Prelude: Computing from Ancient Times to the Modern Era - The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - page 2

More important alternatives are whether or not a community should go to war
with another community. In today's world, some choices have life and death im-
portance, such as what is the best therapy to treat a serious medical condition like
antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis.
Other choices have economic importance. The Republicans and Democrats are
examples of totally opposite views of what choices are best for the U.S. economy.
For choices with diametrically opposing alternatives, it is not possible for both
sides to be right, but it is easily possible for both sides to be wrong. (It is also pos-
sible that some other choice and neither of the alternatives is the best.)
From analysis of what passes for arguments between the Democrats and Re-
publicans, both sides seem to be wrong and the end results will probably damage
the U.S. economy, no matter which path is taken.
From the point of view of someone who works with computers and software on
a daily basis, it would not be extremely difficult to create mathematical models of
the comparative impacts on the economy of raising taxes (the Democratic goal),
reducing spending (the Republican goal), or some combination of both.
But instead of rational discussions augmented by realistic financial models,
both sides have merely poured out rhetoric with hardly any factual information or
proof of either side's argument. It is astonishing to listen to the speeches of Repub-
licans and Democrats. They both rail against each other, but neither side presents
anything that looks like solid data.
The same kinds of problems occur at state and municipal levels. For example,
before the 2012 elections, the General Assembly of Rhode Island passed unwise
legislation that doubled the number of voters per voting station, which effectively
reduced the places available for citizens to vote by half.
The inevitable results of this foolish decision were huge lines of annoyed
voters, waits of up to four hours to vote, and having to keep some voting stations
open almost until midnight to accommodate the voters waiting in line.
This was not a very complicated issue. The numbers of voters passing through
voting stations per hour have been known for years. But the Rhode Island
Assembly failed to perform even rudimentary calculations about what halving the
number of voting stations would do to voter wait times.
As a result, in the 2012 elections, many Rhode Island citizens who could not
afford to wait four hours or more simply left without voting. They were disfran-
chised by the folly of a foolish law passed by an inept general assembly. This