Kali, On Sun, 15 Oct 2000 16:05:35 +0900, Kali McLaughlin wrote: >> Any time the government becomes involved in something as essential [5 >> years ago, no -- now, YES] as the internet, things can only get worse. > ...I hope you are talking about *your* government... > Essential services in Australia used to be trusted to nobody but > government. Now that they are being sold off like a fire sale to try to > keep up the $A, things get worse. Now these "essential" services have > middlemen with american accents paying themselves obscene salaries out > of taxpayers money to do a worse service with fancier trimmings... > A short list reads: > Education > Jails > health > telecommunications > transport > media > scientific research > software It was the gov't that "sold" those services to capitalists. It would have made better sense to pay a bit more to get some experienced THINKING people on the gov't team so that "sell-offs" wouldn't have been necessary. But being it was the gov't that thought process never was implemented, and now you apparently suffer the consequences. It would probably have been far better if it had not been a gov't monopoly in the first place, so that competition weeded out that bad stuff as things grew. Some states here are trying the "private jail" approach. When the requirements are written correctly, and the "contractors" followed closely enough, the inmate-to-square-foot ratio goes down and actual daily cost of incarceration *also* goes down. But the gov't has to be ready, willing, and able to do proper spec'ing in the first place and proper oversight thereafter. And that just isn't within the "norm" for most gov'ts. I'm not talking down just the Commonwealth of Austrailia ... it's all governments. They either choke you to death with impossible to meet rules/regs/standards, or turn their collective backs and pass the buck in the hope that blame will fall elsewhere. l.d. -- This mail was written by user of Arachne, the Ultimate Internet Client -- Arachne V1.66, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/
