History repeats itself. Does that ring a bell? But for us IT developers we could refer to an "endless loop" <g>

It really looks like humans are programmed to evolve but just to a certain level. After that is seems like we must get back to square one and start over.

>It's good that you're optimistic, Daniel. I wish I could be!
>
>The examples you cite are perpetrated way back, infrequently, and by an extremely limited number of people.
>
>I look back to 1963, for example, and until then even the President could travel in an open limo.
>I look back to 15 years ago and the NEED for one to lock one's doors just wasn't there, neither at home nor on the car.
>I look back to 10 years ago and the need for strict security at the majority of workplaces waqs non-existent.
>
>Today we have big companies directly coding in their systems deliberate ripping-off of Medicare or some other government program or another on the basis that when they get caught they get to keep what they've ripped and they pay a fine that doesn't approach their gains. Simple "cost-benefit" justifies it all.
>We have car manufacturers that calculate the cost of an improvement versus the cost of personal injury litigation (as in save the 2 cents per brake for glued versus non-glued pads) and it goes on. And when a competitor sees the declared profits they either learn or guess that they must be loosly interpreting some law(s) to make that dough so they use that as justification to do it themselves!
>
>I'd like to be optimistic, but both the numbers and rates of these calamities are huge today where they were miniscule before. That's the difference, in my eyes. The media promotes/rewards these antic (pretending that nothing untoward is going on) and the younger people swallow it whole and wnat to be JUST LIKE THEM. (by the way, I believe that there are/were LOTS more Enron-styled misdeeds out there and that it is in "the system's" interest to hope that nio wise guy uncovers them.
>
>Jim
>
>
>>>I don't know what the answer is, and the powers have pretty much ensured that mechanisms for changing the status-quo are assured to failure. I suppose we can only wait for things to implode.
>>
>>That's a pretty pessimistic view of things, and as a student of history, I think you're dead wrong. It doesn't take much research to find much, much worse examples of greed and stupidity in action by our forefathers (the collective "our", not the American "our", although we've certainly had our share). Some examples that come to mind include:
>>
>>1) any of the Crusades, but especially the First, which saw the sack of Constantinople (nominally an ally of Europe) by the Crusaders at the behest of Venetian merchantmen;
>>2) the Dutch tulip market crash of 1635 (http://www.ricedelman.com/planning/investing/tulipbulbs.asp);
>>3) the forced importation of opium by the British, which led to two wars with China in the late 1800's;
>>4) The Boer war, again, instigated by the British in a quest to grab the natural resources of South Africa.
>>
>>Color me optimistic, but I think we've come a long way as a race, but by no means are we done learning. Capitalism has proven to be one of the strongest and most resiliant forms of societal behaviour yet developed. Does that mean it's perfect? Far from it. There have always been elements in the human race that preys on other humans, and we will continue to suffer from that. Enron was a huge scam that bilked a lot of people out of a lot of money, but we learned from it, and I doubt something like that will happen again (at least while anyone involved remembers what happened).