Trump - Clown Genius

[TimeTravel]

My apology and no intention to hijack the "Trump-Clown Genius" title.

I consider him an "arson-fire marshal". Someone who gets off on setting fires then calls himself a fire marshal to build his ego as the law and order authority.

The saber rattling with North Korea is an example. He might start a war to end one as an ego trip and care less the fallout of lives lost.

Guam is starting to look a bit like Pearl Harbor .

My prediction (just a hunch) is that when the screws of the Russia collusion investigation gets tighter, he's going to invade North Korea as a distraction tactic.

[Riggerjack]

Sorry, that's my own private rabbit hole. I was still thinking about the Google manifesto in the PC thread.

Most folks don't know that we have dictatorship built into the Constitution. During the civil war, many thousands of northerners were imprisoned without trial on the word of anyone who could catch an officer's ear. Lots of old feuds were settled this way. Now, clearly, it was a time of insurrection, and emergency measures are emergency measures. But, the less wiggle room we leave ourselves to deal with crisis, the more severe our actions will need to be when crisis hits.

So, my sense of self preservation tells me that making enemies is always a bad idea, but also that the less efficient our system is, the more likely I will have to deal with emergency measures. The more likely an unpopular minority will be rounded up and caged. This isn't pepper doom fantasy, this is just history. It happened in the 1860's, and again in the 1940's.

Since I am not very PC, and have an INTJs natural ability to make friends and influence people, I would prefer to not experience the next time we round up an unpopular minority. Thus my endorsing more efficient government. More wiggle room for when times get tough.

If Trump were half the dictator the left paints him, he could have declared martial law during the inauguration riots. Once that is done, it'll always be tough to put the genie back in the bottle.

I don't think the douchebag has the interest in dictatorship, but I could be wrong, and he's not the last president i expect to see. Who knows what the future has in store, but I can't think of a reason to reduce the next president's wiggle room when they take over the mess Trump leaves.

Does that make my efficiency as a survival trait argument clear? I'm not saying it will happen, I'm saying it's possible, it has happened before, and more efficiency makes it less likely to happen again in my lifetime.

Back to the barge analogy, it is prudent to load a barge for storms, since storms hit faster than barges can find ports. By the same logic, don't load government to its peacetime plus healthy economy capacity, as those both change faster than the burdens can be dropped.

[Riggerjack]

Guam is starting to look a bit like Pearl Harbor .

Well, that's one way to put it, another might be that Guam is remembering how WWII went for them. It amazes me how thoroughly covered the Aleutian islands invasion is, while no history course I took in school mentioned that north Guam was held by Japan for most of the war.

As an aside, Guam has the highest rate of military service in the empire, and the longest distance to go to a VA hospital.

So if anyone has a real grasp of the situation, they do.

[Campitor]

Also, again, how much is the inefficiency total right now? A few anecdotes are really just a signal to look deeper, not an ironclad case against it. And, how do these things get done without the big organizations? These are the answers that matter in determining how detrimental inefficiency is at any given point in time.

http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-17-491SP
http://www.gao.gov/assets/690/684304.pdf

Some excerpts:

April 26, 2017
Congressional Addressees
The federal government faces a long-term, unsustainable fiscal path
based on an imbalance between federal revenues and spending.1 While
addressing this structural imbalance will require fiscal policy changes, in
the near term opportunities exist to take action in a number of areas to
improve this situation, including where federal programs or activities are
fragmented, overlapping, or duplicative. To call attention to these
opportunities, Congress included a provision in statute for GAO to identify
and report on federal programs, agencies, offices, and initiatives—either
within departments or government-wide—that have duplicative goals or
activities.2
We have presented 645 actions in 249 areas for Congress or executive
branch agencies to reduce, eliminate, or better manage fragmentation,
overlap, or duplication; achieve cost savings; or enhance revenue from
2011 to 2016.3 Congress and executive branch agencies have addressed
329 (51 percent) of those actions resulting in about $136 billion in
financial benefits.4 We estimate tens of billions more dollars could be
saved by fully implementing our open actions.5

In our 2011 to 2017 annual reports, we directed 627 actions to executive
branch agencies, including 77 new actions identified in 2017. Of the 627
actions, over half—334—remained open (192 were partially addressed
and 142 were not addressed) as of March 2017. While these open
actions span the government, a substantial number of actions are
directed to seven agencies that made up 84 percent—$3.6 trillion—of
federal outlays in fiscal year 2016; see figure 3.

[TimeTravel]

Guam is starting to look a bit like Pearl Harbor .

Well, that's one way to put it, another might be that Guam is remembering how WWII went for them. It amazes me how thoroughly covered the Aleutian islands invasion is, while no history course I took in school mentioned that north Guam was held by Japan for most of the war.

As an aside, Guam has the highest rate of military service in the empire, and the longest distance to go to a VA hospital.

So if anyone has a real grasp of the situation, they do.

I was thinking more of Guam is looking like a sitting duck, like the way Pearl Harbor got surprised attacked. Sure how this doesn't happen and trigger the next war to end all wars.

[Riggerjack]

Well, like I said, we are happy to have them serve, but somehow we can't be bothered to get a VA clinic out there. I doubt 8 out 10 Americans could find it on a map. I know how hard it is to get middle guidance systems to be acurate. And I don't believe a word from either supreme leader.

So, between lies, incompetence, apathy and ignorance, I think we'll pull thru.

[IlliniDave]

I was thinking more of Guam is looking like a sitting duck, like the way Pearl Harbor got surprised attacked. Sure how this doesn't happen and trigger the next war to end all wars.

Guam is a long way from N. Korea, and there's no chance of a surprise attack anytime soon since the threat has been made publicly. Seoul and Japan seem more realistically within N. Korea's capability to strike with some accuracy. I don't think there's much danger of a "world war" right now, but a lot of people could die very quickly on the Korean peninsula if KJU is as deluded as he tries to appear.

[Chad]

Since I am not very PC, and have an INTJs natural ability to make friends and influence people, I would prefer to not experience the next time we round up an unpopular minority. Thus my endorsing more efficient government. More wiggle room for when times get tough.

Yeah, I wouldn't be well liked either. INTJ, atheist, etc. My wiggle room is not owning any physical thing of real value.

If Trump were half the dictator the left paints him, he could have declared martial law during the inauguration riots. Once that is done, it'll always be tough to put the genie back in the bottle.

I'm not sure it would be quite that easy, but, yeah, I don't think he quite wants to be one enough to take on the workload required to become one. Though, he would prefer to have the same power he had in his company, I'm sure.

Back to the barge analogy, it is prudent to load a barge for storms since storms hit faster than barges can find ports. By the same logic, don't load government to its peacetime plus healthy economy capacity, as those both change faster than the burdens can be dropped.

What about just increasing capacity? I'm not really asking.

[Chad]

We have presented 645 actions in 249 areas for Congress or executive
branch agencies to reduce, eliminate, or better manage fragmentation,
overlap, or duplication; achieve cost savings; or enhance revenue from
2011 to 2016.3 Congress and executive branch agencies have addressed
329 (51 percent) of those actions resulting in about $136 billion in
financial benefits.4 We estimate tens of billions more dollars could be
saved by fully implementing our open actions.

Better.

I'm not going further, as I don't really want to argue this anymore. I do agree there are inefficiencies. The difference is I would prefer to work on fixing them rather than not doing anything about the issues, goals, etc. those agencies are striving towards. (I argue with Riggerjack, because it's something we always do.)

[Chad]

That's enough for now. I'm not sure how many of you are even interested in this stuff.

I am. I do enjoy the "inside baseball".

[Riggerjack]

(I argue with Riggerjack, because it's something we always do.)

We do. And it's always fun.

What about just increasing capacity? I'm not really asking.

Sure. Increasing capacity would mean increasing the scope of the productive economy. We all know how that is done, no need for going into details.

I'll give you another example of scale. I work for FTR. They were originally a small telco, that specialized in buying up profitable mom and pop telcos. These little shops made money, but only so much. When they were converted to FTR, a team of sales and marketing folks would come in, ramp up marketing and sales, and otherwise leave them to run the business as they were.

In 2011, they bought up the part of VZ I worked for, and I watched as they struggled to swallow a purchase that doubled the size of the company. They certainly did things differently. VZ was a top down, uniform company, and FTR was a bottom up, loose conglomeration.

Last year we bought more territory from VZ. And... This is where size exceeded carrying capacity. We've been hemoraging money, ever since. Stock went from $6 to just over $1, causing a reverse split. 6 straight quarters of losses.

Now, each local territory is profitable, even with line loss. The profit margin of small telcos is usually higher than that of big ones. But bigger is bigger, and large companies have solid advantages when dealing with government. In a regulated industry like telecom, that is a significant advantage.

Yet even with the regulatory advantage, shear size makes the company unprofitable. We're turning things around, we've laid off 1000 or so managers, and overcome many of the integration problems. The customers we pissed off during conversion have already left. But even when things go right, and it's faith and speculation here that they will, because we are crazy over leveraged, we won't have the profit margins we had. And we never had the profit margins post 2011 that they had before the expansion. This isn't a line loss issue, people who sweat the land line loss fundamentally misunderstand telecom.

This is just efficiency loss due to size.

Economies of scale are primarily a manufacturing advantage, and even that hits a point of diminishing returns. Eventually, efficiency in dealing with government and international trade, marketing and market share have to overcome these diminishing returns from economy of scale in manufacturing. That's why we still have GE and Ford. The greater the profit margin, the more you can afford the inefficiencies of scaling up.

And, I started this at 3 am. Couldn't sleep. I think I will go try before the sun comes up.

[jennypenny]

@Chad--I'm out of town for a couple of weeks so I'm not in contact with my friends in the biz as much as usual. Most of the talk is focused on NK right now anyway (understandably). I've only heard that any plans the pentagon announces regarding NK are mostly to quell fear in the US. Private threats are being made to NK through other channels. And poor Tillerson is the only one trying to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis. I've heard he's better than he gets credit for and could possibly get it done, but he's one voice competing with a lot of brass who have more direct access to Trump.

[Chad]

(I argue with Riggerjack, because it's something we always do.)

We do. And it's always fun.

Absolutely. I had also written, "Even though, we both think the other is an idiot sometimes." I deleted it as it's so difficult to express voice inflection online to show it's a joke.

Economies of scale are primarily a manufacturing advantage, and even that hits a point of diminishing returns. Eventually, efficiency in dealing with government and international trade, marketing and market share have to overcome these diminishing returns from economy of scale in manufacturing. That's why we still have GE and Ford. The greater the profit margin, the more you can afford the inefficiencies of scaling up.

And, I started this at 3 am. Couldn't sleep. I think I will go try before the sun comes up.

Valid point. Judging economies of scale, as with almost everything, really should be on a case by case basis. I'm sure we could find some government programs I would be fine cutting because of diminishing returns.

FTR? The company that pops up in dividend stock articles every couple months because of it's sky high shaky dividend. Yet, the dividend always seems to survive the ax. Always interesting to learn certain details.

I can see your point in the FTR/VZ example concerning scale. However, without scale VZ and T would have had more difficultly becoming national cellphone players. No one wants cell service that doesn't cover basically the entire country. But, as you point out, scale isn't everything for every issue.

[Chad]

@Chad--I'm out of town for a couple of weeks so I'm not in contact with my friends in the biz as much as usual. Most of the talk os focused on NK right now anyway (understandably). I've only heard the any plans the pentagon announces regarding NK are mostly to quell fear in the US. Private threats are being made to NK through other channels. And poor Tillerson is the only one trying to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis. I've heard he's better than he gets credit for and could possibly get it done, but he's one voice competing with a lot of brass who have more direct access to Trump.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if Tillerson is decent. Guy just doesn't have much of a chance with Trump as president.

The North Korea situation is just the same game that has been going on for years. It's boring and not very interesting. One demonstration of this is in the lack of attention it drew on here. The only thing that makes it interesting/scary is if Trump does something stupid. I'm not worried about Kim Jung Un at all. He won't be the first one to actually shoot. He is just trying to find a way not to be Gaddafi.

[Riggerjack]

I can see your point in the FTR/VZ example concerning scale. However, without scale VZ and T would have had more difficultly becoming national cellphone players. No one wants cell service that doesn't cover basically the entire country. But, as you point out, scale isn't everything for every issue.

VZ wireless is an entirely different corporation than VZ Telecom. Same with T. Each wireless company pays for landlines and data circuits thru the local telco where the tower is. So both T and VZW pay FTR for circuits from their POP in the Westin in Seattle to each tower in the north and east Seattle areas. They pay Quest in Seattle and South. When we were VZ, VZW paid us for those same lines. This is the same everywhere in the states.

[Campitor]

I'm not going further, as I don't really want to argue this anymore. I do agree there are inefficiencies. The difference is I would prefer to work on fixing them rather than not doing anything about the issues, goals, etc. those agencies are striving towards. (I argue with Riggerjack, because it's something we always do.)

Not trying to argue either. Just trying to see your viewpoint and elaborate on my own "limited government" philosophy. Sprinkled throughout this thread was the assumption that inefficiencies were not known/quantified. I'm only pointing out that the GAO has been identifying such inefficiencies since 2011 and has identified billions in savings; 51% which have been realized with 49% to go. So we assuredly know that the government has saved billions but has many more billions in spending cuts to realize. And we now officially know, per the GAO's declaration, that the current level of spending to revenue collection is unsustainable.

Per the linked PDF:

In our 2011 to 2017 annual reports, we directed 627 actions to executive
branch agencies, including 77 new actions identified in 2017. Of the 627
actions, over half—334—remained open (192 were partially addressed
and 142 were not addressed) as of March 2017. While these open
actions span the government, a substantial number of actions are
directed to seven agencies that made up 84 percent—$3.6 trillion—of
federal outlays in fiscal year 2016; see figure 3.

So of the identified problems discovered thus far - the government is scoring 51% out 100 - that's a failing grade. And this is addressing inefficiencies only and not addressing such things as outcomes per dollar spent. As I mentioned previously 86% of American's are not living in poverty - how much more should we spend to eliminate the remaining 14%? It's already costing us 1+ trillion to safeguard most Americans. And since we get a constant influx of newly arrived poor/displaced persons, can we come to some agreement that 86% or <insert percentage less than 100 here> is good enough and stop there? We will never eradicate poverty because there are too many persons who behave sub-optimally even when given the best of resources. So we have to come to a reasonable consensus and tolerance for the amount of poverty that can and will continue to exist. The same can be said about defense, education, war on drugs, etc.

Please don't misconstrue my statements into some kind of uncaring attitude for the less fortunate. If poverty, social benefits, and safety could be attained without bankrupting the nation, I'd be 100% for it. But realistically I know these problems can only be attenuated and not solved therefore we need to set a limit on spending and prioritize programs that are urgent and retire or delay programs that are important but can wait. Even if money wasn't an issue we would still be constrained by human capital - there are only so many people on the planet who are willing and/or capable of working in the fields needed to solve these problems.

PS- the clown boy/genius isn't a fiscal conservative so he gets a big frigging F on the executive report card in my opinion..

[BRUTE]

https://medium.com/@DaleBeran/4chan-the ... 4e7cb798cb

[Chad]

I'm not going further, as I don't really want to argue this anymore. I do agree there are inefficiencies. The difference is I would prefer to work on fixing them rather than not doing anything about the issues, goals, etc. those agencies are striving towards. (I argue with Riggerjack, because it's something we always do.)

Just FYI, my use of "argue" wasn't meant in the negative. "Discussion" might have been a better choice.

[Spartan_Warrior]

@Brute: That was a pretty good article.

[BRUTE]

@Spartan_Warrior:

brute doesn't agree with everything in it, especially the moral components (it seems pretty one-sided in that sense). but there's definitely a lot of truth to the troll phenomenon, and how Trump exhibits this behavior. brute also thinks there is definitely something to the mindset of "everything's shit, might as well let it burn". brute very much grew up in this mindset, and somewhat still does. very Fight Club.

the article paints all of this as "young men being losers", but to brute, it feels more complicated. Fight Club wasn't just about young men being losers. it captured something in the zeitgeist, and so did 4chan, and now Trump.