From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,9b30240b5a381bbf X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-08-27 06:04:04 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: tatebll@aol.com (Bill Tate) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: OT: Software Economics was RE: Ada 95 for an ARM-based bare board? Date: 27 Aug 2002 06:04:04 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: References: <3D666253.5060408@cogeco.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: 64.12.96.106 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1030453444 18011 127.0.0.1 (27 Aug 2002 13:04:04 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 27 Aug 2002 13:04:04 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:28445 Date: 2002-08-27T13:04:04+00:00 List-Id: We can go around & around on this. Suffice it to say, I prefer to solve my own problems and make my own decisions and accept responsibility for those decisions rather than gov't institutions making those decisions for me. As far as your analogy the "rich get richer, poor get poorer" - if you want to select out anecdotal examples fine. However, I would point out, again, that the enron employees lost most of their net worth in 401K's invested in a single company's stock. An idiotic and risky investment strategy to say the very least. Regardless of whether an individuals portfolio loss could be attributed to fraud, bad management, an ailing economy, lousy products, obsolescence, etc., an individual investor has a responsibility of understanding how a significant hit of any kind in ANY area of their portfolio would have on their net worth. Once understood, they have an obligation to consider whether this is something they can live with? Lastly, they an obligation to consider how long would it take to recover from such a loss? If the risks are unacceptable, then you spread the risk around. It ain't rocket science and the math is pretty damn straight-forward. I certainly feel compassion for these folks because it was fraud that caused their loss, but I don't feel an obligation to provide (i.e., pay for) a security blanket for someone else's poor financial decision. A decision that any high school graduate would have known to avoid. Especially when you consider the myriad of other investment options available to anyone that are substantially less risky and far more secure than the choice these individuals made. And as far as the "scandal" plagued U.S. No one is excusing the fraud and the nature of the U.S. economy certainly doesn't give license to it & it is certainly not predisposed to it as the papers would suggest. If you think otherwise, then we should talk about some really interesting european adventures in this area.