I am a bit upset to put a nice within the posting rules response to how mad I am at the moment. You see I lost my cell phone at work. As a Nurse I looked for it and then assumed that it went into that magical world of Hospital laundry. So being the procrastinator I am and hoping it would turn up. I did nothing about it. So I finally tonight decided to look at other phones and log into ATT and find that I have an 800 dollar bill and someone has used my phone to call France and Israel etc.... So I try and report my phone stolen and the web site won't let me. The 800 number won't let me so I am waiting to call in an hour or so. As I sit here in the early morning hours. (I work 7pm to 7am) I am trying to find something interesting to read. Having almost gotten to the point of tuning out of politics and finance for the moment. I stumble across this Post on why people should not vote...

http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2008/10/05/new-on-free-will-polluting-the-polls-will-jason-brennan/

In this week’s Free Will, I chat with my friend, Brown philosopher Jason Brennan, about his forthcoming paper, “Polluting the Polls: When Citizens Should Not Vote” [rtf]. His argument is simple and compelling. (This is my indelicate reconstruction, mind you.) People should be public-spirited, and act with the common good in mind. When enough people vote badly–from ignorance or bias, for example–the result is often bad policy. The quality of policy matters to the public good. Higher-quality democratic decisions, and better policy, can be secured if bad voters choose to abstain. Because the personal cost of not voting badly is so low, a public-spirited person shouldn’t do it. And it seems that a lot of people are quite likely to vote badly. So there are many people who, if they care about the common good, ought to choose not to vote.

Now I have someone to call a dumb@xx besides myself for not canceling my phone three weeks ago.....

So does anyone buy this theory of voters not helping the process by voting?

Update:Well at this point it looks like my bill will be adjusted. What that ends up being depends on if I keep my service. The wife has already said that on principle we are not paying for fraud.

As for the wilkinson post .... Their are times that I think we need better and smarter leadership. The congressional hearings with lehman brothers CEO Richard Fuld showed just how IMHO stupid some of the people seemed. I can only attribute it to a lack of Knowledge on the general publics view of this crisis. Their were no probing questions on what caused them to file for bankrupty. If you take him at his word he said lehman had lowered its leverage and raised capital for the preceeding eight months. His answers on compensation were pretty good. The congressman did seem to have any concept of the market factors and vestment that seemed to be what I would consider a progressive model of compensation. Was Lehman a leaky ship that just could not get clear of the storm and back to dry dock. In other words was their a chance that they were wounded with a chance to get help in a frozen capital market? I have heard former CEO of AIG said that he could save the company if given a chance... It will be interesting to see what happens. I have heard that AIG was a hedge fund over the top of their core business. I wonder why they would risk that kind of exposure. Still the congress did not do itself alot of good in the depth or insight of questions. It made little difference on what side of the left right split. Shays pushed the blame toward fanny and freddy reminded me of timmy's view.
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Ask courageous questions. Do not be satisfied with superficial answers. Be open to wonder and at the same time subject all claims to knowledge, without exception, to intense skeptical scrutiny. Be aware of human fallibility. Cherish your species and your