The New Class: Savages Amidst a Technology They Don't Understand

[jordan179]

From Daniel Greenfield, "Government Is Magic," Sultan Knish, October 27th, 2013:

Our technocracy is detached from competence. It's not the technocracy of engineers, but of "thinkers" who read Malcolm Gladwell and Thomas Friedman and watch TED talks and savor the flavor of competence, without ever imbibing its substance.

...

The ObamaCare

Comments

[igorilla]

Unfortunately, this meant a huge front-end jam in the system
But why the fron-end ? All input occurs on the user said, and the data goes to servers only after submit is finished

[luagha]

If you've been reading up on the various failures, one of the problems with the Healthcare government site is that it downloads to the user, at once, over 50 java programs and 9 style sheets. No matter what, that means that every person is going to have at least 59 responses - some simple saying 'message received' and some more complex. A hundred users at a time, 5900 messages, and so on

[igorilla]

If you've been reading up on the various failures
Ni, I've not - I'm not american

over 50 java programs and 9 style sheets

G-d bless them, but why they don't use one nice big installer, for example
I never programmed for the web apps, you know, but it seems to me self-evident

It works in your testing lab because your testing lab only has ten computers, not ten thousand

It's funny, there're a lot of traffic generators around, it's the basic, to plan for peak capability, isn't it ?

Honestly, what is scarier : stupidity or corruption ?

[luagha]

Exactly. And keep in mind that this is just one of the big glaring problems that they have found with the site design.

There are many different ways to do this kind of thing right but they were not used. There are ways to generate realistic traffic to test it right but it wasn't done. And so on.

The people hired for the job are the same people who screwed up the Canadian firearms database (a much simpler job) for 2 billion dollars and ended up with nothing that worked and it had to be scrapped.

[x_eleven]

It's often argued that the reason why the America of the early to mid 20th century could build "skyscrapers and fleets within a year ... and build them well," is because the products were simpler. It is true that the products were simpler. But it was also true that the tools we had to build them were also simpler. Today we have computers, design programs, word processors, spreadsheets, simulators and fabricators. The men of the last Civic-Heroic generation worked with slide rule, pen and paper, and tools wielded by hand. The difference is that they were focused on getting their jobs done, while we are focused on looking good while making the motions of doing them.

Great things were done with even less than that. St. Peter's Basilica was built with less. The slide rule had not yet been invented. Galileo had not yet published his works on what would later become known as Kinematics and the Strength of Materials

[akilika]

My Little Pony... you know, despite having an actual ascended creature of massive power and wisdom in the position of permanent God-Empress, worshipped and feared by all, she seems to leave almost all affairs to local rule. Which, despite the fact that every aspect of nature needs to be handled manually, appears to deploy itself with a feather-light touch in all matters but weather

[luagha]

And yet, the ponies seem to have a need to worship Celestia's power (and a need to fear Luna's during Nightmare Night, even if they know it's all a joke).

Even if it doesn't turn out so great when Celestia tries to step in and save the day against Queen Chrysalis.

Problems are generally solved through willing collective action, even if it may be guided by a leader.

[jsl32]

MLP FIM is a techno-distributist Schizo Tech-topia.

[banner]

That was very good.

Not to be missed

[marycatelli]

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

Re: Not to be missed

[jordan179]

I would say that Kipling was prescient, and he did have a lot of insight, but of course it's more a matter of the fact that foolishness keeps repeating the same sorts of errors. As the poem itself says:

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

Which is true whether the Fool is Saturnius, Saint-Just or Obama.

Re: Not to be missed

[galadrion]

Yup, not prescient, just observant. Obama & Krew are nowhere near as original as they think they are - substitute in (the use of) modern technology, and today's "Progressives" (hah!) are "sisters under the skin" to those White Men who assumed the Burden of Kipling's own society. And just as surprise, with much less justification, at the results of their actions.

Re: Not to be missed

[jordan179]

The funny thing about it is that Obama's policies, or ones like them, have been repeatedly tried but never worked. As Kipling pointed out, and he wrote that poem in 1919 -- probably in reaction to the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1918. To put this in perspective, the Russian Communists were only in their first year of attempting to implement Socialism, and were in the middle of the Russian Civil War -- yet the poem predicts, in broad terms, much of what was to go wrong with the experiment.

Because, of course, it had all been done before. Not just by the French Revolution of 1789, but by smaller revolutions before and after 1789, such as the various German Peasants' Revolts of early Protestantism and by various radical regimes in Latin America, most notably that of Solano of Paraguay. It never, ever worked, and Kipling was dead right in seeing how and why it would fail in his future.

[kitten_goddess]

Corporations and schools do this as well. How well a job applicant fits in with the corporate culture and how good of a team player she is is deemed more important than whether she actually has the skills, intelligence, and knowledge needed to do the job.

In schools, socialization is now deemed every bit as important, if not more important, than academics. Heaven help the child who is intelligent but is not exactly like his peers. He gets thrown into special ed, where he receives an inferior education and suffers a lifetime of stigma and discrimination.

[eric_hinkle]

Heaven help the child who is intelligent but is not exactly like his peers. He gets thrown into special ed, where he receives an inferior education and suffers a lifetime of stigma and discrimination.

Special Ed seems to have come quite a ways from when I attended school, and not a good ways either.

[jordan179]

Special Ed tends to lump together all the kids who are alike only in being "non-standard," whether their non-standardness is stupidity, emotional problems, or (in some cases) intellectual superiority such that school is boring for them.

[gothelittle]

That is precisely the trap my husband fell into in elementary school, and the crux of the reason why he strongly favors and supports our decision to homeschool.

Boring = Lack of attention = Needs medication and a slower pace = more boring = more attention problems = needs harsher medication and an even slower pace.

His son, and I say "his" because our eldest shares many of his gifts and curses, is doing perfectly well in an advanced homeschool curriculum. No medication. Faster pace. No more attention problem than the average kid.