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Pork addicts are pathetic losers
I've trimmed all-ai because relevance had dipped below the
threshhold. Please at least cc: me so I don't miss responses, or move
this debate to libernet-d@listserv.prodigy.com.
steve@method.com:
>If you want to save lisp, make it attractive to real
>customers who will pay you year after year.
The US federal government single-handedly commands an over-the-table
budget of over a trillion dollars. It behooves you to notice that this
is over three percent of the global economic output.
It occurs to me that with such a silly, artificial concentration of
economic power (perhaps not artificial, but certainly by dint of
massive theft), it is nonsense to expect the USG and its constituent
parts to be anywhere other than near the top of the list of pitch
targets of any special interest group's initiatives. Like it or
(mostly) not, there's virtually nothing an American resident can do
that doesn't involve the governments.
There are vast industries whose only customers are the US federal and
state governments. These industries go on, year after year. The
lottery industry does quite well. There are privately owned prisons in
Texas that are turning a handsome profit incarcerating drug offenders
shipped there from all over the country. Lockheed-Martin, SAIC, etc.,
are empires. If you drive around certain parts of Maryland and
Virginia, you will see whole industrial parks which center on
unmarked, guarded buildings nestled in the middle, which are
administered by the NSA and similar agencies. LISP is used by many of
these contractors, since they're busy implementing automated language
processing and speech recognition to better snoop on... who? I'm sure
I'm belaboring the obvious pointing out that the products of this
taxpayer-funded research will lose their top secret stamps only after
50 years, if ever.
The only way to remove the corrupting, corrosive influence of
Washington money from American academic and commercial activities is
to remove the money from Washington. Spend your energy lobbying for
the repeal of the 16th amendment. This is their coup de grace, and
license to ill: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect
taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment
among the several states, and without regard to any census of
enumeration." Take this away from them and most problems of Washington
influence evaporate.
In the meantime, my message to people who weasle funds out of
Washington for their own purposes: be very ashamed. You have found the
moral low ground.
-Daniel Pouzzner
System Architect
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