Word: doneness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...happens, we already have a system for inducing truly voluntary activities that benefit the public. It's called free-market capitalism. It works this way: if you need something done, you offer enough money to induce someone to do it. There is no need for inspiration or other malarkey. In fact, the voluntary nature of transactions under capitalism is what gives our economic system its moral authority. And if the need that has to be satisfied is social - if satisfying it would benefit everybody or the worst-off among us who need help - we have another well established system called...
...national service plan on the military's need for relatively few recruits, what do you do with the rest of them? There are, it seems to me, just three possibilities: give them useful jobs that someone else is already doing; give them useful jobs that currently are not being done; or give them make-work jobs...
...Here is an easy prediction based on past experience: if the government employee unions have anything to say about it (as they do), most of the work done by this national volunteer program will fall in category three: make-work. Only jobs that accomplish nothing important can really avoid trouble. Scandals are another easy prediction. A desperate Commissariat of Volunteerism will find itself placing young folks as interns at home decorating businesses or excusing them entirely on grounds of an allergy to cats. As with the discredited Vietnam-era draft, the challenge for bureaucrats will be finding ways...
...China. South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun has no incentive to anger Kim now that the two have agreed to a summit in Pyongyang in October. And the Chinese, in this their glorious Olympic year, have already pocketed the idea that the North Korea issue is settled and done with. The last thing Beijing wants is a ruckus over who agreed to what and when...
...Montreal tournament wasn't a Grand Slam event, but, in those early August games, the young Serbian player had done one of the toughest things in pro tennis today: he had consecutively defeated three of the world's best players: Andy Roddick of the U.S., Rafael Nadal of Spain and, most astonishingly, Roger Federer of Switzerland. But as the announcer at the Roger's Cup declared Novak Djokovic the champion, he introduced the young man as a native of Croatia, Serbia's less than friendly neighbor. That's like saying a Pakistani is an Indian or an Irishman an Englishman...