Crossing The Line -Surfer Killed By Sharks & Reality TV

A few days ago, a young man in South Africa was attacked and killed by a Great White Shark. His name was David Lilienfeld and he was a champion body surfer with his life stretched out before him. He was only 20 years old and his death was the unnecessary result of the carelessness of others who crossed the line.

There is an old saying about crossing the line which refers to having gone too far in doing something. It means that a person has gone beyond what is acceptable and done something wrong. Robbery, for example, crosses the line from legal to illegal behaviour.


It used to be relatively easy to identify when someone crossed a line because the lines were pretty well-drawn and were fairly-well established. If not universal, they were boundaries agreed to by the majority of people in a society and which basically defined the values of that society.

Those days are gone.

Whatever values our societies have these days, they are no longer universal and they are no long clearly defined by bottom lines which we have mutually agreed are not acceptable to cross. Today, morality and integrity are defined by individuals and often are based on expediency rather than any specific universal moral code.

“Some people cross that line but I think as film makers you have to make that moral decision for yourself.” 

Bill Wallauer – Wildlife photographer

We all face moral decisions at various times in our lives but the decision to chum waters close to the shore near Capetown, South Africa; to attract sharks for the a reality tv program was not a moral decision. It was a reckless decision made for the benefit of the filmmaker without regard for the safety of others. The decision to try to attract sharks to an area known to be frequently used by body surfers crossed the line.

Most of our societies were founded on values expressed through religious faiths like the Judeo-Christian code, or other faiths. Some codes have evolved to become purely secular but have retained the basic moral tenets of many of those religious-based codes.

Regardless of whether a society is based on faith, is purely secular or is a blend of both, it is usually only successful when it has an agreed-to set of moral values and principles. Once that is lost and people either redefine the boundaries for themselves without regard for others within the same society or simply ignore the existing boundaries, a kind of moral anarchy takes hold which begins to undermine that society’s values. It is happening now in most major democracies around the world.

While many still hold to their faith or to some other set of principles, collectively we have cut our moral anchors loose and are drifting.

People seem able to justify just about anything now, even the manipulation of nature in order to save it.

“We have to understand the life of the white shark if we’re going to protect it’s future. If we don’t handle a few of these sharks and we don’t know anything. About their lives, we could accidentally wipe them off the face of the planet.”

Chris Fischer – Shark Men

Mr. Fischer misses the point completely. What happened here is not about saving sharks, it is about a careless disregard for the safety of others so that he and his film crew could make a television show. It is how they make their living. They put all other considerations aside and crossed a line that resulted in the death of a young man. Rationalizing the decisions that were made in this case does not validate those decisions. It exemplifies the moral decay our societies are experiencing.

It is the same attitude that many who supported the Occupy Movement brought to their attempt to rationalize the self-indulgent behaviour, the vandalism of our cities and the crime in Occupy camps. For them, it was a small price to pay for what they considered a greater good. For most of us, it was simply one more example of rationalizing the lack of real values attached to the movement.

It’s not all that surprising because we have become societies that put our individual opinions and feelings ahead of the common good and which revere celebrity status rather than moral leadership. We are societies that give more support to American Idol than to religious observance or respect for the founding principles of our nations.

John Kennedy once said, “Ask not what your country can do for you but rather what you can do for your country.” Today, the only question that usually gets asked is, “What’s in it for me”.

It is how organizations like PETA, which kills more animals than SPCA and The Humane Society combined, rationalize their actions in the name of treating animals ethically. It’s how politicians, who’s morality is so flexible, they are able to rationalize to themselves the fact that they do not personally or professionally live the values they represent to the people during elections.

It is how places like Guantanamo are built and a nation’s own constitution is violated and how people can ignore the rule of law when our personal prejudices and opinions are offended.

Whether we are religious or atheist, we are part of democratic nations built on core principles and moral values. The documents where our nations' principles were set down are noble and revered documents. Many believe in them but while we may wave those documents around as defining who we are, we have lost sight of their true meaning and no longer honour their intent.

We have replaced our morality and values with trite, bumper-sticker slogans. We have replaced our need to learn with speaking endlessly on things about which we know next to nothing but have cribbed from some web site or another. We form instant opinions based on whatever is currently trending on social media rather than on what we should believe in because many of us believe in nothing beyond the moment.

We are quick to take offense and slow to forgive.

In our attempt to be more inclusive, we have so watered-down what we collectively stand for that as nations, we stand consistently for very little.

We fill that void with mindless entertainment from reality tv, causes that are poorly thought out but which seem important and which we allow to delude us into believing we are living meaningful lives. We play computer games and watch twenty-four hour news reports that are less about the transmission of information than turning life into a circus for the masses. We need to be entertained rather than informed and we indulge ourselves in the mindless violence of extreme professional sports.

We text, tweet and 'like' all over social media with friends we've never met while ignoring the real people who live down the street.

We have become like every previous civilization that was in its final decline. Like the ancient Romans and others who came and went before us, we are too busy watching gladiators in the arena to notice our own declining civilization.

We are spiritually and morally bankrupt and we have not only crossed the lines that once defined us but have blurred them until we no longer see them.

Collectively, we no longer have a collective moral compass to guide us. We no longer understand or know which lines should not be crossed because we no longer believe in anything beyond  this morning’s news,  last night’s vote on American Idol or own personal interpretation of what is or isn't moral .

We have become societies filled with individuals and governments that can justify almost anything.

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http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/04/what-ever-happened-to-integrity.html

Entitlement Addiction

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© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

The Ends Do Not Justify The Means

'Political language....is designed to make lies sound truthful.....and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.'

George Orwell

I’ve been writing daily and posting what I’ve written for almost six months now and you know what? I’ve come to the realization that what is behind most of what I have written is that I am simply tired of being lied to.

Whatever happened to integrity anyway?

Look at climate change as an example. It is now established that there was all kinds of fraudulent science and misinformation behind much of the data that was released in support of hysterical claims of global warming. In some quarters, those claims persist even as it is also now established that the warming period seems to have peaked and the earth has been cooling over the past decade.

Consider the claim that the wealthy don’t pay enough in taxes? What a hoot that one is. Even President Obama jumped on that opportunity with his ‘Buffet Rule’ even as he took full advantage of the tax system to reduce his personal tax liability. The myth is thrown around quite freely but  according to the IRS, it just isn’t true. Figures published on the IRS web site show that the top 5% wage earners actually paid 58% of all income tax collected by the IRS. More significantly, the bottom 20% of income earners received $8.00 in direct and indirect  benefits for every dollar they paid in tax while the top 20% income earners received less than $1.00 for every dollar of tax they paid.

The tax system is overly complex, expensive to manage and incredibly unfair to all tax payers but rather than address that, politicians and special interest groups who benefit from that complexity continue to put forward the myth that it is the rich who are not paying their fair share.  They are an easy and popular target and it is that mythology that special interest uses to protect its entitlements or rationalize new ones and one of the lies some politicians use to get themselves reelected. 

Simplifying the tax code and making it equitable for everyone would force special interest groups to start earning their own way like the rest of us, while politicians would have to depend on merit as the key reason for getting elected rather than bribing us with our own money.

That, my friends, isn’t going to happen any time soon, so don’t hold your breath.

News has become entertainment

Even the media lies to us as we saw recently with the hysterical and over-the-top biased coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting. What an absolute disgrace that coverage turned out to be. Honest, accurate journalism and objective analysis has been replaced by treating news like entertainment and by commentary that is little more than a personal soapbox from which to give vent to all manner of prejudice and misinformation.

The fallout from that, of course, is a loss of trust in the integrity of what the media report on anything.

In fact, that’s the fallout from all of the self-serving lies and misinformation being put out by one group or another in support of their particular ideology or cause.

Can you tell which are conservative or liberal?

Here are some simple truths.

The left is not comprised solely of socialist beggars looking for free handouts. To be sure there are some but most people who vote the liberal agenda are decent, hard-working folks who believe in social justice and want a better society for their families and neighbours.

Likewise, the right is not solely comprised of fascist extremists or religious fanatics who only believe in God, guns and keeping the poor….poor. Most who vote the conservative agenda are decent folks who simply believe in self-responsibility and enjoying the results of their labour without interference from government. While many on the left don’t like to admit it, many on the right are also very supportive of social safety nets for the disadvantaged and other issues that many on the left also support.

Not all students are whining, self-absorbed, spoiled brats looking for a free ride. Many are responsible, hard-working individuals who have assumed full responsibility for the challenges of financing and completing their university education. I admire them.

And, as hard as it is for most of us to accept, there are even some in the Occupy Movement who are sincere and honest people with jobs and who are non-violent. They are simply trying to call attention to their cause, as poorly defined and focused as most of us may believe that cause may be.

All of these folks have one thing in common. You can talk to them. You might not come to agreement on how to resolve certain issues but you can discuss the issues and debate them without all the hysterical, accusatory rhetoric that is the sole weapon in the arsenal of those who know they aren’t being honest with you.

I have many friends and colleagues who think I’m wrong on some of the issues, as hard as that is for you and I  to believe. We get along extremely well nonetheless because we are honest with each other and respect each other’s opinions. We also feel free to laugh together at our own foibles and laughter is even more unifying than sex…………….and almost as much fun.

You can’t laugh with liars for very long, if at all, and their sex is only self-serving. They’re out to screw you and that’s that! Most of them won‘t even kiss you before they take advantage of you.

We have too many like that in our society today.

Too many politicians, academics, union leaders, activists, religious fanatics and just plain, uniformed people who hide behind half-truths and outright lies to achieve their objectives, get their hands on money they haven’t earned or to advance some failed cause or other.

They tend to be driven by vested self-interest, by emotion rather than thoughts and ideas or by what is expedient rather than what is right and it is fairly easy to spot them. 

They tend to be divisive rather than unifying. Polarization works in their favour by keeping people running on feelings rather than facts. Politicians and activists are particularly fond of this tactic, as are most labour unions.

They are people who prefer to blame others for their problems rather than working with others who hold differing opinions to find real solutions.. They are the ones most likely to confuse what the believe for what they actually know and who are among the first to shout down your opinions, and deny your right to express them, while demanding you respect their right to express theirs. These are the most self-righteous and you'll find most extreme activist groups out there on the outer edges of the right and the left..

They’re beliefs tend to be among the most fragile because deep down inside they instinctively know that they don’t have much to support what they want to believe or are demanding from others. They yell, they bully and they bluster in the hope that neither you nor they themselves see the truth. In other words, these are the people who usually lie to themselves before they lie to everyone else.

Some are just flat out crooks who are only interested in taking your money and will say and do pretty much anything to get it.

But the easiest way to spot them is by how quickly they are prepared to rationalize illegal or immoral behaviour to justify their actions. These are people who believe that the rule of law only applies when it supports their cause or is expedient.

Justice is always one of the first casualties of people who believe that the ends justify the means.

I’m tired of it all to be honest. I believe it is impossible to build a successful society on values that lack integrity and by people who put expediency ahead of the truth. If a person’s beliefs are so fragile that they can only be supported by distorted half-truths and outright lies, then those are beliefs that aren’t worth having let alone following.

Our democracies are led by such people and by many who either have no consistent values or who work overtime to ignore the values they were taught.  

It is not serving us well in government, business, labour or academia. Even some in our court systems have lost sight of the true meaning of the word justice.

This was driven home to me recently by the jailing of a 17 year old rape victim who was incarcerated in order to compel her to testify against her assailant.  Despite the fact that she had been brutally victimized by her rapist, the prosecutor was able to justify victimizing this young girl a second time because he believed the ends justified the means. There is nothing honest or decent about that and we are all demeaned by it and should feel shamed that such a thing could happen in a free society.

In the end, the only hope we have is that lies are more fragile than truth simply because lies have no substance and can be exposed and defeated by the truth. The truth is substantive because it based on fact. It requires nothing but itself to exist. It remains the truth regardless of the lies that are put forward to try and obscure it.

Truth cannot be changed simply by lying about it. It may be overlooked, it may be ignored but unlike lies which have to be constantly reinforced by more lies, the truth stands on its own merit.

In the end, the old adage is true. The truth shall set you free and all of those who claim to want to build a better society with freedom, justice and equality for all would do well to remember that.

Trying to create a better life for the world on a foundation of lies and half-truths is like building your house on a foundation of sand. Sooner or later, that house will sink and be lost.

Nothing real can be built out of anything that doesn't actually exist and lies are merely words that blow on angry winds. In the end, they just blow away and leave nothing of value behind.

"Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

- George Orwell

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Whatever Happened To Integrity
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© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

My Response To Those Offended By My Article On Student Entitlement

I’ve received quite a bit of commentary about my article on the demands by students that taxpayers should give them more support.  Not all of the comments were posted on my blog, many came in the form of direct messages on Twitter and some were public tweets. I can’t address them properly in 140 characters so I will address them here.

The comments can be broken down into three categories. The majority were quite supportive of what I wrote which tends to illustrate just how tired taxpayers are becoming at always having to cough up more cash for one group or another.


The second group were actually venting their frustration about how ineffective their education has proven to be in finding a meaningful job after spending all that money and I can empathize with that but it is not the responsibility of taxpayers.

The third group were exactly who I wrote about; "It’s expensive therefore someone else should pay for it."

One conversation started with this comment from a student.

“Hissy fits? You are aware that tuition alone now would have paid for an entire year at university 30 years ago right?”

I am more than aware of it. I worked as a senior exxecutive for a large post-secondary institution for a number of years and have seen first-hand what drives the cost.

I have paid tuition for myself more than 40 years ago and again for my daughter 18 years ago. My wife and I now have her daughter in university and are well-versed in the current cost of a college education. I’ve experienced the increase in the cost of post-secondary over forty years, not as an impartial observer but as a participant.

Thirty years ago, the cost of university was considerably lower when measured against today’s dollars but that is an absurd measurement. Average incomes were about 30% of what they are today. A new Toyota Corolla cost less than $4,000 and a new single family home cost less than $60,000 in most Canadian cities. Condominiums were selling in the $35,000  or less range. Mortgage interest rates hovered between 10 and 12%. Government debt was starting to rise and along with it taxes.

Up to that poiint, about 25% of the average taxpayer’s real income was chewed up in taxes. Now, fully 50% of the average income goes to taxes for one level of government or another in one form of taxes or another.

it is true that tuition was cheaper back then but it is equally true that there was a lot less personal income as well.

It wasn’t any easier back then than it is now and the reason it hasn’t improved is because nobody ever addresses the root causes.

The cost of education is ridiculously high but that doesn’t mean that the solution is demanding taxpayers pay even more than they are currently paying. The problem has nothing to do with taxpayers and attacking people who are tired of watching their....let me repeat that....their hard earned income being whittled away to pay for what others want is wearing thin.. Students aren't asking for help to sort out the problem, they are demanding money that was earned by others to pay for them.

The simple fact is that the high cost of education is found in the six-figure salaries being paid to professors and administrators including seven figure salaries to some American University football coaches.

It’s found in the absurd text book publishing rip offs that as far as I am concerned border on criminal. Academic text books are sold far above normal market values for books and are amended every year, usually insignificantly, in order to cut down on students selling their books to the next year’s crop of students.

Publishers are aided in this by professors and institutions that sometimes get inducements to require specific texts or one publisher or another. Some professors write their own textbook which they then have printed cheaply and sell to students.

University meal plans, parking, locker rentals and a wide range of other costs are implemented to generate income for the institution without much regard for cheaper ways to provide those services.

The cost of maintaining bricks and mortar institutions is expensive and the post-secondary industry, and for all its fancy rhetoric it is an industry, was slow to take advantage of the cost savings to be found in digital online education.

In the end, it drives the cost of attending university through the roof and it is a serious problem but it is not the taxpayer’s problem!

Demanding that taxpayers cough up more cash does two things. First it simply transfers the expense to someone else and that is unfair. Secondly, it does nothing to address the real problem, it merely perpetuates it and that won’t work for anybody.

In Canada, taxpayers are already picking up the tab for 75% of the cost of post-secondary education including tuition, facilities maintenance, academic and administrative staff salaries. In other words, taxpayers are paying the lion's share of what a university education actually costs.

I appreciate that the cost of education is difficult and frustrating. I understand why it makes people angry but that doesn’t excuse the same tired old demand that somebody else needs to pay because the costs are too high. Nor does it excuse the even more tired protests in the streets that disrupt our cities, induce unnecessary conflict with the police and endanger the safety of people on all sides of this issue.

That has become the preferred method of dealing with problems now. Get a mob together, go out into the street and stir things up. What has it accomplished lately?

Well, if you look at Occupy, it resulted in eight people dead, countless criminal charges for rape, assault, criminal trespass, an incredible number of injuries and more than $50 million in property damage across North America. What did all of that accomplish? Nothing! The problems remain and have only been exacerbated by ludicrous bills for repairs and ancillary services now being paid out of tax dollars.

How often do we have to keep reliving the failed mistakes of the past before somebody finally stands up and says, “Hey, this doesn’t work! We need to find a way to fix our problem rather than throw a hissy-fit over it and demand others pay for it!”

Canada and the United States are already living beyond their means. There isn’t enough tax revenue to pay for the programs already in place let alone add new ones. Both countries have borrowed significantly just to meet the bills and guess what? Programs are being cut because of it.

Canada\s richest province, Ontario, has gone from being a have to a have-not province in less than eight years and the draconian service cuts are already starting just to try and balance the books.

Suggesting that borrowed money can be moved from one entitlement to another in an attempt to justify support for a particular entitlement is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It won’t matter how nicely those chairs were arranged, the ship is going down. Greece is the perfect metaphor for what happens when you lie to yourself like that.

Greece is the poster nation for where a country living beyond its ability to pay leads. If you thought trying to struggle through the high cost of post secondary education in Canada was a challenge, try to imagine what it will be under the conditions that now exist in Greece.

The simple reality is that there are thousands of students across North America who are dealing with the exorbitant cost of going to college and I don’t dismiss that challenge lightly. But I find it insulting that students who live in a province that has the lowest tuition in North America by thousands of dollars annually feel hard done by because they are facing what amounts to $175 per semester increase.

It offends me to see those students marching in the streets demanding more from taxpayers, the same streets where the homeless try to find shelter. Their demands are not for a better society, the demands are for more for themselves at the expense of others. It is selfish and nothing less than an unwarranted sense of entitlement by those who have not earned that right.

It especially offends me that those students demand more while we have children going to bed hungry at night and can't successfully deal with poverty because we don’t have the tax money to properly address the issue, Too much money is being paid out in entitlements to too many who think life is unfair and who continue to demand more.

It’s a big world and it isn’t always easy. It's just the way life is and it doesn’t mean someone else is suddenly responsible for paying your way because things are difficult. That merely leads to where we are now, stupidly trying to build a successful society on borrowed money. That is nothing less than the road to perdition.  If students who are demanding more haven’t figured that out by now, they’re in for a rude awakening when they graduate and discover how little their degrees are really worth in the workplace.

   

Even taxpayer dollars won’t help them then.

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© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

I'm Tired Of Student Hissy-Fits Over Tuition And The Greed Behind Them!

In the United States, the average cost of college tuition ranges from $20,000 to $50,000/yr. In Canada, where post-secondary education is significantly supported by provincial governments, tuition costs range from a high of $6,600/year in Ontario to a low of $2,500/yr in Quebec. Guess which province has students in the streets protesting a $325/year increase in tuition?

More than 600 students protested in Gatineau today and thousands have been protesting in Montreal and Quebec City. They are protesting the proposed increase of $325 / year to their tuition which is the lowest university tuition in North America.


Here's a couple of basic facts.

Post-secondary education in Canada is subsidized by taxpayers who pick up the tab for about 75% of the annual cost. Clearly this isn’t good enough for many students in Quebec who seem to feel that they have only a limited, if any, responsibility to pay for their education.

Annual tuition for a basic BA at McGill University in Montreal and one of the country's leading institutions cost Quebec students $2,100 / year. By contrast, an international student who must pay the full tuition cost rather than the one subsidized for Canadian students by taxpayers is charged $14,000 / year for the same degree. In Ontario, at Queen's University, another of Canada's leading educational institutions, the cost to Canadian students is more than $5,000 / year.

At Queen's the annual tuition for a medical degree is approximately $19,000 but at McGill, Quebec students are only charged $3,000 annually and they feel hard done by.

It is not a uniquely Canadian attitude.

This is a belief shared by their colleagues in the Occupy movement who have announced that post-secondary education is a right, not a privilege and definitely not a responsibility for students.

I'm not surprised. Self-reliability is a concept that is as alien to Occupy as common sense.

The argument put forward by students in Quebec, and groups like Occupy, is that getting a university education benefits the state, therefore the state should pay most, if not all, of the freight for its cost.

There is a counter argument that the education has far more benefit to the individual than the state which would suggest that the individual has a greater responsibility than the state; but let’s not quibble over logic. Let’s assume that most of the precious dears who think the state owes them a free ride are correct.

If the benefit accrues to the state and the state should therefore pay for the education, it also hold true then that the state should have a say in what individual students are going to study. There isn’t much demand for graduates of a program like “Social Practices in Art” or “The History of Philosophy.” (One can almost predict that if graduates from these programs don't find positions as academics, they will be living a good portion of their adult lives on social assistance where they will no doubt expect even more support from the taxpayer.)

Canada, for example, needs more doctors, engineers programmers, technicians and people who are trained in business-related disciplines. We also need more trades people like bricklayers, carpenters and electricians. We don't need more art critics and dillitants. We have more than enough of those employed at taxpayer expense at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and The  Canada Council For The Arts.

If the state is to pay for the education because the state is to be the ultimate beneficiary of that education then the state should identify which programs each individual student should take.

This, of course, won’t be popular with students or Occupy and it has been tried before in places like the Soviet Union where it was equally unpopular. It was clear that depending on the state for everything as has been seen in North Korea, The Soviet Union and other countries that paid for everything doesn’t work out too well. One by one, those countries sank into poverty, oppression and ultimately, many simply fell apart.

What makes a country successful is the willingness of individuals to take responsibility for their own lives while making a contribution to their country. In other words, they don’t depend on the state to be successful; the state depends on them to function successfully as individuals and being fully responsible for their own lives.

It is an oxymoron to suggest that one can be independent and self-reliant while expecting others to pick up the tab.

In the end the argument that the state should pay because the state benefits is specious. The beneficiary of the education is the student. The state has no guarantee that the student will graduate, will be successful if they do graduate or even that the graduated student will remain in the country where they will put their education to good use for the benefit of a grateful nation.

Education is a privilege and a responsibility. Nobody owes anyone a free ride and the self-serving arguments by ‘kids’ who for the most part are barely out of the cocoon of having mommy and daddy pay for their lives up to this point is absurd.

The state is not an independent entity in and of itself. It is people and most of those people are taxpayers who don’t owe anyone a free or almost free education. We’ve already footed the bill for all of the education every student has received up to the end of secondary school. Now it’s their turn to contribute and merely showing up for class and graduating isn’t enough of a contribution!

Taxpayers have other things to pay for like social programs for the poor and disadvantaged, health care, highways and roads, environmental and consumer protection, justice and defense. Post-secondary education is primarily the responsibility of the student and no one else. It’s time for those who feel they have been oppressed by having to take responsibility for their own lives, to get over this self-absorbed, everything for free, Utopian self-centred fantasy and embrace the realities of the real world.

Demands that the state owe them a cheap or even free university education is just one more example of an unwarranted sense of entitlement in a world that already has too much of it! It's nothing less than a hissy-fit by spoled, self-centred and selfish children pretending to be grown up. They need to get over themselves!

And one more thing.

Instead of blaming the state for the high cost of education, protesters who think the cost of college is too high should take a look at those six-figure salaried professors who stand in solidarity with them. They, along with those who work in administration at universities and colleges, are the primary reason that tuition costs keep increasing.

If they want to protest something, protest the greed of academics and administrators and leave the taxpayer alone.

I’m tired of the posturing by people who think that they have a right to be fully independent while others pick up the tab for their independence. That isn’t independence, that’s nothing but pure and simple greed. It is no different than the greed they criticize on wall street and in corporations.

Don’t want to pay for your education? No problem. Get a job and forget university.

McDonalds is hiring.

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© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Can The Government Do More? Yes - But Pray It Doesn't!

I am always confused by those who demand the government provide more services. We hear it all the time. There is a demand for more health care, more environmental protection policies and demands that the government impose stricter regulations on the banks and big corporations.

I’m not suggesting that some of those things aren’t important or even necessary; some probably are but expecting government to take care of it is like expecting ….well…there isn’t anything quite as stupid as expecting government to take care of things in an effective and efficient manner.

Honestly! When was the last time government did much of anything that could be considered truly efficient? They can’t even collect taxes, let alone spend the money they collect efficiently.

I know it’s not a popular topic. I hate taxes too but we all need to throw some cash into the pot to take care of a few common essentials like roads and highways, national defense, justice and so on. So, taxes in some form or another are a necessary evil and we elected government to take care of that for us.

It’s a simple concept really. All government is required to do is collect a specific percentage of our incomes and then use that money to provide the services to which we’ve agreed. Government, however, lives in an alternate universe and they have turned that simple concept into a bizarre, overly complex and expensive process that is both inequitable and expensive.

In the United States, for example, government spends approximately $1.5 trillion…..let me repeat that for you in case you missed it the first time….$1.5 trillion collecting taxes. In Canada, the Canada Revenue Agency has almost as many employees as the Canadian armed forces. How is that possible?

It happens because bureaucracies are the same the world over. In Canada, a gun registry was budgeted to cost $200 million. It ended up costing $2 billion making it the most expensive data base ever created. In Germany, the bureaucracy and politicians invested billions in solar and wind power but are now dismantling the entire program and purchasing much of their power from the Czech Republic at a fraction of the cost already incurred.

Billions, even trillions, of dollars are spent on bureaucratic processes and systems that do nothing other than to slow down economies, overly complicate the function of government and drive sane people into therapy.

The procurement process is just one more example. Governments spend billions on everything from office furniture to military equipment each and every year. Do they do it well I’ll let you judge. Personally I don’t believe that paying more than $100 apiece for hammers that a Defense Department audit revealed a few years back would support any claim to either efficiency or even common sense. You and I can pick one up at Home Depot for less than twenty bucks. Maybe we should be doing procurement for the government,

Despite the incredible amount of bureaucratic process that goes into government procurement, somehow we still end up seeing an incredible amount of over-spending for things that most of us could pick up at a box store for a fraction of the price.

Government is very good at imposing restrictions on itself to protect our interests; they just aren’t very good at operating within those restrictions as is now being discovered in the ongoing GSA scandal in the United States.  Wouldn’t we all like a job where our employer picks up the tab for a vacation in Las Vegas complete with hot tubs and free meals? I think it would actually be better if the government cut most of these departments and let us keep more of our income so that we could pay for our own trips rather than applying for a government job just get away now and then.

It isn’t just the incredible wastage of real cash that is bothersome though, it’s the way government works that squanders billions in daily nickel and dime activities.

I was recently told about a very senior bureaucrat who was to present an award at a ceremony. It wasn’t a big ceremony and there were no media or politicians present, nor was the public involved. It was an employee awards presentation and this particular bureaucrat was asked to make a five minute presentation speech to present one of the awards.

He earns in excess of a quarter of a million a year but was incapable of winging that speech nor was he capable of jotting a few notes down on a piece of paper as he was being driven across town to make the presentation. Apparently his personal staff wasn’t capable either. Instead, they requested that a particular department write the speech for him. 

This speech took the better part of an afternoon to craft and involved a deputy-minister, assistant deputy minister, a director general and no less than two directors. The five minute, “Congratulations, here’s your award’ speech was emailed back and forth between these executives for approximately four to five hours as they painstakingly poured over every syllable. The cost? I’m glad you asked. The deputy minister makes close to $250,000/yr, the adm makes somewhere in the area of $180,000, the director general $150,000 and the two directors each earn approximately $110,000. 

In other words, government required the services of a team of people with annual salaries totaling $800,000+ / year just to craft a brief presentation speech that you and I could have ad-libbed.

That’s how government approaches everything. If the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, government will never be able to successfully connect those two points. Instead they will form committees to discuss alternate routes between the two points, conduct feasibility studies to examine which of the alternate routes is the most environmentally friendly or has the least potential for political repercussions, call for tenders which they will subsequently ignore and then scrap the entire project because all of this took so long, the original requirement is now redundant.

Canadians are issued a social insurance number and a shiny plastic card with that number on it. My card eventually fell apart and I needed a new one. I thought it would be a simple matter of showing up at Service Canada (a somewhat outstanding oxymoron), producing some ID and then filling out a form. I was wrong.

I needed my birth certificate but I no longer had my birth certificate because it was printed on flimsy paper and had become so worn out, it simply decayed. Government, for reasons known only to itself won’t permit you to plasticize your paper birth certificate. So, I dutifully drove to Toronto, prepared to produce all kinds of ID to get a new birth certificate. I didn’t need ID, I merely had to fill out the form, pay a fee and we were done. Three days later, my birth certificate arrived by mail.

Now understand what happened here. I was originally applying for a new SIN card, arguably the most important document a Canadian has. The federal government would not accept any government issued photo ID to verify who I was. I was required to produce my birth certificate (remember, I was already in their data base). I didn’t need photo ID to replace my birth certificate which means that the federal government relied on a document any idiot can obtain without any verification of who they are.

Only a bureaucracy could be that abjectly stupid.

There are many good and professional people who work for governments. They do the very best they can but they are constrained by a system and process so antiquated and byzantine that I’m surprised more of them haven’t attempted suicide out of frustration.

I’ve brought this up because so many continue to pressure, petition and lobby the government for more services. Why? Were they not here for the last billion dollar boondoggle? Are they masochists who enjoy seeing things done in the most ineffective manner possible or are they so naïve that they cling to faint hope like a fat kid clings to a chocolate bar. Government doesn’t make our lives easier or better. It interferes and undermines what otherwise would be a pretty good lifestyle. 

Do we never learn? Just how many $100 hammers can we afford?

Personally, I think the time has come to reduce government to as small a size as possible. They clearly have too much time on their hands and the world is full of real problems looking for real and expeditious solutions. We don’t have the time or the money anymore to wait for politicians and bureaucrats to figure out the worst way of accomplishing something,

We’re better off muddling along on our own for most things. For those who think government should handle everything remember this simple truism.  

The less government touches, the less they can screw up!

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© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

You're Awesome!

I’ve been told that I’m awesome more often since joining Twitter six months ago than throughout out all of prior life and almost exclusively by people who have never met me, don’t know me and who seem to think that because I can click the follow button I’m - well - simply amazing!

I don’t let it go to my head because I've also been called a 'capitalist lickspittle', a 'right-wing neo-fascist' and a 'left-wing socialist jerk-off'. I also have lots of people in my real life who know me quite well and who regularly assure me that I am merely just ok.

Then too, there is something about trusting the sincerity of an automated direct message telling you that you're awesome that tends to get in the way of believing it.

I’ve often commented on the extreme rhetoric used in social media and usually my comments focus on the accusatory and over-the-top attacks on someone else’s point of view or opinion. But not all of the extreme language in places like Twitter is reserved for attacking others. Sometimes it’s just so downright obsequious it’s embarrassing. 

The fact that someone chooses to follow someone on Twitter doesn’t make them awesome. It doesn’t even make them special. It might mean they’re curious, interested in the other person’s tweets or just simply hoping that the person they’re following will follow them back but it doesn’t raise them up to a level of awesome achievement.

In the real world, we tend to reserve that for people who discover cures for diseases like polio or who invent new technologies nobody ever thought of before. Steven Hawking is awesome, the last person who chose to follow you on Twitter isn’t.

I follow lots of people. Sometimes I follow them because they were recommended by Twitter, sometimes because they followed me and after checking their profile and reading some of their previous tweets, I thought they might be interesting enough to follow. Sometimes, I unfollow them later because it turns out we have nothing in common. Occasionally, Twitter randomly unfollows a few on its own.

And that, of course, is the other side of being awesome.

People are not merely offended that you unfollowed them; they are downright insulted and even hurt. They send messages demanding to know why you are no longer following them or tweet that you have unfollowed them to the Twitterverse as if anyone else actually cares. It’s as if you have committed a grave injustice to them and they feel the need to tell the world what a mean, selfish and uncaring person you are.

It makes me wonder what this whole follow thing really is about.

Clearly for many, it isn’t about connecting with people and exploring ideas or just chatting. It seems to be like acquiring points and the more you have, the more value you have as a person. Some seem to think that the number of followers they have is a measure of their popularity but that seems pretty shallow to me.

I follow a guy who has less than 50 followers and communicate regularly with him. Our connection started when he severely criticized one of my blog posts which prompted a back and forth argument for about a week. I learned some things in that debate that I didn’t know before and started following him on Twitter and he started following me. We communicate reasonably regularly now and have established a solid mutual respect for each other.

I contrast that with some who have a few thousand followers, who never interact with anyone or who waste my timeline with meaningless quotes by famous dead people. I haven’t got much time for that so I tend to unfollow those people (the tweep, not the famous dead person) after awhile. Likewise, I’m not overly interested in following those constantly trying to flog their latest book or sell iPhones so I tend to unfollow them as well. It’s not personal nor do I think those people are bad people; it’s just not where my interest lays.

But a lot of folks online take it very personally. 

They protect their follower’s list like a lioness protects her cubs and they can switch from thinking you’re awesome to telling the world you aren’t in a heartbeat. One Twit, (or is it Tweep?) that I followed based on Twittter's recommendation, tweeted me that he didn't permit fascists to follow him and immediately blocked me. It was if people he permitted to follow him should feel honoured. It really doesn't get much more adolescent than that.

But here’s the thing. I thought it was my follow list. I thought it was up to me to decide who I wanted to follow and when I make a decision to follow someone, it isn’t like I’m bestowing some great honour on anyone. Likewise, when I decide to stop following someone, I'm not intending it as a personal slight,

I’ve had a number of people actually tweet me to tell me they’re honoured that I am following them. Why? I’m just reading their tweets; I’m not leading them to the Promised Land.

The most interesting thing I’ve noticed in all of this is that those who were most honoured that I followed them and who took the time to thank me and tell me that I’m awesome, almost never contact me again unless I unfollow them. Many of them were so honoured they used a bot to send me a direct message to tell me so. But they have no connection to me, make no attempt to get to know me and forget I even exist until another app they use tells them I am not following them anymore.

It’s like accumulating a lot of stuff over a period of time, never using most of it but becoming upset because you suddenly become aware of the fact that something you never used and forgot you had has gone missing. It’s a shock and your life is somehow diminished.

I have a message for people like that. Get a life!

It’s Twitter, not a new universe. People will follow you and unfollow you randomly and for countless reasons. It means nothing. It is not an honour to have someone follow you, it is merely an opportunity to potentially get to know someone online. It is not an insult when you are unfollowed, it simply means that the person with whom you had no contact has moved on. 

If a person’s life is so bereft of meaning that they measure it by who followed or unfollowed them on Twitter, I suggest they need to spend less time online and more time out in the real world building a real life. 

A person’s value as a person is not measured by how many people do or don’t follow them. It’s measured by things like character, talent, ability, intelligence and compassion for others. We are what we think and do in life. We are not defined by how many follow or stop following us online. A followers list is merely what its name implies, a list of people who are following their tweets. It is not a measure of a person's worth.

It’s nothing more and nothing less than that and treating it like it is somehow the measure of a life is like trying to evaluate a life based on how many ‘things’ you’ve acquired. At the end of the day, that’s how most people treat their followers. They’re just things that make the list bigger.

There is no humanity in that, just an insecure need to appear to be popular. It's an illusion of popularity brought about by the delusion that the number of followers one has is a reflection of how popular they must be. People offer to sell followers and others set up "follow back teams" in an attempt to gain more followers.

That isn't popularity. It's just one more illusion in the great cloud, a universe where virtual reality for too many has become more important than the reality we live out here in the big world.


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© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Noise!

There are days that I wish I had been born in a different era. Any era will do on those days because all I’m looking for is an escape from the noise. I get tired of the yelling and screaming online and in the media. I get tired of bureaucrats speaking in a language none of us understands and who work overtime trying to socially engineer our societies with politically correct doublespeak and regulation upon regulation for even the most mundane things.

I get tired of politicians pretending to believe in something just so we will elect them and even more tired of the sanctimonious and divisive rhetoric that spins out of that from their supporters. Much of that noise comes from folks who have bought into the fantasies spun by them and that’s all it is much of it is now…..noise.

 We have successfully turned our freedom of expression into a form of ideological slavery.

Oh, I know. We’ve had some form of government since the dawn of time and I’m sure the folks living in caves divided up into left and right political ideologies. “Kill the T-Rex  - “No. It’s an endangered species and we need to protect it.” And I’m equally certain they had some kind of primitive bureaucracy to support the tribal council, some faceless group to ensure that all spears and clubs were properly registered and that the tribal elders got their share of every root foraged or mystery beast killed for dinner.

What they didn’t have was the constant yelling and screaming that passes for informed discussion and debate these days. My God but it gets tiresome after awhile. The entire free world is capable of taking one fact, it doesn’t matter what it is, and exploding it into days and weeks of arguing, accusations, conspiracy theories and, of course, countless accusations about the perfidity of the opposition.

And here’s the really stupid thing. Most of the time, whatever that issue was gets forgotten almost as quickly as it emerged once a new one shows up. Remember NDAAP or SOPA or RoboCall?

Often the accusations have virtually nothing to do with the original issue and you’d have to invest a considerable amount of time and energy trying to find some facts to debate. Instead it’s all personal attacks. There is no sense of proportion anymore and everything is a threat to someone.

Here is something I have learned that may help you wade through some of the overwhelming noise. The more personal the attack, the more threatened the attacker feels because they really don’t have much upon which to base their opinion. 

I’ve reached a point where I have simply accepted that there is no point in discussing anything with people like this. They don’t listen to anyone but themselves or those who agree with them and there is nothing to be learned from them. 

Debate is an excellent way to learn. It offers the opportunity to challenge your own opinions by looking at, and discussing, facts from a different perspective. You can’t have that debate with people who start from a position that has no factual basis or who think that debate means clobbering their opponent over the head with ill-informed opinion and personal attacks.

To me, it is no different than racism and religious intolerance. It is opinion and belief based on emotions rather than factual information. Like being anti-gay, it’s just another form of intolerant prejudice.

Often, with these people, the language is so over the top, it becomes impossible to consider it let alone take it seriously. Too often they use an issue as an opportunity to open up a debate on something else and pick over old scars.

Some state governments have recently passed or are attempting pass legislation to change abortion laws. That is an issue worth debating. There are real consequences to those decisions and we should be discussing them. Instead of debating the issues and the wisdom behind those decisions, the left has characterized it as a ‘War On Women’ and the language quickly moves from discussing a serious issue in a serious way to yelling and screaming that the Republicans hate women.

How absurd is that?

Within days, Hilary Rosen, a Democratic strategist, utters a poorly phrased but otherwise harmless comment about Mitt Romney’s wife never having worked a day in her life and the right fires up its troops and declares that it is the left that is actually at war with women. The rhetoric escalates and the stupidity is that both sides have successful and intelligent women. Getting around that to prove one side or the other hates women requires a certain amount of verbal tap dancing. Day after day, pundits, politicians, bloggers, mainstream media scavengers fuel the war until the rhetoric is so loud, you can’t hear yourself think and certainly not about the original issue.

Remember that issue? It was abortion but nobody is talking about abortion are they? Instead, they are yelling, screaming, sneering, accusing and labeling the other side and the original issue, which should always be treated with consideration by both sides, is long forgotten.

And we wonder why we never seem to move forward.

The simple fact is that issues like abortion are contentious and difficult for both sides of the debate and both sides of the debate have valid concerns. The only way these issues can be resolved is by consensus and there can be no consensus when people are using words like weapons designed to hurt and intimidate each other.

I watch this constant flow of anger and derision and often find myself wondering if most of the people involved ever stop to think that it is their fellow citizens and not some foreign enemy they are attacking.

They are people just like you and I. They have families, jobs, believe in democracy and many, bless their hearts, have even been known to laugh out loud now and then. How does having an opinion that doesn’t agree with our own suddenly make them, not only the enemy, but less than human? Have we really lost that much of a sense of civilized behaviour and respect for the opinions of others?

I think we have and I think it is born in fear and insecurity which we hide behind intolerant and accusatory rhetoric.

We’re like frightened animals trapped in a corner that lash out and snap at anyone who gets close when they feel threatened. In this case, it is our opinions that are threatened and we are afraid because too many of us lack the confidence in those opinions to debate them without anger. We all have opinions and in North America we are free to voiced them but instead of voicing our opinion with confidence, we attack and denigrate the opinions of others. It shows not only a lack of the same respect for others that we expect and demand for ourselves but a lack of confidence in the opinions we’ve formed.

I think we need to reacquaint ourselves with some of the fundamentals of democracy and one of them is that just as we expect our opinions to be respected even when others disagree with us, so too should we be respecting those with whom we disagree. When the time comes, we vote and the majority decision dictates the decision. Yelling and screaming doesn't change that and accomplishes nothing except more anger, yelling and division.

I grant you some opinions are so stupid they aren’t worth much consideration but that doesn’t mean we have to go out of our way to treat the people who hold those opinions as an enemy of the state.  We don’t gain anything by that other than to create a climate of hostility and intolerance where people talk at others rather than to others. It breeds mistrust, anger and polarization….

….and that, my friends, has been the undoing of more than one civilization in the past.

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© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others