You may. ;~) and thank you.

I appreciate your kind words. Please, drop me a line someday.

My sincerest apologies for my grievous error.

The author's surname is Carnegie

There, feel better now?

In terms of success, people skills are more useful than programming skills.

"...just *their* form of government"

as long as you mean less despotic when you say "their" government, I could agree

In Canada total tax and non-tax revenue for every level of government equals about 38.4% of GDP, compared to the U.S. rate of 28.2%.

A significant portion of this tax differential is due to spending differences between the two countries. While the US is running deficits of about 4% of GDP, Canada has consistently posted a budget surplus of around 1% of GDP. Considered in a revenue-neutral context, the differential is much smaller - Canada's total governmental spending was about 36% of GDP vs. 31% in the US. In addition, caution must be used when comparing taxes across countries, due to the different services each offers. Whereas the Canadian healthcare system is 70% government-funded, the US system is just under 50% government-funded (mostly via Medicare and Medicaid); adding the additional healthcare-spending burden to the above figures to obtain comparable numbers (+3% for Canada, +7% for the US) gives adjusted expenditures of 38–39% of GDP for each of the two nations....

The greatest difference in social programs is in health care. Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. Government spends as much on health care, 7% of GDP, as the Canadian government does, and total healthcare spending is much higher - 14.6% of GDP in the US vs. 10% in Canada. Canadians, however, receive comparable care to those Americans who receive treatment, and result measures, such as life expectancy and infant mortality are better in Canada.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Comparison_of_Canadian_and_American_economies#Taxation

you can't trust public organizations much, but you can trust private ones even less

Exactly! Most people won't use this, therefore the amount of waste will actual increase. Personally, I just wish Asus would properly document and explain it's motherboards' BIOS settings. Think how much energy and time that would save! Sigh. ;~(

They have nothing to do with safety and everything to do about scamming money from the public in order to support irresponsible bureaucrats.

In my opinion, overly affluent people are the real problem with the world today. Capitalism actually means all the people have access to the world's capital, not just the few percent. We live in financial despotism and employees are just economic slaves in denial. If democracy is so great why aren't our companies more democratic? From what I can see, greed is the insatiable effect of the law of diminishing returns. If materialism could actually produce happiness, wouldn't rich people stop at some finite point? It never ends because they're addicts. The rich and powerful are in the process of running society into a brick wall and for all of our science, we can't do squat about it.