When I was reading the Ed vs. Hoffmeister point/counterpoint it occurred to me again that the main difference between the pollys and the doomers is that the pollys seem to believe that effort equates to results, while the doomers realize that sometimes efforts, no matter how noble or heroic, fail. I was particularly struck by Mr. Greenspan's insitance that because the banks had speent so much time and effort on the y2k problem there is no longer a need to worry, effort = results.

Of course, my cynical side immediately told me that since 98% of the population would automatically assume that Greenspan was correct, would agree that the effort would automatically produce the desired result, that Mr. Greenspan was, with full knowledge, misleading the population in order to try to prop up the banking system upon which his personal livelihood depends. Could that be right? Would Mr. Greenspan be that devious, that evil? My answer to that question is, "Yes." For, after all, he is involved in the Federal Reserve Banking system, a system that I believe exists for the sole purpose of transferring the wealth of this nation from the individuals to the banks and bankers, and he could not hold his position without knowing what the FED is and what it does. But also consider that if only a very small portion of the population demands currency from banks, the fractional reserve system will be destroyed. If the fractional reserve system is destroyed, the FED will nolonger serve a purpose. If the FED no longer serves a purpose, Mr. Greenspan will be out of a job. It seems to me that Mr. Greenspan's remarks are very self-serving, and are therefore, by the logic of the pollys, not to be believed.

In any event, please remember that effort does not automatically produce the desired results. If it did, every team in the NFl would win every week.

George

-- George Valentine (GeorgeValentine@usa.net), September 22, 1999

Answers

That was astute, George.

www.y2ksafeminnesota.com

-- MinnesotaSmith (y2ksafeminnesota@hotmail.com), September 22, 1999.

Regarding Y2K code remediation: Too many variables and too little time. The only way an intelligent person could fail to see this is if he doesn't want to see it.

-- cody (cody@y2ksurvive.com), September 22, 1999.

George & cody...excellent post and reply...This has the potential to be a really great thread...

-- BiGG (supersite@acronet.net), September 22, 1999.

"Results! Why man, I have gotten lots of results. I know several thousand things that won't work!" Thomas A. Edison

-- quoter (quoter@quoterrr.com), September 22, 1999.

Cody,

The intelligent people get there news from the media. A small percentage get in here on the web. The average person has been made to believe that everybody is Y2K ready and that fine with them. Nothing short of a major breakdown somewhere will WAKE the people up. Its now the FALL season and soon the Christmas season. No need to WORRY about something they can't put a handle on.

-- y2k dave (xsdaa111@hotmail.com), September 22, 1999.

George,

Very nice job. Well put. I'm shocked that such a good post showed up on the board, these days. NO, NO, don't flame me over that, just my observation.

-- fed watcher (hmm@welldone.com), September 22, 1999.

Second, our estimating techniques fallaciously confuse effort with progress, hiding the assumption that men and months are interchangeable.

The Mythical Man- Month

-- Lane Core Jr. (elcore@sgi.net), September 22, 1999.

Lane,

Good quote. That is one great book. I've had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Brooks, long, long ago, shortly after he left IBM for UNC. He is (was?) one fine mind, and as courteous and self-effacing as they come.

George

-- George Valentine (GeorgeValentine@usa.net), September 22, 1999.

I disagree, Dave. I think the average person will, as a defense mechanism, refuse to believe that inconveniences, catastrophes, and recession is inevitable.

-- Klar (klarbrunn@lycos.com), September 23, 1999.

Perhaps it is not evil or a deliberate deception on the part of anyone who doesn't believe something will or -for the other side -will not happen. Perhaps not everyone who has a different opinion actually has a hidden agenda - it maybe right in the open or not exist at all. Each of us base decisions on our collective history, values, experiences, skills, etc. So to Greenspan, who has devoted years to to work he probably loves, perhaps he cannot EVEN conceive of a set of conditions which his work could not handle. That would be his experience to date. My rub with both pollys and doomers is that many of each believes the other side has "evil" intentions. That is probably true of some on both sides of the issue. But is it not cut & dried workable generality anymore than the final outcome of this event can be cut & dried.

As a former programmer I know a little about the complexities and hidden gotchas that come up - I have experienced them. I know very well others who have not and who cannot conceive or grasp even possibilities - it is simply not within the realm of what makes them.

I don't know Greenspan well enough to say. I listen to his market comments and know he knows more about economics than I. I don't believe all he says is right. I think he is adept at pronouncing ambiguity so as to have it interpretted in the way he wants. That's his job -as he sees it - keeping the ecomony on a leash. Just like the Navy report thing - a rumored coverup in the works. Odds are the report was done by guys like you and I who were doing their jobs rather than by evil twisted little men bent on keeping the truth to themselves (which if that were their intent, the were very inept and have reached their level of incompetence) Now as for Clinton... well... he's probably an example of the other extreme.\

Put another way, my little mind cannot conceive some of the conspiracies or deliberate and elaborate schemese people are credited because my experience says its nearly impossible to make a business strategy work, predict and prepare for the outcomes exactly as planned, in open environments let alone secret ones. That thinking is in fact why I am preparing. to think every little trap will be found is incomprehensible to me. So perhaps I have been surrounded by ineptness all my life and there are people so brilliant that they can make a plan that works flawlessly for weeks, years or generations but frankly I doubt it. Even WWII's brillant deceptions which turned the tide on Hitler relyed heavily on luck, timing, or the hand of God. ( I do still find some of the activities there astonishing or that people even tried some of that stuff - so maybe I am naive)

But even the most strident on either side are more or less just regular people doing what they perceive is the right thing - however misguided I or anyone else thinks that might be. So in the end all this chat is really pointless. People make up their minds, speeches and plans based on all that goes into making them and only additional EXPERIENCEs which are different than their perceptions can influence and MAYBE change their thinking.

In the meantime everyone seems to relish a good debate and take a side with no real chance of winning the other side with words or theory. Since this event will have a measureable yet still unpredictable outcome, none of us will give much to the other side, taking comfort in those that agree with us (further bolstering our opinions) and disdaining those who don't.

Why do I say all this? I've got my reasons.

-- Just Maybe (BNthinking@othershoe.com), September 23, 1999.

WELL DONE GEORGE, BRILLIANT !!!

-- Jack Mercer (mercerjohn@usa.net), September 23, 1999.

There are actually 4 groups of people with regard to Y2K.

1. those who are preparing, nicknamed doomers.

2. those who don't believe it is a problem, nicknamed pollies.

3. those who are in a position to influence and are controlling the situation for their own benefit and the benefit of their benefactors (I'll call them manipulators).

4. those who are not aware of the problem, or are aware but have no opinion (I'll call them neutrals).

When one listens to someone like Greenspan say effort = results, I believe Greenspan (and other manipulators) do not really believe this argument, but push it anyway to give the pollies a simplistic reason for conforming to the polly view.

The main difference, in my opinion, between pollies and doomers is that pollies are emotional and have a need to belong to a larger peer group and conform. The doomers generally study the facts and come to their own conclusions and are not dissuaded by simplistic arguments. The simplistic arguments have the common theme that most of them are not very logical. This does not matter much to the pollies, since their mode of thinking is not logical, but emotional. If everyone else suddenly became a doomer, or pollies perceived that the tide of public opinion was turning towards the doomer point of view, the pollies would become doomers because their need to conform would drive them towards doomism. This is the reason behind the oft-noted phenomenon that a doomer can get an individual isolated polly to convert for a few minutes or hours, but then the individual reverts to pollyism. The polly mindset is not an individual mindset but a collective mindset, and reflects to some degree a common human need to belong... to a family, community, village, civic organization, company, hobbyist group, racial group, gang, association, whatever. The manipulators understand this basic human need well and exploit it very well using modern journalistic methods developed during the Civil War in America, and during the Nazi period in Germany. The manipulators do this because their mindset is without a social or moral code other than to self-interest. People without conscience have an easier time rising to the top of the economic heap at the expense of others (for whatever reasons). This is why appealing to manipulators with logical arguments also falls on deaf ears, because the manipulators recognize the logical arguments but choose to ignore them because Y2K presents an opportunity to consolidate or magnify their gains and power.

This is why there are so many doomers in small business because the small business person has to think for themselves and is a maverick by nature.

Doomers as a general rule, I think will be condemned to be about 5 to 10% of the population. This is the residual fraction of people who are not in the other three categories. In the War for Independence, only about 5-10% of the people were actually actively involved in the breakaway from England and the formation of the new country, according to some. So being a small minority is not necessarily a death knell for that minority's cause. However, other factors come into play, such as luck, perserverance, precedent, and connections. The difference between 1776 and now is that much of the media is entrenched with the manipulators. If this were the case in 1776, the revolution might never have succeeded.

A ray of hope in this situation is the internet, which did not exist 2 centuries ago and can be used to do an end run around the normal communication channels.

However, if the theory holds and the manipulators are true to form, they have already laid plans for disrupting the internet (and other modes of easy unregulated mass communcation) and have already taken steps to ensure that doomers will be isolated and ostracized if and when the time comes to consolidate control. Doomers will be made to look like villains, guilty of hoarding supplies and inciting panic and violence and economic and social disruption. Excuses will be found to round up doomers and other dissidents and separate them from the rest of society and each other, in the extreme case.

I would be happy to be wrong, but unfortunately events in the last few years have been fairly predictable with this model. If the "end" does not come with Y2K, something else, such as a riot or natural disaster, will be used as a trigger later on.

Warning signs will include a dip in the stock market, indefinite suspension of whatever is left of Constitutional law, followed by an attack on the Constitution itself, probably using a repeal of the 2nd amendment as a spearhead towards that effort.

-ann

-----

It's time we set our sights on the Second Amendment

Let's hear it for the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

A 208-year-old law, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms", made this local tragedy possible:

Earlier this month, 16-year-old Marcos Sarabia put a handgun owned by his father into his backpack and went to school in San Jose. He then killed himself in a restroom.

A 208-year-old law written with the myth of the soldier-farmer in mind gave us this recent tragedy:

Buford Furrow, Jr., a white supremacist, bought seven guns months ago. A few weeks ago, it is alleged, Furrow shot several people at a Jewish community center, then killed a Filipino-American mail carrier in Los Angeles.

A 208-year-old law written in pre-modern times gave us this massacre:

One day last week, Larry Gen Ashbrook purchased two semiautomatic pistols. He went on a shooting rampage at a Baptist church in Fort Worth, Texas, that same night. Seven innocent people died.

And that's just the carnage of the past few weeks. At this clip, we can start a news series called Massacre of the Month.

Many Americans can still recall the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado last spring, committed by two heavily armed teens. Thos who can't are probably members of the National Rifle Association, a group for which amnesia is a requirement for membership.

The NRA insists that we can't stop citizens from owning guns. I used to think this was just a pinheaded interpretation of the Second Amendment, but I've come around. The NRA is right.

As social critic Daniel Lazare writes in the October Harper's magazine, the Second Amendment is a disastrous relic of a bygone era, but it's holding up well in the modern courts. Here's the really bad news for us liberals on the subject: Lazare is a liberal.

For decades, Lazare begins, gun-control advocates have argued that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual a right to own guns; it guarantees "merely a right to participate in an official state militia".

Then he picks the amendment apart, examines the history of each controversial phrase and concludes that individuals indeed have the right to own guns. The militia argument, he says, was a nice try but it's too pat and ahistorical. Lazare's not alone. Growing numbers of liberal and conservative scholars agree.

So what's a good liberal, gun-control advocate to do? We can't shoot ourselves. That would be hypocritical.

Lazare's got a better idea: Repeal the Second Amendment.

"Because we have chained ourselves to a pre-modern Constitution, we are unable to deal with the modern problem of a runaway gun culture in a modern way."

With nearly 240 million guns in America-- nearly one for everybody-- I think the best chances for intelligent control were lost a long time ago.

Schools can put up all the metal detectors they can buty. States can adopt piecemeal gun controls one by one. Conservative congressmen can badmouth violent Hollywood films all they want. But the gun culture will thrive so long as the Second Amendment keeps the gun factories and sellers in business.

Lazare takes on not only the Second Amendment but the whole Constitution as an inflexible plan inherited from a simpler society that no longer exists.

"Why can't *we* create the kind of society we want, as opposed to living with laws meant to create the kind of society *they* wanted?"

If this sounds like heresy, it is. So was the Declaration of Independence to King George. We should feel free to change the Constitution to fit our times. As Lazare concludes, most industrialized nations have revamped their constitutions since 1900.

I'll be the first to sign the petition.

Joe Rodriguez jrodriguez@sjmercury.com (408) 920-5767 Sept 22 1999

-- Ann Y Body (annybody@no.where.dis.org), September 23, 1999.

My comments are interspersed in the following. they are in brackets.

It's time we set our sights on the Second Amendment [Yes, it would be nice if we gave it the power it deserves.]

Let's hear it for the Second Amendment to the Constitution. [The one that is supposed to keep us free from tyrants.]

A 208-year-old law, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms", made this local tragedy possible:

Earlier this month, 16-year-old Marcos Sarabia put a handgun owned by his father into his backpack and went to school in San Jose. He then killed himself in a restroom.

[No. Poor parenting allowed a misguided kid to feel so unwanted and so worthless and so full of pain that extinction was better than enduring. Had there been no gun he would have found another way, perhaps ODing on his mother's sleeping pills or something.]

A 208-year-old law written with the myth of the soldier-farmer in mind gave us this recent tragedy:

Buford Furrow, Jr., a white supremacist, bought seven guns months ago. A few weeks ago, it is alleged, Furrow shot several people at a Jewish community center, then killed a Filipino-American mail carrier in Los Angeles.

[No. If there were no guns he could have accomplished his ends by barricading the door and burining down the building or something else. I will concede that free availability of arms does make it easier for the mentally unstable to do things like this, but I also contend that that is the price one pays for freedom.]

A 208-year-old law written in pre-modern times gave us this massacre:

One day last week, Larry Gen Ashbrook purchased two semiautomatic pistols. He went on a shooting rampage at a Baptist church in Fort Worth, Texas, that same night. Seven innocent people died.

[Perhaps our persistent teaching of our youth that there is no such thing as good or evil, that one person or idea is as good as another - - even when it is not true has led to mind sets in which such actions are acceptable. We have intentionally warped our youth. Why should we be surprised when they do warped things?]

And that's just the carnage of the past few weeks. At this clip, we can start a news series called Massacre of the Month.

[Let's also start on about how known killers are set free to kill again.]

Many Americans can still recall the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado last spring, committed by two heavily armed teens. Thos who can't are probably members of the National Rifle Association, a group for which amnesia is a requirement for membership.

[Because the warped do warped things, because parents don't parent, is no reason to blame the tool for an action nor to blame an organization that likes the tools for the unhealthy use of them. Why don't you replace gun with automobile in all of your musings and see if, when it's your ox being gored, if you come to the same conclusions.]

The NRA insists that we can't stop citizens from owning guns. I used to think this was just a pinheaded interpretation of the Second Amendment, but I've come around. The NRA is right.

[Yes. For is tomorrow every law-abiding citizen destroyed his guns, then only the non law-abiding would have them.]

As social critic Daniel Lazare writes in the October Harper's magazine, the Second Amendment is a disastrous relic of a bygone era, but it's holding up well in the modern courts. Here's the really bad news for us liberals on the subject: Lazare is a liberal.

[The fact that a liberal reports on a fact that does not further the liberal cause is bad news? What kind of twisted thinking is this?]

For decades, Lazare begins, gun-control advocates have argued that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual a right to own guns; it guarantees "merely a right to participate in an official state militia".

Then he picks the amendment apart, examines the history of each controversial phrase and concludes that individuals indeed have the right to own guns. The militia argument, he says, was a nice try but it's too pat and ahistorical. Lazare's not alone. Growing numbers of liberal and conservative scholars agree.

[On the web, I forget where, there is a copy of a congressional report that came to identical conclusions.]

So what's a good liberal, gun-control advocate to do? We can't shoot ourselves. That would be hypocritical.

[Try sleeping pills, or step infrom of a train.]

Lazare's got a better idea: Repeal the Second Amendment.

[Sure. Let's let the government have _all_ the control. Don't you believe that absolute power corrupts absolutely?]

"Because we have chained ourselves to a pre-modern Constitution, we are unable to deal with the modern problem of a runaway gun culture in a modern way."

[Try enforcing laws agains crime rather than coddling prisoners. The examples might deter others.]

With nearly 240 million guns in America-- nearly one for everybody-- I think the best chances for intelligent control were lost a long time ago.

[Intelligent control is an oxymoron.]

Schools can put up all the metal detectors they can buty. States can adopt piecemeal gun controls one by one. Conservative congressmen can badmouth violent Hollywood films all they want. But the gun culture will thrive so long as the Second Amendment keeps the gun factories and sellers in business.

[And when the united States no longer manufactures arms, what about the other countries?]

Lazare takes on not only the Second Amendment but the whole Constitution as an inflexible plan inherited from a simpler society that no longer exists.

[I'm glad you hero is so wonderful, but I prefer the founding fathers.]

"Why can't *we* create the kind of society we want, as opposed to living with laws meant to create the kind of society *they* wanted?"

[The kind of society I want is one in which each and every person is responsible for each and every one of his actions. And I want it to be one like this country before the 1930s, when guns _of all types_ could be freely owned.]

If this sounds like heresy, it is. So was the Declaration of Independence to King George. We should feel free to change the Constitution to fit our times. As Lazare concludes, most industrialized nations have revamped their constitutions since 1900.

[So what. Your neighbor drives his car into a bridge abutment, you should do the same?]

I'll be the first to sign the petition.

[And, I hope, the first to be hanged for treason.]

Joe Rodriguez jrodriguez@sjmercury.com (408) 920-5767 Sept 22 1999

-- Ann Y Body (annybody@no.where.dis.org), September 23, 1999.

-- George Valentine (GeorgeValentine@usa.net), September 23, 1999.

To the idiot above when he suggests that we repell the 2nd ammendment because it is a 208 year old law that has no purpose in todays society, he should be greatful that there is another 208 year old law that gives him the right to voice his opinion, or should we repell that one to?

-- www (www@www.cxom), September 23, 1999.

What strange reasoning everyone seems to agree on here. Kind of like arguing that since not everything that has four legs is a dog, therefore no dog has four legs. Amazing the contortions people will put their thoughts through to arrive at a foregone conclusion!

No, effort does not equal success. On the other hand, on a project like y2k you won't have success without effort either. As a first approximation, let's say that effort *permits* success, but does not guarantee success.

In real life, effort has varying degrees of effectiveness, depending on many variables -- the amount of effort, the difficulty of the particular task, the consequences of varying amounts of shortfall, the skill (and experience and knowledge) of those exerting the effort, and so on.

Perhaps a good metaphor is a special race, wherein you run as far as you can within a given time limit, and pay a fine based on your distance. The further you run before time runs out, the lower the fine. It's probably not possible to run far enough to reduce the fine to zero. But if you choose not to run at all, you pay a huge fine, perhaps more than you can afford.

Now, how far must you run before you "succeed"? Indeed, *is there* any set distance past which you "succeed" and before which you "fail"? How large a fine are you willing to pay, because it's a better tradeoff than running harder (which is a lot of exhausting effort and you don't want to do any more of that than you absolutely have to).

Yes, we know a great deal of effort has been expended -- Greenspan isn't lying about that. No, we don't know exactly how effective that effort has been, except for a ton of admittedly self-reported success stories. But the whole point here is that there is no definable finish line even in theory. There is no point where we can say HERE is the dividing line between success and failure. There is only a big debatable gray area between relatively better and relatively worse.

And it seems highly likely that more effort makes things relatively better in nearly every case. "Good enough" cannot be defined clearly by anyone. Y2k is like horseshoes. Close counts, and closer counts more.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 23, 1999.

No Flint y2k is like a hand grenade.

-- 40 cans of crisco (is@that.enough), September 23, 1999.

Okay - y2k is like a hand grenade - several can play that game...we have spent about 800 billion trying to solve the problem. Was that ENOUGH effort? It's an effort certainly, perhaps the biggest effort towards one goal ever spent by individuals and businesses, but was it enough, and did we get enough done?

Or, phrasing it another way....since c"lose only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades," ... did we throw the hand grenade far enough away, early enough so it will explode and not harm us? ?

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), September 23, 1999.

"What strange reasoning everyone seems to agree on here." Flint.

Ofcourse it's strange to you Flint, you can't reason that way, even when someone like George takes you by the hand to show you how.

Talking about colors is strange to a born blind person.

-- Chris (#$%^&@pond.com), September 23, 1999.

Flint,

It's tough arguing against the binary thought modality. While it seems eons ago, in my first post I discussed the fallacy of "go/no- go" logic as applied to Y2K.

While computer problems occur every day, our economic system has a fair amount of tolerance. Problems are better described as increased friction in the system rather than the "fatal error" common to computer programs. The pessimists often see the economy as a mechanical device where if one cog fails, the entire economy implodes. This is simply not an accurate portrayal. Businessesses fail every day. The economy absorbs these losses, with a loss of efficiency, of course.

As to Mr. Valentine's original post, no right-thinking person (especially an economist) can imagine a perfectly efficient effort. This only exists in theoretical physics. We know some of the money spent on Y2K has been wasted... and perhaps there have been some unanticipated benefits.

On the other hand, I cannot imagine the Y2K effort has been perfectly inefficient. The billions of dollars poured into remediation has fixed some systems, replaced others, and perhaps forced a few to a well-deserved boneyard. The "pollies" do not confuse effort with outcomes... but as Flint aptly points out, outcomes do not come without effort.

I am reminded of an error in logic made by Mr. Cook earlier. Mr. Cook posited that because management felt Y2K was well spent... not spending enough meant not everything was being addressed. (Please forgive the paraphrase.)

In Y2K remediation, as in most economic activities, there is bound to be a point of diminishing returns. When one budgets for an activity as uncertain as Y2K remediation, it is highly likely one will discover the point of diminishing returns at some point. After all, part of the inefficiency of the effort involves learning as we go.

I imagine some firms have spent money on testing and retesting (like our local utility). At this point, additional testing does not seem cost effective. They have reached a point where the returns no longer justify the investment.

-- Ken Decker (kcdecker@worldnet.att.net), September 23, 1999.

Chris:

Are you sure? Can you find anything in what I wrote that you disagree with? If so, why don't you mention it? What purpose does it serve you just to call me names?

Now George has said Greenspan is evil. Why? Because Greenspan spoke of the vast effort made to remediate. And why is it evil to mention this effort? Because according to George, 98% of Greenspan's listeners "automatically assume" that effort will "automatically produce the desired result." Now, where did George get this 98% figure? Everyone I know is well aware that you don't always automatically get everything you want just because you try. You usually get *part* of what you want, and most people know this. People are constantly doing rule-of-thumb probability calculations every waking hour.

So what do we have here? We have George calling Greenspan devious and evil for citing accurate statistics George is afraid everyone *else* will misinterpret. George takes it upon himself to point out to us suckers that not every team wins every game. Golly.

I won't even try to comment on George's gleeful anticipation of the collapse of banking due to abnormal activity. His statement is speculation, likely false. Pure subjunctive tense.

Anyway, George isn't showing anyone the way to anywhere. Again, if you disagree with what I wrote, do so directly.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 23, 1999.

If you know anything about mind control, you know that the use of language with context, phrasing, omission and *weaving* is everything.

Pessimists, ask yourself what you would have to hear from Greenspan to believe him? You *know* what you would have to hear, and it wouldn't need to be the '100% compliant' routine, either.

This is the guy who 2 years ago said 99% remediation wasn't going to be good enough. I am sure, today, he regrets that statement. However, with the clever use of language, you have yourself what they call in da bidness 'soft mind control'.

-- OR (orwelliator@biosys.net), September 23, 1999.

OR:

I agree with you on this one. A couple of years ago, Greenspan tried to use hyperbole to clarify a point. I'm sure he never dreamed that a horde of doomies would take his hyperbole as the Literal Word of God, and use it to beat him over the head every time he tried to reintroduce a little reality. Use of words is indeed critical. No wonder most of these people tend to be dry as dust. The slightest coloration is ripped from its context and used to support some point never intended. All Greenspan can do is get dryer.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 23, 1999.

1. I don't find the analogy between Y2k and a horseshoe game either accurate or useful. A horseshoe game is a finite sum game in which one party wins via some semblance of a quantitative measure that is not subject to subjectivity or coloration. In Y2k, everyone can lose. In Y2k, some players are playing behind shower curtains, and the results we have to take more or less on faith until the aftermath of Y2k occurs (or not).

2. The problem with defending the polly notion that Y2k is a bump in the road or 3 day storm is still summed up by looking at the fractional reserve banking system, which is inherently risky since it depends, ultimately, on societal stability. Remove the underpinnings of societal stability, and people will want to withdraw their money. Not enough money in the banks to allow that? Then those who seek to defend the status quo are forced towards policies that keep the sheep docile, so to speak. And this explains much if not most or all of the public pronouncements from Rubin, Greenspan, Clinton, IMF, et al. The infrastructure simply has an instability mode, one which if reached will simply result in a threat to society approaching nuclear war.

3. As long as pollies don't own up to points (1) and (2), they are not being realistic, with themselves and their own families and friends to begin with. That is largely their problem, but the moment they wake up and find they are without resources and I have stockpiled, their ignorance and willingness to sacrifice foresight and logic for what is essentially pride becomes to the extent they approach me for my supplies, my problem, and the problem of those like me. Preparing for this specific problem has led me into dark alleys that I have had no desire to explore at any time in my life prior to this time.

3.1 I don't regard anything that I've ever thought of and/or posted electronically on this subject requires a particularly large intelligence to figure out. In contrast, I do not think folks like Greenspan are where they are without considerable intelligence and the will to discipline themselves. I presume, in fact, Greenspan is well aware of almost all the arguments we make on this bulletin board, and that for whatever reasons he simply chooses not to bother with a stragegy for his flock.

4. It seems to me very evident that this Y2K phenomenon *has* been experienced before in time, under different guises. The major reason we are not aware of it is because the civilizations that faced the challenge are almost all no longer with us. I am thinking of the Maya, the ancient Indus region civilization, the ancient civilizations on the South American continent, Easter Island, and so on. In general, the problem is as I see it is that civilizations arrive at a certain level of complexity, interdependency and social stratification such that a collective hubris builds, invincibility becomes a common belief, and the system effectively implodes, unable to overcome a relatively straightforward problem, not because of lack of resources to deal with it but because of lack of collective psychological mindset to deal with it. After the system implodes (or is torn apart), there are bandits and vandals. I can almost hear the Maya saying to themselves that they will always have enough maize at harvest time to feed their population, and internal civil war will never occur because their and only their civilization is advanced enough technically and politically such that no one should ever have to suffer from hunger or strife. In this sense, Western Civilization is following a well trodden path in declining to identify and meet the (relatively straightfoward) threat of Y2k in a rational and prudent manner. And if Y2k does not "take out" Western Civilization, it will become the bellwether for a different threat (eg biological warfare epidemic) that will, eventually succeed.

5. The Fabian Society and the eugenics enthusiasts no doubt welcome such scenarios as a means to consolodate their power and reduce stress on the environment caused by current population explosion. I personally would prefer to see more humane and education-oriented methods of voluntary restraint and conservation, along with a distribution of power among the governed, but that is just my personal opinion, if not flaw. Instead, I have no high expectation that this will ever realistically occur and am ready to accept whatever will happen in due time, choosing to limit more and more as I get older and wiser, my own exposure to risk from any direction where pragmatic. It still seems like a cop-out, gut feeling, but it is unclear to me that there are many realistic alteratives at this time. Sigh... :-/

-- Ann Y Body (annybody@no.where.dis.org), September 24, 1999.

Dear "Ann Y. Body"

In Part 5 of my White Paper, I try to describe some alternative scenarios that could unfold between now and the rollover. I hope you might have a look at it and see what you think. The URL is http://www.gwu.edu/~y2k/keypeople/gordon. Then click on Part 5. It is entitled: "In Case of Fire, Yell 'Fire'". It could have been subtitled, "And What to Do If the Fire Department Fails to Show Up."

The different scenarios also help to distinguish the major differences in assumptions and concerns on the part of those who are pursuing the status quo scenario (the approach being taken by the Administration) and those who recognize that the present course needs to be immediately transformed into an adequately staffed and orchestrated proactive and crisis-oriented approach.

In the best case scenarios that are characterized, initiatives would be implemented that would be directed at minimizing the most severe impacts (including doing our best to avoid technological disasters ~ Bhopals and Chernobyls, pipeline explosions, dam failures, etc.) and encouraging and actively supporting preparedness efforts so that the social fabric has the best possible chance of holding together through the rollover and beyond.

Part 4 of the White Paper provides an explanation of why the Administration is following its present course. It is my hope that the media, Members of Congress, and the public will challenge the President directly concerning his "strategy" which evidently involves waiting until after the rollover to assume a major leadership role. The price tag to the country will be infinitely higher if he continues to pursue such a strategy. More resources need to be directed to addressing the crisis now. A central staff of ten or fewer persons never was sufficient to the task and never will be. The Information Coordination Center ~ ICC ~ is not germane to prerollover efforts unless it is reconfigured to proactively act to minimize impacts. Preparedness initiatives must be totally reformulated and be based in assumption that a fully informed and fully prepared public provides our best chance of pulling through the next months and years.

We cannot afford to continue to put scant resources into these efforts. We have a vested interest in seeing to it that adequate resources are made available at all levels of government, and in all sectors of society. It is a matter of pay now or pay much, much more later.

If the President continues on his present course and waits until the rollover to exercise leadership, it would mean that recovery efforts might take many years and full recovery and restoration of social fabric might not, even then, be assured.

RealVideo presentations in which these views are discussed are available for viewing through a link on my homepage noted above: http://www.gwu.edu/~y2k/keypeople/gordon.

-- Paula Gordon (pgordon@erols.com), September 24, 1999.

Sir Decker: But that is exactly my point.

Have we spent enough effort and money to "innoculate" the problem? Much has been doen, and every positive step will reduce the impact further. But have we "turned the corner" so that enough damage has been prevented to prevent total breakdown? (Probably yes.) To prevent a lonnnnnng depression (Most likely.) To prevent a major worldwide depression? (Maybe.) To prevent a major worldwide recession? (Probably not.) To prevent a severe 1st and 2nd quarter impact? (Absolutely not.) To prevent significant threats to American health, safety, and well-being? (Absolutely not.)

One reader above said we are playing horseshoes against an opponent "playing behind the shower curtain."

It's worse than that: we are playing hand grenade against an opponent who blindfolds us and then says he will tell us where the target is, how close we came with each throw, and will keep score for us.

____

My question, more accurately phrased, was that we have been told to "believe" the government and put our entire faith and future in their Judgement" that nothing will happen. That we are to accept their conclusions about future events that hold incredible threats to the basic life, health, and safety of our families.

So, the question then becomes, can I believe these people with such a critical threat?

Do they have a track record of correctly the "future" of the economy, of international affairs, of any industrial or major civil contruction project? NO. [No public statement about the econmy, taxes, the supposed budget surplus, the results of economic policies, medical or health issues or the ecology have been correct. No foreign interfaces have resulted as they intended. Therefore, we can conclude this administration has an "0 for 7 seven years" record of failure.]

Do they have any vested interests in presenting incorrect facts or slanting the released informatiion to preserve a "pollyanish" prediction? YES.

Do they have any economic biases or political interests that would lead them to incorrect conclusions, and - most important - if they did come to "gloomy" conclusions, would they conceal or "rewrite" those conclusions? YES.

Have they concealed information, or misrepresented information, or covered up embarrassing information to the public before? YES.

Is there hidden or concealed information that would indicate that the administration has information that would show the public information is too "gloomy" or that the publically released infomation is only "gloomy" news and ignores positive development? NO.

In fact, the best indicators are that concealed information (such as the Navy list that Jim Lord was given), the CIA estimates, and actual foreign compliance figures, are MUCH MORE GLOOMY than the publically spun positive information. In fact also, the administration has been central to almost all of the positive information released....so we can conclude that no positive data is "missing".

----

So they are not capable of making predictions correctly. They are biased already towards presently "good news" and have inthe past deliberately hidden bad news, are proven to lie in public and to the courts about public matters and public policy, and (apparently) have no "hidden" information that would contradict the public information we have found despite their efforts and the efforts of the national media.

----

Now, I look at the same "public" knowledge, and with a lot more experience in the actual parts of the "equation" than the government experts have, and based on actually having "handled" the software modification, testing, the industrial and shipping and construction and utility processes that these supposed government experts and committee members have never even seen. The problem is not politcal - and these committee members have never handled a problem that cannot be solved by "advertising" - is it any wonder that they resort to "salesmanship"?

But my conclusions are very different than the administrations conclusions. And, since the administration is acting from selfish concerns not in the best interst of this country or my family, I must act based on what I consider the most prudent course.

___

All right, Paula, excellent point - now, let us ask why he (Clinton) would have chosen to wait until after the occurrance of problems to show leadership, if he does at all. (No doubt, he will will appear to show leadership, "show" is all he is a master of. With the compliancy of the national media, 'tis all that is needed too.....)

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), September 24, 1999.