Totally agree with you Robbie. I am in insurance and SOP's are stifling my agents' abilities to interact with the customer for optimal sales/service interactions. Now calls for into maybe 4 call types. We basically adapted 4 scripts. May as well quote over the internet.

Credited to Alexander Tytler in 1787
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a
permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until
the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from
the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for
the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury,
with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose
fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."
"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning
of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these
nations always progressed through the following sequence:
>
1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage "

Whether this a true quote or made up is not relevant. We are on Step 8 in this country. Since over 51% of this country are on some kind of government assistance, (dependence) it will not be long before we are all slaves again and in bondage.

Tennessee Ernie Ford wrote a song. 16 tons. That song was written because the coal mine company kept the workers in debt to the company store and in essence were slave to it through debt. Where are we?

Yes thinking is completely obsolete. Here is a link to my book on thinking and you tell me if I am correct or not.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bc0wkov3lsppz7...

Professor Sowell is on target.
Survival of the fittest used to cull some of the non-thinkers and those that remained depended upon the charity of others. Now they all thrive and reproduce sustained by monies redistributed by force of government with an ever increasing number and burden placed upon the remaining thinkers and producers.

"Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil. Since everything man needs has to be discovered by his own mind and produced by his own effort, the two essentials of the method of survival proper to a rational being are: thinking and productive work."
“The Objectivist Ethics,”
The Virtue of Selfishness, 23

When the burden is so great to remain a thinker that one recognizing the futility, decides it is no longer worth it, a reset will be requisite... The strike is on! The unthinking will weep, unknowing they have reaped what they have sown.

Now this I can agree most certainly to. And that's the way it is "Cronkite' goodnight.

I'm 'thinking' it is.

I recommend people watch "Idiocracy", and tell me if that satire movie isn't coming to illustrate the direction our society is headed. Most tell me it seems creepily prophetic of how mindless the world is becoming, and that they see signs of it all around them.

Love Thomas Sowell.

Of course it is. You can't control a people who know what freedom is and want it. But if you change the definition of freedom to mean freedom from want instead of freedom to pursue my desires, you can lull people into thinking that government handouts are the only way to go. And with those handouts comes a steep price: the loss of actual liberty.

Of course the answer is yes.
There are exceptions such as the Gulch that proves the rule. But I've seen it happen bit by bit, over the years. From education to entertainment, the word is, "You go ahead and live your life, we'll do your thinking for you." After a while certain attitudes and ideas are taken for granted as to how things should be. Equal opportunity becomes equal outcome. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, rather being something to be earned, becomes something to be given to everyone. We get, as a result, the desire to "even the playing field" in the Middle East, which to anyone who can think is totally ridiculous on the face of it. Sowell puts the problem in a form that Rand expressed many years ago when she said that the chief problem facing mankind is "To think or not to think."

It is amazing how easily people can be led or mislead. We are intentionally being dumbed down.
Liberalism is evil. It's objective is the control of the populace.

I would back up your 87%, but the question is when the crap hits the fan and you either think or die how many will choose death, how many will learn to think again?

We are fast approaching the time when our society will have Dagny with a gun asking us to choose. The gun may be famine, disease or natural disaster. It may actually be the guns of war. It most likely will be joblessness of a collapsed economy. What percentage will choose to think and live when it happens?

Yes, and it has been since the days of Cronkite and Rather. I remember clearly the day the President gave a speech and Dan Rather followed that speech by telling me what the President really said. He was speaking English, I didn't feel the need for an interpreter, why was Rather doing this? To shape the news to his political point of view instead of reporting the news. This has become the mold of "news reporting" today.

the school system eliminated teaching the students how to think years and years ago. a perfect example of how far back this goes in geroldo rivera.

My business has outlawed thinking and creativity. Now we follow standard operating procedures and we are punished for thought and creativity.

Should be no surprise. Schools have been teaching ignorance (Emotions before Reason) for over a century.

Our educational system is the culprit, where they are more concerned with indoctrination instead of critical thinking.

With Homer Simpson as one of their heroes and drool coming out of their mouths.