Showing posts with label government. Show all posts
Showing posts with label government. Show all posts
Friday, September 14, 2012
Good men do not HOPE for revolution. It is simply to be endured.
I was discussing the mess in out government, and the apparent intractability of cleaning it up with my friend Mark Smith. I have often called for there to be few laws, rigorously enforced, and applied evenly without exception. I think the whole of the law should be 10,000 words (or less!), double spaced 12 point font on 8 x 11 paper. If they want to put something in, they should have to take something out. No regulations or other fine print not specifically laid out in that law should exist. There should be no tax code, or getting around this limitation by making an addendum, etc.
You should be able to sit down and in an afternoon learn how your country works and is regulated from a-z.
Additionally there should also be no more than 3 levels of management in any government entity except the military. Managers should manager no fewer than 8 employees. Professing ignorance of the doings of your subordinates should be cause for immediate dismissal.
Mr. Smith had similar views, and here I am paraphrasing "Our laws are ... not meaningless. They are INTENDED to be dense, confusing and TOTALLY dependant upon "the clerks" to enlighten we, the benighted. They create these complex laws and regulations on purpose. It is by design. Therefore it CANNOT be "fixed". If you refuse to name the enemy, you cannot fight him and you surely cannot win. Capitalism has "creative destruction" as a KNOWN mechanism that CAN be implemented to "fix" problems. There is NO SUCH MECHANISM in EXISTANCE for "government" or a bureaucracy. The only mechanism in existence is "revolution". It is to be avoided."
I was going to say Maximilien Robespierre had a solution, but it didn't work out well for him.
"Revolution is ugly, messy and TERRIBLY inefficient. It is to be avoided at all costs if at ALL possible. It does NOT go easy on the weak either. Good men do not HOPE for revolution. It is simply to be endured. Cancer cannot be "reasoned" with though."
I agree.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Avatar - B
== SPOILER ALERT ==
10' tall blue smurfs and floating mountains. It was Pocahontas with aliens complete with singing. The corporate human enemy (thank God they weren't wearing US flags on their uniforms) are there to get a mineral they can't find elsewhere and the smurfs are sitting on top of it. I found the plot recycled, and not a single new idea in the whole film, with one dimensional enemies (Mr. Hard Case Soldier, and Mr. Evil Corporate Exploiter made an appearance). Unless you consider golfing into a coffee cup, and a brief I'm a veteran, you're a veteran of such and such back stories. That said the film was visually stunning, probably one of the top 5 films I've ever seen as far as visual spectacle was concerned. The visuals didn't REALLY get in the way of the story, but the floating mountains were a bit hard to take (given the mineral, I'll give that a physics pass, but barely).
If you are bothered by physics or time-lines, 2154 is probably too soon for spaceships with NAFAL to get anywhere except the closest star systems. Given the evident mass shipping of materials too and fro, even granting the base shown was built locally the actual level of technology in the film was disappointing low. We'll assume the corporate types had access to the military equipment of contemporary Nigeria say, but if the mineral is that important, why is there no government oversight?
The biggest problem with the movie is the anti-capitalist anti-corporate anti-technology pro-noble-savage view of the world. Savages are savage. The smurfs don't even use fire. Given the importance of the mineral, the next contact the aliens will have with earthlings is likely to be a few dozen high-yield Cobolt-60 dirty nukes launched from orbit to sterilize the planet, or at least a large swath of it. Hard for flying smurfs to deal with fallout and gamma rays. Of course killing the natives is supposed to "look bad", so perhaps there is oversight after all.
Realistic? Sort of given the content of the movie, and our past contacts with native peoples. Depressing view of mankind, technology and progress? Oh God, yes. That said, the built in neural interfaces for all the critters was cool. I don't plan on unplugging my refrigerator and air-conditioner any time soon, or going to live in the jungle in harmony with the animals. It was a cool view of an alien world, but it was also very preachy.
10' tall blue smurfs and floating mountains. It was Pocahontas with aliens complete with singing. The corporate human enemy (thank God they weren't wearing US flags on their uniforms) are there to get a mineral they can't find elsewhere and the smurfs are sitting on top of it. I found the plot recycled, and not a single new idea in the whole film, with one dimensional enemies (Mr. Hard Case Soldier, and Mr. Evil Corporate Exploiter made an appearance). Unless you consider golfing into a coffee cup, and a brief I'm a veteran, you're a veteran of such and such back stories. That said the film was visually stunning, probably one of the top 5 films I've ever seen as far as visual spectacle was concerned. The visuals didn't REALLY get in the way of the story, but the floating mountains were a bit hard to take (given the mineral, I'll give that a physics pass, but barely).
If you are bothered by physics or time-lines, 2154 is probably too soon for spaceships with NAFAL to get anywhere except the closest star systems. Given the evident mass shipping of materials too and fro, even granting the base shown was built locally the actual level of technology in the film was disappointing low. We'll assume the corporate types had access to the military equipment of contemporary Nigeria say, but if the mineral is that important, why is there no government oversight?
The biggest problem with the movie is the anti-capitalist anti-corporate anti-technology pro-noble-savage view of the world. Savages are savage. The smurfs don't even use fire. Given the importance of the mineral, the next contact the aliens will have with earthlings is likely to be a few dozen high-yield Cobolt-60 dirty nukes launched from orbit to sterilize the planet, or at least a large swath of it. Hard for flying smurfs to deal with fallout and gamma rays. Of course killing the natives is supposed to "look bad", so perhaps there is oversight after all.
Realistic? Sort of given the content of the movie, and our past contacts with native peoples. Depressing view of mankind, technology and progress? Oh God, yes. That said, the built in neural interfaces for all the critters was cool. I don't plan on unplugging my refrigerator and air-conditioner any time soon, or going to live in the jungle in harmony with the animals. It was a cool view of an alien world, but it was also very preachy.
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