To: TimF who wrote (11949 ) 5/10/2002 2:29:18 AM From: Solon Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 21057 "The inaccurate claim that my assertion had been discredited is the tactic " Nonsense, I provided a summary to prove it."This is not even close to being true " Certainly, it is. Public service is subject to public scrutiny at several levels--both formally and informally."I merely state that it is not a forgone conclusion that they do greatly increase government productivity " You have not offered one shred of evidence to suggest they do not. The long litany of hypotheticals you rambled on about had no factual bearing on our discussion."Questioning how much useful work someone produces does not mean that you are attacking their character " Sorry, when you insult the productivity of all workers in Government departments, you are assaulting their usefulness, value, character, and competence. If you had floated a particular complaint about a particular worker and had factually backed it up...then your disregard could have been taken as factual, objective, and well intentioned."If it is considered entirely subjective then just take my posts to mean that government is less productive by my standards. " You are missing the point. You have made innumerable accusations, but you have not produced one fact to support your acusations. I find that disreputable, and I can't imagine that the dedicated people working to put out fires--or any other public work--could possibly feel complimented by your dismissiveness."Many of these programs are just taking from the population at large to give to whatever special interest groups that have the best political connections. " Again, you start a paragraph of unfounded accusations which suggests that your accusations could apply to any public program. Thus, you tarnish everyone; but you name nobody. You accuse everything, but you specify nothing. You adduce nothing factual which may be checked and verified...or discarded ."If you spend more time on one thing you have less to spend on something else. This lowers productivity. " No, it doesn't. Productivity is not synonymous with variety. I do not need to run around the block in the middle of the night to claim I had a productive sleep. And I do not need to cook dinner or sleep to claim I spent productive time at the tennis courts. Productivity is not measured by the infinite things you don't do. It is measured by the things you do.