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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (514554)	9/19/2009 2:55:40 PM
From: koan	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 1577903

>> Here's what you don't get: Your government, through its massive deficits and massive [future] tax increases is sucking the life blood out of our own economy, and the future for your children and theirs -- it is already bleak. If this isn't stopped, it only gets worse from here. It is beyond me how you (or anyone) can't see this. But you can't, you refuse to.<< Koan: First Denmark and Sweden function better than we do in every way imaginable way and have a much larger welfare state. And Bush doubled the deficit from 5 to 10 trillion in his 8 years and got us in debt to China for 2 trillion. And he has nothing to show for it but a world financial calamity. Both 9/11 and the economic crash happened while HE was president. Does that upset you? But here is what you do not seem to understand. When you refer to "the government" if you are living in a dictatorship or monarchy, then you can bitch about what the govenrment does. But when you live in a democaracy, you and I are the govenrnment. We can vote out every single person in the house next year if we do not like what they are doing. You do not recognize the rights and responsibilities of our society. And you confuse freedom with anarchy; and economic systems with political systems.

To: i-node who wrote (514554)	9/20/2009 8:36:21 AM
From: Taro	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577903

My buddy Bob read your post and the following comments to make including his own experiences from working in Livermore. Taro Bob: "Yes, this guy has it right. The situation in a nutshell is that gov't should not be in the business of solving the real problems of the populace. Private business should do that. Simply because it has a history of getting things done, in an effective and efficient manner; whereas gov't has a history of ineffectiveness and severe lack of efficiency. Gov't has the job of setting up the rules so that businesses have to compete with each other to produce solutions to society's problems. Gov't has to make sure the playing field is set level, and the rules are written in the best way to provide good for the nation's citizens, and to make sure those rules are effectively enforced. Sooner or later I think enough people will come to understand that this brief outline is the way to go in solving 99% of society's problems. At least for the problems we really do want to solve. For the ones we really don't care much about, gov't will work fine. Gov't has a history of making a mess in every country. The USA will not prove to be an isolated exception. We are subject to the same governmental tendencies that all other countries have experienced, and are still experiencing. A great accomplishment of the free-enterprise system, for example, is that it has turned the human tendency toward greed to the common good. We say to all people: "So you'd like to be rich. Fine. Just come up with a solution to one of society's problems, and people will pay you handsomely for that solution. Works every time if you just follow the rules, exercise due cautions, and run your enterprise in a sensible manner." Government alone will never accomplish much, simply because it has so little in the fundamental motivations that provide the drive behind accomplishment. Gov't employees are paid simply for putting in the time, and only VERY secondarily for high performance (as judged entirely subjectively, by other gov't employees). They have almost no motivation for finding solutions to big problems, and almost no tools for getting to a solution of they did think of one. I know how the federal gov't works. I worked in it for four years while I was in the military. What I saw was what I have tried to outline above. Gov't is little more than a millstone around the neck of those few people who really do have something to contribute. I spent one year trying to figure out what was really going on in the lab I was assigned to, and then three years trying to implement a permanent solution. It was near impossible, partly because the gov't employees were not even willing to admit there WAS a problem, a multi-million dollar waste. Fortunately, I was able to come up with a mathematical PROOF that they could not refute, and that got the attention of civilians of high enough rank they were FORCED to listen (even though they hated the idea of doing so - the status quo was SO comfortable). Within a year after my departure that lab regressed right back to where it was when I arrived there four years earlier. All I really accomplished was getting Federal Standard 222 put through a big revision. But the boondoggle persisted, and is probably still operating now, 40 years later. Too much of our gov't is based on compromise among ideas, rather than selection and implementation of only the best. Business is different - it has to go with only the best ideas, or be out-competed by someone else who DOES. And so the mess marches on."