Joshua Stacy

I'm a passionate innovator with a deep background in computer engineering and website development. My software company helps businesses in Las Vegas and nationwide harness modern computing advancements. By helping small and mid-sized businesses use technology to improve their productivity I help the businesses better serve their customers and employees.

I am deeply excited for the opportunity to represent the good people of Senate District 6 (and Nevadans in general) at the state legislature to help leverage our lawmaking process with improvements in technology. I have personally given presentations at Tech Alley Las Vegas on Web 5.0, WordPress, Artificial Intelligence, and more. Nevada is a wonderful state with a long and rich history of limited government, an emphasis on individual liberties, and a beacon of excitement in the desert. I love living in Las Vegas and I believe the future looks bright!

• Nevada is in the perfect position to warmly embrace technologies that help improve the quality of life for workers and their employers. I believe there is a false conflict between unions and technology companies because their is concern jobs will be replaced. As an engineer I can tell you that it is much easier to build software and technology that can work as a force multiplier to help workers than it is to replace them. Instead of trying to fight automation, we should be embracing policies that encourage worker augmented technologies, not trying to prevent new innovations from happening.
• We can easily make schools safer by repealing legislation that has prevented teachers and schools from being able to maintain discipline in their space. A student was beaten to death in Clark County Schools, largely because of policies pushed that were meant to help create a more fair environment for all students to learn. I try to never fault anyone or any group for trying to make progress, but when we see that a policy is backfiring, we need to have the courage to admit we made a mistake and revert. As a computer engineer I know it's not as always as restoring from our last save, but we can repeal laws that backfire and any policies that resulted in the death of students in public schools should be rolled back.
• Let's talk healthcare. Healthcare in Nevada is plagued by a lack of sufficient providers because of a problem the state legislature can solve fairly easily with a very short law. Right now nurses from out of state have significant barriers to being able to work as a nurse; if Nevada were to simply join the Nursing Licensure Compact then qualified nurses in over 25 states would be able to work in Nevada by using a very streamlined process that helps make sure that Nevadans have qualified nurses available. This would also be a huge win for any military families with spouses that are nurses because existing requirements essentially prevent them from being able to help with our healthcare system.

Part of being an engineer usually means trying to deeply understand a problem or set of problems to find possible solutions. If we push to make Nevada a "Right to Build" state it will help open the door for solving public issues in healthcare, education, employment, public safety, and just about everything. We do need specific plans for each area of concern, but over history technology improvements have always helped societies survive and thrive. I want Nevada to be a beacon of innovation and an inspiration of what is possible. I am not arrogant enough to believe I have all the answers, but I do believe our greatest opportunity for broad success is creating an environment where human-focused innovation can thrive!

I'm a huge fan of Escape Velocity by Geoffrey Moore. I originally read it because I had a business that had steady revenue, but I wanted to really grow it. I probably read that more than 10 years ago, but the lessons in it have really helped me understand how innovation and change work. While the book is primarily written as insight for helping executives in large companies grow and thrive, the lessons are absolutely applicable to small businesses and even government. I'll elaborate a little bit on one way it directly applies to solving some of the problems the good state of Nevada has:

In every organization there are always people who want resources to do things. One of the most impactful lessons in the book was addressing the question of "How do you get resources for new initiatives"? Let's say you were working in a company and you wanted to launch a new product, how would you get the budget? Well, Geoffrey Moore says you already have the resources! How can that be? The answer (as he takes time explaining) is essentially to improve the efficiency of what you're already doing so you can free up resources for the next thing or things you want. As this would apply to government, I believe we have a large budget and certainly opportunities to improve how efficiently it is used. There are also a lot of groups and organizations that want to see funding and resources for new initiatives. I believe the only sensible way to work to address the business of the state is to take a good hard look at ways we can cut back on the budget and use that to free up resources for new initiatives. Of course saying that is the easy part, the hard part is going through the process.

Given that the Governor is the state head of the executive branch of the government and the state legislature is the legislative branch, they really need to remain separate. I think part of the reason Nevada is facing some of the problems it is comes from blurring the lines of the checks and balances in the system.

None of this is to say that I believe the legislature should have a hostile relationship with the governor, but the state legislature needs to be able to do the business of the state without fear of reprisal or hostilities from the governor.

I don't think it's simply important, I believe it is critical. A functioning legislative body is necessary for passing and repealing of laws as necessary. I believe collaboration and strong communication can go a long way.

Part of the concern most Americans have about paying taxes is not that they don't want to help support a government that's helping them, the concern is that money is either being used wastefully or that it is being used against their interests.

The current federal government of the United States is the largest federal government in recorded history. If you spend time talking to people that work on things like grants and government initiatives you'll quickly find out that the government rarely (if ever) holds government funded programs accountable for their outcomes. Accountability shouldn't be a dirty word, accountability is literally how we have feedback loops to improve outcomes over time.