[jazusamo]

Are individual decisions made by people deciding what is best for themselves to be over-ruled by ignorant busybodies, obsessed by things they do not understand?

It seems the Dem controlled 110th Congress thinks so.

[jazusamo]

Ping - Dr. Sowell

[mhx]

I'm being paid too little.

[FlingWingFlyer]

This is right on the mark. Unfortunately, politicians are not smart enough to think the way Dr. Sowell does. Which raises the question, "Are politicians worth the money that the government says we should pay them?" I don't think so.

[RussP]

Sowell is usually right on the mark, but I beg to differ with his example of Bill Gates in this column.

I agree completely that the government shouldn't be deciding how much Gates should earn, but that is not the main issue with Gates and Microsoft. The issue here is that Gates and his company have essentially fooled the public into accepting his proprietary standards as de facto public standards.

Think about it. Why should I be forced to buy MS software just to be able to read public government documents that are available only in MS Word format? All government entities should forthwith adopt the OpenDocument Format (ODF) for public documents. MS is perfectly free to support that format too, so they would not be excluded from that market. Howerver, they would be forced to compete based on merit rather than getting a free ride because the public was foolish enough to get locked into its proprietary formats.