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That's the definition of cost-efficiency, yes, but that's not the only sort of efficiency out there. Wasted money is a problem, but money is not the only resource that gets wasted, and sometimes to avoid wasting one resource you have to spend more of another: time, knowledge, materiel.
I was intentionally speaking in broad terms -- I avoided the questions of which resources we should prioritize above others, or which kinds of efficiency to stress in our design. Those would be important public discussions to have if we were rebuilding our government, but I don't claim to have all the answers on them. (Like any good engineer, I'd want to study the problem for a while with some other engineers before I claimed to have a viable solution.)
I see this too, but I see it mostly in a reversed form: the Tea Party members that I hear the most don't seem to want any reduction in government-provided services (police, roads, parks, medicare, jails and prisons), they simply don't want to be paying as much for it as they currently are. (Witness the situation in Obion County, TN, where Tea Partiers first privatized the fire department so it relied on fees rather than on taxes, then they raised a stink about ethics and morals when the fire department didn't put out a fire at the house of a person who hadn't paid the fee in advance.) The Tea Partiers want the same amount of goods and services, but they want them at reduced costs, which would indeed be more cost-efficient. They seriously want to have their cake and eat it too.
The Tea Party looks at a person like Ramon in today's story, and they see $20,000 of their tax dollars that are being "wasted" on something that could be done with a shell script contracted out for $500. And, in the narrow context of this story alone, that's not a terrible idea. But when it's applied too broadly, the "slash and burn" instinct leaves institutions without the resources (manpower, knowledge, funding) to accomplish anything useful, so in the end, the institution isn't any more efficient, they're actually less efficient, since less is now being accomplished with every unit of resources put in.
The Hurricane Sandy relief bill is a good example: in their single-minded zeal to reduce "waste," the Tea Partiers denied the government all of the resources they actually needed in order to help out Sandy victims. That didn't make the disaster response any more cost-efficient, though, because the cost of rebuilding now will have to be paid through long-term loans with plenty of interest; and while failing to make it more efficient, they also made it less effective by slowing the overall disaster response down for the victims who needed the government to provide shelter and food. The only people that this is more "efficient" for are Tea Party voters who don't live in areas damaged by Sandy, because they won't have to pay for any of the rebuilding through their taxes.
That's what I mean by the problem with the Tea Party approach: you can't just cut your way to efficiency, but I'll be damned if you can find a Tea Party politician who won't swear on a Bible that you can.
And this is one of the reasons I am in favor of the engineer's approach to an efficient government. The question of which expenditures are valuable or useless (and whether or not they are harmful) should be debated and evaluated separately from the question of how much they cost. If there is a service that does not need to be provided by the government (whether because it's harming people or whether it's just not one of the design goals), and the government is currently providing it, then yes, absolutely, cutting that program is a good step toward efficient government. But, contrariwise, if there is a service that we agree does need to be provided by the government, then we should be prepared to provide the government with not just enough resources to provide it at all, but enough resources to provide that service well. The compromise position -- that we need this service but we're going to deliberately constrict the resources available to perform it -- leads to institutions doing inefficient things, like spending $500 on paper clips because if they don't use that $500 this year, they'll get $5,000 less in their budget next year. Idiotic.
Another way to look at this is that we can't have a meaningful national discussion about governing efficiently until we have some kind of consensus on what the business of "governing" actually entails. Should government protect us from each other? Should it protect us from ourselves? Should it protect us from changes in the status quo? Should it protect us from natural threats? Should it protect us from our own human fallibility? Should it protect us from itself?
The Engineer seeks to answer these questions first and then derive sound, rational laws / policies / practices from those answers. By contrast, the Salon Socialist, the Tea Partier, and the Closet Libertarian all assume the answers to (some of) those questions. And the Tech Utopist is merely delusional.
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I agree with you that some policies are bad ones - we're not arguing about whether or not sodas should be banned. Look up a few posts and you'll see that I don't need to be convinced on this - I also don't think that people should go to jail for using marijuana, and I don't have a real issue with someone using viagra so he can sleep on his side and use his dick as a kickstand. The problem is the argument you're making: it's not coherent. Basically, you're trying to make moral arguments after you've already conceded the moral case. It's not going to fly. Either the government has a responsibility to regulate markets for product safety - which is the usual assumption - or it does not. If it does, the argument is about what sorts of regulation should be applied, not about the morality of the regulation. If it does not, then we have to have a long talk about "life in the state of nature" and "solitary, nasty, brutish, and short" and stuff like that, because that's the direction you're heading in.
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Well, the flag orders are usually scheduled a week or so in advance and even though Im assuming this a fairly old WTF, many municipalities mailed their flag orders for longer than they should have. These orders would be scanned by the order coordinator and sent to pretty much every other municipality and state agency who would then decide how to act upon it. Flag coordination takes about an hour a month at my employer, but one person has a full time position as a liason for these matters at the state level to coordinate requests.
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I don't disagree with you -- I also feel that systemic efficiency is desirable as a means to the end of maximizing human happiness. But here's why it's a problem for the Salon Socialist camp:
(a) It may well be that the state which maximizes human happiness is a state in which some individuals themselves do not have their happiness maximized. (Also known as "somebody's still gotta clean up the dog shit.") In other words, it might turn out that for everyone to be as collectively happy as possible, some people have to be unhappy.
(b) It may well be that the state which maximizes human happiness is a state which does not maximize job satisfaction (or which does not maximize, for each person, the sense that their job is "worthy" of them or that they are "worthy" of their job). Or in other words, the happiest way I could live my life might involve working a job which I perceive as beneath me. It's at least possible. (Lester Burnham found more life satisfaction working at Mr. Smiley's than he did working at his ad agency.)
(c) Generally speaking, there isn't a good consensus on what it actually means to "maximize human happiness." You and I are using the phrase in a very utilitarian way, but not everyone would. There also isn't necessarily consensus on what a "worthy" job would be. It's a very subjective quality.
So the Salon Socialist argument, which I would phrase as "well, we need smaller government, therefore Ramon and those like him should be fired and go find a worthy job, because this will lead to maximum human happiness" is a lovely theory on the surface, but it's not actionable. There's no way for someone so far detached to know what makes a job worthy or unworthy to Ramon. There's not even any way to be sure that such a move would, in fact, increase human happiness. There isn't any solid and reliable reason to conclude that the desired ends would be reached by the means that their argument proposes.
Well, remember, efficiency for it's own sake, or evaluated in a vacuum, isn't really efficiency. It all depends on what it is that you want to accomplish. If one of the goals of your system is, say, to employ 100,000 people -- if those jobs are one of the design criteria -- then it's not accurate to say "well, we could be more efficient if we did this with only 75,000 people." Sure, you could provide your services more cost-efficiently. But you would be going back on your goal of also providing employment. It comes down to a question of "what are the problems this system is intended to solve?" And if one of those problems is unemployment, then a system which requires more people to operate is more efficient at solving that problem.
As for the example you give: if the guy WANTS to do it all by hand, I don't see a specific issue. But we should at least consider the possibility that letting him do it all by hand would not maximize human happiness. Maybe we decide that letting him do it all by hand would slow down the process too much -- maybe human happiness depends on how quickly people's flag orders get processed. I can think of a number of systemic reasons that, even if there were enough resources to do it that way and even if it would improve this guy's specific happiness, it might not be best to let him do it.
Also:
I would need to read up on some process theory to know whether I'm using the word "efficient" in a perfectly-accurate way. I think it's important to recognize that "efficient" and "effective" can't usually be separated -- for example, a system that did absolutely nothing but consumed no resources shouldn't, IMHO, be said to be 100% efficient -- but I'm not capable of completely outlining the relationship between the two concepts here.
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So you completely screw over the people who fight wars? Good luck with that!
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Much longer. Go back to Kermit Roosevelt in Iran, for one very clear and important case.
You could say that Reagan tried to appease people in Iran and Afghanistan. Didn't really work out so great, though.
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The government uses thousands of contractors, many of whom contribute to political campaigns. Then you have the millions of federal employees that would become unemployed, which will lower private sector salaries due to the increased competition (remember, there is no reason to assume the layoffs will be merit based). These same people will also stop buying houses, products etc. Every politician knows this will happen, and they aren't going to let it happen on their watch.
Further, consider some countries with small governments, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, and you see that small government is not a ticket to instant success.
In short, its not as simple as you think it is. Quit boiling down everything to a talking point. The solutions
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You've got a point. I always wonder why it is that libertarians don't move to some place like the Sudan.
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Have you heard of the comedian Robert Newman?
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Not quite. They have similar incentives to businesses. But businesses also, at times, ignore those incentives.
The difference is that if a private firm wastes too much money, it runs out. The government never does.
Also, unless it gets bailed out by the government, it's commonplace for a business to be liquidated and redistributed among creditors and owners.
It takes a major effort to induce even modest reforms in government, and often you just wind up changing the guys at the top. The career civil servants can usually go on the way they always have.
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And because of massive managerial incompetence. Typically, something gets discussed at an Executive-like level. They decide what is needed and which area it's needed in. The top manager of the area it fits in doesn't really know what to do, so he hires an underling (at upper management level). This bloke only really knows about managing people, so the first thing he does is hires two subordinates (mid-level managers). Naturally, these guys aren't the type to do work either, so they hire at least two low level managers, most likely overlapping responsibilities...by the time you get to the actual work, you have 16 or more monkeys, all working independently toward the same goal (ie delievering several funcitionally identical systems), and the workload that basically requires 1 or 2 workers (and maybe a manager), is done by 16 workers managed by 15 managers.... Good people get fed up quickly, and see that their work is basically redundant, and leave. Usually, because their good workers, they will have gained a lot of domain-specific knowledge which now can't be replaced without either hiring multiple people, or paying big bucks for someone who is too important to actually do work. Two types of people remain. Those who are incompetent, but love the security of the work; and those who are quite capable, but have become disenchanted with the state of the workplace (but happy enough with the salary) that they still show up to work, but do little other than update theio FB status.
Yes, smaller is better, but unfortunately the way cuts work is broken too: Big bossman says "we need to reduce number of staff". Naturally, the intermediate managers read this as "we keep the managers, but we cut the workers" and before you know it you have 15 managers sitting around doing nothing because there's no work to be done. Worse still (in Australia, at least) they have this idea of "Natural Attrition". This basically means we allow the workforce to reduce itself - he stop hiring and shift people around to cover any holes appearing. Unfortunately, this ignores the fact that some positions are uniquely qualified. A Customer Service representative would probably have a hard time replacing a qualified IT professional, or a Finance delgate, or someone working for legal....I hate the idea of privatisation but sometimes it really works - because when the bottom line becomes the bottom line work is more likely to get done....
That said, Govt wastage also contributes to lower unemployment rates.
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Didn't realise the conspiracy nuts had gotten this site....it's all about False Flags people....
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Time to get away from your computer, too much binary thinking!
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Suppose these two employees can do it manually most of the time but occasionally there's a problem that causes them to fall behind. Suppose further that when they fall behind, the impact is massive - whether in lost earnings eslewhere, time spent by others assisting or actual damagae occuring somewhere that now needs to be fixed. Suppose further again that this job is being done (very well) by these 2 employees, but requires pretty specialised knowledge - that might take a long time to train, and might be fraught with risk because of the impact of things going wrong. Granted, we're probably still not getting close to $12 million, but I can't think of too many examples where it would cost $12 million to replace to 45K employees - and yes, I have taken into account how incompetent the gummit can be in getting shit done - but I still couldn't get close to $12 million.
I was involved ina project that cost quite a lot, and ran horribly over budget and time and with significantly reduced functionality. It was interesting that each year when they reviewed the (lack of) progress the people who had decided to march on this far were too embarassed to dump it, and would approve another years work because "at least we'll get something out of it in the end"...but I'm sure the gummit is full of a plethora more white elephants than the ones I've encountered....
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Easy, do nothing.
If you look at the numbers historically, the government revenue has never exceeded more than about 25% of GDP. That is, we've tried all sorts of ways to tax people, and the way the politics and economics work out, the government winds up getting about a quarter of what we produce.
The reason we're broke is that on the spending side "payments to individuals" has increased from just a few percent in 1900 to 66% in 2010; we've gone from a government that provided critical services to one that writes us checks. (This is mostly the New Deal inspired entitlement programs.)
We can't extract much revenue from the rich because we're past the point of diminishing marginal returns. If we raise taxes on the middle class, there will be massive political pressure to cut spending. We've had, incidentally, 100% income taxes in the past. It really doesn't accomplish anything.
Our credit rating is already on the brink of being downgraded. As we keep borrowing, it will eventually be downgraded, at which point the cost of borrowing will skyrocket.
Other ways: We've done three rounds of QE, so anything further and we'll start to devalue the dollar. In addition, if bond buyers see the value of the dollar tanking, our interest rates will rise as well.
Even if stimulus spending worked, the last two stimulus programs proved that we're too tied up in red tape to do large public works projects. (The Hoover Dam, for instance, could never be approved today.)
Again, you can take issue with my analysis, but the history is clear: our spending (as % of GDP) has been steadily increasing while revenue has stayed relatively constant. What can't go on forever, won't.
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That's almost always a permissions issue. If you are using ftp, make sure the ftp user has write permission to the remote folder. If you are doing sftp (ssh ftp) make sure your ssh user has write permission to the remote folder.
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For some reason, people seem to think that if we cut staff, we'll force them maggots to do the same work with less - but the reality is that they do less with less (and not necessarily in a linear fashion).
Suppose the government realises it has an inefficient bus system. Cutting the number of drivers will reduce cost - but does nothing to make the system any more efficient. In fact, now we have the same number of routes to cover with fewer drivers - so we can either decide to decrease the frequency of the service(s) or we can increase shift times, and minimise "dead running". Unfortunately, it's possible that our staff was cut to a level where we are absolutely unable to provide the service [i]within legislated heavy vehicle driving time limitations[i] or without overburdening our drivers to the point where sick leave goes up and drivers quit. Additionally, a lot of drivers are now being caught speeding because they are desperate to keep to unrealistic shift timetabling, and this, coupled with their increased workload and tiredness is seeing an increase in accidents - costing not just in lost services, but in repairs to vehicles and legal costs.
Of course, this example is rather fanciful. Let's instead cut staff from the workshop. Now our maintenance interval is increased, which in turn increases the possibility that buses are breaking down. This costs us by having to send mechanics on the road to recover broken buses(ie leaving an already bare-bones workshop), missed services, buses unavailable for shift and snowballs onto drivers who are now under more pressure because of increased delays, passenger complaints and bus availabiulity at the start of their shift to let them start on time.
But I'm making the same mistake you are. I'm over-simplifying the issue. The reality is, no matter how inefficient a government department might be arbitrarily cutting staff does not immediately make them more efficient. It might make them cost less, and it might (in some cases) show that a similar workload can be achieved with less, but any such decisions need to be carefully considered before simply cutting jobs.
It seems almost ironic that on a site where everyone (claimns to) understands the necessity of process in the delivery of quality IT products, we seem to be blissfully blind to the idea that similar skills might be useful beyond IT. Unfortunately, feasibility studies appear to bring overhead that is seen as "not worth it", so instead we look for a panacea that doesn't need any effort to evaluate - which is usually something nioce and simple like "Let's cut cost by not spending money" or "lets make oursleves more efficient by getting rid of the plebs that actually do the work" etc
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ITT: Absolutely bugger-all to do with computers.
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Nope, it happened the opposite way, it was a regular expression, then it became an innuendo. (Just found a quote in a July 1941 Popular Science magazine.)
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I think big or small government is an issue of preference and neither option will never result in maximum happiness for both parties. Each party in this case has a fundamental belief in what's good. On one side it is good that the government regulates and has beneficial services for the public and certain income groups even if there is the inevitable result of corruption, waste, and loss of personal freedoms. On the other hand if the government had minimal function of defense, law enforcement of laws that harm others, and collects just enough taxes to pay for it then that is good even if it results in some people getting lost in the cracks such as not being able to receive preventative medical care, overdosing on drugs, or even being harmed by certain products due to a lack of a warning label. These are two opposing views and I'm sure each side understands the negatives, but believe that they are outweighed by the positives. So pointing out the negatives and positives of either side will not really change anyone's opinion.
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It must be demoralising to realise that felons who are treated better in many countries actually end up with a lower recidivism rate. Don't let the facts get in the way of your opinion, though.
You say you've never done psychology and are choosing to ignore the results of many large-scale studies on the matter? Do tell me more.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha oh ... see, this is what happens when you raise a completely insular generation, America. "They hate us because they hate us", indeed. 'cos, you know, the only sane people in the world are the Americans. Other people just get out of bed one day and become haters. Nothing to do with more than half a century of imperial aggression, oh no...
i ... wha ... really? After Occupy, after a depression, after the economic troubles of the last decade, you think the problem is that America is "appeasing the poor"? Oh lordy. I don't think there's any hope for you.
And this seals it, I think. Diagnosis: 14-16 years old, probably male and white, definitely American, never left the shores of your own continent, and you hang around with others who happily tell you you're the Voice Of Sanity. The only treatment is to expand your horizons. Unfortunately, that'll require you to expend a bit of effort... and who's got the time or inclination for that, am I right?
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In this particular instance, Ramon's happiness in the fact that he's paid to do practically nothing is neither here nor there. It would not be a moral decision to spend a morning amending the process so as to remove the need for Ramon's job, it would be a pragmatic one. Don't look at it as doing a cruel thing by depriving Ramon of a job, look at it as how you are bringing to an end a situation whereby Ramon has been privileged to have a job in which he (effectively) didn't have to do any work.
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You find the same jobs in large companies. It is all the same. However, small government normally means that they collect less money and spend lesser money. However, the bureaucracy stays the same.
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Because when you spend your own money you make sure you're getting some sort of value for it - more or less. Once you have layer upon layer between the people spending money and any detectable benefit then no-one cares. Plus more money keeps being firehosed in so why bother?
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To those who are asking why government is so inefficient:
My experience was that it's because they underpay the market by at least 30%. So, they attract either a) idiots who can't compete in the market or b) decently talented people who see working there (especially if it's in a assistance-related part of the government) as a way to give something back to the community.
Soon, the b's get burned out dealing with the a's and leave, and you have a group of bunglers left behind.
For example, when I worked in a government office, we upgraded a database to SQL Server 2008, moving it (of course) to a new server. Announcing that we'd be doing this in a staff meeting, I was asked by a "senior developer" for some help.
"All you should have to do is change your connection string to the new server xxxx."
"Can you come by tomorrow and look at my process to ensure I do it right?"
"Sure"
I get there the next day, and her "process" was a printed sheet of instructions she performed every day to get some file, import it into SQL, then run a procedure to transform it. It never occurred to this "senior developer" to, oh, I don't know, develop a script to automate the process or something.
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Captcha: genitus
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Not a crime, for one thing.
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Um, no.
(wiki, wiki, wiki)
Hm. I love Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis - listen to the Now Show every week when it's on - but I never heard of Robert Newman.
Should I have? Is the relevant?
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He had a good bit concerning Kermit Roosevelt. If you're into that kind of thing, he has decent historical humour.
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Steve should definitely get more exercise. And stop being a pussy.
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Obviously this may be more or less difficult depending on your city's layout and population, but a cut-down, half-baked service that doesn't work for many people is almost not worth having at all.
(I'll also point out that I think this argument is pretty general and applies whether or not (I think yes) you think government should be in the business of providing transit.)
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Hmm, I get lots of email from Tea Party groups, and I have never once heard them say that they want the government to do everything that it's doing now but for less money. The constant theme is that the government is doing all sorts of things that they believe it shouldn't be doing.
Most Tea Party folks believe that police and fire protection, jails and roads are legitimate and valuable government functions. (BTW those are primarily STATE functions, while the Tea Party is complaining mostly about FEDERAL spending.) I don't know what most would say about Medicare. (Libertarians certainly oppose Medicare.) They'd also include the military, no doubt some other functions.
But I think most TP people would agree that a substantial percentage of federal dollars are spent on things they don't think the government should be doing at all. I think you would be hard pressed to find a Tea Party person who thinks that the government should be subsidizing green energy projects, or should have been involved in the bailouts of the auto companies and the banks, or should be taking over the health care system.
There's a little game here that opponents of the Tea Party like to play: They say, Oh, you don't want to pay taxes, but you still want all these government services. Umm, no, they don't. It is not at all unreasonable to say that A and B are valid functions of government and I am perfectly willing to pay a fair level of taxes to finance them, but that C and D are not valid functions of government and I don't want the government to do those things and I don't want to pay for them.
As I said, I don't think your premise is true, but even if it was, there's nothing irrational about saying, "This is indeed a worthwhile service, but you are doing it inefficiently and so it is costing me too much." Saying that the government should be efficient and provide services at a reasonable cost is not "wanting to have your cake and eat it too", it's "wanting to have your cake at a reasonable price". If the grocery store started charging $50 for an ordinary box of cake mix, I think it would be quite reasonable to say, "I like cake. I was hoping to make a cake for my kid's birthday. But $50 is just way too expensive. Surely if you ran your business efficiently you could sell cake mix for less than that." (The difference, of course, is that if the grocery stored charged an outrageous price for cake mix, I could go to a different grocery store, or if they all charged that, I could find something else to eat. But when the government charges excessive taxes, I either pay them or go to jail.)
Wait, maybe I'm missing something, but I thought Congress approved $60 billion for Hurricane Sandy relief. That hardly qualifies as "denied .. all of the resources they actually need". (And by the way, in typical government fashion, the "Hurricane Sandy Relief" bill included things like $150 million for fisheries in Alaska and $8 million for new cars for the Department of Homeland Security. Never let a crisis go to waste when it can be used as an excuse for more spending.)
In any case, suppose hypothetically that the government did not provide disaster relief. This isn't a far-out scenario: it's pretty much how things worked in the US for most of our history. How would people deal with disasters? People of reasonable means would buy insurance, and it would then be up to the insurance companies to foot the bill. The poor would rely on charity. Charitable organizations like the Red Cross and the Salvation Army would help the poor as well as providing emergency services to all. Big corporations would repair their own stores and factories. People who had the means to buy insurance but didn't would be in trouble, probably have to borrow money, but that's their own fault if they failed to take reasonable steps to prepare for disaster. (Actually, I don't understand why it is my responsibility to not only buy insurance for my own house, but also to pay taxes to provide for the person who didn't buy insurance. I'm perfectly willing to pay for the poor person who couldn't afford insurance, but not for the person who makes more money than I do but chose to spend his money on other things.)
It's not at all clear that such a scenario would result in disaster relief being less efficient. It would likely be much more efficient, because insurance companies and private charities would be more careful about how they spend their money than the government is.
I mostly agree. Yes, if we agree that the government should provide some service, than we have to be prepared to pay taxes reasonably sufficient to cover the cost of that service. I don't know of anyone who disputes that, though. What libertarian or Tea Party person is saying that he expects the government to provide police protection to a major city for $100 a year? No one. This is a non-issue irrelevant to the actual debate.
I'd quibble with your statement that the question of what services the government should provide is unrelated to the cost. One of the major arguments people make for the government providing this or that service is that the government can do it more efficiently than a private organization could because of transaction costs or economies of scale.
For example: The government should operate local roads because it would be impractical and expensive for private companies to collect fees for use of a private local road. They would have to have a toll booth in front of every driveway, and the cost of building all these toll booths and paying people to staff them would be ridiculously high. But if a private company came along and showed that they could pay for the cost of the road by, say, renting billboard space to advertisers and not charge motorists anything, that could seriously undermine the case for it being something that should be done by government.
It's not clear how the existence of a stupid government policy that penalizes people for saving money is the result of the government not having enough money. It's not like the existence of such policies is caused because they couldn't afford to hire someone smart enough to make a better policy. The problem is that they don't care about saving money because, as I used to say all the time when I worked for the government, "It's not like it's real money. It's only tax dollars."
Actually, isn't that an example of exactly why we DON'T want to give the government more money? They have many, many of these stupid policies that result in wasting money, that a private organization could never tolerate. (Because if they did tolerate such policies, they'd go out of business, and some other company with smarter policies would take their place.)
Absolutely. But isn't that exactly the conversation that the Tea Party is trying to start? And exactly the conversation that you are ridiculing them for starting? They say, "We need to re-examine all the things that the government is doing. Many of these are not appropriate functions of government." And you reply -- you said right here -- that you don't believe them or refuse to listen when they say that the government shouldn't be doing so much. You insist that they must REALLY mean that they want all these things done for some absurdly low cost. You then rattle off services that most people would agree are legitimate functions of government and ask how we could possibly function if the government didn't do these. But of course the functions you list are only a fraction of what the government spends money on today. You attack the Tea Party for saying we should examine what government functions are appropriate, and then you attack them for failing to say that we should examine what government functions are appropriate.
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How much lower. Is it worth the risk of another life. How much better should we treat them. They get free cable, they don't have to do hard labor anymore, matter of fact, little is required of them. The only harshness they really face is from other inmates. If there is some injustice in the system, I have no problem removing it, but how much nicer should we treat them. Maybe a spa visit? And then, if recidivism rate is 10% lower, I don't care. If I had a 10% less chance for a felon to commit a murder after being release (in Europe as opposed to America), then it's not worth it.
Never done psychology? Unless you are a psychiatrist, I haven't done any less than you. What I say comes from personal experience. Self-esteem doesn't replace a stable home-life. And I would think I'd have more studies behind me. Let's test it. Take a child with a stable home and no self-esteem curriculum. Take a child with an unstable home but with self-esteem curriculum in school. Which is more productive in life and less likely to do dangerous drugs or end up in crime?
Big strawman there. First off I have to define who I'm talking about. Radical violent groups. Typically they lash out against whoever doesn't agree with them. And if it's just America's problem, why is India, France, Germany, Russia, Somalia, Chad, Israel, etc all have problems with these people. Is it that all these nations are just wrong and the violent backlash is their own fault? How many countries do these groups need to target before someone says, "Maybe their hate is their own fault." But, with liberals everyone else is a victim. No, all these countries are Imperialist scum and deserve to have bomb-laden cars driven into their buildings. This is the appeasement mentality. It's everyone else's fault if someone does something wrong. Must have been their childhood was bad, or someone mistreated them. No responsibility for your own action. The first to blame guns for violence, neglecting pipe bombs (guess we need to ban pvc and pressure cookers, because it's the manufacturer's fault pressure cookers are exploding).
I can't have a logical discussion with someone who insinuates that it's a perfectly normal reaction for someone to blow themselves up during a marathon, or fly into towers.
Shall I take a crack at you? 20-26, male and white (white guilt is strong in this one), American or European doesn't matter, never left the shores of your own continent other than possibly a vacation or cruise, and if European, feels that leaving for a tourist destination counts as cultured. Has a few friends that new someone that isn't white. And if American, lives in the new England states.
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Okay, good point. In reality, there are several more steps here:
(4) measure the real-world performance of the implemented solution (5) compare those measurements to the design goals and identify places where they fall short (6) determine / develop a way to improve the implementation to more-closely achieve the design goals (7) implement the improvement plan (8) go to step 4, repeat until your nation collapses for other reasons
... but I figured that those would be implied ;-)
No, not at all. I was just "slightly ridiculing" you right back. I do indeed grok the humor in the four-way breakdown you offered, and I do realize that you weren't seriously proposing that OP must fit into one of those categories by definition. Still, I hope you don't mind that I took your post as a launching-off point into my own political opinion piece.
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Nice accurate statistic you've got there.
Anyway, if there aren't more WTFs from government, it's probably because most of the colleagues of the perpetrators don't have a clue either, so they never get reported.
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What we actually need is less private companies and more government jobs to take care of employment problem.
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Well, I'll start out by saying that I for one do not receive lots of email from Tea Party groups, so you may have a better picture of what they say they want. But it has been my understanding that the reason they believe the government shouldn't be doing all these things isn't necessarily because they're philosophically opposed to the government doing them at all, but rather, because they just don't want to pay for it. Over the past few years of Tea Party involvement in American politics, I have gotten the sense that the Tea Party would be perfectly content for the government to keep subsidizing green energy projects or bailing out banks, just as long as the money magically comes from thin air instead of having to come from their taxes. It doesn't seem to be the actions of the government that they care about, just who gets the bill.
I could be wrong. I'm neither a political expert nor have I spent time specifically studying the Tea Party. It also could be that my perception has been deliberately skewed by the mass media portrayal of the Tea Party. I will freely concede that I've heard a lot more about Tea Party politicians than about Tea Party voters, too, which no doubt colors my perceptions somewhat, but I think I've accurately explained what I genuinely perceive as their position.
The Tea Partiers successfully pressured Boehner to kill the bill on January 1st. Later, after an outcry, a second bill was brought to a vote, passed on January 29, and signed by Obama on January 31st. But that doesn't change the fact that they stopped the first bill cold.
I want to stick to your points and not digress into a long discussion of the bill itself, but I also want to mention briefly that the vast majority of what the Tea Party called "pork" in that bill was genuine disaster relief to areas other than New Jersey. For example, $4 million to repair storm damage at Cape Canaveral. This is apparently "pork" to the Tea Partiers, who seem to have forgotten the fact that Sandy smashed up a lot of other places before it got to New Jersey. Even the fisheries money was primarily intended to cover the costs of restocking the destroyed fish farms in the Northeast with new, live breeding stock from Alaska. But hey, I guess helping storm-damaged business owners get back to work is "pork" if you're a Tea Partier.
So, if this was actually the Tea Party's argument, then I'd be okay with it. But their objections to the Sandy bill -- heck, their objections to anything and everything -- aren't anything remotely similar to this.
At this point I spent about an hour of my time at work shirking my actual responsibilities and googling for quotes by Tea Party members about the Sandy bill or about other spending. I didn't find a whole lot and I need to get back to my job, so I'll give you two quotes, one about Sandy, one about the bailouts. But please don't take these as the entire foundation of my argument, instead, they're intended as a brief representative sample of many similar things that I've read and heard over the past couple of years:
"[The Sandy bill] is unacceptable at a time when the U.S. is running trillion-dollar budget deficits... Congress should also reduce the cost-share provision for all FEMA declarations... so that most of the costs of a disaster are borne by taxpayers living in the affected state or states." - Owen Graham, columnist for the Heritage Network
Is Mr. Graham questioning whether or not it's appropriate for the government to provide disaster relief? No. His problem isn't with what the government offers, his problem is that he doesn't want to have to pay for it.
"[The Tea Party] began... when... Rick Santelli stood up and said 'what the hell are we doing bailing out people who couldn't afford a mortgage by taking money from people like me who are prudent?'" - Karl Rove
Was Mr. Santelli concerned about whether or not the government should bail out the banks at all? No. His problem isn't with what the government is doing, his problem is that he doesn't want to have to pay for it.
These are both fairly typical of other things that I've heard from the Tea Party. I've never once heard a Tea Party politician state that they're opposed to a bill because it's simply not the government's place to do whatever that bill does. I've only ever heard them oppose bills because of the cost, or because of how the cost passes back to the taxpayer.
If I had to guess, I would guess that the emails you receive from Tea Party organizations probably go out of their way to make themselves look like they're interested in a genuine debate over which roles the government should play. But the elected officials with Tea Party ties don't engage in such a debate once they're in Washington. Instead they simply try to cut, cut, cut as much as they can, a strategy called Starving the Beast. Your statement was "there's nothing irrational about saying, 'This is indeed a worthwhile service, but you are doing it inefficiently and so it is costing me too much,'" and you're right, it's not irrational to say that, but that isn't what they're saying. They're missing the whole first two-thirds of that statement. All that they're saying is "This is costing me too much," and that's not the same thing.
Certainly. I do think that that should be a factor in the debate. (I remember a study four or five years ago which found that the cost of state-government-provided services, if purchased on the free market, would be over nine times higher than the cost when funded through taxes.) But those are debates that the Engineer thinks should happen in step 1. Either we're going to have the government provide roads, or we're not. And yes, the estimated cost of providing roads or not providing them should be factored in. But by the time we get to step 2 we should know which way we're going to go. We definitely should not be changing our minds once we get to step 3.
But the Tea Party isn't saying any of that, except -- apparently -- in the propaganda email lists that you signed up for. If they are saying it, then they must only be saying it to their existing supporters, because they aren't saying it on the national stage where such a debate would have to happen. On the national stage, they've been busy obstructing any government functions without examining whether those functions are appropriate.
The Tea Party is trying to jump all the way to step 3 (implementing change) without ever completing step 1 (figure out what we need) or step 2 (figure out the best way to get there). They've come in with pre-existing assumptions about what we do and don't need. Such assumptions are the precise opposite of the discussion that needs to happen.
Believe me, if I thought that the Tea Party was having that discussion, I wouldn't be attacking them. Maybe it's because of some limit in my perception, but I don't see them having it. And I suspect that the reason you do think they're having it is because you're listening to the narrative that they write and send out.
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Jazz, instead of treating the Tea Party as a group mind which they are not, you might consider the idea that what is being said is that the people who live in a coastal area should pay for the rebuilding costs, people who live and work in New York City should pay for the flooded subways that flooded due to the lack of flood barricades, people who live along the shore in New Jersey should pay the costs of rebuilding their houses, people who live down in Florida by Cape Canaveral should pay for their own storm cleanup, and realize that all that is being said, is "That the people who benefit by living in an area should pay the costs of living in that area."
And by the way, I object to those who not only want to define what is needed, they want me to pay for it. Things like wanting me to subsidize someone else's cost of health insurance, instead of directly addressing the cost of non-insured health care and its impact on those that do not have insurance.
and stop worrying so much about who the organizations are that are saying these things.
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By all means, take a crack. I'm male, non-white, born and raised and living in a "third-world" country in Africa. Which is why I call BS on your alleged "experience". Nobody here gives two damns about "terrorism", and there are certainly no "raids" on villages here (and, by the way, we mostly have towns and cities ... not "villages"). The same is true for the majority of African nations (well, the ones where America isn't drone-killing in, anyway ... you should talk to some Somalis, they'll tell you who the real terrorists are). Now, I suggest that you stop trolling while you're ahead.
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First, probably every party is seen and treated as a "group mind", though none of them really is. While that might be "unfair", it is kind of hard to do otherwise, especially if you are not a member of that party. However, having said that, your following statement does not actually treat the Tea Party as something else as a group mind, so I am not really sure why you brought it up in the first place.
Now, you can have that idea and try to organize everything according to it, but I don't think it will work. It sounds like a good idea in general and certainly is true in a very general sense, but it grosses over so many details it gets pretty useless as a rule to apply to everything. It boils down to the idea that "everyone should pay for their own stuff", which is certainly fine on a small scale, like groceries, cars or even houses, but does not work when it comes to things like floods, earthquakes and even diseases or health care.
No one choses to be flooded, get their house destroyed by an earthquake or to get cancer. No one controls these things. Yet they happen and more often than not, people cannot afford to rebuild their entire house or get some medical treatment. But you just tell them that they can pay for it themselves, because, well, it happend to them and not you. Now you could say that those people should just get some "insurance", but an insurance is also just another way to socialize the costs for something (most people won't get as much mony out of their insurances than they put in and a few get out much more), so insurances are not an option. Thus, the only way to really live by the idea you mentioned is to let everyone to pay for "their" stuff. Which only a few people can actually do. The rest just has to get homeless, stay sick or die. Sounds not like that great of an idea to me. But maybe I just like helping those who cannot help themselves (and I don't care if I also might help a few who don't really need my help).
You don't want to "subsidize someone else's cost of health insurance", but well, if you want more or less everyone to have access to good medical services, you just have to. Maybe it does not have to be some kind of "health insurance", but fact is, some people cannot afford the costs of their health care and some people can afford more than they need for themselves... so why not have the latter subsidize the former? Of course, if you don't think everyone should have access to medical services, you don't need that.
By the way, this discussion really became off-topic very quick...
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I like how all four choices present the chooser in a bad light. Surely this couldn't have happenedc by chance alone, and since your policical credentials are undoubtedly impeccable, one can only conclude that he's a bad person in all possible scenarios. You've sort-of proved it!