I agree with the deadwood issue, but there are also some dynamics that favor having work done by government. The big one is that there's essentially no profit motive. In a well-functioning federal agency, all of the staff are encouraged to "do the right thing" for the people they serve, rather than maximize profit.

The real problem with the lack of profit motive isn't feather-bedding or anything crazy like that, though a fair amount of that goes on. It happens in the private sector, too. The real issue is that management is kept accountable by profitability - if they get penny-wise and pound foolish, the market will (eventually) punish them for their shortsightedness (yes, yes, after Wall Street's computers spike share prices for a month so investment bankers can extract every ounce of value out of the company first). In government, however, the only thing keeping anyone accountable is popular opinion. If the people think you're saving money, even if it's by throwing together 23 different layers of "accountability" between a funding request and the request being fulfilled, they'll reward you. If the people think you're spending too much, regardless of value you're returning to the community, your funding will be cut. The result is that pay and funding are directly tied to appearance of performance (plus bits and pieces of patronage, where available), not to actual performance or value.

The worst part is when the same people running government institutions decide to treat their systems as "best practices" and insist on forcing private companies to adhere to them, too. Then you end up with well-meaning but ill conceived bits of legislation like Sarbannes-Oxley.

Clearly, you are not familiar with video games, porn and the Internet. The definition of copypasta is the first link in the article I linked to.

Why would anyone argue about this?

lol libertarians.

Jonathan Swift already thought of this.

Here is a better copypasta for you: http://encyclopediadramatica.se/So_cash

And in my eyes you are still a kid until you see your whole country destroyed, and you have moved to a place with language, culture and traditions are fundamentally incompatible with ones you lived with before, the place in large part populated by ignorant, arrogant, intellectually and ethically underdeveloped assholes whom you hate with the deepest and purest form of hatred that you have ever thought of being possible.

Or something like that -- it's easy to make pompous, self-serving claims if you have even a tiniest grain of truth somewhere buried in them.

er.. bawdier... damn you Slashdot, you make me think in BANDWIDTH!

Ha ha... and before that... well, read Plato's Republic. The youth of his day were being ruined by the pan pipes, and by the baudier passages of Homer! And some of the early Greeks claimed that literacy was ruining youth because they could write things down, rather than committing things to memory.

Face it, most gamers exchange television time for game time, because gaming is more engaging. The real divide is between active and passive--between television and other activities. It turns out that kids who play video games are as likely to go out and play other games. I love video games too, so much that I was a game developer for 15 years, but on a beautiful sunny day, I have to get out and cycle, run, walk, read a book under a tree, or if there's a lake nearby, swim, paddle a canoe, or sail. If I don't exercise at least an hour a day, I feel slovenly, and I can't sleep well.

But the main divide that Zimbardo and Duncan pay no attention to is between extraverts and introverts. Introverts are viewed with suspicion by our salesman society; we're pathetic broken losers. We should be out pressing the flesh, chatting people up, engaging in team sports (notice that all of the ones I engage in are solitary.) But because we don't, there is obviously something wrong with us. And so, they go in search of the reason we are so pathological.

By the way, video games must be pathological, because they're NEW!

Porn isn't new. And many of the most successful pickup artists I've ever met had huge porn collections. Frankly, the difference I noted between guys who got laid a lot and those who didn't was that the good pickup artists were much more callous, more manipulative, and used women like sex toys. But never mind, that's a sign of maturity. Or maybe women are just as immature as men. This is nothing new, either. Feminism was supposed to address this, but so far, it hasn't made a dent.

Nor do they notice the trend that has been going on for a century: in an age of increasing specialization, the gestation period for everyone, both men and women, is getting longer. The Bar Mitzvah is at 13--at one time, this is when you became a man, and you were ready to start a family then. A hundred years ago, few went to any school beyond what we would now consider elementary school: age 13 to 15. Then we went on to high school, age 17 to 20. Then college, age 21 to 23. Bachelor's Degrees, age 22 to 25. Now advanced degrees, age 25 to 30.

Material expectations are now also much greater. You must have a car, a house, a steady job, to raise children. And the strategy of parents is different; while my parents and earlier generations had as many children as possible, hoping that some would survive, most parents now wait and bet everything on one, two, or three, expecting them all to survive.

The world has changed. But the doomsayers have not.

if i get the sense i'm talking to someone who is driving, i will say "are you driving? i'll get off the phone"

it's not about being a hyperactive boy scout, it's not about the law, it's about living with myself. because if i am on the phone with someone while they are driving and i am AWARE of it, then i am responsible for continuing the conversation, and helping to keep the driver distracted

i have to live with myself. and i have to respect myself