Quote:

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

- Galileo Galilei

Let's talk about The Man

Think about it. The Government takes all of this money from hardworking people, some of it they put to good use, but a lot of it is wasted. It is spent unwisely or even flat out wasted. Our Government does many good things for it's people: it protects us, it provides aid for people who need it, it maintains order, and it provides for our retirement. But it doesn't do all of these things as well as it could, and some of the things that it does are unnecessary. Such as several forms of welfare and countless other bureaucratic agencies that do nothing but push paper around.

The most prominent of these money wasting agencies is the Social Security Administration, yes I realize that its important for Americans to have a retirement but the way the Social Security is handled is horrible. You will be lucky if you get the amount of money you put into the system back. If Americans put away all the money that they put into Social Security into a retirement fund we would all retire rich. But what happens? The Government wastes our money and gives us back almost nothing.

Welfare is something that is important but that is badly managed. Where I live a large portion of people live off of Welfare but they don't need it, they're just lazy. I don't know how this could be fixed only that it need to be.

Thomas Paine said in his pamphlet entitled Common Sense that "Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries [by a government], which we might expect in a country [without Government], our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer." and I would be inclined to agree. The Government should be a relatively small body that is strong enough to defend us when necessary but small enough that it isn't such a drain on our hard earned cash. The government should only be large enough to do it's job, and that's it. I agree that the New Deal was a good idea to get us out of the Great Depression it shouldn't have extended long after that.

"That government is best which governs least.”

-Thomas Paine

Download Day 2008

Next week is Download Day 2008 when Mozilla will attempt to set a world record for the most downloads for a single piece of software in one day. Click here to go the to Spread Firefox homepage to find out more.

How, exactly, does money work?

Where does money come from? Initially it was developed as a means of trade (ie. trading gold coins for some commodity) but these days money is mostly made of inexpensive materials. (A can of soda is not of equal value to a piece of paper) When you get paid at work that money comes from where? Other people who pay for the services that your employer offers or for products your employer produces. But where does that money come from? Other people who do the same thing. Essentially an economy is the moving of money from one person to another. So...money is worth only what people think it's worth. Interesting.

If I'm wrong please correct me, but as I see it economics don't really make sense.