Just Curious...

[ukaserex]

That is very insightful.

However, I disagree with Mr. Cleese's statement "to know how good you are at something requires the same skills required to be good at it in the first place."

I appreciate art (painting, drawing, and sculpture). I am no good at any of those forms of art.
I am, however, creative in other ways. My Chemistry teacher once compared my descriptive narrative in writing to that of Jack Frost. ( I don't think I'm that good)
I guess you can say that I paint my pictures with words instead of pigments. But, I still can't paint or draw an actual picture.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

But, don't you see? Because you recognize that you aren't any good at painting, you actually possess the ability to become a good painter. Conversely, if you were, in fact a horrible painter, you would be clueless to the notion that you weren't any good at it. 

[Ironwolf]

I found Mr. Cleese to be extremely insightful.

Look at the American Federal government - they believe they can help everyone and yet they can't even run the Post Office without running debts into the billions every year.

They try and do more and more - believing they are incredibly clever when in fact they are downright ignorant and blissfully unaware of how wrong they are.

[downix]

I found Mr. Cleese to be extremely insightful.

Look at the American Federal government - they believe they can help everyone and yet they can't even run the Post Office without running debts into the billions every year.

They try and do more and more - believing they are incredibly clever when in fact they are downright ignorant and blissfully unaware of how wrong they are.

The Post Office debt is completely fabricated. Any company which had to pay for 75 years worth of healthcare and retirement in 10 would be in the same shape.

[Segev]

The Post Office debt is completely fabricated. Any company which had to pay for 75 years worth of healthcare and retirement in 10 would be in the same shape.

See: The auto industry.

[JaguarX]

The Post Office debt is completely fabricated. Any company which had to pay for 75 years worth of healthcare and retirement in 10 would be in the same shape.

especially on top of bad customer service and rude attitudes that drive customers away and general unprofessionalism and not doing a single thing to address those issues besides raising prices of things to make up for lost customers. The Post Office is tsuck in the 50s thinking they are the only player in town still and can treat customers anyway they see fit. What they fail to realize is that many people dont need them anymore and packages can be sent through other companies and thus not likely to take their crap that had to put up with in the past anymore.

[Heroette]

Look at the American Federal government - they believe they can help everyone and yet they can't even run the Post Office without running debts into the billions every year.

My dad used to work (and retired from)  the post office when it was run by the goverment  but now its a privately run corporation.  The government doesn't run it anymore.  They just own it.

[downix]

See: The auto industry.

not even the same situation. The Auto Industry is one of non-paid pensions, not overpaid pensions.

[Ironwolf]

See again - Blissfully unaware of how to run a business and the dangers of unfunded pensions.

A successful bureaucrat rising to the top of the heap is rarely a successful business person. Throttling creativity and going against common sense to foster croney capitalism and nepotism will always end poorly.

Look at the government backed Solyndra - they were trying to make solar panels that you can buy for much cheaper based on a chinese product that gets government subsidies. Now a clever businessman would say - let's buy as many of those chinese backed panels as we can get and punish them for selling them at government expense. Our silly government backed a bunch of their high dollar donors to SUBSIDIZE OURS! How silly is that. So the plan was lose money as fast as possible to undercut - their undercut..........

Or the lovely LG Chem http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/lg-chem-to-build-303-million-advanced-battery-plant-in-holland-michigan.html they got hundreds of millions to make batteries and never made a single one in the US. Here you go http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/Report-LG-Chem-wasted-150-million-grant-for-battery-cells/-/1719418/18536976/-/2g51om/-/index.html.

I could show literally dozens of these "investments" (read paying donors off with taxpayer dollars) done again and again and yet these are the ones supposedly oh so smart and know how to run your business better than you do.

"God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board" - Mark Twain - or the Federal Government whichever works for you

[downix]

See again - Blissfully unaware of how to run a business and the dangers of unfunded pensions.

A successful bureaucrat rising to the top of the heap is rarely a successful business person. Throttling creativity and going against common sense to foster croney capitalism and nepotism will always end poorly.

Look at the government backed Solyndra - they were trying to make solar panels that you can buy for much cheaper based on a chinese product that gets government subsidies. Now a clever businessman would say - let's buy as many of those chinese backed panels as we can get and punish them for selling them at government expense. Our silly government backed a bunch of their high dollar donors to SUBSIDIZE OURS! How silly is that. So the plan was lose money as fast as possible to undercut - their undercut..........

Or the lovely LG Chem http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/lg-chem-to-build-303-million-advanced-battery-plant-in-holland-michigan.html they got hundreds of millions to make batteries and never made a single one in the US. Here you go http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/Report-LG-Chem-wasted-150-million-grant-for-battery-cells/-/1719418/18536976/-/2g51om/-/index.html.

I could show literally dozens of these "investments" (read paying donors off with taxpayer dollars) done again and again and yet these are the ones supposedly oh so smart and know how to run your business better than you do.

"God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board" - Mark Twain - or the Federal Government whichever works for you

The cheap chinese panels were not introduced until 2010, causing the price collapse in the market. They perfected the technology, which used the runoff from silicon chip manufacture, in 2009, to the surprise of everyone. To blame the government, or Solyndra, over a situation which did not exist until the year after the loans, is very silly to me.

[JaguarX]

See: The auto industry.

Well for many companies of the auto world it was merely a case of years of building crappy products finally catching up to them. Redundatn products, products that doesnt do anything great but doesnt do anything particular bad, boring designs, and placing too many eggs into one basket. GM, 1994-2010 (at least) built decent trucks and SUVs that guzzle gas that wasnt a problem when gas was cheap but became a liability when gas prices went up and the car selection couldnt compete with yawn inducing styling and out of date technology compared other offerings. Recently they caught on and started to put more effort into their cars, probably out of the will for survival more than choice. Unlike Toyota which also have SUVs and trucks but also placed money and development into smaller and more fuel efficent vehicles at the same time thus when gas prices skyrocket, they still had money coming in from the sell of their other options and not had to depend on cars that was relegated to rental fleets and government vehicle fleets. I dont think the ex-CEO of GM even cared one bit that he was at the helm nearly killing off GM, the biggest auto maker in the US and one of the biggest in the world as he still, probably from the bailout money, got a large "bonus" for life and "severence package" while people was still laid off. Basically tax payers paid to ensure that ex-CEO walked away with a fortune.

[blacksly]

"The cheap chinese panels were not introduced until 2010, causing the price collapse in the market. They perfected the technology, which used the runoff from silicon chip manufacture, in 2009, to the surprise of everyone. To blame the government, or Solyndra, over a situation which did not exist until the year after the loans, is very silly to me."

It's easy to just accept stories created for political points by one party or another and get outraged over them. It's a lot harder to do research on the topic and find out what the real stories are, as well as several different perspectives.
Government-bashing is easy and fun. The problem is when people start to believe that they know more and better about how to do things than those who are professional at it.
Sometimes people are right. Professionals make mistakes. The issue is that government-bashers think that professionals make MORE mistakes than ignorant amateurs, and that's an ignorant and amateurish belief to have.

[Ironwolf]

The cheap chinese panels were not introduced until 2010, causing the price collapse in the market. They perfected the technology, which used the runoff from silicon chip manufacture, in 2009, to the surprise of everyone. To blame the government, or Solyndra, over a situation which did not exist until the year after the loans, is very silly to me.

To not research the tech again and again and again is a reoccurring theme. Fiskars? Give $500 million to a Finland car company to bost American jobs? Well several high level Democrats had heavily invested in the company so yes.

Give $3 BILLION to Brazilian oil companies to drill for oil in the gulf that our government would not allow Americans to drill for, if you have George Soros invest there yes!

This is not the sole exclusive right of the Obama administration or Democrats to do this - I could list just as many favoring Republicans - I am merely showing the complete lack of common sense and illustrating Mr. Cleese's wonderful saying. Many people who are clueless are completely clueless as to how clueless they are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs23CjIWMgA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0huQFfFtji8

She can feel global warming in her seat as she flies.

[Ironwolf]

"The cheap chinese panels were not introduced until 2010, causing the price collapse in the market. They perfected the technology, which used the runoff from silicon chip manufacture, in 2009, to the surprise of everyone. To blame the government, or Solyndra, over a situation which did not exist until the year after the loans, is very silly to me."

It's easy to just accept stories created for political points by one party or another and get outraged over them. It's a lot harder to do research on the topic and find out what the real stories are, as well as several different perspectives.
Government-bashing is easy and fun. The problem is when people start to believe that they know more and better about how to do things than those who are professional at it.
Sometimes people are right. Professionals make mistakes. The issue is that government-bashers think that professionals make MORE mistakes than ignorant amateurs, and that's an ignorant and amateurish belief to have.

Businessmen are professionals. If they lose money they go bust - the government just raises taxes - hence the reason we are in debt for $17 trillion dollars - because we have people investing in areas they are NOT the professionals.

[Ironwolf]

A little insight on Solyndra for you by the way:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/04/why-did-solyndra-fail-so-spectacularly/

Some people you see don't rely on talking points for either party

[Segev]

not even the same situation. The Auto Industry is one of non-paid pensions, not overpaid pensions.

I was actually more or less agreeing with you; the difference was that the auto industry didn't have the money, whereas the post office just kept getting more money poured in. Both institutions faced the same problem, and I was providing secondary reference to illustrate the validity of your point.

[Electric-Knight]

Without the post office, where would I get all that paper that fills up my recycling bin?

[JaguarX]

Without the post office, where would I get all that paper that fills up my recycling bin?

hmm good question.

[FatherXmas]

China is playing the long game when it comes to solar and other "green technologies".  By dumping cheap but low efficiency panels on the world marker, they almost guarantee that the companies that are trying to create inexpensive high efficiency panels to go out of business.  At which point China steps in and buys the IP behind that technology.

There was a time when foreign companies were not allowed to buy companies involved in certain technologies, usually technologies that have direct military applications.  While solar panel technology doesn't fall into that definition I firmly believe that economic and military might is fundamentally driven by inexpensive supply of energy.  Because of that I wouldn't like to see ownership of the technology slip through our fingers simply because it has become caught up in political gamesmanship.

As for Solyndra, I believe they had some very innovated technology which solves a number of practical problems where it comes to large scale retrofit of solar on existing flat roof buildings.  Sure it wasn't designed to go on slanted roofs or be used on a dedicated solar farm but the shear number of commercial structures where this technology could be used is still quite large.

The other technology in danger of slipping out of the hands of the US is energy storage.  Since most "green energy" production relies on capture of energy at the time it's available (solar, wind) rather than creating it at the time of use, storage has to be a big part of the equation.  And what happened to the various solar companies behind new innovative technologies being forced out due to dumping from China, new innovative battery companies are experiencing the same thing.

Imagine what life would be like if we let the transistor and other silicon based technology be snapped up by other countries because politicians were to short sighted to see how it could be beneficial in the long run.

[dwturducken]

A) Isn't this better discussed under General? The initial analogy was appropriate, but we're getting close to bickering. Plus, everyone is wrong.

B)What was this thread about, again?

[Electric-Knight]

A) Isn't this better discussed under General? The initial analogy was appropriate, but we're getting close to bickering. Plus, everyone is wrong.

B)What was this thread about, again?

Hey, get back on topic!!