Do we even know who actually made the decision to fire her at this point? Does she?

She just wants to live the American Dream that she's been trained to believe in. For that matter, so does the rest of the world. http://www.fastcoexist.com/168...

Yes, the race to the bottom would have us all living with as many roommates as it takes that we can legally (or, maybe not) squeeze into a residence somewhere so as to be able to divide up the living expenses. The days of being able to afford life on one's own seem to be gone for good. The "two-income trap" (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003PJ6UKC/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1) has us all by the throat.

If spectacular failure means death (which is probably the case with trying to get human beings to Mars) and mediocre success means that people actually survive, I think mediocrity ends up being responsible for producing a lot more progress than the spectacular failures do.

Nature finds a way.

Three words: The Mythical Man-Month. http://www.softpanorama.org/Bookshelf/Classic/tmmm.shtml

Let's privatize the road system. Certainly there will be no problem giving competing road builders all the space they need to build parallel roads to the already existing ones so they can charge less for them and undercut all prior road builders.

Are hiring managers allowed to ask potential employees how obsequious they're willing to be in order to be hired?

Somebody is bound to go nuts before the experiment is over and kill everyone else. The question is: will they make it public when this happens?