James Bowery <jabow...@gmail.com> wrote:
> That's why I concluded, in 1992 when this all occurred (on top of the > problems with NASA basically thumbing their collective noses at the Launch > Services Purchase Act of 1990) the only way to attack > bureaucratic intransigence in both the private as well as public sectors, > was to replace taxation on economic activity with a flat tax on liquidation > asset value at a rate equal to the government bond rate. > I doubt that an economic or structural panacea exists. This problem is caused by our primate nature. It happens with every kind of institution as far as I know, including government agencies that depend on tax money; corporations such as Microsoft that depend on profits; and organizations such as churches that survive on charitable donations. I think you have to live with this. It is a built-in limitation of human nature, like the fact that we only work eight hours a day, we think slowly and we are often obsessed with sex. People often complain about our fellow humans. Japanese will say that the Japanese public is hopeless. Americans think our voters are stupid and they fall for politician's tricks. Democrats are fed up with Republicans and vice versa. The problem is, there is no better group of human primates available. It isn't as if we can restock with superior people from a parallel universe. We are stuck with this generation of people presently inhabiting this planet. A scheme to improve things that calls for better human nature, a better crop of people, or more morality that people are prone to exhibit is going to fail. It is like saying we should build bridges with something 30% stronger than any known material. All in all, people are the paragon of animals, noble in reason, infinite in faculties. History has shown that we are capable of remarkable achievements. So I see no reason to complain about us, and I can't think of how complaining might help. People discovered cold fusion. Martin Fleischmann and Stan Pons did. They were smart, but not superhuman. What people can do, they can do again, and learn to do better. I am confident it is possible to power our civilization with cold fusion. I am confident that we can find ways to overcome the political & technical problems and make that happen. I am not confident that we *will*, but I am sure that we *can*. I know this because we have met greater challenges in the past, and the people who lived in the past were no better than we are. As Kennedy said: "Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man. . . No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again." http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkamericanuniversityaddress.html - Jed
