On Fri, 27 Sep 1996 13:01:13 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote:
My conclusion is simple: Tell people if they don't work, they won't eat. If they do something others are willing to give them money to do, they won't get money. They won't get "entitlements" from the government (= taxpayers, = those who are working, = me and thee). Tell them that a college education should only be pursued if one has a "calling" to be an engineer, a programmer (and probably not even that, judging by what I see), a doctor, a I've noticed that many places are concerned more with things like creativity, adapability, drive, etc when hiring a CS grad. I've found that having a resume that shows these kind of traits well overcame the lack of a degree (I'm working on that). There was a thread about this in comp.lang.cobol awhile back. lawyer (on second thought, don't ever suggest they become lawyers), and so on.
The old way was that your HS provided what the mythical average person needed to go about life. College was for the more "complex" careers.
And make it easier to hire people, instead of harder. (And if one hires a maid, and the maid steals, cut off her hand. We've lost sight of justice, and people think that ripping off the rich is their kind of justice. This needs to change.)
You don't even need to be that harsh. Chain-gang work to pay off stolen property would be more effective, if for no reason other than that you'd get your money (or property) back.
Psychologists and similar psychobabblers call it "tough love." If one always "enables" an addict, a layabout, a shiftless worker, with excuses and handouts, the behavior does not change. To save a person, sometimes harshness is needed.
This is why crypto anarchy's starving of the tax system is good. It may "kill" some number of people, as nearly any new idea does, but ultimately it will put things back on track.
And you have to look at it from another point of view: If it would ameliorate the problems in the future for the majority of the population, it'd be worth a bit of discomfort now. # Chris Adams <adamsc@io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp # <cadams@acucobol.com> | send mail with subject "send PGPKEY" "That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can change them." --- Karen Hargrove, Microsoft (quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial)