My experience with scientists, academic professors for example, are that they are geniuses in their field and believe they are geniuses in every other field. Sure, they're all exceptional minds, but it doesn't mean they are informed on any particular topic.

Another Star Wars reader: it actually explains this in one of the books by Stackpole - The Emperor created the so-called "death stars" for rapid mineral extraction from planet sized objects. It was only meant for peaceful uses, until Rebel Terrorists took the first one and blew up Alderaan; the Emperor then had that one destroyed. The second one was almost taken over by the Rebel Terrorists and the Emperor ordered it destroyed, at the cost of his own life.

It must be true, it was in a museum on Coruscant.

Who is bein successful? Does each of the 100,000 employees receive a $1.8M bonus? That's profit: unallocated revenue. Perhaps they could pay their contractors a fair wage, reduce the price of their phones.

not underwhelming there. My brother's family spent the day in the truck keeping warm and my dad, well, he basically slept through it but under the covers was warm so.

No power for 12 hours, no phones for 8 hours, 70MPH winds, two feet of snow, ocean flooding. Good times.

I don't think anyone can make a serious argument that problems with their ability to function are desirable.

OK, here is the argument:

1) The IRS audits certain classes of people a LOT. (I've been audited almost every year for the last 5 years)
2) Normally, they don't find anything worth mentioning. But the taxpayer still had to pay for the audit.
3) So the taxpayer is out several thousand dollars, the "people" gained nothing
4) Repeated across 10 million audits, on average the "people" are gaining FAR less than is being spent by taxpayers on audits

This is a dead-weight loss to our society caused by the IRS auditing too many people. If this was a corporation, they would only audit enough to find most of the cheats - IE, to the cost effective point. But since this is government, instead they hire auditors until they run out of budget money, and audit as many people as possible regardless of actual culpability.

If the IRS lost the ability to do 90% of it's current efforts, it would be better for society.

I'm sorry - if you (as the head of the IRS) allow the IRS to be politicized on your watch, then you will not be funded by the next Congress. It doesn't matter if you think it hasn't been politicized if enough people disagree with you. If the IRS wanted to continue as an organization, they needed to avoid even a hint of partisanship.

It doesn't take a genius here...

That read like an XKCD What If? response.

You would need to get a little lucky and also have the chance to explain what's changed since your crimes. Find a smaller company where you can talk with someone who won't dismiss you because they have 200 other job candidates without your issue.

But remember that IT work generally revolves around security. And this makes it a job where trust is paramount. Convince an employer that your past was due to youthful exuberance and not a character flaw (you'll want to provide examples of other's trust in you), you will likely do fine.

I don't mean to undermine your arguments, but what in God's name or otherwise are you talking about? It's like everything you said had this demeanor of factuality when none of it is true. Very Colbert of you. Not sure whether to applaud an epic troll or kick myself for responding at all.

I thought open source software was supposed to be better because everyone could see the code and spot problems.

It is, they can and do.