- Ankur Aras
- Mumbai
- India
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Is Kindness - Powerful?
Can, 'kindness' - serve as a powerful guide to live?
Topics:
life
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Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.
pat gilbert 50+
Colleen Steen 500+
Verble Gherulous 20+
Just my two cents' worth.
Colleen Steen 500+
The "government" cannot be kind or unkind. The government, however, is made up of people. I believe that people, out of the kindness of their hearts, start government programs which are meant to help other people fullfill a need, as you insightfully say. Sometimes, the programs get misdirected and/or are not facilitated in a way that actually helps people. As you say...the people running the programs may mess up the original intent. It all comes back to individual people. I think we're on the same page?
Verble Gherulous 20+
pat gilbert 50+
It is true that the representatives are supposed to represent their constituents. The reality is that the only thing a politician really cares about is reelection. Other than that depending on the individual... amidst a culture of undeniable unethical conduct...
In general people do not like to see, hear, or speak no evil, the problem is that to handle evil you have to confront it.
The programs that are created always have the apparency of "good". The test of this (as Krisztián likes to point out) is to offer their constituents an alternative. An example is a bill passed called Sarbanes Oxley it passed with almost 100% of the votes from both Republican and Democrats. It's intention was to make sure that nothing like Enron (a stock scam, it is on Wikipedia) occurred again. The problem is that it has existed now for 10 years
at a cost to the economy every year of 1.5 Trillion dollars and has yet to find one single solitary instance of it's intended purpose. In the U.S. on of the strongest industries you can get into is financial services (accounting) I contend that this is the reason.
At the time I'm sure the authors of this legislation were very proud of the legislation but none the less has been a HUGE burden on the country. Yet Sarbanes Oxley will go on into perpetuity, which for this country will be a few decades, and this is just one of many will be the ruin of this country.
Krisztián would also say that the more government meddles the more it has to mettle as with Sarbanes Oxley, there were already plenty of laws on the books that would of handled Enron situations. So you see there always unintended consequences, not sometimes but every single time, do you see that?
Verble Gherulous 20+
However, there is another issue at play. Those who want to allow business to continue to run rampant and unchecked throughout our economy are those who have orchestrated this rather effective smear campaign against government. This idea that "government is trying to take away your freedom/Big Brother/meddle/make you gay marry/blah blah blah" is propoganda to make the citizens wary and untrustful of the government. This is why we are even suspicious of those government programs that truly help. We perceive this kindness as a way of maniplulation, thus keeping people dependent, thus maintaining a cycle of dependence.
My entire posit is that we stop thinking of our government as the oppressor and involve ourselves more in it. We the people take it back over, by petitioning, by protesting, by assembling, and by clamoring more for government to work for us.
My apologies for rambling, and my sincere apologies for going way off topic. But this has been very interesting (and I hope we don't get deleted for being off-topic!)
pat gilbert 50+
"There are always unintended consequences, because government doesn't make a law if there is no problem."
The politicians take every opportunity to gain political capital as the did with Sarbanes Oxley, the fact is there were already more than enough laws to deal with the problem. The overkill probably made hay for the politicians but are a HUGE burden on the economy.
The government has been growing for almost 100 and in a hockey stick analogy in the past 10 years. Forget the ideology the reality is that we cannot afford anymore of spending and is the downfall of most countries in history. This is not opinion it just is a fact?
I agree with your 3rd paragraph in the sense that government works for us not the other way around. But that means is the government has to shrink, again this is not my opinion. Federal government is borrowing .40 cent of every dollar that is spent, the interest on the borrowed money is going to be 25% of the budget, the entitlements are unsustainable. Truthfully the country is going to fail it is only a matter of when. The only very slim chance is that enough people smell the coffee but if TED is representative of the voters we are toast.
Verble Gherulous 20+
But, since we're so far off the kindness topic, do you think we should go ahead and create a new discussion? Perhaps one tha addresses these questions regarding government enabling the citizenry, or disabling the citizenry? If you want me to start one, let me know - and if you do, let me know as well.
Thanks,
VG
pat gilbert 50+
If you want to start a new thread, but this subject has been done quite a bit and there are 100 Tedsters for every one of me so it gets a little old...( you know the informed thinker types-- against the few knuckle dragger types like me)