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Forums - General - The US Presidential Inauguration thread

mrstickball on 21 January 2009
Words Of Wisdom said:
mrstickball said:

Smaller government usually makes for more effective government.

You can do more with more people.  Two people working their hardest can't achieve what ten people working their hardest can all else equal.  If the government is truly effective, it will grow or shrink in size to meet the demands placed on it.

A lot of folks currently associate more people with sloopiness, laziness, and overspending.  "Big government" carries that negative connotation with it.  In reality, being large doesn't create laziness... lazy people do.  A smaller government isn't necessarily better, but a more efficient government would be.

Your correct, but that's not the reality of the situation. The larger the business, the easier it is for employees (and government employees are still that - employees) to become corrupt, innefficent, and unable to handle their task.

If the entity is smaller, it will demand more from it's workforce since it allows for better management. Government is the same way. If the 'best and brightest' go to the Government to become leaders, what happens when they recruit beyond the best & brightest?

Why is it that private schools outpace government schools?

Why is it that 401k's offer better returns than Social Security?

Why do corrupt workers have an easier time at tenure inside government projects than private ones?

There are so many areas this can apply to. Trust me, I used to work for the government. I loved every minute of it - they demanded so little, and gave me so much. My pay & benefits were vastly higher than civilian comparibles.

Think of it with the example we had/have with the military before and after conscription. When we had a drafted/constripted army, many of the people inside of it did not want to be there, and our army was very inneficent. Now that it's entire volunteer, we attempt to recruit the best & brightest. Our fighting forces are in far better shape than they were when we grabbed every John Doe that we wanted - and every statistic will point to a volunteer army being better in every way than a concripted one. Government is the same way because the larger it is, the more pork you'll find in the package.

It's honorable, and a great thing to crack down on corruption, but that's like plugging some holes in a dam. If the structure can't support itself, then all the plugs in the world won't help.



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

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Words Of Wisdom on 21 January 2009
mrstickball said:
Words Of Wisdom said:
mrstickball said:

Smaller government usually makes for more effective government.

You can do more with more people.  Two people working their hardest can't achieve what ten people working their hardest can all else equal.  If the government is truly effective, it will grow or shrink in size to meet the demands placed on it.

A lot of folks currently associate more people with sloopiness, laziness, and overspending.  "Big government" carries that negative connotation with it.  In reality, being large doesn't create laziness... lazy people do.  A smaller government isn't necessarily better, but a more efficient government would be.

Your correct, but that's not the reality of the situation. The larger the business, the easier it is for employees (and government employees are still that - employees) to become corrupt, innefficent, and unable to handle their task.

If the entity is smaller, it will demand more from it's workforce since it allows for better management. Government is the same way. If the 'best and brightest' go to the Government to become leaders, what happens when they recruit beyond the best & brightest?

It seems like people just can't escape the pitfall in thinking that large must equal corrupt/inefficient.  I guess it's just too hard to imagine.



mrstickball on 21 January 2009

Words - given the American government, I'd like you to show me how I'm wrong.

Yes, it's possible, but not given our government. Prove me wrong, please.



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

pearljammer on 21 January 2009
mrstickball said:
Words Of Wisdom said:
mrstickball said:

Smaller government usually makes for more effective government.

You can do more with more people.  Two people working their hardest can't achieve what ten people working their hardest can all else equal.  If the government is truly effective, it will grow or shrink in size to meet the demands placed on it.

A lot of folks currently associate more people with sloopiness, laziness, and overspending.  "Big government" carries that negative connotation with it.  In reality, being large doesn't create laziness... lazy people do.  A smaller government isn't necessarily better, but a more efficient government would be.

Your correct, but that's not the reality of the situation. The larger the business, the easier it is for employees (and government employees are still that - employees) to become corrupt, innefficent, and unable to handle their task.

If the entity is smaller, it will demand more from it's workforce since it allows for better management. Government is the same way. If the 'best and brightest' go to the Government to become leaders, what happens when they recruit beyond the best & brightest?

Why is it that private schools outpace government schools?

Huh? You think a major reason why private schools outpace public schools is the school size? Comparisons among various sized public schools in my district don't support that idea.

Not to say that smaller class sizes don't benefit from this. But that isn't what I'm reading from your post. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

 



mrstickball on 21 January 2009

pearl - I did not say school size had to do with it. Smaller class sizes improve grades (obviously). When it comes to schools, I'd argue that they fail in America due to the the bureaucratic system that supports it - bad teachers with tenure (a failure of the public system that uses them), bad curriculum, ect.



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Coca-Cola on 21 January 2009
mrstickball said:
pearl - I did not say school size had to do with it. Smaller class sizes improve grades (obviously). When it comes to schools, I'd argue that they fail in America due to the the bureaucratic system that supports it - bad teachers with tenure (a failure of the public system that uses them), bad curriculum, ect.

Agreed.

And the amount of money spent is ridiculous!

private school charge $700 a month per student (elementary)

State pays over $10,000 per student.



akuma587 on 21 January 2009
mrstickball said:
I just wonder, going forward, how much complaining there'll be about Bush now that Obama is president.

Oh, one thing I thought of for why we spent so much money, and the media is swooning over Obama:

Could it be that, since the world is pretty anti-American (at least from an image standpoint) at this time, that the media is giving Obama a focused PR job to repair our/presidential image? I'm not meaning the typical 'oh hey, it's the new prez' look, but the 'all hail savior of the world! Barak Yeshua Christo Hussein Obama!' so the world will look at him in a better light now that Bush is outta office?

I had that thought. Maybe the media is learning from their Bush-bashing mistakes that it does hurt the American image overseas, and is bad for business in the long run. I doubt there'd be this much fanfare if it was McCain, but maybe Obama makes a good 'britney spears celebrity watch' target. Maybe they'll be taking pictures of Michelle 24/7 to see what she's wearing, and have Perez Hilton comment on it daily.

The rest of the world didn't need the American media to hate Bush and America.  Our hyper-aggressive military tactics were more than enough to piss off just about anyone.

Moaning about the media is getting so old...

 



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson

megaman79 on 21 January 2009
SamuelRSmith said:
tombi123 said:
SamuelRSmith said:
I disliked the way he said "non-believers" as if we're wrong for it.

 

I prefer the term "non-believers" to "Atheists". It makes it sound less like a religion.

 

One day, "non-believers" or "Atheists" won't have a name at all...

 

In Australia there is now a law that provides the oppurtunity for kids to be taught athiesm (science based beliefs) if their parents don't want them to be taught normal Christian studies for religious classes. Australia being a protestant / christian nation means i had to be taught about Christ as a kid irrespective of whether my parents wanted it or not.

There should be a choice and alot of people actually don't believe in God.



“When we make some new announcement and if there is no positive initial reaction from the market, I try to think of it as a good sign because that can be interpreted as people reacting to something groundbreaking. ...if the employees were always minding themselves to do whatever the market is requiring at any moment, and if they were always focusing on something we can sell right now for the short term, it would be very limiting. We are trying to think outside the box.” - Satoru Iwata - This is why corporate multinationals will never truly understand, or risk doing, what Nintendo does.

The_vagabond7 on 21 January 2009

mrstickball said:
I just wonder, going forward, how much complaining there'll be about Bush now that Obama is president.

Oh, one thing I thought of for why we spent so much money, and the media is swooning over Obama:

Could it be that, since the world is pretty anti-American (at least from an image standpoint) at this time, that the media is giving Obama a focused PR job to repair our/presidential image? I'm not meaning the typical 'oh hey, it's the new prez' look, but the 'all hail savior of the world! Barak Yeshua Christo Hussein Obama!' so the world will look at him in a better light now that Bush is outta office?

I had that thought. Maybe the media is learning from their Bush-bashing mistakes that it does hurt the American image overseas, and is bad for business in the long run. I doubt there'd be this much fanfare if it was McCain, but maybe Obama makes a good 'britney spears celebrity watch' target. Maybe they'll be taking pictures of Michelle 24/7 to see what she's wearing, and have Perez Hilton comment on it daily.

 

Doesn't that kind of invalidate your theory of it just being media PR to make the world love us? Would they not want the world to like America of McCain was President? Would it be "better for business" for the world to hate america for four more years? Just saying, your theory doesn't make much sense.



You can find me on facebook as Markus Van Rijn, if you friend me just mention you're from VGchartz and who you are here.

mrstickball on 21 January 2009

I am sure they'd give McCain a better shake than Bush, but given how much others supported Obama overseas, I'm sure that it wouldn't of been hard for them to hype him even more.

Megaman - So Austrailian schools teach religious ideas in your public schools?



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.