Handouts and the Homeless

I agree that the idea of supporting the homeless as a community service is a matter of perception, I.e., is it really constructive to enable people to live on handouts? However there are some important facts being left out of the discussion. In a society of more than 300 million, there are a number of inescapable eventualities.

It is true that some of these people simply choose not to work because as a society we enable them to do so. That is not to say that ALL of them do, because that is not the case. In fact the majority of these people are mentally ill. Some of them are so tragically ill that they even refuse critical aid they need.

Lets show some temperance here and make a distinction between these groups. I don't have any sympathy for the minority young male who views society as hostile because in his view we owe him a living. But for the aging schizophrenic alcoholic whose objective view of reality is no better than a Picasso abstract, aid becomes a societal obligation.

Let me emphasize that I not implying that every working person is personally responsible. I am only saying that as a whole, we need to address the mathematically inevitable underclass. The idea that every person is capable of making their own way is just indulgent naiveté. We have created a massive society that as a whole seems resoundingly successful, but that comes with a cost: There is always going to be a certain percentage of the population that is mentally incompetent, and until we can cure mental illness that will continue to be the case.

If we house them, the quantifiable cost does go up. But if we don't house them then crime and its costs, and abuse by others goes up. There is no easy or perfect solution. So, with the realization that many will not agree with any solution, I say the closing of the mental institutions was a misdirected sentiment.

They were closed because of claims of abuse, and because “They don't work”. Yet, the exact opposite is true. Yes there were abuses of some, but throwing these people out victimized them all. So now they freeze and starve in the winter, and defecate in public while providing targets for street thugs. When they are not being robbed or beaten, they are stealing as well, in order to survive. Putting these people on the street is always going to make them worse, not better.

Secondly, the point is not to “rehabilitate” the mentally ill anyway. They created jobs. They provided employment for medical, psychological, and research staff. I don't care if the government funds American scientists to study American patients if it comes at the expense of funding some automaker in Zkrgzftambia.

If that leads to reports of abuse of patients in our asylums, fine. That only means we can provide training and employment for human services professionals to monitor and improve the system. This is where government money should go. Not legislating the proximity of billboards to schools, or giving tax-breaks to oil companies with historically obscene profits, or funding outreach programs in foreign countries.

Instead of spending trillions of dollars bailing out irresponsible corporations in dire straits for no better reason than greed, what if we had been spending the money on social programs that protect the vulnerable while creating competitive jobs for the responsible? Would we still have needed to force banks into so many trillions of dollars in sub-prime mortgages if people could have afforded their mortgages in the first place?

Instead of forcing loans to people who can't afford them, how about helping people afford them? Promoting the general welfare is mandated in the constitution, corporate bailout is not. Defense of American soil is mandated, defense of foreign national interests to our own detriment is not.

Religion and war

I am sick and tired of people turning off their brain and blaming religion for no other reason than that is what they WANT to believe. It is a lie. The true problem is money and power and the access ignorance of the masses gives to insane leaders to acquire it.

I think ignorance is the greatest killer of mankind. A self-imposed learning disability that makes billions of people parrot back simple-minded feel-good homilies that do nothing but make sheep of nations.

LETS REVIEW RELIGION AND WAR

US vs Iraq: Geopolitical threat of Saddam acquiring and distributing RBC weapons, and oil/economic reasons.
Rwanda: Hutu vs Tutsi reprisal for perceived political assassination.
Kosovo, Chechneya, Balkan wars etc:, ethnically motivated geopolitical nationalist pro vs anti communist/capitalist ideology towards independence & statehood.
Vietnam: US vs Russian expansion.
Korea:US vs Chinese expansion.
WW2: German expansion.
WW1: Perceived assassination of Ferdinand.
American civil war: Liberal democracy vs. republic issue.
American revolution: National independence from England.
Europe 1600-1800: Wars of accession, land, and independence.
Rome 300BCE to 800AD: nationalistic expansionism, and conquest for the sake of conquest.
Greece: see "Rome" above.

Even the Islamic vs Jewish problem has more to do with land, than religion. If Jews would just go away, they could worship somewhere else (like Alaska or Antarctica I guess). The Arabs don't really care, they just want the land, and for Israel to go away.

That accounts for BILLIONS of casualties, almost entirely based on nationalistic expansion for economic reasons, to gain land and power, often directed by charismatic leaders followed by people who fail to think critically.

So, do you want to compare "The Crusades" or "The Inquisition" to 4,000 years of greedy, power-hungry megalomaniacs leading, dismembering and murdering billions of humans simply because they can? Stalin? Ghengis Khan? Napoleon? Hannibal? Did the Vikings engage in conquest in order to convert the masses to another religion?

Yes, you can blame the few thousand deaths in the Crimean war, the Crusades, and perhaps some of the Ottoman/Persian conquest on religion, but that is a laughable comparison to the true motivation for war: MONEY and POWER. And in fact, where there is a religious reason involved, it is STILL driven by leaders struggling for POWER over masses of morons, because the people provide the means for them to do so in the first place.

Stop blaming "religion" and start taking responsibility for your own intellectual laziness and lack of humility, i.e. pride. These are the tools the masses provide the morally bankrupt and insane leaders the means to murder millions at a time, and impose economic slavery for their own personal benefit, whose only religious motivation is to make themselves into gods.

Byzantine governmental policy

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I first wrote this as an assessment of the process and results of our current intelligence classification and structure, (i.e., CIA, NSA, DHS,etc.) but another review makes clear that the principles involved apply to much more than the areas originally targeted. Following is the original post:

Governmental organizational policies are almost always going to evolve into incomprehensible and illogical quagmires.

Those struggling for solutions often find themselves victim to another human failing; fixating on foreground details, mistaking immediacy for importance. Inevitably this leads to bandaging the problem, and patting oneself on the back for creating such an effective "solution", when in fact only the symptom has been addressed. The actual problem requires emotional divestment and enlarged perspective.

In this particular case, the problem is not the byzantine system that has been implemented, but rather that the system is specified by personnel who have no business specifying these systems in the first place.

Instead of microanalyses of individual procedures, a better approach would be a reworking of the expectations of and requirements for the policy making individual, with a heavy emphasis on real-world experience, with a track record of proven results, and not someone who has developed their philosophy from inside the governmental structure.

This is the origin of the current system and it relies on political alliance and legal-writing skills, with a focus on self-advancement more than technical understanding and experience.

Once again, the politically adept emerge victorious over the socially-impaired genius. Lets stop rewarding idiocy and emotionalism and start giving the public a more positive view of intellectualism. I will talk about that dynamic later. For now, I suggest a reread of Dale Carnegie's book.

You have just been Java Clicked?

Hi,

I'm JavaClick. I likes my Java, and I likes to CLICK!

Expect to see some deeply insighful observations, and occasionally some truly whacky sounding ideas here. Sometimes there will just be random thoughts.

Right now, I'm just going to get some more coffee.

(off to a roaring start, I see)