39 karma · joined February 17, 2025
It's like any large org. Except it is probably one of the largest large orgs.
And seeing as these orgs need to provide regulated services to 330 million people, the nature of the beast is it must be a large org.
or, the other is about providing them the vision and the clear set of steps. Then checking their progress along those steps. (including revising the steps when the original plan diverges from the evolving reality).
Training and mentoring the people so they can become rock stars.
One evidence of greatness: Humbolt has more geological features named after him than anyone else. Like the Humbolt Current etc.
However, all of the maintenance around allowing private transport is also a cost. That includes all of the private costs for car ownership. If public transport is a valid option, then car ownership becomes a choice.
A tiny city might need 100 busses, but how many cars does that replace? What is the full cost of those cars? If everyone made a monthly "bus payment" instead of a "car payment" (actually payments when you add insurance, maintenance, ...), I think we'd find the bus system much less expensive.
if you are listening to a podcast or music, your mind is following those rhythms and thoughts. Not clear this is better when running that listening to the rhythms of your own body; breath, heart, footfall, and the sounds of the world around you.
If you are driving using a GPS for navigating, how much of your mind are you using to track where you are, spotting landmarks, etc. This is a FUNDAMENTAL aspect of almost all motive forms of live, the circuitry is deep in the brain, and if you are not activating it, you don't even know what you are missing.
Can you name a popular civilian tech that blocks adding random journalists to small chat groups? That includes strong identity guarantees? That meets compliance requirements around logging calls?
Bloomberg might come the closest on this. Why don't you go out and price a Bloomberg terminal for yourself, at the grade that lets you trade options with other Bloomberg terminal owners over the chat interface?
Very true, however,
1) it does slow the process somewhat and therefore also reduces total throughput, this keeps government more stable and also gives more time to respond. Slow and stable may or may not be the best way to run a company, but the government is not a company.
2) It would put the individual congresspeople on record, and they are somewhat more dependent on/accountable to their local population. If for example all the farmers realized that the tariffs would destroy the farmer's livelihood, we could see Iowa withdrawing suport.
The US goverment was set up the way it is for reasons.
implies most people since the King James version was published. Not at all clear that's what author meant; the concept of the world as we now know it didn't exist then.
So very reasonable to conclude that the Great Flood in Genesis was meant to describe a regional megaflood, which innundated the "whole world" meaning all of Mesopotamian civilization.
And there is archeological evidence of ancient cities totally buried in mud, i.e. as you say regional megafloods.
For many people (and other animals), memory is tied to a specific place. The poster knows that the note they made is i.e.
red notebook on top shelf, page 12, top left corner.
Searching in digital notes doesn't give that same sense of place.
And the sense of place, plus the "path" that connects items in the space, is an important part of memory and learning.
Nor does the propoganda define "waste", if one looks at the actual cuts, it seems to be focused on "things Herr M. doesn't like". which is not a good definition of "waste".
Step 3: profit
right? Did I leave something out?
Think about the teachers who buy classroom supplies out of their own meager paycheck because they want them for the lesson, and 'cost-cutting' means they don't have enough resources in the school.
Think of all the people at the CDC, or at NOAH, or similar.
In any large organization, and the Fed Government is > 2m employees, so it counts, you can easily find example of people who are driven and people who coast.
And actually, people are sacked in the fed if they don't make their numbers, or they are quietly sidelined.
Until someone decided that only people over 21 could drink, and that we needed strong controls over ID. And most people had drivers licenses, so that is what they said they would need for a document
Also, electric cars are heavier. This means not only higher tire pollution, but also they are inherently less fuel efficient.
electric bikes, on the other hand,
I think there is even a song about it, "land of the free home of the brave" or something like that. I hear it occasionally at sporting events.
rayiner, I'm wondering if your bloodline is 100% native american, because otherwise it seems like the person you are afraid of is yourself.
A previous poster mentioned boiling in milk as mixing death (boiling/eating) with life (milk), as a sort of generic badness.
As giraffe_lady just reminded us, the original prescription is boiling the baby in it's OWN MOTHER's milk. This is not a "put cheese on hamburger" situation, it is an explicit expression of cruelty to the mother and to her baby.
And the prohibition was put in place because boiling babies in their mother's milk was considered a delicacy back then. People used to do horrific shit, celebrating cruelty.
So great science would come up with a sound theoretical foundation, or at least strong arguments as to why no such foundation can exist.
"harm" is a tricky word.
The article says that the main conflict is part one of the OSS license, "The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component… [and] shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale." Which makes it very hard to sell OSS software (read the article for nuance).
Business cannot do this because the business needs to capture the value (ie. through sales) in order to fund creating the value (the software).
A government, however, would not have this restriction, because they don't need to sell it to capture the value the software creates.
This is, in fact, what government is best at doing and where business fails. Business is great when value capture is linked with value creation, think hamburger stand (the value is the burger, and the customer trades money for burger).
Goverment is optimized for when value creation is separate from value capture. Svilven mentions roads. The burger stand couldn't create or sell the burger without roads to freight in raw materials and customers, but only a fraction of the value of the road network is in the burger. Because the road also supplies value to a number of other enterprises.
So the best way to capture the value of the road is via a similarly diffusive system, i.e. a tax. Government.
And for certain fundamental types of software systems, i.e. web browsers, search engines, messaging services, perhaps a government can build them better than a company. Certainly the economic incentives align better.
Europe downplayed investment in military capacity because this was seen and agreed as the best way to reduce the risk of WWIII.
Europe also realized that building things is better than destroying things. Is it spineless to do this? Question to you, mavdi, did you volunteer to serve in the armed forces? If not, do you view yourself as spineless for this decision?