Category Archives: Crap For Brains

People and especially governments do some incredibly stupid stuff. This is about those stupid actions.

Quote of the day—Myrddin

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Gun control advocates have offered capitulation couched as ‘reasonable demands’ for far too long. If the pro-gun lobby is going to resist any significant restriction on guns, then we should put on the table the very thing they fear most.

…

We need to start far more drastic measures if we are going to save our children and ourselves.

It is far past time to call for a total ban on guns.

Myrddin
December 14, 2012
Forget the assault weapons ban, it’s time to ban guns completely
[Myrddin has no sense of political, physical, or criminological reality.

With our enemies that out of touch it’s no wonder we are winning.—Joe]

Higher rates than entire countries

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In addition to being extremely ignorant about guns many anti-gun people have no clue about math:

Some U.S. cities have higher gun murder rates than entire countries.

I find it amazing someone can pack so much stupid into a single sentence.

First off “gun murders” are an extremely biased measure of crime. It presumes that murders by various method are independent of each other. They are not. Substitution of weapons are well known to criminologist who study these things. If it were possible to eliminating firearms from society the murder rate would not be reduced by an amount corresponding to the number “gun murders” prior to the flying unicorns carrying off with all firearms.

Furthermore, firearms are far more frequently used as defensive tools than as offensive weapons. Any law which hopes to decrease their use as an offensive tool must be carefully crafted and enforced such that it does not decrease the availability and use as a defensive tool more than it does as an offensive tool. To the best of my knowledge no such law has ever existed. Hence infringing upon the right to keep and bear arms, no matter how insignificantly, actually runs a strong risk of contributing to increases violent crime.

Second, saying someplace has a higher rate of anything than entire country only demonstrates how stupid the person is. If someone lives alone and commits suicide that household has a 100% suicide rate. This is a higher rate than every city, county, and country on the planet. If Tom McKay, who wrote the article, thinks his statement is of any significance whatsoever beyond making scary sounding noises he truly has crap for brains.

Quote of the day—New York Times

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One way to discourage the gun culture is to remove the guns from the hands and shoulders of people who are not in the law enforcement business.

New York Times
September 24, 1975
The Gun Culture
[“Discourage” the gun culture?

I don’t think “discouragement” would be the response. The New York Times was, and still is, quite out of touch with reality.—Joe]

Prepping – know your environment

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There are all kinds of “survivalists” and “preppers” in the world. Most are good folks, if a bit odd. Some are… not so acceptable. I came across this article about a group that explicitly says in a major disaster, which they expect, their plan is to take what they need. Not stockpile their own stuff, but take it from their neighbors. I.e, they plan to become looters. They claim to have “80 dues-paying members.” But I have to admit, the last paragraph in the story really gave me a laugh – it tells me they are really not all that clued in about their working environment. Situational awareness operates at many levels, and it seems they are seriously missing the big picture in a major way.

I don’t have food

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In any conflict, the most important thing is to understand exactly what it is that’s conflicting with what. If you can’t define the opposition, or even name it, you can’t fight it. Worse yet is to fail to understand what it is you’re fight FOR.

Even those ostensibly opposed to ObamaCare are often heard conflating medical insurance with medical treatment, as though one equals the other– If you don’t have insurance, you have no “health care”. They are the same thing.

By that standard, since I do not pay into a common financial pool designed to insure against starvation, I have no food. Period. I do not eat. I’m already dead. I died back in 1958 or ’59 as soon as my mother ran out of milk. I’m a ghost. Boo!

The notion that I might simply pay directly for my food, as I wish, and choose my own food provider, with no middle man, no money pool and no qualifications (or, heaven forbid; I might even grow some of it myself) is apparently a foreign concept to those who claim to favor a free market. It simply doesn’t even enter their minds.

If those who are opposed to a nationalized starvation insurance program are telling me I have no food, or if those opposed to ObamaCare are talking about people who have no healthcare, they are insane. They are not on my side. They have been co-opted by the enemy. They are blind, blithering, gibbering idiots, or zombies, who can’t even understand their own words, and yet we tolerate and entertain this insanity. Liberty isn’t even on the table for discussion. We can’t even speak of it, or even define it, and so how can we claim to fight for it?

What’s wrong with us?

Simple solutions from simple minds

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President Obama said:

With millions of consumers getting cancellation notices for their current health plans, President Obama announced Thursday that he will encourage insurance companies to continue offering their customers the same health plans next year.

“This fix won’t solve every problem for every person,” Obama said, saying he would consider legislative action to go further. But he appeared to rule out the sort of legislation that House Republicans are pushing, which would allow insurance companies to continue selling new policies, indefinitely, that would not comply with the law’s new consumer standards.

“I will not accept” legislation that would “drag us back to a broken system,” Obama said.

He and his supporters have no idea what they are doing.

  1. The insurance companies will be “encouraged” to break the law? They cannot legally still offer those plans.
  2. The people who will keep their old plans are those who are at low risk of needing expensive health care. Their premiums were to pay for those at high risk. Taking them out of the pool will mean the premiums for those remaining will have to go up.
  3. The insurance companies spent the last few years working to estimate the risks, set prices based on those risks, and restructure their organizations to work with the new mandates. It will take a similar amount of time to revert back and support the system they were forced to abandon.
  4. Restructuring of the insurance companies resulting in employees going to different jobs within the company or being laid off. Those changes cannot be undone in a short period of time. A lot of that expertise has been essentially vaporized by Obamacare.

Not only did the Democrats have no constitutional authority to inflict this upon the people but they had no idea what they were doing. They believe changing the laws of economics is as simple as changing the laws of the nation. The reality is that the laws of economics are as immutable as the laws of physics. To believe that Obamacare could make health insurance cheaper and more accessible to everyone is to believe perpetual motion machines are possible.

There will probably always be simple minded people that believe in perpetual motion and we have present day proof of that in those that voted for and support Obamacare.

Update: An insurance industry insider just told me: “Your post is exactly what we were just talking about. The magnitude is staggering.”

Criminal psychology

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I’m in the process of making a post on personality disorders, liberalism, and how to deal with them. I read a fascinating blog post about it. It is very long but awesome. I’ll get my synopsis out in a day or three.

In the mean time I engaged an anti-gun person on Twitter to do some testing. Here is the result:

@DanielHupke @_Garreth_ If only that BOOM was another #gunbully eating his gun.

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@ConcldCourier @snwflk713 @_Garreth_ @PatriotTay @MomsDemand Come on baby, suck that gun, pull that trigger.

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@ConcldCourier @snwflk713 @_Garreth_ @PatriotTay @MomsDemand Suck the bullets out!

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

Eh. There wasn’t any bullying to be seen. There was only law-abiding citizens exercising their rights. @rosesindew @HelloPoodle

— Linoge (@linoge_wotc) November 12, 2013

@linoge_wotc @rosesindew Funny how THAT got you needing to advertise your gun-gun.

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

I hate to break it to you, but I’ve been lawfully bearing arms for over a decade now. #assumption #fail @HelloPoodle @rosesindew

— Linoge (@linoge_wotc) November 12, 2013

@linoge_wotc @rosesindew So what? Why is it such a big deal that you’ve got to point your guns at people?

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@HelloPoodle @linoge_wotc @rosesindew People that attempt to infringe our rights are either ignorant or criminals: http://t.co/7VZA2zFoAJ

— Joe Huffman (@JoeHuffman) November 12, 2013

@JoeHuffman @linoge_wotc @rosesindew You have every right to shoot yourselves. Stay in your own yard & play together.

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

HelloPoodle @linoge_wotc @rosesindew We do. Our yard is called the United States of America. If you don’t like it go someplace else.

— Joe Huffman (@JoeHuffman) November 12, 2013

@rosesindew @JoeHuffman @linoge_wotc I love watching cunts like you get obsessed with me. Love it. Hilarious. Shows your true motives.

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@JoeHuffman @linoge_wotc @rosesindew Nah, I got the anchor babies on ObamaCare now. Lots of free shit, ya know? Hoo hoo ha ha #RWNJ

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@HelloPoodle @JoeHuffman @linoge_wotc it’s called exposing gun control advocates as the bullies they are, ur doing a great job helping me!

— Christine Larios (@rosesindew) November 12, 2013

@rosesindew @JoeHuffman @linoge_wotc Nah, you’re just a cunt who wanted attention & sympathy she didn’t get. A little ego maniacal.

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@JoeHuffman @rosesindew @linoge_wotc Keep talking about your big guns & how nobody is gunna take ’em. Paranoid much?

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@rosesindew @JoeHuffman @linoge_wotc Like your mom?

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@HelloPoodle @JoeHuffman @linoge_wotc again thanks for proving me right over and over

— Christine Larios (@rosesindew) November 12, 2013

@HelloPoodle @JoeHuffman @linoge_wotc more like you

@rosesindew @JoeHuffman @linoge_wotc Yes, we’ve proven you’re a cunt & this isn’t about guns at all. Just that you’re scum.

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@rosesindew @JoeHuffman @linoge_wotc My, aren’t you the attention whore. Do a cartwheel now!

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@HelloPoodle @rosesindew @linoge_wotc People who conspire to infringe the rights of others go to prison. You should find a good lawyer.

— Joe Huffman (@JoeHuffman) November 12, 2013

@JoeHuffman @rosesindew @linoge_wotc Oooohh you’re being conspired against now. Tin foil hat a little tight?

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@JoeHuffman @rosesindew @linoge_wotc You have had EVERY opportunity to show responsibility in gun ownership. But what have you chosen to do?

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@HelloPoodle @rosesindew @linoge_wotc I’m just gathering evidence to be submitted at your trial.

— Joe Huffman (@JoeHuffman) November 12, 2013

@JoeHuffman @rosesindew @linoge_wotc Public opinion is drastically rising against you. Again, it’s about the tea party crap, not guns.

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@HelloPoodle @rosesindew @linoge_wotc I’m a certified firearms instructor. What have you done beside commit crimes against gun owners?

— Joe Huffman (@JoeHuffman) November 12, 2013

@JoeHuffman @rosesindew @linoge_wotc You’re just too fucking stupid to realize you don’t point guns at soccer moms to get their support.

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@JoeHuffman @rosesindew @linoge_wotc I’ll alert the press. This should be good.

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@JoeHuffman @rosesindew @linoge_wotc What “crimes” are being done to you? Are you feeling unsafe again? They’re coming for you!

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@HelloPoodle @rosesindew @linoge_wotc I hope your delusions are worth it. It must be lonely in your imaginary world: http://t.co/5xI0QbHMsF

— Joe Huffman (@JoeHuffman) November 12, 2013

@HelloPoodle @rosesindew @linoge_wotc http://t.co/7VZA2zFoAJ

— Joe Huffman (@JoeHuffman) November 12, 2013

@JoeHuffman @rosesindew @linoge_wotc Well, you have your guns. For now.

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@HelloPoodle @rosesindew @linoge_wotc That sounds like a threat. It’s going into your file.

— Joe Huffman (@JoeHuffman) November 12, 2013

@JoeHuffman @rosesindew @linoge_wotc You really are fucking paranoid. Not sure you should have weapons. @NewYorkFBI

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@JoeHuffman @rosesindew @linoge_wotc Ooooooh, the teatard is scary!

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@JoeHuffman @rosesindew @linoge_wotc Don’t you mean FOIL? They’re out there. Whop whop! Here come the black helicopters!

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

So @HelloPoodle is back to wishing death on those she disagrees with? Must suck to be that consumed by hate. @rosesindew @JoeHuffman

— Linoge (@linoge_wotc) November 12, 2013

@HelloPoodle @JoeHuffman @linoge_wotc @rosesindew You wood think a poodle would be more laid back. Must be tough having a bark & no bite

— Hal (@Hal_Maine) November 12, 2013

@linoge_wotc @rosesindew @JoeHuffman Oh, look, you’re back for more. Actually, it’s fun hating scum suckers like you. Dumb pig.

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@Hal_Maine @JoeHuffman @linoge_wotc @rosesindew Yeah, I better show everybody my gun so they’ll wonder if I might be dangerous.

— hellopoodle (@HelloPoodle) November 12, 2013

@Hal_Maine @JoeHuffman @linoge_wotc @rosesindew Gotta make sure you let everybody know you’re carrying though, right? NRA bumper sticker?

Securing your arms

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It’s funny how the anti-rights cultists always have exceptions for governments and their minions. We peons are expected to just suck it up, because we are not as professional, as well trained in their use, and as well screened for psychological problems, and all the rest. Then we see cases like this, where the FBI SWAT team loses a couple of their rifles, and M16 and a “sniper rifle,” and they are considering if they should be charged with “improper storage.” Duh, ya’ think? This being Mass people freaked of course, and they also offered $20k for a reward for less than $5k worth of guns.It looks like the guns have been recovered, but the FBI isn’t saying anything, saying it’s because it’s an ongoing investigation, not just that it’s full-on CYA.

H/T to Paul.

Psychology of mass shooters

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I took a lot of psychology classes in college and, IIRC, got straight A’s in them. I really enjoyed them. I thought it was fascinating.

So it isn’t surprising this article was of extreme interest to me:

Massacre killers are typically marked by what are considered personality disorders: grandiosity, resentment, self-righteousness, a sense of entitlement. They become, says Dr. Knoll, ” ‘collectors of injustice’ who nurture their wounded narcissism.” To preserve their egos, they exaggerate past humiliations and externalize their anger, blaming others for their frustrations. They develop violent fantasies of heroic revenge against an uncaring world.

…

Mass shooters aim to tell a story through their actions. They create a narrative about how the world has forced them to act, and then must persuade themselves to believe it. The final step is crafting the story for others and telling it through spoken warnings beforehand, taunting words to victims or manifestos created for public airing.

What these findings suggest is that mass shootings are a kind of theater. Their purpose is essentially terrorism—minus, in most cases, a political agenda. The public spectacle, the mass slaughter of mostly random victims, is meant to be seen as an attack against society itself. The typical consummation of the act in suicide denies the course of justice, giving the shooter ultimate and final control.

We call mass shootings senseless not only because of the gross disregard for life but because they defy the ordinary motives for violence—robbery, envy, personal grievance—reasons we can condemn but at least wrap our minds around. But mass killings seem like a plague dispatched from some inhuman realm. They don’t just ignore our most basic ideas of justice but assault them directly.

The perverse truth is that this senselessness is just the point of mass shootings: It is the means by which the perpetrator seeks to make us feel his hatred. Like terrorists, mass shooters can be seen, in a limited sense, as rational actors, who know that if they follow the right steps they will produce the desired effect in the public consciousness.

Part of this calculus of evil is competition. Dr. Mullen spoke to a perpetrator who “gleefully admitted that he was ‘going for the record.’ ” Investigators found that the Newtown shooter kept a “score sheet” of previous mass shootings. He may have deliberately calculated how to maximize the grotesqueness of his act.

The human mind is a marvelous and sometimes bizarre thing. I’ve seen some really strange behavior from people with personality disorders. Probably the best short story is that I know someone who convinced a judge that his being caught sitting on his ex-wife’s chest on the sidewalk punching her in the face was self-defense.

Stacy, my counselor, told me people with personality disorders cannot, or will not, admit there is a problem with themselves. It’s always someone else’s fault. Keep that in mind. It’s a huge telltale. Another one, also from Stacy, is that personality disorder symptoms are more prominent when they are interacting with people in close personal relationships with. Family members and spouses get the worst of it. Co-workers and strangers may think they are perfectly normal people.

Attempting to interact with them can be challenging. Having a “model” to help understand, identify, and predict their behavior is incredibly useful. We owe a big thanks to the author of this article and the researchers who investigated the psychology of these people.

H/T Say Uncle.

Perhaps it’s Stockholm Syndrome

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This is the equivalent of a rapist using a condom and lubricant:

…this is the future of airport security here in the nifty fifty, but the changes that are taking places in Charlotte and Dallas are certainly something that we can support. Think more comfortable spaces, better signage, and even places specifically intended to use for slipping your shoes back on.

The perpetrators should be prosecuted not encouraged. I suspect Stockholm Syndrome has something to do with it.

Quote of the day—Ashley

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Nobody cares about your guns, if you hunt with them or (I hope) someday kill yourself with them.

…

Everyone else considers “ya’ll” crazy. We strive for the day that your ancient propaganda goes extinct. You, Mr. Redneck, are a dying breed of ignorance.

Ashley
November 5, 2013
Comment to Quote of the day—The Coquette
[Why are anti-gun people so violent? Oh, yeah. Now I remember.

Don’t ever forget. There are a sizeable number of anti-gun people that want you dead. They want your children dead. This is just one willing to announce it on my blog. They believe their desires are so mainstream they don’t even have to hide that wish and will tell it to your virtual face. And perhaps it is a mainstream view in San Luis Obispo California where Ashley is (IP address 66.215.49.99). Yet people look at me a little strange when I tell them I try to avoid California because those people hate “my kind”.

People will say “it’s just talk”. “You don’t have to worry about someone like that.”, they will reassure me. Probably not. But I’ll bet a lot of people didn’t think they would have to worry about a half nuts failed artist in prison writing a book about “My Struggle” either.

And you do you notice that in her world view I’m ignorant and crazy? I’m quoting U.S Supreme Court cases, Federal Appeals Court cases, and Gandhi. What does she reference to bolster her view? Nothing. And claims of me being ignorant by people who have spent more than two minutes of time talking to me are non-existent. I am therefore forced to conclude that Ashley has based her conclusion on ignored data. Which, if I’m not mistaken, makes her the ignorant or possibly crazy one.—Joe]

CSGV and VISA

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CSGV now wants VISA to stop its affiliate program with the NRA:

Visa is helping to pay for NRA lobbyists who advocate against common-sense policies like background checks on gun buyers, and for dangerous legislation that would force K-12 schools, colleges, places of worship and businesses to allow the carrying of loaded guns on their premises.

I have a suggestion for CSGV. Why don’t you guys compare what a boycott by CSGV members would mean for VISA versus them dumping the NRA? It may be that this plan “can’t get the votes necessary” to succeed just like the gun control legislation they have been pushing.

The NRA has something like five million members. How many does the CSGV have?

Oh! That’s right. CSGV doesn’t have members so we can’t really do a direct comparison on that parameter. How about the number of people that show up for the annual meeting? The NRA has something on the order of 75,000. How many does the CSGV have?

Oh! That’s right. The CSGV doesn’t announce any annual meetings or make it known how many people show up at their meetings. But then a small apartment balcony with a couple lawn chairs is probably all they would need or could afford so announcing such a thing doesn’t make any more sense than demanding VISA drop the NRA.

Consensus with Biden on gun laws

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I’ve been reading (listening to it actually) Emily Gets Her Gun: …But Obama Wants to Take Yours. In it she tells of V.P. Biden telling Jim Baker, “regarding the lack of prosecutions on lying on Form 4473s, we simply don’t have the time or manpower to prosecute everybody who lies on a form, that checks a wrong box, that answers a question inaccurately.”

Only 44 out of 72,659 denials of the NICS check were prosecuted in 2010. If the firearm buyer told the truth on form 4473 when they tried to purchase the firearm the seller would have either been denied the sale on the spot and no NICS check would have been performed or they would have passed the NICS check. If they lied then they committed a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

I realize V.P. Biden has a problem with his head whistling when the wind blows so I’m not surprised he didn’t think of the following when he tried to get consensus on gun law changes. Gun owners, the NRA, and Biden should all be able get behind legislation to get rid of gun laws the Federal Government can’t and won’t enforce. If they aren’t going to prosecute people for improperly filling out a form then lets get rid of the form. Otherwise people might as well scribble “Screw you!” on it and call it good. I might be okay with that last approach too. It would be a common sense compromise, right?

There’s some truth in it

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BlondeObamacare

Via email from JoeyD.

Let’s look to the UK for healthcare

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The UK has government run health care. That’s been working out well hasn’t it?

Oh! Maybe not:

A plan to create the world’s largest single civilian computer system linking all parts of the National Health Service is to be abandoned by the Government after running up billions of pounds in bills. Ministers are expected to announce next month that they are scrapping a central part of the much-delayed and hugely controversial 10-year National Programme for IT.

…

“The department has been unable to demonstrate what benefits have been delivered from the £2.7bn spent on the project so far,” Margaret Hodge, chair of the PAC, said. “It should now urgently review whether it is worth continuing with the remaining elements of the care-records system. The £4.3bn which the department expects to spend might be better used to buy systems that are proven to work, that are good value for money and which deliver demonstrable benefits to the NHS.” A further £4.4bn was expected to be spent on other areas of the vast IT project.

H/T to Adam Baldwin.

What I don’t think most people realize is that software doesn’t scale in a linear fashion from small projects to large. I can write, debug, a deliver a program to you that prints out, “Hello world!” in a minute or two. I can easily do it in five lines of code. That figures out to about 1200 lines per day* if I were to spend the entire day coding at that rate.

Yet when you look at the number of lines of code delivered on real projects it’s about 10 lines per day per developer. On a project as large as an operating system like Windows it’s much lower.

The problem is that planning, complexity, documentation, testing effort, and difficulty goes up much faster than the number of lines of code increase. You can pump out the code at a fast rate but it’s not something that is going to work well. It will be very fragile. You can find test cases where it will work correctly but as soon as you do something a little unusual or the system is under load and the timing on something changes you can end up extremely difficult to find bugs.

As the size of the project goes up communication between teams become a problem. With a poor design a small change in one part of the system affects many other parts. Communicating and coordinating this occupies increasing amounts of time and care. A change occurred “somewhere” in the system and your code stopped working. It can take an hour or a week to find the problem and get it fixed so you can continue to add features. Even worse are “build breaks”. This is when someone changed something and you can’t even build the software into something that runs so it can be tested. This can mean every single programmer on the entire project is at a standstill. As you might imagine these are very high priority events and you can have people baying for your blood. People take them very seriously and the consequences are high but they still happen.

A former roommate working on Windows NT back in about ‘99 told me she had a bug fix ready for check-in but wasn’t allowed to for months because of concerns that it was a change that could affect other people.

How many lines of code are in the Obamacare system? I don’t know for certain but there are reports that it contains 500 million lines needs to have 5 million lines rewritten. Do the arithmetic to arrive at your estimate of how many people working for how many days is required before it will be “fixed”. My best guess is that the politicians had the U.K. model in mind and that’s what they will get (see above).

Everything I see about the Obamacare web site indicates it was thrown together by someone who didn’t know what they were doing. There are very few companies that have been able to write very large complex systems successfully. Microsoft and Google come to mind. The contractor for Obamacare isn’t on anyone’s list of successfully large scale system developers.

They claim it will be working by the end of November? Did they say which November?

* Yes. Lines of code per day is a poor way of measuring productivity. For example one can be very productive while reducing the number of lines of code in a program. Yet, it is good enough for many uses and can illustrate valid points with serious error.

Quote of the day—mikee

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People? Brownian motion with random, moving magnets arrayed in their environment, as far as I can tell.

mikee
October 24, 2013 at 11:55 am
Comment to Quote of the day—Timothy Sandefur
[This comment showed up when Barb and I were at lunch. I laughed pretty hard when I read it. I showed it to Barb but she didn’t know what Brownian motion was and it spoiled the mood some.

It’s funny because I suspect, on the scale of all humanity, the model has a positive correlation with the available data.—Joe]

One big happy family

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This ought to make you feel all warm and fuzzy.

The same company that made the healthcare.gov website (on a no-bid contract, naturally) is the same one that created the Canadian gun registry that cost roughly twenty times the original estimate and got scrapped a decade later after being found to be both useless and seriously defective.

But they want us to just trust their good intentions, ’cause they are so smart and transparent. Yeah, riiiight.

If a tree falls in the forest

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Yesterday, in reference to spying on U.S. citizens, U.S. Congressional Representative Mike Rogers and Intelligence Committee Chair insisted:

You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.

I can only conclude he would also insist that he hadn’t actually stolen cash from your wallet if you didn’t know it had been taken. Or that a teenage girl hadn’t been raped if she had been drugged and didn’t know what happened.

Someone should tell him that must also mean his privacy wasn’t violated if someone made of video of him having sex with a sheep and didn’t tell anyone.

The only purpose

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With as many crazy people as there are it’s surprising the world isn’t more messed up than it actually is.

And of course with a psychotic belief like that they have no reservations whatsoever about destroying your guns and you.

I tweeted back the following:

But trying to reason with the mentally ill is hopeless. I know, I’ve tried it before.

Quote of the day—Mike Konczal

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It’s important we get more sophisticated analysis of what has gone wrong with the ACA rollout to better appreciate how utilizing “the market” can be far more cumbersome and inefficient than the government just doing things itself.

Mike Konczal
October 23, 2013
What Kind of Problem is the ACA Rollout for Liberalism?
[In other words, “Our government program is such a disaster that we need a new and expanded government program to fix it.”

Monopolies are almost always a bad thing. The lack of choice creates a situation where inferior and expensive products do not get improved or replaced. Konczcal and hard-core liberals want government monopolies. The soft-core liberals want to regulate the market.

What Konczal doesn’t understand is that he, politicians, and government in general, do not have the domain knowledge to solve most problems. This includes regulating the solution providers. When I read the instruction manual for my car and it says to use a particular grade of gasoline and change the oil every 5000 miles I follow their recommendations. They know their car far better than I do. Even though I am a software engineer when a software package says it requires X megabytes of RAM Y megabytes of disk space I follow their recommendations because they know their software far better than I do.

The advocate for more government might say, “We will bring in experts and/or we will become experts.” This doesn’t work. I worked in a government lab for three years. I remember sitting in a meeting discussing how to get more research contracts. One guy said, “What we have is the ability to become experts on anything within a couple of weeks.” He was serious. I felt the blood drain out of my face. I had been working with him for over two years and I had not yet discovered anything that I considered him an expert on. They spent several years and millions of dollars coming up with a software testing and quality program for the software being developed at the lab. What they came up with was something that the industry had left behind a decade or two previously (the “waterfall model”).

The reason government cannot acquire the expertise is because they are a monopoly and expertise is like a product. It must constantly be improved and updated to remain relevant. And without the marketplace pressure it will stagnant and become obsolete.

Because of this lack of domain knowledge and the inherent inferiority of monopoly products government “doing it itself” will always be the wrong answer to a problem that doesn’t involve the use of force.—Joe]