Wednesday, December 18, 2013

President Amabo and the Great Refridgeration Act of 2037

And so it came to pass that the many President Amabo and his party friends decided that there was a terrible problem with decentralized refrigeration.  Some families had to much... and others to little.  It would be much more efficient if there was one centralized refrigeration system.

And thus... the Affordable Refrigeration Act was passed into law.

President Amabo hired his good friend Ned, who just happened to run massive refrigerator company, to set up the system.  The system cost billions and took years to develop.

Now... It turns out that President Amabo didn't actually know much about refrigerator... and neither did his party friends.  To them it was like magic.  You open the door of the fridge and its cold in there.  How does it work?  Well you plug it in and turn it on.  It works.  That is the whole limit of their understanding.

What they did understand... was perception.  They were very keen to see that the very important project was perceived as successful.  So they poured over all the progress reports... and frequently called Ned to insist on changes to this or that based on perception.  This made Ned's job very difficult... because Ned wasn't building a Perception.  He was building a refrigerator.

3 months before the whole system was supposed to go online...  President Amabo was looking over the latest report and noticed that the system used something called a compressor.  Now Amabo had no idea what a compressor was... but he was certain if The People heard one was involved it would be bad.  The People would probably think they were going to squish all the food together.  And that's no good.

So Amabo called up Ned... and explained... This refrigerator cannot use a compressor.  Take out the compressor.





And now...

You know everything you need to know about Healthcare.gov... and why it doesn't work.

11 comments:

Susan said...

You have a real talent for steaming off the BS from a situation to get to the nub.

Excellent analogy, and unfortunately, so true.

rycamor said...

So, by compressor you mean--a functional data model, right?

WaterBoy said...

Nice and succinct explanation of the Healthcare.gov fiasco. Good analogy with the compressor, too.

I know it wasn't the main point, but I think it didn't go far enough in explaining why the concept of centralized refrigeration (Obamacare) is also wrong, though. Some people might confuse it with central air conditioning in a house, which is a good thing.

Nate said...

central air conditioning may be a better option.

IE... they make tons of cool air and try to push the cool air to everyone's house.

The main point is to show that those in charge simply don't understand how things actually work in the real world.

Refridgerators... like air conditioners... are just magic to them.

how it works doesn't matter a lick.

Vidad said...

"they make tons of cool air and try to push the cool air to everyone's house"

They do something like that. It's called HAARP.

Talk to the guys at your Lodge about it.

rycamor said...

Porky's going to step in here any minute to tell us that of *course* President Amabo understands exactly what a compressor is, and in fact has a very sophisticated understanding of thermodynamics, even though he has never studied anything but law and politics. He just wants people to suffer through 6 months of spoiled meat so he can later step in to be their savior.

Susan said...

Nate,

Remember the reaction that the media had when Bush the elder expressed some ignorance about how the supermarket scanners worked?

They ridiculed him for being so out of touch with how the real world works.

Nate said...

Yep.

The same media folks that also have no idea how the scanners work.

Krul said...

What's the compressor?

rycamor said...

Ha! I didn't realize how apt your metaphor was:

Another sore point was the Medicare agency’s decision to use database software, from a company called MarkLogic, that managed the data differently from systems by companies like IBM, Microsoft and Oracle. CGI officials argued that it would slow work because it was too unfamiliar. Government officials disagreed, and its configuration remains a serious problem.

Did you know about this already when you posted?

Nate said...

yep.