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Ongoing Thoughts 13:

By William E. Steinman:

June 16, 2008:

Ignorant People:

Let me discuss what I consider to be the biggest problem in government. Although I focus on America, I believe this problem is worldwide and ageless. The biggest problem, as I see it, standing above all of the issues that face us and influencing those issues is the profound ignorance of our elected leaders.

While we clearly have a few evil politicians, that is not the real problem. The real problem is one of ignorance. Politicians by-and-large are well meaning ignorant fools. They know about politics and how to create the charisma needed to be elected, but they are almost all, technically ignorant. In a technical age, when technical knowledge is most essential to our continuing survival, they do not have it.

Worse, they have no tools for recognizing the technically sound ideas and people. They do not realize how totally ignorant they are. They do not realize it when they are not given all of the facts. They are much too easily conned by grandiose nonsense. That has never been more evident than it is in the energy debacle. Fools have been lead way astray by slick conmen after government money. They have conned too many of our officials into believing that destroying our food crops and our food economy will produce significant amounts of energy and solve the energy problem. No technically competent person would buy that, only political dupes are fooled.

The GI Bill:

I remember the GI bill. It was passed for veterans of WWII and the Korean War. I don’t know if it included any others or not. I did my bit in Korea. When I got out, the bill allowed me to purchase a new home with very favorable interest rates. My wife and I lived there for several years. The bill also paid the entire cost of my technical education at Electronics Institute of Detroit. That is the main reason I was able to retire from Ford Motor Company with a pension in 1992. In the meantime, I contributed to America’s economy. By giving me and many others a leg up, this bill made our economy stronger. In the end, it did not cost a thing.

Now we have a similar GI bill in congress for the recent vets. To be sure, the Mad King George is against it. He says it is too expensive. Let’s think about that. It was not too expensive to send those kids into a senseless war in Iraq where he is spending billions of bucks to get them killed and maimed. However, it is too expensive to spend two or three billion to take care of the survivors, our kids.

I am not convinced that a person who has never served in a war has a right to make decisions on a GI bill. I am not sure the Mad King has the wherewithal to make decisions on anything. I believe he is the quintessential example of the ignorant politico.

The energy crisis.

This problem has been known for decades. It was known in the Carter administration. It completely illustrates the profound failure of our government in dealing with problems. This is not just a few isolated administrations I am talking about. It is all administrations in all parties. When real problems come up, they hide their heads and hope the problem will go away. It appeared to go away for Carter, but it did not. It will not go away for Bush and it will not go away for Obama. We can only hope he will be competent enough to seek out knowledgeable people who can seek real long term solutions.

Currently, we have kludges, local genius, and dishonest rhetoric. We have some good local solutions that help a bit. We also hove stupid local solutions offered by ignorant people like that woman in Lansing and those fools in Washington. We have the hunker-down solutions offered by the ignorant auto executives. What we do not have is a total solution.

One partial local solution is a method of turning human poop into bio-fuel. Of course, our government did not think of this, but they are lining up to take credit. The idea was developed in another country and brought to Michigan. It is worth money folks. Good ideas are worth money. Worthless government ideas must be funded with tax dollars. Mankind has utilized manure for centuries. In Japan and in China, human poop is collected and used in the rice paddies as fertilizer. In Europe in olden days, the people shoveled manure into their cellars and it heated their homes in the winter while it degenerated. All this makes me wonder if I might convert my septic system to a bio-fuel generating system. (Septic Power.) I’ll think on that.

A real long term solution would be a form of energy that eliminates the need for hydrocarbons as fuel completely. Nuclear fusion comes to mind as one such solution. However, so far as I know, no one is working on that yet. Years ago Fermi was looking into it, but congress cut off their funding to fund some pork projects. Duh!

I believe this situation of political ignorance may be hopeless. It is clearly timeless. It has been with us since Rome rose to power. Everywhere we look ignorant people are entrenched. When they are opposed, they are opposed by other ignorant people. When will it end? Perhaps when we get a politician who has sense enough to seek out technical competence. We cannot look to our universities or big industries for this competence. Most of those have entrenched incompetents who make a career out of screwing up and running up costs while blocking real work. I think we will have to look within the smaller innovative companies. If there is talent, they will have it. For the smaller companies, supporting untalented people is the road to quick failure.
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