Actually, unalone, I think your quip is correct... I think entrepreneurs are largely wasting money, and politicians are mostly leeches. But it's the exceptions that make the whole enterprise worthwhile -- one Google makes up for the money wasted by literally 10,000 startups. And one Ted Kennedy makes up for several hundred leech politicians. It's why both professions, if you intend to do them well, are among the most important in our society.
I'm not quite sure as to what your preferred alternative is. You excoriate Kennedy for not having had a "real job," so the mere fact that he is a Senator, rather than the way he conducts himself as a Senator, is what gets your goat. So you would prefer not to have a Senate?
Yes, you cannot attribute economic growth to Sen. Kennedy. That's why you have to look beyond the numbers to see his impact.
You're incorrect if you think that the peak of his influence was in his later career, when the glamour of the Kennedys had largely passed, and the House, Senate, and White House were controlled by Republicans. The peak of his influence was in the 60s-80s, but from that day onward he has been pushing health policy, and although he didn't get the ball to the top of the hill he's pushed it farther than anyone else.
To say that he was ineffective because the goal wasn't accomplished on his watch is like saying that Elizabeth Cady Stanton was not an effective suffragette because she died 20 years before women got the vote.
Useless companies which simply take from the productive sectors of the economy are also the rule, with the few amazing companies being the exception. You can't have a new Google or Voting Rights Act every week.
Income inequality is the wrong metric - the right metric is real income for the bottom 10% of America in 1950 vs. today. Of course there are many factors at work, but rising income inequality isn't bad if it's bringing everyone up.
Also keep in mind that today's healthcare debate is one that he has been fighting for 50 years (along with many others), and that whatever does happen, whenever it happens, will have more of his fingerprint on it than Obama's.
I'm as sick of politician hatred by the peanut gallery. Think back 250 years in this country's history, when blacks were slaves, non-landowners couldn't vote, and women weren't sent to school. The difference between that world and today's world is due to the efforts of politicians and activists. Do you think that Johnson's Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were not "real" accomplishments?
In fact, complications in calculating sales tax cause many businesses to outsource their entire payments to something like PayPal. If instead they had a number of competing sales tax calculators and other services, one can imagine a payment platform built on a loose network of services with the ability to failover when one goes down.
Because IKEA is a global brand, they need to maintain safety and pay standards that wouldn't scandalize their Western customers, which is why their Chinese factories can't produce for the same prices as local competitors.
This question exists because humans demand a cause for each effect, and a "responsible party" for every tragedy. Sometimes, things are just "accidents."
A colleague of my dad's tripped and fell while walking down a set of three stairs, hit his head, and died. It was nobody's fault -- it was just bad luck.
Keeping software hosted is active. Let's say he waited until his domain name expired... then he could say "I'm not spending the $10" and let it go offline, and people would excoriate him then. He just chose to rip the Band-Aid off at once instead of in bits and pieces.
The shot fraction graph doesn't hold any water. Ray Allen's shot fraction is likely to be the highest when his teammates are performing poorly -- thus he has to take on more of the burden himself. The effect may not be due to him at all, but rather that when 4 players are playing poorly, the team tends to lose.
You can live in a shared apartment in East Palo Alto, cook all your food at home, buy a used car, and select free entertainment options. No need for drastic actions.
The very fact that this question has been asked demonstrates the reason that the biggest companies are founded by people who are truly "not in it for the money."
Most of the numbers here are under $10 million. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Mark Zuckerberg, could have all sold their companies very early and had plenty of F-U money with a few extra Lamborghinis to boot. But it was the vision of creating something bigger than money that kept them going at it, even though it could all fall apart, and that's why we have the amazing things we do today.
Measuring "glory days" by total spending is a red herring. I can think of a lot of places where spending is going down, but opportunities are going up, as value is taken away from the big dogs by entrepreneurs. Imagine all of Microsoft Office installations were replaced by software-as-a-service startups at 1/3d the cost. Microsoft would lose $15 billion a year, but a bunch of startups would make $5 billion/yr between them.
I've already had a site (forget which one) refuse to serve up its content until I turned off ad blocking. Of course this could get into an arms race involving Flash etc. which would be horrible.
I think the people you're talking about are nonrepresentative. There is a vast number of people who have not installed any apps, and even more who have apps but don't use them. Very few people see the iPod touch as an economical substitute for the iPhone.
They use a company called an ODM (Original Design Manufacturer). These companies can, for different prices, do everything from design a tablet PC off a single phone call to simply building something exactly to your CAD drawings.
This is why all computers (Dells, HPs, etc, not sure what Apple does) are manufactured by a handful of companies (Solectron, Flextronics) which actually run the Chinese factories.
For a hyperbolic analogue, what % of death row inmates do you think are innocent? I'm guessing less than 1%. I find the concept of that 1% very disturbing though.
If it troubles you, it's still very easy to avoid being surveilled by most of these systems. Pay cash instead of using a credit card. Don't use EZ-Pass. Turn off your phone when you're not using it. Yes, it is inconvenient, but trading privacy for convenience means you don't value it very much. People got along fine before EZ-Pass came along.
Until we have mandatory legislated tracking devices in cars, etc. (not a far-fetched idea at all, and something that must be fought), you are largely the keeper of your own privacy.