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.

You've touched on something that I discuss with my socialist friends on a regular basis. They fail to recognize that there's always a profit motive. In government jobs its not a corporate motive, it's a personal motive. I'd argue that personal profit motives are much worse than corporate profit motives, because corporate motives are typically enabled by groups of people that are effectively hindered by their disagreements. In individual profit motives, there is no such limitation. Also others are not likely to call them out on their behavior due to fears of confrontation, and because they receive little or no incentive to ever raise their voice. Most of the time, they just don't want to be noticed, and calling out someone else is a great way to get the wrong kind of attention.

In a nutshell, an overwhelming number of government employees "do the right thing" for the people they serve, true enough. You just have to remember that they consider themselves as the #1 person they serve.

It would be pretty effective at causing panic and fear in the average user. The user could then give their credit info over the phone, or the agent could tell them the command to re-enable the gui and get them on-line again. It wouldn't have to be perfect and they wouldn't care if the right services were re-enabled, since they'd just charge the card and get off the phone.

Thank you for that! I'm pretty well versed in military jargon, but I've never heard that one before. I appreciate it.

Replying instead of moderating

You make great points except for "used nukes in anger". There were a lot of considerations that went into the decision to use nukes, but anger definitely wasn't one of them. The debate over the US' decision to use them has been going on for quite some time, but a few things are pretty clear:

1. The casualty estimates for an invasion without the use of nukes ranged between half a million to 1.5 million.
2. The Japanese had a standing order to execute allied POW's in the event of such an invasion, of which there were about 100 thousand.
3. The conventional wisdom at the time (which was probably true) indicated that Japanese leaders would be unlikely to surrender until well into the invasion of the Japanese homeland.

IANAL. That being said, they may claim the changes are not material but that doesn't mean anything. Any change to the service agreed upon in the contract that results in an increased cost or decreased service would be "an important part of the instrument" and therefore constitutes a material change.

In other words, they can say whatever the heck they want, but if you take them to court (small claims or otherwise) they will lose.

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Material+Changes
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/instrument

Not a great idea. I spent five years working post-sales in that environment.

The problem is that the sales people typically aren't motivated and view learning the technical details mostly as a waste of time. So they don't learn it as well as they should. Also, since they've been "trained", an engineer isn't as likely to be assigned to the sales person for the engagement. What you end up with is usually a sales person who thinks they understand the details.

The end result is that the post-sales engineer who gets assigned has to clean everything up. I probably spent at least 60% of my time having to re-engage our sales team for more appropriate contracts and re-engineer the "solution" the client was sold.

There were a few times I was sent to engagements following a new sale that had involved both a sales person and a pre-sales engineer. Those engagements went much more smoothly and usually resulted in increased sales of product and services.

What you describe is a best case scenario for a stolen credit card. Things don't always go that way, and there are a million ways for the incident to be much less pleasant. There is a very real chance a lot of people will have to spend a significant amount of time and energy to get this cleaned up.

Another thing to note here is that it's a closed system. Sure, in the end you won't have to pay the bill. But, I can guaran-damn-te the suits at Sony or Visa won't pay it either. So who pays the bill? Innocent bystanders when Sony raises their prices or Sony employees when they add the loss to their budget planning and have to eliminate another position to offset costs.

And watch a lot of them get turned away. The cable companies have been hard at work introducing legislation to greatly limit competition in a lot of areas. Try asking Verizon when FiOS will be available in Tennessee for example. In the entire Memphis area, your choice is pretty much Comcast or Comcast. There is DSL, but its throughput is laughable and the service is highly unreliable, and there is no "high end" DSL to speak of.

Shouldn't be uncomfortable. There are two types of schools: public and private.

Public schools are mostly paid for and to some degree run by "government" entities. They generally could care less about profit and tend to operate much like assembly lines.

Private schools are businesses. They don't always measure their own performance in terms of dollars, but make no mistake, they operate for profit. Sometimes the profit is the schools prestige, sometimes its student enrollment, and sometimes its simply a schools political involvement. Whatever it is though, its always about advancing either the school or the people who run it.

I have nothing to support this other than my personal experience, so take this as my thought and not as fact. That being said, most of the democrats I've known in my life have tended to convert to the republican party after they've started making decent salaries. IF that is true in a wider sense, then it would seem reasonable that the agenda you describe above would be pushed by both the democrats as well. Otherwise, they educate their base, their base makes more money, and they start losing people.