You gave me a little chuckle with this analogy. My lawnmower is not composed of people, and thus does not have emotion. Government agencies, on the other hand, are composed of people who have the capacity of emotion.
I absolutely would not hold it against you, nor would I argue with the statement, if your argument is that the
people within the agency care about you.
My point was more just that people do things - the caring, the greeding, the killing, the bribing - not government agencies nor business entities.
Intel is not greedy, the people making decisions at Intel are greedy. The government doesn't care about consumers, the people who are in the government are
supposed to care about consumers.
Now my reasoning for making it a point to imply that the people within the government don't care about the consumer is based on the fact that I know of no government agency that doesn't have a watchdog group on their ass precisely because simply having a charter doesn't seem to be enough to motivate people to align their daily work activities within the organization to that stated by the charter.
And why do lobbying groups exist? What is it our our caring government agencies that creates and enables the existing lobbyist-driven environment?
So to me the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the fact that watchdog groups need to exist and the fact that lobbyist groups do exist is all the evidence I really need to have to resign myself to the position of assuming my government could give a shit about me so long as I am paying my taxes.
Now I am absolutely positive that there are very good-minded and well-intentioned individuals working within the system for reasons that I would find to be noble if I ever became intimately knowledgeable of their detail...but I'm not counting on it is all I'm saying.
How long did this Intel/Dell deal go on and on and on before the government could be bothered to intercede on the consumers behalf and do something about it? WWII was started and finished in less time than it has taken the US government to get on the ball here. Same in the EU.
At any rate you can no doubt surmise I am really just
venting here, my posts in this thread weren't drafted with the intent of standing up to much in the form of rigorous scrutiny. If you've read this post this far thanks for humoring me on my little rant.
I did use the term "in fact" as you deftly pointed out. I have my reasons for saying what I did, and I believe it is a fact. I will not go into my reasons here, as it would not be prudent to discuss such things on a public forum. That being said, I wrote the term "in fact" mostly as a freudian slip. It was meant to convey the oposite opinion was also plausable, and gave some reasoning to it. It was not meant to display the opposite view point as fact.
The reasoning for why the agency would not care about the people it is chartered to protect was not given in your statement, and I could not think of a plausible reason that the agency would not care that outweighs the reasons it would care. It exists for a reason, and it makes a lot more sense that the agency would be trying to do what is in the best interest of the general public than the corporations it is watching.
While bribery is still happening, it is far from prevalent in US government agencies, and the consequences for it are very severe. (I may supply examples if I find some time later in the day) Other than bribery, the other feasible reason to avoid punishing illegal anticompetitive behavior is because the personal relationship between the auditor and the company. In this case, that relationship is not nearly the same is it would be with other industries, as there is not a product that is being regluarly inspected by that auditor. In all likelyhood this is a one time audit (or maybe an infrequently occuring audit), which would make that relationship far less of an issue.
The reason they would work on fixing uncompetitive practices is because it is their job. The auditor would likely have more connection with the consumer than the company, since the company is doing these things at a macro level which often dehumanizes them to that auditor. Also those workers do a very boring job, that does not pay well, and many cope with that by thinking of how they are helping those they are charged to protect while doing their job. Even at the higher levels, this is often true - although perspective may not always be what you would like up there.
Anyway, I cannot keep going on about this, and I don't know how coherent my message on this subject is, but I hope you understand where I am coming from here. Also, I hope you are having a good day!
Your logic is impeccable, the message is quite coherent, I really have no retort against what you have said. I think I understand where you are coming from and from that point of view I agree with everything you are saying. My only grouse here, and I felt the same way about the student loan debacle and the Madoff scandel, is why the f*** did it take so long for the government to get around to showing us consumers how much they care. Why is everything measured in units of decades?
Unlike yesterday it turns out I had a rather good day today, I hope you had a good day too Martimus!