That doesn’t mean much. People with psychopathic personalities often do well in business, and the corporate world. Doesn’t mean you have to vote for the sicko. He loves having power and firing people to make millions for himself. He’s out of touch not only with real people, but probably doesn’t even conceptualize them as anything but numbers.
No. he was using one example, out of many, to illustrate the proposition that the private sector is, due to the pressures of competition, more efficient than the federal government.
So, is your position that the federal government is more efficient that the private sector, and that your example is just one of many you could provide?
If so, can you share other individuals that hold that same position, i. e., that the federal government is more efficient than the private sector? Because this position is news to me. Also, if you do believe that proposition, why do you think that is? What do you think it is that makes the federal government that makes it more efficient than the private sector?
You’re arguing through two different megaphones. Are there reasons why someone should vote for Obama over Romney. Absolutely. But that doesn’t make him a “psycho” or a “sicko”. Sure he likes having power. Who doesn’t? Yes, via Bain, he fired a lot of people. But if he hired more than he fired, does that enter into your calculation? Seems like, based on your criterion, that if he hired one more person than he fired, that would be a check in the positive column, right. How about if he hired twice as many as he fired?
So, beyond that, what makes him a 'psycho" or 'sicko"? Being a successful Governor? Saving the Olympics from the debate it was on the brink of? Being Mormon? Being white? Having a large family? What is it? You’ve piqued my curiosity.
Healthy people.
I am the genie in the bottle. Right now I am going to give you a choice and make it happen: would you like more power or less power?
Which will it be?
That’s just the thing. That may have been his premise, but his example did not illustrate that particular proposition. He compared a government change of address form for a medical provider to a business that makes sandwiches. This comparison did not show that the private sector is more efficient than the federal government. His comparison was inane. I simply showed that you can come up with an equally inane comparison that shows that a certain business is has more cumbersome paperwork than a (not even vaguely related) government department.
Neither of these comparisons can be used to prove ANYthing. They are both equally useless.
It’s not as simple as how many hired vs. fired. Honestly, if Obama does something that costs lots of jobs, I may or not agree with what he did, but there’s no doubt in my mind that Obama is a human being. Not so with Romney.
I’m not going to list everything. Ever since the campaigns started, it seemed to me everyone equally hated Mitt. Republicans especially. I’ve read people’s opinions, I’ve read the negative and positive (what little there was), and based on that, as well as my own personal judgement of him watching him on TV, his voice, mannerisms, body language, eyes etc. I think he’s a creepy. I think he is a compassion-less and completely unempathetic machine who doesn’t, or maybe can’t differentiate between business and the rest of life and the world, and who believes destruction is the path to profit. I don’t want the guy for president. I wouldn’t want him next door, and I wouldn’t leave my kids or pets alone with him for a second.
I didn’t make up reasons to not like him. Republicans themselves clued me in on him.
My cousin demonstrated how to use one of the sandwich touch-screens in a Wawa in PA. I was quite impressed. Apparently they’re open 24 hours, including on Christmas there, too.
It is amazing. Technology has this effect, or else we would all be resorting to subsistence farming. There was a period where the Soviet Union was criticised for being too efficient and unconcerned with the human spirit. Religion and over-production were sacrificed before the altar of the Stakhanovite movement and ruthless science of production. Note there “overproduction”: without a central planning committee, many hours of human labour are spent on ventures which will ultimately prove fruitless. Under economic theory, this inefficiency is tolerated due to the beneficial effects of competition (which I do not refute). Despite opposition from primitivists and neo-Luddites, both Marxist and Friedmanite economic theories adopt the concept of “necessary unemployment”. The difference between the two is that Marx held that such developments should benefit the maker of the whip, not just the wielder of it (to borrow one of Bricker’s examples).
This is also the reason that the concept of “job creation” is fallacious. The owners of the means of production do not produce jobs and assign them out of their own beneficence. The owners respond to market pressures by determining whether they could extract surplus labour from a subset of the population. Externalities such as the deprivation caused by unemployment do not factor into their decisions. Their primary concern, if part of a corporation, is to extract profit for their shareholders. This could be by employing guys in Detroit, it could be by using materials gathered by children in Uzbekistan, it could be by replacing a worker with a touchscreen keypad.
LiberalViewer documents over a hundred instances of bias.
Not that I think a two wrongs argument is a good one.
I gotta admit, when it comes to making people miss spending the holidays with their families, private enterprise kicks the government’s ass.
I think there’s an important difference between some kinds of taking out of context and others.
If someone is basically saying “here is thing A I believe, and here is thing B I believe, and the important point when contrasting them is C”, and you broacast only “here is thing B I believe”, then that is somewhat deceptive. You’re making it seem that thing B is something important enough to bring up all by itself, and the specific word choices that were used to describe thing B might seem different all by themselves than when in the midst of a comparison. That’s basically what MSNBC did to Romney. I agree it’s somewhat deceptive, and I would prefer that those “on my side” not do it. I don’t think it’s outright dishonest, however, as the person presumably does believe thing B.
Certainly, it’s peanuts compared to, for instance, the selectively edited tape about the Obama apointee or nominee (I forget the precise details) a while ago in which she said something like “when I was in this situation, I was tempted to screw over whitey, but then I realized how horribly unfair that would be so I didn’t”, and only the first half of the sentence was played, thus 100% changing the meaning of what was said.
Also, I’m pretty non-outraged about Mitt saying the guy got a 33-page form, because, most likely, some guy told Mitt this anecdote, and Mitt is reporting it, and even if Mitt has a person whose job it is to check facts in anecdotes that Mitt is going to repeat in public (which he probably should), it would be very easy to do a quick check, verify that there is this (37?) page form, and not do the further due diligence about precisely how much of that needs to be filled out. Pretty small potatoes.
All of that said, the argument and comparison that Mitt was actually trying to make is a stupid one. (And to the question of whether government vs private industry makes things more efficient, well, I suggest that you get sick here and deal with the insurance industry, then get sick in Australia and deal with the government-provided health care there, and see which one is more efficient to the end user, which is the type of comparison Mitt was trying to make.)
Prove? What the hell, is there a sale at the Acme Straw factory or something. Who claimed that what he said proved anything?
As far as the rest, the fact that you refuse to answer the questions I’ve asked you repeatedly leads indicates (not proves, indicates) that you know you really don’t have a point. Let’s try again:
As a general proposition, would you say that the federal government or the private sector is more efficient?
If your answer is the federal government, can you provide links to some leaders who hold that position, as well. Or anyone else?
If your answer is the federal government, can you give a few examples that lead you to that conclusion. Also, can you provide a reason why that may be the case? What do you think it is about the federal government that cause it to be more efficient?
So, you present a metric by which the man should be judged, but then realize that your metric might not justify your position, so it must be, uh, something else. Okaaay. Care to try again?
Other people have said bad things about him and you don’t like his mannerisms, so he’s a psycho and a sicko. You find that reasonable?
Well, he seems to have a happy, healthy family. And he gives a ton of money to his church. So I don’t see how you see him as unempathetic and compassion-less. And when he was asked to leave his business behind to save the Olympics, he did. How selfish! But he is/was “destructive”. What if it could be shown that he created more jobs than he destroyed? How about if he created two or three times more jobs than he "destroyed. Would that change your characterization of him as being “destructive”? Shouldn’t it?
And that would be because…? What would your fear be?
This seems strangely weak reasoning. If you’re going to characterize a man as a sicko and psycho because of “reasons”. Shouldn’t they be good reasons? I haven’t seen any even mediocre ones yet. You must have more. Let’s hear them. Make me hate him. Or even dislike him a little.
You’re the one who assigned me my criterion with a sentence that started “it seems you’re…” and now you’re riding me about that criterion you set for me. Not to godwinize or anything but I could easily say Hitler accomplished a lot in business and government too but that says nothing about his character or sanity. It doesn’t automatically speak well of Mitt.
No, I haven’t stopped beating my wife! What??
Yeah, he has a happy healthy family and gives to his church (which he has no choice about) and goes around putting people out of jobs and pioneering the outsourcing of American jobs to China and India to boost investor profit. Sorry, warm and cuddly he ain’t.
He’s gay and thinking about turning Democrat.
How about this then: Neither of these comparisons can be used as an example to illustrate ANYthing. They are both equally useless.
My whole, entire, complete point here has not been whether or not one system is more efficient than the other.
My exact point, which I’ve tried to repeat as simply as possible, and I repeat here again is:
The example that Romney used to illustrate his thesis that private business is more efficient than the federal government was a flawed example. It was a poor one. It did not serve it’s purpose. He compared the efficiency of a government form to the efficiency of a business that makes sandwiches. Comparison fail. Bad example. He should have used a different comparison.
Have I made myself clear?
In order to convince others that Romney’s example comparative efficiencies sucked the big one, I DO NOT need to make the whole entire argument that the Federal government is more efficient than business.
Do you follow now? His example sucked. It was a bad example to use. It was laughable. That’s it. That’s the point.
No… I restated what your position seemed to be. If I got something wrong, simply point out what seems incorrect and restate it. But I thoroughly understand you preferring to find an out and not have to defend what you have been saying.
But Hitler has a ton of stuff in the Evil Monster column. So far Romney has mannerisms you don’t like and a lack of empathy displayed by the fact that he had people fired. Even if he had created many more jobs than he ended. By the way, you do know that Bain specialized in invested in companies that were already in the red with dismal prospects. You do know that, right.
Oh, and if you don’t want to Godwinize, don’t Godwinize. Easy.
This doesn’t apply. Sorry. rethink and come back with something applicable.
But how many companies has he helped save? How many jobs did he create for Americans? Why do you ignore that in your calculation?
Nope. The meter didn’t move. Got anything else?
No one is saying that is THE example someone would use in a doctoral thesis. But the example was valid, as it was an example of the degree to which the private sector is encouraged towards efficiency. Not all comparisons need to be close in reality. For example, analogies and similes can use very stylized comparisons.
So, I have to ask you again, are you of the mind that the private sector is less efficient than the federal government. This, at least, would root you example in a premise. I ask the other questions in the previous reply to you to judge the apparent validity of that premise and the mechanism that must be at work making the federal government more efficient.
So, got anything of any substance?
Not my job. Speaking of jobs, these jobs you’re saying he “created” (I believe he now hedges “helped create”), I assume you know are in China and India. It would be fair to say he’s shown some compassion for them, I guess.
Nah, pretty sure it was investor profit.
So the point of Romney’s speech was to make a comparison between two things which are not comparable.
I’d say you were horning in on MSNBC’s turf but I don’t think anyone is going to feel that this argument makes Romney look silly.
Yes and…no. I don’t think the intent of what he said about the touchscreen really makes him sound all that silly–even edited down–so the edit was just kind of pathetic. But what makes Romney sound silly (over and over again) is that he’s so bad at pandering to the hoi polloi locals by talking about their local businesses, and in either version of the video that’s what comes through. He just tries too hard to show that somehow he’s connected to the general populace, when in reality he’d never be buying something at WaWa’s if he weren’t running for office, touchpad or not.
Ha ha! Who said you didn’t have a sense of humor? It is not what you would use in a doctoral thesis, no. It was a poor example. An incredibly poor one.
If Romney were to have compared a private business sandwich ordering system to a government sandwich ordering system, he might have had a point. If he had compared a private health insurer’s change of address form to the Government’s insurance change of address form , he might have had a point. (in fact, look up-thread for just such a comparison, which might actually have validity)
In point of fact, Romney compared a companies sandwich ordering system to a government change of address form. It is laughable on it’s face. It is not a “simile” it is not an “analogy”. It’s a joke.
You can ask, but I must re-state: THAT WAS NOT MY POINT. My point was that Romney’s example that he used to show that business is more efficient than government was incredibly stupid. I continue to be amazed that you don’t get my point here.
If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that this was intended to be insulting. Of course, you would not do that in this forum.