h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My father worked as a professional for a city government. This means that his job was not an elected position. He had something to do that required skill, training, and experience. Naturally he saw government after government elected and each one had it's own agenda and expected that agenda to be acomplished. This is not unreasonable and it is part of the reason why governments exist and are changed.

My father told me that given a choice between working for a crooked government and working for one made of idealist who had just manged to throw out the crooks, in terms of getting the job done for the people, he would rather work for the crooks, because they, at least, were there to make a profit and expected things that they would allow to be done to be done efficiently. The reformers didn't really know what they wanted done or what needed to be done though they had ideas of what would be nice to do. The result was that they didn't know how their ideals could be acomplished and nothing got done or got done much slower than it might have been otherwise.

I understand what my father, who is a very compasionate and capable man, meant. While I agree with you that things are not being done in the best way that they could be done, I am not prepared to say let's all dream together till a plan comes to mind but meanwhile let's just stop all this bad stuff.

When we are talking about the welfare of the planet and, to me, the more important issue of the welfare of the people on it, before we start rolling our sleeves up and jumping in to the ditch with our shovels, we should first decide what the ditch is for and whether we need it at all.

In short, show me your plan, we'll talk it over and come to some conclusions, and then we'll make the necessary changes and roll our sleeves up.

I'm don't need to be convinced that a change is in order, I agree with you about that. I do know, though that as bad as the current systems may be, they are what is sustaining the currently good things as well as clearly contributing to the bad things, We can't just stop. We need to find the way to be able to change over with the minimum disorganization and the maximum efficientcy in terms of peoples lives and personal welfare.

I don't believe in average standards, the whole concept of averages is in humane. So, I'm not interested in affecting the averages. In terms of statistics, I'm interested in maintaining the current level of good while minimizing the standard deviation from the average.

Talk to me about how to do that without having to start all over after a complete global disaster or without creating the equivalent of one in the process of change over.

Barton