Nothing To Fear But Fearlessness Itself? 660
theodp writes "In a post last August, Robert X. Cringely voiced fears that Goldman Sachs and others were not so much evil as 'clueless about the implications of their work,' leaving it up to the government to fix any mess they leave behind. 'But what if government runs out of options,' worried Cringely. 'Our economic policy doesn't imagine it, nor does our foreign policy, because superpowers don't acknowledge weakness.' And now his fears are echoed in a WSJ opinion piece by Peggy Noonan titled 'We're Governed by Callous Children.' She writes, 'We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they're not optimists — they're unimaginative. They don't have faith, they've just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don't mind it when people become disheartened. They don't even notice.' With apologies to FDR, do we have nothing to fear but fearlessness itself?"
Come to California... (Score:5, Insightful)
...to really see it in action. The state legislature approval rating was approaching single digits last I heard.
Do you think a single one of those scumbags give a gnat's fart about it?
They don't have to- not with district boundaries drawn like fractals and the vast majority of you voting the Party line.
Money for Something (Score:3, Insightful)
We should stop putting value on the work of those who make money from money, from paper instruments, rather we should value money for goods. As a socialist, I applaud takeovers; they always lose money. As someone who likes to get paid, I want a return to the time before the Masters Of The Universe ruled our financial institutions.
Re:Come to California... (Score:5, Insightful)
We've been in our own self-made depression for over a decade.
Re:Come to California... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Come to California... (Score:3, Insightful)
and how many of them will get re-elected? everyone hates incumbents except when its the one who's representing you. I've lived in the US since 1981 and the last time I remember that people voted out incumbents was the Republican Revolution in 1994. 2 years into Bill Clinton's presidency, a tax increase and the defeat of hillarycare
Re:Come to California... (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow, way to miss the point. The "mediocrity" you speak of is caused by "disinfranchised callous children" in government: which simply states that they may have "knowledge" of capitalism, but they do not "know" it. They have never experienced failure in their lives and therefor don't grasp the ways of capitalism.
Yet another right-wing nihilism hit piece (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically, the thesis of this piece is the same thing the right wing has been pushing since Reagan's time: government can't work. Nothing that comes out of government can ever be good. We might as well just give up.
Maybe she's right, but history isn't on her side. So this sounds more like sour grapes: Peggy has no hope, because her people have no relevance, and she doesn't like who's in power. So she hopes we will listen to her and lose hope as well, because that way nobody will have hope. Not the Republicans, not the Democrats, not the independents, not the geeks. In that nihilistic world, her folks can waltz in and take over the government and keep pouring our tax dollars into their pockets the way they did under Reagan and both Bushes. Government doesn't work. Might as well send your tax money to Halliburton and Xe.
Re:Come to California... (Score:2, Insightful)
...to really see it in action. The state legislature approval rating was approaching single digits last I heard.
Do you think a single one of those scumbags give a gnat's fart about it?
They don't have to- not with district boundaries drawn like fractals and the vast majority of you voting the Party line.
All I can say is, the Founders got a lot of things right. Including the fact that sometimes leaders squeeze the citizen to the point where he feels he doesn't have options. The Founders tried to enshrine the ability to eliminate such leadership by any means necessary, when necessary, into the core of our legal system. The only remaining question is ... at what point do we have to replace them the hard way? Apparently just voting them out doesn't have very much of an effect anymore.
Why are they still employed? (Score:5, Insightful)
If any employee caused this kind of damage the customers/consumers would sue and employees would be terminated. Yet in this case, we have companies (and hence employees) that are "too big|valuable|important too fail" so they get bailed out.
If I did this at my company (I manage a large mainframe storage environment at a recognizable financial institution on WallStreet), say by blowing away a ton of customer data, I can guarantee I would be walked to the door before the end of the day.
People in peer departments of mine (like those than manage the networks, server admins etc) that have no input to the investment direction of this company's holdings, have lost bonuses, haven't been able to purchase equipment and staff has been cut. We had nothing to do with this bullsh!t, and yet us like the rest of American's are having to suffer while the MBAs reap in the dollars that the Federal Gov't is handing out.
I wish I could get a $200k bonus for blowing away a PetaByte of mainframe storage. Maybe I'll go power off the z10 and see if Obama will bail out my unemployed ass.
They're not clueless, they just don't give a fuck (Score:1, Insightful)
I mean think of betting on a coin flip where you call heads. If it comes up heads, you get a billion dollars. If it comes up tails, the fed bails your bank out for a billion dollars and maybe your bonus this quarter is smaller, but you lose nothing directly, and your bonus is back to normal 3 months later. Kind of makes fearless and stupid betting par for the course.
Re:Come to California... (Score:5, Insightful)
the vast majority of you voting the Party line.
I think that's the real cause of a lot of problems with our elected officials.
V for Vendetta (Score:3, Insightful)
"And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense."
Re:Money for Something (Score:5, Insightful)
We should stop putting value on the work of those who make money from money, from paper instruments, rather we should value money for goods.
Easier said than done. If you do, people stop giving loans, which is the most straightforward way of making money from money. That means no new small businesses, no student loans, no mortgages.
Right now, one of the most interesting ideas in improving life in poor countries is precisely to introduce making money from money. Small loans, with interest, help create vital services. The interest helps fund the continuation as some projects fail.
Capitalism is not the automatic win that the "laissez-faire" crowd presents it as; the problems are real and do not fix themselves (at least not without harming vast numbers of innocent people in the process). But neither is it the automatic evil socialists imagine it to be.
Re:News for nerds? (Score:4, Insightful)
These are the people who (amongst other things) think offshoring technology is a good idea. They don't see the danger, and they don't worry about the implications. Money is money.
It's news that affects nerds at least.
Re:News for nerds? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yet another right-wing nihilism hit piece (Score:4, Insightful)
I always found it odd that people are pushing for more government when they've just been victimized by the last one. Massive corporate welfare, war and rampant waste. Bush was one of the greatest examples of government gone wrong and people actually believe that more of that is a good thing. These corporations are using the power of government to rob the people. Bush wasn't anti-government. After all, his administration passed the patriot act, instituted torture, started two wars, began a massive trillion dollar bank bailout, increased spending more than LBJ... What did he do exactly that makes people believe that he in any way represented the view that "government doesn't work." If anything, it's one of the examples of government that doesn't serve the people by violating rights and through sheer incompetence.
She's without hope, so we must be? (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, so in pretty Peggy's view anything that government does by way of governing won't work. (Didn't she write Reagan's line, "Government is the problem"?) Since Democrats to some extent believe government can be, and should be, effective - well, we should just give up on this. We should become disheartened as Democrats. If "most everyone else" knows that government - which by its nature involves regulation, and public investment, and yes collecting taxes to pay for those activities - is "not a path through," we're left asking "Who is this 'everyone else'?" Pretty clearly it's the shrinking demographic which still identifies as Republican: prevalently old, white, and living in the Deep South - people who last liked government when it was run by Jefferson Davis.
Well, I'm middle aged, white, and live in New England. I'm hopeful. The way through looks obvious, and I see an administration with a fairly good vision of it - even if they're not going nearly far enough in regulating Peggy's friends on the street her Journal's named after. It's so brightly obvious, it's almost blinding. It's based on government, businesses, and individuals each doing our part. Yes, government should not go too far in controlling businesses; but in return businesses have to back way off, as they've gone much too far in recent years into endeavoring to control government. Why do people like Peggy never worry when businesses control government too much?
Threaten to stop the wheel of the world? (Score:3, Insightful)
Who is John Galt?
Why should we be surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
The "top" people in both government and business are spoiled children. From Bill Gates to GW Bush, they had everything handed to them, and when things got tough, their parents bailed them out. In the socio-economic stratosphere of the US, it has never been about merit. It's always been about money, and now we can see what that has bred.
We hear a lot about the sense of entitlement among the baby boomers, but it's almost always in the context of Medicare and welfare for the relatively poor. Now we see what this sense of entitlement does on the grand scale. It's ridiculous when GM assembly line workers expect health care in perpetuity. It's mind blowing to see the same attitude applied to C level executives who think they are entitled to year over year growth, and bonuses, regardless of how bad things really are.
And things are bad. The financial wizards of Wall St. have, almost literally, destroyed trillions of dollar in wealth over the last year. None of them think they did anything wrong, and any who are taken to task for this colossal screw up will cry about how unjust it is. When will people realize that handing the reigns of power to spoiled brats, who have no concept of the consequences of failure, is a stupid idea? Doesn't look like they've learned it this time. Maybe in 10 more years when the next economic crisis is screws everyone but the people who caused it.
It's simply the consequence of corporate psychopat (Score:5, Insightful)
Psychopaths have the desire to reach leadership positions because that way, they can gain the most profit for themselves (not just monetary profit), and they also have the best tools to reach leadership positions, by manipulating others - something psychopaths excel at.
Psychopathic executives will not blink to destroy their own company, a whole industry, or cause food poisoning, water and air pollution, lower the standard of living of hundreds of millions - as long as they have profit out of it. Wake up, guys, with the few exceptions of people like Warren Buffet, corporations are run by highly functional psychopaths.
my eyes, they burn (Score:1, Insightful)
The "problem" (Score:5, Insightful)
The real problem, is that there is no simple answer. Only a complex one.
Is capitalism or socialism the answer? Yes.
Yes, because BOTH are the answer, at the same time.
Allow me to try to explain this, before you explode.
There are things government does well and things private individuals do well, but they are NOT restricted each to a field.
This means that private individuals should be free to engage in business, but not without any controls and limitations. And government should be allowed to interfere if it serves society as a whole better.
You had a little while ago the laughable story about the US press. You saw several posts commenting that either a state run media or a company run media are the only alternatives.
How idiotic, everyone knows that in Europe, BOTH exists, besides each other, fighting each other tooth and nail. THAT is how you get progress. If you think a state run media alone can be independent, you are insane, although not nearly as insane as the idea that company run media will be independent. Fox News is company owned. Case closed.
The US needs to accept that you need a healthy balance between the state and the individual and that this balance can NEVER be achieved, you always will end up with a pendulum swinging back and forth. Things only go wrong if the pendulum is either hanging still or doesn't swing back.
The problem is that you can't get elected with this policy. You need to pick a side and that means in the US that the pendulum can be pulled to far of the center. That is what happened with the credit crisis, to many administrations, from both sides, who did not excersise the control of the state on the financial institutions.
We need to get away from the idea that their is ONE ideology that is the answer. Uncontrolled financial markets are clearly not the answer but neither is total control. What you need to have is the right control at the right time but that can't be achieved, so you need to accept the situation that sometimes there is a bit to much control and sometimes to little without going to extremes.
This middle path is NOT taking the road of least resistance, on the contrary, you will face opposition from all sides, but it is the only one that has been proven to work.
Re:Come to California... (Score:4, Insightful)
You should have elected the Republican. He was a businessman who, even in Michigan's power economy, managed to succeed and had plans to use his contacts to bring more business to Michigan, so everyone could get jobs.
Instead you re-elected Granholm, who had done nothing her first four years and hasn't done anything the second four years. She's just perpetuated the "do nothing and government will take care of you like a big daddy" welfare state. She's encouraged sloth not industriousness.
Re:atlas yawned (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit.
We have exactly three types of politicians: the ones who inherited money (didn't lift a fucking finger to earn it), the lawyers (the ones who make their living by making contracts so incomprehensibly complex that people have to hire lawyers just to read the damn things), and the racist fucks who get donations everytime they say something stupid (see also: Robert "KKK" Byrd, Sheila Jackson Lee, etc).
Ok, we have that one guy over there who isn't, but he's a used car salesman. Would you trust a used car salesman either?
Re:Yet another right-wing nihilism hit piece (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you'll find that the people who actually make the decisions are decidedly not strictly anti-government types. They're whatever benefits me at the moment types and if weaker government furthers that then they'll push for it and if stronger government furthers their goals, they'll push for that. Everyone to some extent is the same way, they try to further their own interests in the ways that they can. The problem comes when the two major power groups feed off of one another and screw the populace. The lesson here is that concentrated power in both its major forms is generally dangerous.
Re:Come to California... (Score:3, Insightful)
No the fault is with the people themselves!
Is America a democracy, yes or no? Do Americans not vote who will represent themselves yes or no?
The issue here is that politicians have learned that it is easier to get people to agree to a hot button issue like abortion and distract them from the issues that matter. People themselves are faulted here! The politicians are only doing what they need to get re-elected.
Sarah Palin is an excellent example of a nitwit politician who knows how to play the hot button issues. She is smarter than most people give her credit for.
If people actually paid attention to the issues and stopped voting on emotions then politicians might change.
California (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and California? What a perfect example. The Granola State (home of Fruits, Nuts, and Flakes) deserves what they got for electing who they elected.
That's callous and unreasonable. (1) We haven't had any good alternatives in a long time. (2) Everyone is too caught up on the lesser-of-two-evils mentality brought about by our first-past-the-post method of election (I'd be surprised if you lived somewhere different in this regards). Combine that with gerrymandering, and congress stagnates. (3) California is said to have the 5th largest economy in the world. Our government hurts our economy (without question) which ripples throughout the rest of the states. (4) The country as a whole has a tendency to follow California's lead. This doesn't predict the future, but it's worrisome. (5) Only the federal government is more beholden to a plethora of special interest groups, making real action nearly impossible to mobilize. (6) Not every Californian voted for these idiots. You're blaming a lot of innocent people. Yes, I've voted for third party candidates before. (I'd support an actual third party if any of them reflected my political views.)
I'm not asking for an apology. Just be careful who you lump in with the "Fruits, Nuts, and Flakes".
Re:It's not fearlessness that's the problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Which is why we are not a democracy, I'd bet that 75% of the population have not done any real reading on any single topic beyond what appears on the front page of their newspaper or in emails their like-minded friends send.
Unfortunately, the population can't really distinguish a leader from an orator like Obama. And many think that being famous gives someone insight into political wisdom. So we get mindless rantings and half-truths from the left and right, and most of the population follow it blindly depending on their own personal beliefs. When people with 'new ideas' like Ron Paul show up, the frustrated run to their half-baked ideas without any real analysis either.
Here is an example
And that, my friends, is really what goes on. Most people latch onto ideas that prove the point of view they already have, and won't take the time to examine any opposing opinion. When presented with such opinions, they shut down or simply state 'you just a liberal/conservative sheep spouting talking points'.
Re:Come to California... (Score:5, Insightful)
People who always vote for the same party. It is simple really. People go on about how votes for third parties doesn't count. But that is a pure lie.
The only vote that doesn't count is the vote that always stay the same, the predictable vote. Because no one has to make an effort to gain that vote. It is simply free.
Re:Yet another right-wing nihilism hit piece (Score:2, Insightful)
What is it that most people seem to be only able to hold extreme views? Government handling everything and government handling nothing is both equally bad. There are things better handled by government, and there are things better not handled by government. If government handles things it shouldn't, it's bad. If government doesn't handle things it should, it's equally bad.
Now in many cases deciding whether it is better handled by government or not isn't easy. But the world just is complicated, live with it. Extreme positions are simply wrong.
Re:News for nerds? (Score:3, Insightful)
This article is the definitive proof that nerds are being governed by brash jocks with tunnel vision. I'd say this qualifies as a classic Slashdot article.
Re:She's without hope, so we must be? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is same duplicity being pushed by Republicans when it comes to health care reform. It starts out, "Yes, we have a health care problem." Then it becomes, "Yes, we (ie, government) need to do something about it." Then, "Oh no, we can't let the government regulate or tax to fix the health care problem; they're the source of the health care problem!" What does that mean? Well, the only "solution" then is to cut taxes on health-care related taxes.
As the adage goes, if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like nails. Unfortunately, sometimes there is a market failure when it comes to allocate resources. When it's non-critical (ie, not health, the elderly, the poor), government very probably shouldn't become involved. But this fanciful idea that markets that function on money will suddenly start working with people without money to spend is ludicrous. Cutting taxes doesn't solve the problem. Nor, really, does this mandatory health insurance. The real solution is universal coverage with progressive taxation, just like nearly every other governmental project. But, I guess pointing out that would alienate the Republican base and do nothing political advantageous.
PS - Yes, Obama's doing the same thing from the other angle. The whole "health insurance subsidy" is clearly a pragmatic (ie, political) attempt to obtain Republican support. Since that's not going to fly anyways, why half-ass it? A major problem with the health care system, anyways, is that it's been so cobbled together there's tons of inefficiency and loads of room for fraud. Real reform means real unification, even if it involves a lot of kicking and screaming from people.
Sociopaths and children of Sociopaths (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Come to California... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, the real problem is our voting system which encourages this lousy bi-partisan system.
Re:Why should we be surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, no, I don't think it's ridiculous for someone in the modern era, in a first world country, to expect health care in perpetuity.
Re:It's not fearlessness that's the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The education system (run by the left wing for the past 30 years)
As I'm not living in the US, could you expand on that a bit? Not living in the US anymore, the only time I hear about political fighting in the schools is when religions zealots [wikipedia.org] complain about not teaching their world view(creationism/ID) as fact. That, and not forcing everyone to adhere to their own religious practices in school. Neither of those sound very left/right to me, more sanity vs. disturbed.
Re:atlas yawned (Score:2, Insightful)
the ones who make their living by making contracts so incomprehensibly complex that people have to hire lawyers just to read the damn things
Kind of like programmers right? Contracts have to be precise and often complex in order to express what is intended.
Crazy pairing of articles (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yet another right-wing nihilism hit piece (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that the current president has shown no signs of reversing damage that the last administration had done and is starting to add more things which may or may not be bad on top of that. I don't consider opposition to the government expansion that Bush did to be an extreme position. Nor criticism of state spending habits when the maintenance of bridges and roads take a back seat to everything else. Bush exploited the power given to him through government; he was a warning sign that something is very wrong with the system.
Re:It's not fearlessness that's the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is an example ... my son won't eat honey because it 'exploits' bees. I explained to him then that he had better stop eating many fruits, because the fruits are also pollinated by those same exploited bees. He simply grabbed onto an idea without really looking at what 'exploited' really means because it suited his purpose, not eating honey.
This is a really stupid example. Fruit is not the product of a bee's labor. They are out there pollinating plants, so that they can make their own food. Which is then "stolen" by a beekeeper. This is very different from what humans do when they eat fruit, even though bees are often tangentially related to that process.
Here's what "exploit" means:
1.To employ to the greatest possible advantage: exploit one's talents.
2.To make use of selfishly or unethically: a country that exploited peasant labor. See synonyms at manipulate.
3.To advertise; promote
Which of these do you think your kid meant? Obviously, number two. You seem to think number one is the ONLY definition that matters. You said as much when you insinuated that your kid "latched on" to an idea without even understanding what the words meant. Your son has an ethical issue with stealing food from animals. There is no contradiction between that and still wanting to eat the products animals help produce but do not consume.
In short, your kid is right. And you are wrong. And an insincere debater, at best.
Re:atlas yawned (Score:5, Insightful)
I think she was talking about the Wall Street bankers and stock brokers who disproportionately come from wealthy families, go to prep schools, get degrees from ivy league schools and then go work at Goldman Sachs, Citi and JP Morgan. They also end being treasury secretaries, on the Federal Reserve and New York Fed (which is the body that actually runs Wall Street though its more like Wall Street runs it) and the President's economic advisors.
If you remember the resignation letter [distressedvolatility.com] of Andrew Lahde after making a killing of the ivy leaguers and quitting rich:
"The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America."
The U.S. Senate also tends to be a rich kids club and is also the place that tends to do the most looking out for the rich, since one senator can often block legislation in the public interest to the benefit of special interest. John McCain for instance wasn't really rich enough so once he got out of Vietnam he dumped the wife that had stood by him while he was a POW and married a more attractive women who happened to be an heir to a sizable fortune of an Arizona beer distributor, and who were politically connected enough in Arizon to get him elected to the Senate.
And of course the Bush clan are the epitome of the stereotype though they've only been a part of America's new aristocracy for about a century.
One reason Carter, Clinton and Obama were so skewered in the White House is the rich WASP/Jewish aristocracy considers them to be poor trash and not worthy of running their piggy bank. Clinton and Obama in particular had stellar educations but were born to poverty so aren't acceptable by "the establishment".
Re:atlas yawned (Score:4, Insightful)
At the local politics level, what you say is often true. Local politics are often the most useful, anyway.
However, at the national level, this is almost never true. National politics are popoulated nearly entirely by the priveledged old boys club.
Re:Yet another right-wing nihilism hit piece (Score:3, Insightful)
When we're already in the situation of tyranny tempered by incompetence, the last thing I want is more competence.
Re:Money for Something (Score:5, Insightful)
No. In capitalism, the aristocrats -- the owners of capital -- are left free to make their own choices, and succeed by them, or be rescued by their cronies. The working classes -- including the professionals, all the folks who actual do productive work rather then skim off the top -- are left to scurry around in the footsteps of the giants, trying not to get crushed.
Re:Socialism and capitalism both suck. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the conservative view on every topic of import: the status quo is the best system possible. (That the capitalist his or her self enjoys some privilege under the status quo is, of course, merely co-incidental.) "I can't imagine any system better than our slave plantations. It's always been this way and people don't change."
"I can't imagine any system better than keeping women in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant. It's always been this way and people don't change."
"I can't imagine any system better the segregation. It's always been this way and people don't change."
This is always the heart of the conservative view -- at least, that of mainstream American conservatism, of the sort that stands athwart history yelling "Stop!". It's always wrong, and always gets bowled over.
I suggest Tim Kreider's essay [thepaincomics.com] on the subject:
Re:She's without hope, so we must be? (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the more basic reasons "governing wont work" is that politicians and regulators are easily captured by special interests who have the money, the time, the connections and the motivation to manipulate the government. A few million well placed lobbying dollars and campaign contributions can yield multi-billion dollar windfalls at the expense of the American people.
You kind of have to wonder why the conservative Republicans complain so much about big government because for at least the last 10 years, and really a lot longer than that, they have been the most adept at exploiting it for their own gain. Only reason they are complaining about lately is they aren't in power as of 2006/2008. The potency of their vitriol against big government only spikes when they aren't in power. When they are in power they tend to be more OK with it, and their complaining about is empty rhetoric which acts as cover while they are looting it.
I often shudder to think what this country would be like if the Libertarians won and everything was completely deregulated. Chances are the foxes would devour all the chickens. But, when you see how our government actually works, especially lately, the Libertarians actually have a point. Much of the pillaging and devastation is being aided, abetted or actually initiated by politicians and regulators who have been captured by special interest, so they give legal cover to the pillaging, and trillions of dollars are transferred from unlucky powerless groups to lucky powerful ones. For example, senior citizens are completely looting younger working people to get 20, 30 and 40 years of Medicare and Social Security though they actually paid very little in to the system. Oayroll taxes were jacked up from nothing to 12.5% in the early 80s so most seniors didn't pay anything in but are taking huge sums out.
It is quite possible things might actually work better under real Libertarianism where Wall Street bankers get absolutely no assistance from the Fed, Treasury, Congress or the President. They get no tax shelters, no government backed loan programs and most importantly NO bailouts when they screw up and should fail. The absolute worst thing done in the last couple years was the complete destruction of moral hazard which is the most crucial foundation of Capitalism. If you know that if you fail the government will bail you out you don't have free market capitalism any more, you have state capitalism(i.e. Fascism) which is what I think we have now.
Chances are a few banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs would still end up running the world under Libertarianism but I have reached a point that I would like to see the government get the hell out of it and let them sink or swim on their own. It couldn't be any worst than what we have now.
Unfortunately I've come to the conclusion there is NO political/economic philosophy that actually works in practice. Every one devolves in to some small group acquiring all the wealth and power and screwing it out of everyone else. In some systems its party members and bureaucrats, in others it politicians, and in others its bankers and CEO's. As Shakespeare thoroughly outlines a long time ago, we are a species with vicious tendencies that spiral completely out of control in the people who aspire to power and wealth and there seems to be no way to stop those people.
Re:Money for Something (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't be an idiot. Everybody with a bank account is an "owner of capital."
Re:Yet another right-wing nihilism hit piece (Score:2, Insightful)
We're better off with a competent government. After all, the military is already quite competent. If another civil war broke out, the military would already oppress us quite competently. So we've got the problems of competence with none of the benefits.
Re:News for nerds? (Score:4, Insightful)
They don't believe it does affect them. If they have money, then that money can be relocated, so they don't care whether the software company they own is in the USA or in India or wherever. And if some of the owning class still choose to live in the USA, then that's fine for them too because their wealth disparity will be all the greater.
Re:Money for Something (Score:5, Insightful)
Right; because there's no difference between someone who supports a family on $50k per year with no inheritance and someone who:
a) is supported their whole life and gets $millions in inheritance/giveaways
or
b) gets a job that pays $hundreds of thousands per year (or millions) because of who they/their parents know
All of those people have equal opportunity to invest, by which I mean be owners of the expensive things necessary to get work done rather than the people actually doing work.
I'm not saying people who start with no money can't succeed, or people who start with money are guaranteed to succeed. I'm saying people with a healthy start (or ludicrously easy start) discount just how many times they can fail without consequences, and how much easier it is to succeed, in comparison to people with a middling or disadvantaged start.
Re:They're not clueless, they just don't give a fu (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not going to discuss the bailouts, but this isn't as good a point as you think. Assuming you end up losing (even a little less than) a billion if you get tails, that's actually a good bet from a financial perspective. The expected value of the bet is greater than 0. Make this bet a thousand times and you will most likely end up ahead.
You "just" need a lot of cash flow to make it work in you favor, in the long term. This is how casinos operate, for example.
I do work in a related field (I am a "research analyst"). The whole point is to make bets that are beneficial to you. Because if you're placing lots of bets, statistically speaking under some modest assumptions, some will win and some will lose. And if you're making bets beneficial to you, you will win more from winning than you will lose from losing. On the one hand, this requires a certain amount of "risk tolerance" or even callous fearlessness about money and risk.
People often conflate this educated risk tolerance with something sinister. It's not.
Re:News for nerds? (Score:2, Insightful)
> These are the people who (amongst other things) think offshoring technology is a good idea
It arguably *is* a good idea. If you can hire 3 engineers in India for the price of one in the USA, then yes, it harms that one in the USA, but it helps *three* in India. I'm operating from the assumption that an Indian is just as valuable as an American, so there's a net gain of two people finding good jobs. If your premise is that Americans are more important than everyone else in the world, then you might reach a different conclusion.
It's also better even for the rest of the USA. I recently bought a made-in-China power tool for $50. The made-in-USA equivalent cost over $200. So yes, it harms the few people making those tools in the USA, but not only does it help the person in China making them, it means that far more people in the USA can afford the tool at all. It increases the standard of living of all the people who were not involved in producing that tool in the USA, *and* it increases the standard of living of the people in China who did produce it.
So yes, there are tradeoffs; some are harmed, but more are helped than harmed. Overall, offshoring is a benefit in the aggregate.
Re:Why should we be surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you on some sort of highly potent, neurologically destructive crack cocaine? "Indefinitely"? The average lifespan in the first world average something under 80. Considering a retirement age of 65, that's about 15 years average of medical care. The "worthless" (what are you, a sociopath?) "incapacitated" elderly people will make up a minor percentage of that group. Of course, those that need the most expensive care will likely die sooner than 80, on average.
Oh, did you want an actual answer as to who is going to provide this care? The answer is you. And then, when you get old, someone else will pay for yours. See how this works out? No, you probably don't. Don't like it, do you? Nobody cares.
More nonsense, ad nauseum (Score:3, Insightful)
People aren't push for MORE government, wizardfarce, but for honest and legal government.
The prob today is the Corporate Fascist State, i.e., the banksters have taken control of the government. To paraphrase Prof. Taleb from a year or so ago, during the Great Depression there was pushback, but in the present, the sheeple have allowed the banksters to take over. I guess Americans were smarter back then. Certainly, today we the sheeple require a kick-ass president on the level of a Teddy Roosevelt....instead we have ourselves a Yeltsin!
Re:Money for Something (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't be an idiot. Everybody with a bank account is an "owner of capital."
And laws against vagrancy are completely egalitarian - the millionaire is no more permitted to sleep on the street than is the poorest pauper.
Re:Why should we be surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
Whenever the govt. takes forward looking action you drag it down, if they don't take action you drag them down. You refuse to spend any money but expect everything done for you, you don't want immigration but you want ever cheaper services, you want high paying jobs but you also want home grown industry (who want to pay less and profit more). Then there is this messianic longing for the world "the founders" intended despite the fact that the world is a very different place from 200 years ago. Back then there was a whole continent to conquer and environmentalism was non-existent, you could kill all the animals and rape the land. But you've had to find out the hard way that you can't keep that up for ever. And you still haven't learned. Now when your resources get low you take from another country, and pretend you're liberating them. The funds you promise to spend to help their democracy rebuild end up in your own pockets, and then your bankers sell fraudulent stocks and get rewarded by the worlds taxpayers. You complain about not being able to get loans and start new companies, but if you really wanted to start a company you don't need a loan - fucking save the money yourself ! Oh, but then the risk would be all yours, we can't have that. Playground politics, playground economics, and playground foreign policy. Grow up.
Back when the "founders" wrote their document, people actually got off their asses and did something to better their lives. You lot won't get off your ass to change the tv channel. You're the Peoples Front of Judea.
WSJ full of Right-Wing Mantra (Score:4, Insightful)
The WSJ article is highly un-balanced. While it talks repeatedly about the "sins" of too much government, it barely mentioned the role that deregulation played in the current mess.
Here's an exmaple:
The implication made is that they left mostly because of taxes. However, they never justify that with a reason-for-leaving survey, etc. They simply run with that assumption. The WSJ does this often, as do most Murdock-own publications.
Re:Money for Something (Score:2, Insightful)
Right; because there's no difference between someone who supports a family on $50k per year with no inheritance and someone who: blah blah blah
The point is, the middle class owns the vast majority of American capital. All savings is investment. This is a trivial accounting identity.
Your ideology isn't going to change that. Whining about the "owners of capital", when they're you and your friends and your family and neighbors is not productive. Calling the largest segment of the American population an "aristocracy" is utterly foolish.
/facepalm (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, you don't need Einstein to tell you than when you offload real risk from the lending institution to investors, that the lenders and their middle-men will make crater-loads of money, while people that buy the products that they off-load the risk to have no real idea of its trustworthiness. The fact that investment banks that then sold off these packages while at the same time making exotic and wildly speculative bets against (or on) them completely destabilized the international financial system.
If you want to blame the Community Reinvestment Act or other similar legislation to kickstart lending to low-income areas, you are free to, but to convince others you better have some real evidence to back it up.
Re:Yet another right-wing nihilism hit piece (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd suspect this blind loyalty is due to two things.
First, a lot of people seem to be raised and indoctrinated with a particular viewpoint even as young children. From a young age, they're told repeatedly how bad the "other guys" are, and told what they need to believe in. Rather than develop their own views based on experience and reason, they're basically told "here's what you're supposed to think, now justify it".
Second are the people who develop their own opinion on one issue, find the party/group that supports it, and then blindly supports the rest of those views without even looking at them.
Frankly, I'm sick of all the partisan bullshit in this country. We have representatives being lambasted for representing the views of their constituents instead of marching the party line. We have people expressing virulent hatred for people of the "other party" when they can't even give a reasonable explanation of an issue to begin with--all they know is the filmmaker/talk-radio host/community organizer/pastor told them it's bad, and by $deity, that's what they're going to believe.
Re:Come to California... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's changed?
The number of voters represented by each congressman.
Re:News for nerds? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not if your an American....not if you are a US citizen and wanting a home and to feed your family. At that point...you don't give a flying fuck about giving your job to 2 people abroad.
It is one thing to give and care about others in the world, but, rarely is someone altruistic enough to do so at the expense of their quality of life.
Re:Come to California... (Score:2, Insightful)
If Sarah Palin is both a nitwit, and smarter then most people, then is she not of above average intelligence and therefore as qualified as anyone (and apparently more qualified then most) to have an opine? Just asking --it's rhetorical --and intentionally side steps Palin's actual value or lack thereof.
He didn't say Palin is "smarter than most people", he said she's "smarter than most people give her credit for".
In other words, if most people think Palin is a complete moron, with the intelligence of a particularly dim bacterium, but she's actually as smart as a special-needs fruit-fly, then although she may be really stupid, she's still smarter than people think she is.
Given most people's low opinion of Palin's intelligence, this wouldn't be surprising...
Re:News for nerds? (Score:3, Insightful)
You have a wrong definition of nerds. Nerds like to solve problems, preferably technical ones. There are many low-cost cool nerdy things (like those smartphone-based virtual reality goggles).
If there is little money to begin with, either the toys gets cheaper or there will be a different set of toys available for the nerds to tinker.
Re:News for nerds? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right in the fact that in a certain sense it is a good idea, and outsourcing to quality people(and as much as I've wished in the past it wasn't so, there are some damned good and highly qualified IT folks in India) isn't necessarily a bad thing.
The problem with the American version of outsourcing is that it's very short sighted, like a lot of US policy government or otherwise.
Outsourcing is immensely profitable because you can buy goods at foreign prices and sell them to Americans at American prices. The problem with this is that as you lower employment in the US and move money overseas, there is less of it in the US to support US prices. Eventually the standard of living in the countries you outsourced to will rise increasing your outsourced costs, and the standard of living in the US will lower decreasing your revenues.
There's certainly something to be said for the idea that averaging out the world standard of living, but it's not a particularly great long term strategy for the US market. Particularly not luxury markets which may be cut out entirely if standard of living drops sufficiently.
That said, the United States economy is probably irrevocably fucked anyway at this point. The national debt skyrocketed out of control under Bush(even worse than it was under Reagan), and though I believe that most of the changes are necessary there's really no money left for any of Obama's plans to fix anything(isn't it funny that Reagan and the Dubya who are supposed to be from the party of small government are responsible for the vast majority of US debt?). The dollar is no longer considered safe and will likely continue dropping against nearly all major foreign currencies(possibly excluding the GBP which is also screwed). Most importantly, the US has done almost nothing to change any of the factors which got it into the position it is currently in. There has been no change in attitude towards sustainable economic policies(and I'm talking finance not environment here), or towards any of the economic stabilizers like workers rights and protection from unfair termination(you'd be amazed what having the vast majority of your population fairly confident they're not going to be randomly fired can to for keeping your economy a bit more stable). The US has been digging a hole under itself for a long time now, and it is about to fall in. It's going to be a long fall, and it may not be possible anymore to prevent it.
Personally this doesn't particularly please me for all that I live in another country now. I see a lot of people who want to see the US get its comeuppance, but I'm not sure how thrilled I am with the prospect of a world in which the primary super power is China. The US has made and continues to make an awful lot of mistakes, and it may be that the only way for us to learn from those mistakes is to face the consequences, but at the same time a large proportion of the western world depends on the US for military security. Even without that, while US foreign policy is often short sighted and misguided, it is largely well intentioned and I still hope that it isn't too late to prevent the coming fall.
Re:News for nerds? (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of techies are for all intents and purposes illiterate, at least when it comes to any form of communication which the general populace can understand.
That's not to say that style over substance isn't a bad idea, but I've met very very few techies over the years who would make even remotely good managers, let alone high level executives in any company which wasn't 100% technically based.
It's not necessarily important for engineers to be in executive level positions. A lot of them would make a complete hash of it the same way that having a lot of people who are currently executives wouldn't work either. What is important is for executives to hear and to value the opinions and knowledge of engineers, programmers, etc where it is applicable to the health of the overall business. The problem is that by the time any technical advice has passed through half a dozen middle managers to finally reach someone who can actually do anything with it, it's become so garbled that it doesn't make any sense, even if they were going to listen to it.
That said, it's not just management's fault either. I know a lot of tech people who think they know how a business should be run, who haven't any sort of clue whatsoever. I've seen a lot of people who think that IT should drive the direction of the business as opposed to the business driving the direction of IT. IT is, for the most part, a service industry, and we all forget that more often than we should.
Re:News for nerds? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right, I don't care about Indians or Chinese, nor do I think we ought to be supporting their welfare unless they want to become the 51st and 52nd states.
China you can argue is a country that is going to at least make good on the money we give it, an investment there is an investment in someone's future. However it stands for pretty much the exact opposite ideals that we stand for in the USA (and that Europeans generally want to believe in). They haven't met a civil liberty that they wouldn't trample. Their commitment to communism equals only their commitment to capitalism: the people may suffer as long as the status quo marches on. India? Replace evil ideals with poverty and corruption. Investing there is like flushing money down the toilet. How does that help anyone?
So in the process of impoverishing that American, you're also hurting his country, and also hurting the ideals that enable the free world to be free. You don't have to like America, but you would be a complete moron to not understand that the free world is safe, as long as we're here doing whatever we do. It doesn't matter if we're fighting a war that doesn't need to be fought in Iraq, or if we're late to show for world wars you do happen to care about, the key point is top to bottom we do value what we have and we will help protect it, as long as we have the resources and know how to do so. That doesn't mean that a few very short sighted people will not sell us out to make a quick buck, and then wake up one day wondering why the villagers are lined up outside their castle with pitchforks and torches.
It doesn't matter if you end up with a cheaper power tool if you lose the jobs required to pay for it, or you lose the edge on technology required to build more and better tools. Talking about "unskilled factory jobs" moving offshore was 30 years ago, we're losing science and engineering jobs at record rates. The only thing we're keeping are service jobs and managerial jobs, none of which is going to keep us in a position of power for very long. I don't know how many managers it takes to invent a light bulb, but I suspect it will get lost in committee before we find an answer.
Re:It's not fearlessness that's the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a reasonable reason for limiting it to the last 30-40 years. Both the Republican and Democrat parties before that time period had much different agendas than the ones they do now.
OTOH, your argument that this biases the figures against the Republicans is also valid.
To me the variation between individual presidents seems larger than the variation between the parties in how they spend money. E.g., Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Johnson (and, to a lesser extent, Kennedy) spent money on developing the social infrastructure. Many spent significantly on wars with unclear purposes and no clear beneficial result (and many undesireable results). Note that I carefully phrased that to exclude Roosevelt, and that this *was* intentional. I have not been satisfied with the justifications used for ANY major military conflict since WWII. (I wasn't very aware of the Korean conflict, but that's one that I'm not aware of the justification for how we participated.)
I am definitely not what people call a pacifist, but I also dislike being treacherously lead into violent actions. E.g., the whole Viet Nam war's justification appears invalid. It occurred because we refused to accept the decisions of an international conference, and it turned people who could have been our allies against us. And for no reason that was ever made clear. And note that this was a big part of Johnson's expenses. There are others to which the same analysis applies. We incurred expenses for wars initiated by our dishonorable behavior. (Sometimes it was only our own expenses that were do to our dishonorable behavior, and the wars would have happened anyway, sometimes without our dishonorable actions the wars wouldn't have happened.)
N.B.: I'm *not* claiming that we have acted more dishonorably than most countries do. Instead I'm claiming that our dishonorable behavior has been very expensive, has cost us allies, and hasn't produced much in the way of publicly observable gains. Some have claimed that these wars are for the benefit of private interests, but I'm not certain. Clearly there are private interests that benefit, but it's not clear that they are effectively initiating the dishonorable actions, rather than just taking "low hanging fruit".
If you make your decisions on the basis of Democrat vs. Republican, you are making your decisions on a false basis. The only consistent difference that I've noticed between them is that the Democrats are more interested in having people like them, and the Republicans are less interested in that. They both seem to have the same goals, and largely the same methods.
Re:News for nerds? (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, rest easy on that worry. The US is not fucked. The article is a typical doom and gloom polemic that simply isn't true. Good not to be blind to such possibilities, but it isn't going to happen. Yes, many of the so-called captains of industry have their lofty positions through nepotism and inheritance, not merit, and that's bad for everyone. George W. Bush is the archetype of that sort of thing. He couldn't run a business worth a damn, not the several oil ventures he tried, not the Texas Rangers, and certainly not the US. He was elected by people just like him, who managed to convince enough of the rest of us that they did know how to run a large organization. And they got what they wanted, a country run by the Man, for the Man, and it was terrible. The article is quite right about all that.
But that's not America. They really don't have the control of America the mainstream media seems to think they do. The Bush presidency would have been a much bigger disaster if that were so. Iraq was in a sense Bush's biggest oil venture ever. But America is not a ship that when steered towards a reef will blindly bull onto the rocks. Plenty of us see that stability in oil rich countries is not a long term solution to our energy needs, and while the Bush government was wasting effort and resources on Iraq, many people inside and out of America were continuing work on real solutions. "Drill, baby, drill" did not win the election this time. Yeah, so we're currently in the Great Recession. The fools were going to blow their wealth sooner or later anyway, and the media was going to have a field day about it. They sure can't handle money, but many of us here can, we just aren't into that like we are into technology and science, or we'd all be a lot richer, on paper anyway. We understand there's more to life than money, and that money does not measure all forms of wealth. I am speaking as one of the 80% of the employees who just had our positions with a small company cut way back 2 days ago, thanks to inept management and delusions meeting reality. We all saw this coming, and none of us were so stupid as to keep on partying like the paychecks were never going to stop.
A few kids can still pop up from anywhere with the next big disruptive technology and throw all the captains' unimaginative, plodding, pedestrian planning into a black hole. And, Peak Oil? Bring it on! Life can get pretty boring, you understand. Chinese might think "may you live in interesting times" is a curse, but we like a little excitement. The biggest impediment to working out new transportation and energy systems isn't technological ineptitude however much you might read about how the US isn't educating enough scientists and engineers, it's that the status quo is still very comfortable. China putting a man on the Moon would be wonderful, as that would almost certainly lead to US attempts to rise to the challenge by perhaps something like a visit to Mars. Pay no attention to any wailing about how cleaning up our act will destroy our economy, as was often hysterically said about the Kyoto protocols. Might destroy some existing business models, why else do you think there's screaming about it? We're plenty inventive enough to work out these and other problems, and they really aren't impossible.
Re:It's not fearlessness that's the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
The argument that honey isn't vegan because bees are killed in the process has some merit. But again, eating that organic apple may have been possible because some bee keeper was hired to pollinate the orchard, and he sold the honey. Someone who eats the apple but doesn't eat honey is being a hypocrite unless they have verified that the apple was pollinated 100% naturally from non-exploited sources.
That's not true of all fruits. Date palms, for instance, are male and female. There are no natural pollinators of dates as they are wind pollinated, so it is common practice to hand pick the pollen sheaths from the male plant, extract the pollen, and apply them by hand again to the female plants. The female flowers are then covered with a large sack to keep insects and animals from eating the dates, and to keep the ripe dates from falling to the ground and being ruined.
Of course, eating dates perpetuates the exploitation of low skilled workers by the bourgeois upper class. So if one cares about one's fellow human beings, I guess they need to only get dates from collective farms where all workers carry an equal share.
If one truly wants to not exploit bees, they need to do further homework to determine which growers do not use bees, or which fruits are pollinated without them. THAT was the point of the discussion with my son. Don't take a valid point and misuse it to suit ones on purpose. Understand it and apply it without prejudice.
Re:Why are they still employed? (Score:3, Insightful)
If any employee caused this kind of damage the customers/consumers would sue and employees would be terminated. Yet in this case, we have companies (and hence employees) that are "too big|valuable|important too fail" so they get bailed out.
It has been observed that companies that are "too big to fail" will, instead of attempting to remedy or avoid their calamity, ensure their own disaster on the basis that the have a guaranteed bail-out. This perverse incentive is one form of the moral hazard [wikipedia.org].
In essence, being too big to fail has become a form of (unpaid for/externalized) insurance against failure because you can rely on the taxpayer to bail you out. The likelihood (and amount) of a bailout increases with the magnitude of your failure.
i'm uncomfortable with this idea (Score:3, Insightful)
#1. we're all psychopathic to some degree or another
#2. it excuses criminals. rather than start with idea of a human who has erred, you start with the idea there's something special about someone that has made them a criminal. no: good people go bad, and bad people go good, and whatever someone's flaws, you talk about their criminal acts, not this supposed otherworldly quality about them that means they are forever more this cartoonish stereotype of behavior. it also ignore st eh fact that YOU can commit these crimes, which you can, under the right conditions. you put your guard down
#3. it perpetuates this stupid idea of a magical "other", some sort of special class of people who can have superhuman powers of turning off their empathy and lording over us. its an "us" versus "them" situation, and its the same old retarded thinking from throughout history. it also makes you think you can't succeed, because only a psychopath can truly run a business
this is the truth: you can do any of the crimes you see snakes in suits do. snakes in suits are as flawed as you and me. there's nothing special about them, except the crimes they've committed, which they should be prosecuted on that basis and that basis alone. not this quasi-cartoonish idea of a "psychopath"
the word has become a massively overused mental shorthand for "bogeyman" and does not retain its narrow psychological definition. therefore, it as useless as any other overused synonym people use for bogeyman, like "socialist" or "terrorist"
Most of you are missing the point (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not even a specifically American problem. Simply put, our so-called heroic leaders have no idea what to do with their power, a bit of a problem since we have no intention of doing anything to help.
To quote (as I often do) Voltaire's Bastards [amazon.co.uk]:
We are profoundly conformist and authoritarian, the biggest cowards in history. We wait for a disaster so we can fix it, rather than taking preventative measures, all the while hoping someone else will do it for us.
Re:Why should we be surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
Those at the top expect MUCH MUCH more than the lower and middle class. The lower and middle class expect a safety net where they can always eat, always have a place for them and their families to live and always get necessary healthcare.
Those at the top expect to always make more in a single year than most make in a lifetime. They expect to always have 2 nice houses and to never ever have to think about what anything costs. They expect to be able to fail repeatedly and feel no pain. They expect to be able to do such a crappy job that the company is poised to go down in flames and not only keep their job until ready to quit, but to get a big fat bonus as well. Often a bonus large enough to support a middle class family for a decade or more.
It's easy to spew economic platitudes like "you win some, you lose some", to treat mass layoffs like they're a gift from heaven, and to proclaim universal healthcare and welfare to be foolish luxuries when you're in a position to never in your lifetime ever wonder how you'll pay the mortgage, buy food, or afford life saving medical care.
Re:News for nerds? (Score:4, Insightful)
"I recently bought a made-in-China power tool for $50. "
Thou art a fool, and probably the son of fools.
If you had bought that $50 dollar tool made-in-India, I would ask you how well the tool worked, and how long it lasted. But, I know how well that $50 made-in-China power tool worked out. It has 1/4 the power of the "comparable" American made tool, and it will last about 1/10 as long.
In short, you are full of shit, because there is no "made-in-China equivalent". Replace China with any of a dozen other nations, then you'll have my interest. Korea, Taiwan, India, Vietnam - there are indeed a lot of Asian markets who are undercutting us on goods that might be comparable. But, it sure as HELL isn't China.
Bought any milk products, lately, from China? Drywall? Children's toys? Clothing?
No wonder you post as Anonymous Coward - you have your head up your ass, or you are being paid by China to astroturf for China.
Re:News for nerds? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not necessarily important for engineers to be in executive level positions. A lot of them would make a complete hash of it the same way that having a lot of people who are currently executives wouldn't work either.
A lot of sales and marketing guys make a complete hash of things - look at Fiorina, for instance. The fact that most people wouldn't be good CEOs is no reason to pick them from the ranks of the sales department.
I've seen a lot of people who think that IT should drive the direction of the business as opposed to the business driving the direction of IT.
IT is the part that keeps your desktop running and the lights on in the datacenter. Perhaps you mean software development? Where I work, we are dictated what to build and how, rather than being given goals and expected to achieve them. We have little to no ownership, are treated like cogs, and haven't any budget to spend on tools and support automation. As a result, we spend up to half our time fighting fires.
Re:News for nerds? (Score:3, Insightful)
It arguably *is* a good idea. If you can hire 3 engineers in India for the price of one in the USA, then yes, it harms that one in the USA, but it helps *three* in India. I'm operating from the assumption that an Indian is just as valuable as an American, so there's a net gain of two people finding good jobs. If your premise is that Americans are more important than everyone else in the world, then you might reach a different conclusion."
it is also a good idea to hire Indian or Chinese CEO's and managers. You can hire hire 3 of them for the price of one in the USA. Why outsource only non-CEO's and managers?
Re:It's not fearlessness that's the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, the crash did come on Bush's watch, and his administration was part of the problem and wouldn't face the issue in order to become part of the solution. However, it wasn't entirely Bush's fault. The biggest part of the problem was the American people; they bought houses they couldn't afford, second houses, etc. They voted in anyone promising not to raise their taxes in order to pay for the programs they also demanded. Americans also decided that science and technology were luxuries; that by endorsing an Educational establishment that had no respect for science and technology was somehow a winning formula. The children of the '60's were too good for science and tech, they sent their children to Business School. The result was Business School Product that thought nothing of shipping anything not nailed down out of the U.S.
There is plenty of blame to go around, and Bush's Administration did not nothing to stop the slide, including pissing on science by thinking it could be made to support their policies. In doing so, they made toilet paper out of clear rational thinking; but they also had a lot of help. So much help that it encouraged an America to vote in Obama who never saw a promise he couldn't make. Now we can have some serious deficit spending.
Re:News for nerds? (Score:2, Insightful)
You say that as if you're surprised. I think it's pretty clear that one of the Republican long-term goals is to get rid of Social Security, but since that would injure them with respect to getting votes from the elderly as badly as the civil rights movement damaged the Democrats in the South, the way they've decided to do it is by bankrupting the Federal Government through massive spending programs on projects that pump money into their own pockets and those of the people who vote for them. Once the Fed actually goes bankrupt they can say "see, we HAVE to cut SS because we're broke! It's not our fault!" and not lose the critical (and growing) elderly demographic that they need.