20090330

fisher

fisher: "'If a machine is to run properly,' he reasoned, 'it must be tooled and set up accurately. No other way works. If it does work, then it is proper, and that is the proof. I looked at my business and discovered
the thing that was wrong was Paul Fisher. I was not thinking accurately.'

To retool, Fisher developed 27 rules to live by. From simple lessons in hygiene ('Cultivate good health and physical well-being by regular hours, daily elimination and exercise…') to hard lessons of history
('Remember that power and its accompanying exemption from accountability and competition corrupts all who obtain it.').

But the base insight for this engineer was the need for accuracy in all things. The 'scientific technique,' he concluded, 'was the common sense approach to the solution of any problem.'

At the end of the retreat in the Ozarks, Fisher had what he would later describe as the 'most important book of our time,' but which was then only a 63-page pamphlet. But its topic was a grand one - how to wipe out the federal deficit - and its conclusion, as later revised in his 353-page paperback, 'The Plan,' was: abolish all income and Social Security taxes, and tax everyone's assets in excess of $100,000 instead. Including churches, schools, even the federal government itself. 'It'll make it easier to get rich, but harder to stay"