Re: OT: Canadian Tax Database - Mailing list pgsql-general

>> > Richard Huxton wrote:
>> >> http://www.thestar.com/News/article/189175
>> >>
>> >> "For instance, in some cases the field for the social insurance number
>> >> was instead filled in with a birth date."
>> >>
>> >> Unbelievable. Sixty years of electronic computing, fifty years use in
>> >> business and the "professionals" who built the tax system for a
>> >> wealthy
>> >> democratic country didn't use data types.
>> >
>> > This is Unbelievable? This is commonplace.
>> >
>> And due at least in part to government (and other institutions operated
>> by
>> damned fools) opting for the least expensive provider rather than paying
>> for
>> someone who actually knows what they're doing.  Just as buying cheap junk
>> always comes back to get you, hiring incompetent fools that don't know
>> their
>> ass from a hole in the ground will come back to get you too.
>>
> Come on, they don't hire incompetent fools. The hire the people

You CAN'T be serious!  Have you ever dealt with them or with the
consequences of their incompetence?

> they need to fill their quota regardless of how well trained
> and experienced they are. I am not saying that non white males
> are in any way less competent than white males, but by removing
> them from the pool does not make things better. The biggest
> problem with quotas is not hiring less qualified staff, it is
> that less qualified staff know why they were hired and know that
> they are very unlikely to be fired, so they have little incentive
> to work hard or attempt to do their best, they can always fail
> upwards.
>
What does this have to do with anything?  No one here, except you, has said
anything about the profile of the people involved WRT race, gender,
religion, &c.  Nor has anyone said anything about "qualifications".  The
only thing that has been said is that, based on what is seen in the "work",
the people responsible for that work must be incompetent.  It is an
inference based on what is seen in what has been done and has nothing to do
with any of the prohibited grounds for discrimination used as excuses for
affirmative action.  And yes, I have seen cases where less qualified, even
unqualified, people have been hired as a result of these affirmative action
initiatives (and I have been told, by HR personelle in government, that
certain favoured groups are deemed to be superior to white men, even if the
favoured party has no education nor experience and the latter have earned
doctorates and decades of experience), but no one has said anything about
such people being employed on the projects to which I referred.  But this is
an aspect of our present society that is bound to degenerate into a flame
war, launched by the politically correct, so we ought to say little, or even
leave it alone.  Those in power tend to be vicious, especially when there
are no effective checks on their conduct and no consequences for what they
do.

Cheers

Ted