One thing I don't understand, at one hand you are supposed to keep digital data for X amount of years ( I think 7), and on the other hand the company cannot make use of it, why would it be sitting on servers, might as well make use of it.
Every week, I read an article about this, all I say in my head is 'but then what'. Unless there is money bleeding no politicians will take this to rest. It's sad but true and this will keep on continuing.
It’s ok for a politician to spend money to clean up a disaster. It’s far more troublesome to spend money to avoid a disaster. Politically it will always be advantageous to wait with adressing a problem until after its negative consequences are fully felt.
I always wonder why people need to "feel the pain" before they make a decision - when it's usually too late.
My mom and dad read wikipedia and a couple investment books, and so when the 2008 crash happened we didn't lose all of our savings because we were potently diversified - why did most of our friends have to "start over?" Because "a crash will never happen again?" This coming from people who became adults in the dotcom bust?
Then you have people living through Desert Storm convincing their kids it's "safe" to join the military "just for the scholarship." "Just do 4 years, America will never go to war again." Shock and surprise when 9/11 happens and a ton of my highschool buddies are called off to Afghanistan for uh... some reason? Does it matter? Did they think that wouldn't happen for any made-up reason regardless of if 9/11 happened, when their grandparents lived through Vietnam and their parents through Desert Storm?
What's with this short-sightedness and ignoring of history / professional advice? Not that I'm immune, I got my credit card info stolen for being comically arrogant at defcon.
Its a shame you can't pay a "core 80%" set of taxes, then choose what other things your "extra 20%" would go towards. NASA, climate stuff, recycling, bee stuff, extra education... etc
I wonder how hard would it be to just start building the infrastructure like this in some sort of 'wikibudget.org' and then using that as political leverage? Everyone who liked the system well enough to participate in it could get behind that, even if their individual allocation preferences did not win out or were different from others'. this might overcome the divide-and-conquer strategy of the polity-industrial complex.
For example, suppose Alice wants to spend less on defense and more on schools; Bob wants to spend less on schools but more on veterans, and Carol hates the F-35 program but likes both schools and veterans. As individuals they might donate to and volunteer for different organizations with different missions, but if they were all able to participate in dividing up an imaginary budget they could work together to get their compromise budget enacted even though they would be doing so for different reasons.
My gut says it would take between 5 and 10 years for such a thing to gain sufficient political momentum to seriously threaten the current system, maybe longer; but then the idea that Wikipedia might become the introductory reference source of choice was once considered laughable too, notwithstanding its current imperfections.
The problem with this reasoning, and political funding generally, is that it demands near immediate results. That isn't going to happen.
The problem of global warming will eventually work itself out economically. Industry has been evolving towards a carbon neutral solution since the 1850s.
The large carbon footprint exists because people started consuming and requiring energy faster than energy related technologies were evolving, but this has started to change in recent years. This said people will start off-loading their energy demands onto cheaper more sustainable technologies as they become available, which in time will increase the expense of fossil fuels as an energy source, comparatively speaking.
Even if the problem of energy consumption induced global warming is solved the next consideration is how long it will take for the implications of global warming to be resolved in the effects upon climate.
Well some politicians have spent political capital on this, but have been heavily attacked for it. Let's not pretend that all politicians are equally at fault when they manifestly promote different positions and policies.
