the media, and the public respond? How do you respond back?

My cabinet/related picks:

Attorney General: Preet Bharara

Commerce: Peter Thiel

Defense: James Mattis

State: Tulsi Gabbard

Housing & Urban Development: Matt Yglesias

Homeland Security: Anonymous Mugwump

Health & Human Services: Julia Wise

Transportation/Energy: Elon Musk

Treasury: Satoshi Nakamoto

Education: Eva Moskowitz

Veterans Affairs: David Petraeus

Agriculture: Buck Shlegeris

Labor: Bernie Sanders

White House Chief Of Staff: Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg

Head of NIH: Stephen Hsu

Surgeon General: Dr. Chris Ballas

Head of FDA: Alex Tabarrok

Welfare Czar: Charles Murray

Chair of Federal Reserve: Scott Sumner

Budget Director: Holden Karnofsky

Head of CIA: Philip Tetlock

Everything else can be filled by randomly selected black women so that I can brag about how diverse I am.

First order of business: in addition to being my Secretary of Labor, Bernie Sanders is now vice president. I don’t care what he does with the position, it’s just so that the Republican Congress knows that if they impeach me, they’re getting a pacifist Jewish socialist as the leader of the free-world.

Second order of business is to get Robin Hanson to set up a national prediction market to help me figure out all my other policies. All other orders of business conditional on approval from national prediction market and from new CIA head Philip Tetlock. Then:

- Legalize marijuana and hallucinogens, lessen penalties for other drugs. Replace prison sentences for nonviolent crimes with corporal punishment.

- Build Trump’s wall, because it’s a meaningless symbol that will change nothing, but it’ll make Republicans like me, and it will make Democrats focus all their energy on criticizing that instead of anything substantive I do.



- Tax the rich. Maybe a Georgist land tax?



- Get rid of most occupational licensing restrictions. I’m probably too chicken to get rid of medical licensing entirely, but make it way easier to become a nurse-practitioner, and vastly expand the amount of stuff nurse practitioners can do. Allow psychologists to prescribe most psychiatric medication.

- Declare War On College. Forgive all existing student loans, then refuse to give out any new ones. Prohibit the government from asking about college degree when hiring new employees, and put pressure on private industry to follow suit for any position less absolutely-requiring-of-specialized-knowledge than doctor or engineer. Increase government loans to boot camps, online courses, et cetera.

- If Tabarrok hasn’t already solved everything about prescription medication by this point, do it myself.

- If Yglesias hasn’t already solved everything about urban housing by this point, do it myself.

- Carbon tax, with the money going into massive investment into ways to sequester atmospheric carbon.

- Basic income guarantee if possible, otherwise just sneakily increase income tax credits and stuff so that nobody notices.

- Tell Russia that if they can defeat ISIS, they can have as much of Syria as they want, and if they can do it while getting rid of Assad we’ll let them have Alaska back too.

- Agree with Russia and Ukraine to partition Ukraine into Pro-Russia Ukraine and Pro-West Ukraine. This would also work with Moldova.



- Recognize Somaliland.



- Tell Saudi Arabia that we’re sorry for sending mixed messages by allying with them, and actually they are total scum and we hate their guts. Ally with Iran, who are actually really great aside from the whole Islamic theocracy thing. Get Iran to grudgingly tolerate Israel the same way we got Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, etc to grudgingly tolerate Israel, which I assume involves massive amounts of bribery. Form coalition for progress and moderation vs. extremist Sunni Islam throughout Middle East. Nothing can possibly go wrong.

- Tell China that their artificial islands in the South China Sea are stupid and if they don’t stop, then we’ll show them what real artificial islands look like. If they call our bluff, send Patri Friedman over with ten billion dollars in state funding to create seasteads in whichever spots are most inconvenient for China.

- Eliminate the penny.

- Probably other things, I would have to think.