James D’Angelo, “The Ghost Bill & The Cardboard Box”
Channel: MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing
Date: 2018-06-05

(A version removing the static later in the video is on its way!)

In November 2014, James D’Angelo released the results of more than ten years of research in an hour-long YouTube video titled The Cardboard Box Reform. In it, he amasses evidence to suggest that a single, long-forgotten bill (dubbed the ‘Ghost Bill’ by representative Rees in 1972) is the cause for at least three of america’s more troubling problems (soaring inequality, campaign finance and partisanship). Better still, he suggests that we can patch these problems with the installation of a single cardboard box in the chambers of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Sound to good to be true? Perhaps. But, his idea is gaining traction with Harvard professors, MIT researchers and many other interested citizens.

An academic outsider James D’Angelo is an ex-NASA scientist, and current winner of the MIT Climate CoLab for the design of a mobile-app that provides a global carbon cap-and-trade without requiring the support of government muscle. He is an outsider academic who, in just the last six months has spoken about advances in financial technology to Harvard Business School, novel ways to govern to the Harvard Kennedy School, and led JavaScript/cryptocurrency hackathons at MIT. He spends his time focusing on identity solutions, squirrel genomes, human evolution and DAOs.