dw asked this question on another thread:

Why is it ok to sell beanie babies (useless crap) and not-ok to sell beans (food for life)?

I would like to hear a good answer to this. Why do pollys go ballistic whenever they hear that someone like Y2KNewswire is selling food? Why aren't they as vocal about people spending money on truely wasteful things? In this respect, the pollys seem very slimy and sinister, like they want people to be caught without enough to eat or drink.

-- Wondering (@ .), August 24, 1999

Answers

They're priorities are totally messed up.... plus, they want to bring you down to their level, since they are cowards and don't have the integrity to do the right thing for their families.

-- thomas saul (thomas.saul@yale.edu), August 24, 1999.

Becasue even if everyone in the world tried to stock up on beanie babies nobody would care.

However, if falsely induced panic makes people try to stock up on food, water, gas and money there would indeed be a tremendous problem, maybe even worse than any Y2K bug could ever do.

Personally I think beanie babies are the dumbest fad since pet rocks, but if people want to buy and collect them fine, it's their money they can waste it anyway they see fit.

-- (there@you go...an answer), August 24, 1999.

"Falsely induced panic"? Wow.

You want to see panic, here's what you do: Deny that Y2k is any kind of a problem until it's too late to do any useful preps. Then you've got a panic that never had to happen.

Why is the panic inevitable? Because any reasonable person will eventually see that they cannot KNOW what will happen, and will try to take whatever measure they think is appropriate. For the hopelessly optimistic, that may be no more than a couple cans of soup, but if everyone tries to buy that on 12/31/1999, you've got empty stores and a panic. The panic was ALWAYS a given, it's just a matter of degree.

Want to minimize the panic? Then get as many as possible to prep as far ahead as possible. Finesse the panic by subtracting potential panickers. It's a no-brainer that has been amazingly hard to understand.

"Falsely induced panic". Sheesh, imagine the inside of the brain that could think that. It's like sticking your hand into a bag of those plastic bait worms.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), August 24, 1999.

BECAUSE....

I read a while back that 80% of consumer spending in the U.S. is on "discretionary" items; that is, NON-ESSENTIALS.

*IF* people suddenly converted to GI's en masse, what would happen to all those companies making "stuff" that we DON'T NEED? (TV's, VCR's, cars, stereos, etc...)

The only companies left would be those selling "survival" items and food.

"IT'S THE ECONOMY STUPID..." Get it?

-- Dennis (djolson@pressenter.com), August 24, 1999.

There you go,

You said that: "Personally I think beanie babies are the dumbest fad since pet rocks, but if people want to buy and collect them fine, it's their money they can waste it anyway they see fit.".

EXCEPT for prepping for an occurance which could endanger your family's well being...right? Because when we do that we get tinfoil thrown at us. Maybe I'll just stock up on B. baby's, those people are normal.

-- CygnusXI (noburnt@toast.net), August 24, 1999.

Think about this for just one minute. What are beanie babies made of???? What is inside them??? The pollys have been sandbaging on us all this time!! They are perparing secretly all this time, while at the same time trying to talk everyone else out of doing anything!

But SERIOUSLY folks, just do what you feel is best for your family and don't worry about what others think about you. If it realy truly bothers anyone that I have decided to buy a few pounds of beans and other things that will make me and my family feel a little safer, then you really need to get a life. What concern is it of anyone what I buy with the money I earn?

-- DOC (Hoping_for@the.best), August 24, 1999.

Not just my family's well being the entire country's well being. You can waste all the money you want to, but you can't waste the nation's present supply just becasue some kook said that there won't be any supply left after 1/1/00.

And YES, so far all Y2K panic has been falsey induced, because if you refer to your doomer mantra guide, "nobody knows what is going to happen".

-- (there@you have. it), August 24, 1999.

Put it this way:

If you said that in one week from now all beanie babies (whatever) were going to be taken off the market and you can't ever buy another new BB. People flock to the toy stores (whatever) and buy beanie babies by the truckload. But it doesn't matter because a shortage of BB doesn't really affect anyone in anyway, unless your whole personality is wrapped up in BB and you absolutely can't live without them.

But if you said, in one week from now, you can't take money from the banks anymore, and you can't buy any food. People would flock to the banks and stores to get their $$$ and food by the truckload. NOW there is a problem. People really can't live without food and $$$. Whether you were wrong or right about the prediction doesn't matter because the damage is already done. Whereas some people are okay, the people who aren't in a position to stockpile and live day to day week to weej are dying of starvation because some people wanted to be "safe".

Same with Y2K. Predicting what can happen is just fine as long as your actions don't incite other people to act out of fear. One person said that the difference between doomer and pollies is that pollies hope they are right, while doomers hope they are wrong.

AND YET!, the Doomers, while hoping they are wrong, are going around telling people that they are right. This is turn causes fear and anxiety, and people react by stockpiling things. Now there obviously isn't enough to go around for everyone, so some people get left out in the cold just because some people were scared and acted irrationaly.

You want to provide for your own family fine, but don't spread rumors that might cause worse problems then the result of the problems that the rumors are about.

-- (there@you. have it), August 24, 1999.

O.k. small fry here is the answer. I will type slowly so you might be able to understand.

There is nothing wrong with selling beans. There is nothing wrong with selling beanie babies™ either.

But you brought up Mike Adams. Here is the clincher on him. Go read this (its a posting of the original), even though the idiot removed the 400,000 figure the FACT remains he raped hundreds of peoples wallets. He didn't do this on the up and up. If he had said "here is the information I am selling. You can find it all FREE on the internet yourself. But I want to charge you $XX.XX for it" it would be different. But he pawns himself off like this. He uses FEAR to sell his Bullshit, just like North, Yourdon, Hamasaki, Hyatt, Lord and the list goes on.

THIS is the key difference. You can go ahead and buy there garbage if you want, its a free country. But some of us actually CARE that these snakeoil salesmen are making big bucks off of there bullshit stories and lies.

People need to be informed of the AGENDA's of the fear mongers. Then they can decide for themselves. You bozos here spout your worthless shit as FACT when you have no clue. You scare others who have no clue. The entire time you are making the lying sons of bitches that started the hype rich. YOU are participating in the over-hyping of y2k fears.

THEN you asswipes say the pollys are "stopping others from preparing" or some bullshit like that. "blood on your hands" yadda, yadda.

As far as I am concerned you fuckers should look in a dam mirror. YOU are the ones responsible for FEAR, UNCERTAINTY, and DOUBT.

So why don't you just go buy your stupid piles of beans, or rice or TP and more power to you. Please QUIT trying to get others to spread YOUR fearfulness around.

-- Super Polly (Fu_Q_y2kfreaks@hotmail.com), August 24, 1999.

and I swear to god if kevin "linkmeister" pastes in a big pile of worthless , outdated senate shit just so he can bury this thread I will scream!

-- Super Polly (Fu_Q_y2kfreaks@hotmail.com), August 24, 1999.

>"You can waste all the money you want to, but you can't waste the nation's present supply just becasue some kook said that there won't be any supply left after 1/1/00."

It isn't "the nation's" supply. It's the farmer's, or the retailers, personal property. He has the right to sell it. I have the right to buy it. People have the right to ownership of what they've worked for, and they have the right to freely contract with one another. We aren't a Chinese colony yet, you snot-nosed socialist (thieving) punk.

Liberty

-- Liberty (liberty@theready.now), August 24, 1999.

So everyone who lives near Mormons is suffering from a lack of beans and other necessities? Don't think so.

The problem is not in stocking up, or telling people to stock up. The problem is when they try to do it quickly, because the pipeline is inflexible. That's why we've been recommending it since about September 1997, and everyone who listened is now prepped, calm, waiting for whatever. Others who listened in later months are prepped, calm, no sweat. LDS doesn't hurt anyone else by stocking to a higher level, do they? Neither do GIs.

Yup, the panic is coming, but it's not the fault of those who recommend preparations. It's the fault of those who tried to SUPPRESS preparations, and are still trying. Even so, more and more are removing themselves from the panick pack.

GIs are reducing the panic by moving their friends and acquaintances out of the panic group. DGIs are condensing and heightening the panic by spreading false optimism, in the face of overwhelming evidence of incompetence and delay. DGIs say that if there were no GIs there would be no panic. Actually, if there were ONLY GIs there would be no panic.

It's stupid to prepare when you don't know what will happen? I wear a seat belt Because I Don't Know What Will Happen. I buy insurance BIDKWWH. I wear a personal floatation device BIDKWWH. I look both ways BIDKWWH. I backup my data BIDKWWH. I tell my wife I love her when I leave in the morning BIDKWWH. I lock the door BIDKWWH. I carry an umbrella BIDKWWH. I have a first aid kit BIDKWWH. I see the dentist twice a year BIDKWWH.

Suddenly it's wrong to plan ahead, but only regarding Y2k, BIDKWWH?

The Y2k problem is not a computer problem. It's a pipeline problem, a problem in crowd responses. The pipeline is brittle, people sometimes panic. So prepare for the panic.

We told our families two years ago that in September 1999 we would no longer tell them to stockpile, because by that time it would just add to the panic. Still plan to stick to that. As long as the stores aren't bought out, you can recommend stocking up. Once the panic hits, it accomplishes nothing. My wife and I are now working on the next stage - advice for the panicked who didn't listen to us last year and the year before.

And yes, there will be more that people can do.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), August 24, 1999.

Superpolly, the last time I checked the US was a capitalist society. Ed Yardeni requires folks to pay for his selected news and opinion, as does the Wall Street Journal and countless other outfits.

Why is it legitimate to make money on finiancial advice (that tells you how to profit from sitting on your ass), but not to make money on survival advice (that might save your life)?

-- a (a@a.a), August 24, 1999.

Please linkmeister .. do it. He lost his right to the soapbox when he started spewing "feces" from it. You can't/shouldn't yell obscenities at people from a street corner, and I don't understand people who think "everything is game" on the internet. If we can't delete him, can the rest of us just ignore him and continue OT? He's "going to scream" either way, IMHO...

-- Kristi (KsaintA@aol.com), August 24, 1999.

Hey Super Polly, why are you and your pollyann brethren so silent on this thread:

The Simplicity of Y2K: I Just Have A Few Small Questions Left

-- a (a@a.a), August 24, 1999.

I have discovered that there is a certain percentage of people that are so selfish that they don't want any one else to prepare (either to prove to themselves that they are right or do not want system to go down before they see signs to prepare).

This percentage are the types who would not help another stranded on the side of the road or direct a customer to a competitor, when not having something in stock. They are NOT nice people!

What truly irks the non-giver is when others are trying so very hard to awake others to the potential dangers, they (kind-of) feel guilty. They would NOT help another, so you shouldn't too!

PS: The awakening will begin when there are 99 days to go.

-- dw (y2k@outhere.com), August 24, 1999.

Super Polly,

Is this the mindless drivel you are mentioning???

Does this pose a threat to you?? Is that fear I see in your typing??

Senate Y2K Committee
 
 

BENNETT, DODD CALL FOR CHEMICAL INDUSTRY Y2K READINESS SUMMIT

Lack of Knowledge Raises Safety Concerns

WASHINGTON, DC ? U.S. Senators Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah), Chairman of the Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 (Y2K) Technology Problem, and Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), Vice-Chair, noting a "lack of knowledge regarding the Y2K progress being made in preparing companies and others that manufacture, store, transport, or use toxic or hazardous materials in large quantities," today urged the White House to convene a special chemical safety summit to assess and improve the Y2K readiness of the chemical industry.

"The Y2K bug has the potential to disrupt the operation, transport, maintenance, and control activities at chemical facilities," the Senators said. "We rely on these systems to ensure our citizens enjoy a safe and healthy environment. A White House summit will help us better understand what the industry is doing to keep those safeguards in place."

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) endorsed the call for a summit. "With the millennial countdown approaching T minus 140 days, American communities must be better assured regarding chemical safety," said Gerald V. Poje, Ph.D., who oversees Y2K issues for the CSB. "A Chemical Safety Summit will help redouble efforts to prevent releases of hazardous materials from year 2000 technology problems."

A March 1999 report on the chemical industrys Y2K readiness, released jointly by the Senate Y2K Committee and the CSB, identified "significant gaps" in federal guidelines regarding Y2K chemical safety and a lack of information from small and medium-sized chemical enterprises. The industry was also the subject of a committee hearing in May, in which Senator Bennett called Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) action toward ensuring employee safety during the millennium date change "woefully inadequate."

What information does exist on the chemical industrys Y2K preparedness is based in part on a survey the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) conducted of its membership beginning last December. To date, CMA has received only a 63 percent response. Data on another 7 percent of CMAs members was obtained through other means. Thirty percent of the countrys largest chemical companies have still not declared their Y2K status.

The Senators also expressed concern that a Y2K survey conducted by a coalition of associations representing smaller chemical firms this spring was overly optimistic. Almost 6,000 companies were contacted. The results, however, "were based on self-reported data from only 300 companies (a five percent response rate) that were in turn projected to the remaining 5,700 companies that did not participate."

In a letter to John Koskinen, Chairman of the Presidents Council on Y2K Conversion, Bennett and Dodd cited California as a possible model for nationwide action with regard to chemical Y2K safety. California recently instituted a program to survey and assist the 110,000 hazardous materials facilities located in the state. At present, no similar effort has been pursued at a national level, leading to the need for more accurate preparedness information.

"The Federal Government has an important role in providing Y2K leadership, coordination, and direction," the Senators wrote Koskinen. "The outcome of a federal summit should lead to a coordinated federal plan of action and communication on chemical safety and Y2K." The Senators support wide disclosure and dissemination of the summits findings at the earliest possible date.

The chemical industry is potentially vulnerable to the Y2K problem on two fronts. First, there is there a great deal of automation in the production, storage, and movement of chemical products. These automated systems may fail in unpredictable and potentially dangerous ways when the year 2000 arrives. Secondly, chemical production and storage facilities are often very dependent on external utilities, especially electricity, water, and telecommunications, for safe operations. There are concerns that failures may occur in one or more of these services in localized areas in the US and in parts of the world where US firms have chemical plants.

A July safety bulletin from the U.S. Department of Transportation provides an example of the vulnerability of the chemical sector to technological problems. Stemming from an investigation into a recent pipeline safety incident involving the transport of hazardous materials, the bulletin warned pipeline operators of potential problems with their computer systems, known as Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, which electronically monitor and control pipeline operations. The bulletin said that in one particular situation, the systems had become temporarily "overburdened" as a result of database errors, a lack of reserve computational power in the SCADA processor, and the unusually dynamic changes that occurred during the incident. Operators nationwide were warned to review their own SCADA systems to safeguard against similar problems.

Also
 

Year 2000 Issues
 Technology Problems
 and Industrial Chemical Safety

 Year 2000 Issues
 

The chemical process industry relies on software and microchips
for the operation, maintenance, and control activities that are vital
to the safe operation of the plants as well as the profitable
manufacture and distribution of chemical products. Software or
microchips that store dates as two digits could render incorrect
results. For example, a control device may have been programmed
to provide a reading or report every six months using the two-digit
arithmetic. Such a device could interpret the year 2000 as 00
and calculate a negative number when measuring time intervals.
The outcome of such an event could pose a problem. The question
is: would the computer ignore the incorrect answer, or could it
cause the hardware to malfunction, or cause a major process upset?
Other such date-programming or date-embedded problems can be
categorized as follows:

* Dates stored as two-digits may assume the year 1900 instead of
the year 2000;

* 00 may not be allowed as a valid date;

* Dates may be required to begin with 19;

* Dates may have assumed a range that ends in 1999;

* Reports may assume and print a 19 as the first two digits of the
year;

United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board Page 24

* Dates such as 9/9/99 may cause hardware and software
problems;

* Leap year may be incorrectly calculated for the Year 2000,
resulting in problems around February 29, 2000 and December
31, 2000 on the 366 th day of the year.

Potential for Catastrophic Events Stemming from Year 2000 Non- Compliance

The potential for catastrophic events stemming from Year 2000
Non-Compliance can be divided into three categories. First,
failures in software or embedded microchips within the process
plants may cause process excursions or control problems resulting
in accidents. Second, external Y2K-related problems, such as
power outages may cause various problems, such as accelerated
shutdown of processing, monitoring, and safety systems.
Accelerated shutdowns may cause other problems such as the
triggering of fire suppression systems, causing loss of water
pressure for actual fires, and disabling such systems. Third,
multiple Y2K-related incidents may exceed the capacity of
emergency response organizations to respond.

Other factors that must be considered are applications that are
purchased from a supplier and customer applications that are
developed by the users. In addition, the current utilization of
integrated operations using multiple applications all of which pass
on information/data, or use information/data makes it mandatory
that users consider this in their readiness and operational
contingency plans.

Failures in Software or Embedded Microchips

The chemical process industries, irrespective of size and type of
operations, use a variety of software and embedded microchips to
operate, maintain, and control their processes. Y2K-related
failures, can at the minimum, cause off-specification products or
shutdown of the process and at the extreme cause process
malfunctions leading to accidents. For example, the agitator on a
batch reactor may fail to operate causing the initiation of a
runaway reaction. The emergency shutdown system (ESD) is
expected to stop the runaway reaction but the ESD itself may have
an embedded chip that may be susceptible to Y2K-related failure.
Many other examples exist for both batch processes as well as
continuous processes used by the chemical process industries.15
Chemical processes are usually built with multiple layers of
safeguards that require the congruent failure of various systems to
precipitate an accident. However, many accidents in the U.S. and
overseas have occurred when multiple simultaneous failures
resulted in catastrophic accidents. In addition, some automated
safeguard systems are on-demand or in reserve, making
recognition of the potential for failure very difficult. Thus, it is
prudent to explore the catastrophic potential of single Y2K-related
failures as well as combinations of various failures.

Power Outages

No effort was made in this study to assess the potential of power
outages from Y2K-related failures. However, potential Y2K-related
power outages represent another set of problems for
chemical and petroleum facilities. While many chemical and
petroleum manufacturing facilities have backup power generators,
Y2K failures may include concurrent loss of power, cooling water
and other system malfunctions. First, plants without auxiliary
power backup systems face a threat to parts of their processes that
may not shutdown in a fail-safe mode. Batch chemical processes
are especially susceptible because the safety of the process is quite
often dependent on time-dependent factors such as precisely timed
mixing, heating or cooling requirements. Second, a potential
scenario is that widespread power outages may cause shutdowns of
many plants, which in turn will require simultaneous startups.
Although startups of chemical plants are infrequent and their
durations are short compared with the life cycle of a plant, process
safety incidents occur five times as often during startup as they do
during normal operations 16 . Thus, a large number of simultaneous
startups may increase the potential of incidents in one or more
process plants. In addition, the simultaneous restarts of large
power-consuming facilities will impose large demands on the
electrical grid.

-- Scream! (scream@super.polly), August 24, 1999.

Call it "The Beanie Baby Syndrome" (BBS) - when people confuse the lust for an amusing trifle with what they need to actually survive.

Hey! I love useless crap. My wife and I have a whole house full of it. When people come over, they frequently say, "Whydya have all this useless crap all over the place?!?". Useless crap is fun (for us, anyway), but it is still just useless crap.

When we got hip the potential problems with Y2K, we decided we could live without increasing our bounty of useless crap, for this year. The problem with people with BBS, is they have lost that particular contact with reality. In their minds, nothing is more important than increasing their store of their particular brand of useless crap. This distortion of reality causes them to reject even the possibility of a BITR, because even a BITR might mean losing a days access to eBay or Amazon.com, and that's just not a tolerable thought.

The Beanie Baby Syndrome generally follows the same path as addiction problems; that is to say, they have to "hit bottom" before they begin the path to recovery.

Something tells me that your gonna see an awful lot of recovered BBS types, after next year.

-- Bokonon (bok0non@my-Deja.com), August 24, 1999.

Buy whatever you like beanie babies or beans. I never said don't prepare. I'm totally prepared and haven't bought a single thing for Y2K. But that's just me.

I go ballistic over people saying teotwawki with no evidence, no proof, no justification except for the interconnectedness rule of thumb. I go ballistic over illogical arguments and people calling me stupid who are probably the most stupid people I've met. I go ballistic over the doomers worrying about every nit related to Y2K or not. I go ballistic over doomers who know nothing about subjects but won't stop making erroneous conclusions based on no data.

Bottom line, knock yourself out. Whatever floats your boat. Don't let me stop you. But try not to talk in circles, that drives me ballistic.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), August 24, 1999.

Well then Maria, why do you hang around here? You must like going ballistic!

-- (see@maria.go ballistic), August 24, 1999.

maria, do you ever doubledate with your ego?

-- leggomyego (maria@ego.maniac), August 24, 1999.

If the government wanted to prevent people from prepping as we are, it should have come up with ration books. I hope it will--at least that would allow everyone to have something. If the government had done this two years ago, we would all be prepared now.

As it is, the spin doctors are trying to shame and coerce people into thinking that preparing is foolish and somehow wrong. Do I risk others in society by buying 100 cans of tuna fish? If that's the case, then place a limit on tuna and I'll obey.

It would certainly be a stupid kind of thinking if I were to refrain from buying tuna based on those vague, undefined and unproven polly ideas that it is worse than Y2K itself for me to prepare.

Until prepping is illegal, mind your own business, pollies.

-- Mara Wayne (MaraWayne@aol.com), August 24, 1999.

It's all about protecting the third leg of the iron triangle - the banks. If people start buying food and flashlight batteries, how big a leap is it to say, "Holy s--t! I've gotta sell all my investments and pull all my cash outta the bank!". Unfortunately, banks are what drive a capitalist society. If the banks go down, so do we. It's your classic no-win scenario. Leave it in the bank, and risk losing it all, if Y2K glitches cause them to crash anyway, or everyone take all their cash out, and thereby guarantee a depression. To be or not to be...must give us pause.

They piss me off, when they withhold info, too, but on the other hand, I'm kinda glad I'm not them, right now.

-- Bokonon (bok0non@my-Deja.com), August 24, 1999.

Bokonon,

If I owned a newspaper, I would give you your own column. You really do have a way of turning a phrase, that leaves me smiling and chuckling back at my screen. I also enjoy your postings because, IMHO, you frequently hit the nail on the head without preaching. Thanks.

-- Kristi (KsaintA@aol.com), August 25, 1999.