Re: [tlug] Pretending to be outside Japan?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

fgs@example.com writes:

 > My point is, governments are out of hand all over the world. They
 > just don't know what they're doing. They're utterly expensive to
 > their people, failing every minor corporate standard. A total mess.

Of course they fail on corporate standards.  Governments are not
corporations.  They are not designed to make a profit (ie, sell goods
and services at prices higher than cost), quite the opposite -- that's
why they are universally supported by taxes, without exception as far
as I know.  But they are formal organizations, and suffer from the
usual diseases that formal organizations do, on a huge scale.

If you think you know how to fix that, why aren't you running for
office?  Oh, you don't think you'd be elected, and even if you were,
you wouldn't expect cooperation from the other politicians?  Tough
luck, isn't it?

As Winston Churchill put it, "It has been said that democracy is the
worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried."
Or as Karel van Wolferen wrote, "It is said that a people gets the
government it deserves" and continued "I have always thought this to
be a cruel saying, and nowhere more so than with respect to the
Japanese."

The bottom line, I think, is, "we are the people our mothers warned us
about" (Jimmy Buffet).  Kampai!