CANADA: The Friendly Fascist State

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Fellow Unbelievers,

Before anyone gets all moist about the idea of the State forbidding all possible risk and self-harm, consider this:

It was less than 200 years ago that people thought travelling at a speed greater than 20 Miles Per Hour would tear apart and disintegrate a human body. Even when George Stevenson and passengers willfully took the risk of travelling at 36 Miles Per Hour in his locomotive Rocket, people still thought that women’s lady business would come undone if they went 50 Miles Per Hour.

Early Trains Were Taught To Make Women’s Uteruses Fly Out
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/67806/early-trains-were-thought-make-womens-uteruses-fly-out

When women passengers willfully took the risk, hit that speed, and were still intact, people started travelling faster until now we go on the regular three digits of Miles Per Hour on the roadway (if Smokey isn’t looking, 🚓😈) and twice the speed of sound at 1480 Miles Per Hour or more in the skies, and men have gone to the Moon at nearly 25,000 Miles per Hour, with a world of global travel and trade easily available and an endless Universe more to explore at the speed of light or even more!

And this is just one example of how humans have achieved great things by willfully assuming risk, taking responsibility for failure and credit for success:

The Life-Changing Inventions The Experts Said Were Impossible
https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/inventions/the-life-changing-inventions-the-experts-said-were-impossible/news-story/8c8b0e58532b329d1b6f97c3dfee9fcc

“You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.” –William Blake. People willingly taking their own risks at their own expense is how we learn what is enough. If you are going to consider the risk of doing something, consider also the risk of not doing it as well. Do you or anyone else possess the Omniscient knowledge to take risk out of everything? And what would a society without risk be if not dead?

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addendum

[_Robert_Participant]

Isaac Newton his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687 published his theories on motion and understood that force is mass times acceleration. Therefore, the slow acceleration of a steam train applies a minuscule force to passengers as does a space rocket struggling to get away from the earth’s pull. Most people intuitively understand this fact of physics, making this riding in a train proposition a low-risk trial, however this particular event may have more to do with sexism and the “frailty of women” theme than anything.

You are correct however that intellectual risk takers have advanced us, but riding around without a seatbelt or a helmet only advances the availability of organs for donation if the family allows.

 

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Davis,

Having laws against high pointless risk stupidities with the accompanying extremely easy to do and barely inconvenient hassles, is not unreasonable. Zheesh, some people are so bloody “I’ll do whatever the fuck I want, fuck your big government” that they cannot even see beyond their zealous ideology. I mean, controlling the sale of highly corrosive liquids, or mandatory radiation shields in microwaves are genuinely no different than seat-belt laws.

The consequences of serious injury are extreme for your body smashing through a window, or burning your flesh to the bone or your face melting off from ration vs. the hassles of precaution: a microscopically uncomfortable belt over your lap, or per corrosive acid: some safety precautions and not being able to purchase it unless you know what the hell you’re doing with it or with microwaves…it being a little more difficult to watch your food cooking. I can go on with things like: not being able to sell/buy highly toxic food products or having to have a fire alarm in your detached home. They include such minor inconveniences such as: buying just about any other food that won’t slowly kill you or a small purchase of an alarm and a yearly batter change vs the consequences: slowly dying from food poisoning or burning alive in your home.

Bans on the sale of defective microwaves and adulterated food as well as the labeling of dangerous chemicals are about preventing harm to consumers by manufacturers and is contained in the legal doctrine of Implied Warranty of Merchantability i.e. a product should do what a rational person would expect it to do.

This is perfectly legitimate for the government of a free society to do and has nothing to do with paternalistic prevention of willful self-harm.

As for fire and smoke alarms and their batteries, landlords and property rental agencies require them for their units for insurance and it is a wise practice for home owners too, but where I live in the U.S., no government officer comes to inspect residential property for them.

I mean zheesh. Full absolute civic freedom is a ridiculous illusion and impossible. None of these laws are unreasonable or overreaching. They don’t even approach somewhat greyer areas like banning raw-milk cheese or laws banning the advertisement of alcohol or in Germany where you can be fined for j-walking across a small street with no car within sight or earshot.

And even then, having said all of this, mandatory seat belt laws are NOT just about government knows better (though honestly it should be though of as…every one with a brain knows better), there are reasons for insisting on them. You can injure someone else in the car during an accident if you go flying around, cause further crashes when flying out the window (or injure someone) and it puts a strain on ambulance/health care systems when you add pointless injuries (this is to name a few other reasons we have seat belt laws besides the bloody obvious in that it is a miniscule inconvenience to avoid horrific calamity.

If strain on the ambulance and health care system justifies laws requiring seat belts and helmets, then this gives a green light to laws against any potentially unhealthy vice, including smoking, alcohol, drug use, overeating, or “extreme sports.”

Paternalistic slavery is, a gross misuse of terminology, not to mention debasing the very horror of what slavery actually is and misusing the term “paternalistic” completely out of context. It is utterly deranged to consider seat belt laws as “paternalistic slavery”. While it is reasonable to be a little (and I mean a little) weary of government overreach, seat belt laws are not, in any universe, an example worthy of this.

And just what do you think slavery is? It is ownership i.e. control, use, and disposal, of one human being by another human being. Whether it takes place on a Southern Plantation, a King or Sheikh’s satrapy, a death camp, a Gulag, a Laogai, or in a sterile hospital rubber room, whether the instruments of control are clubs, whips, guns, or lobotomies, is tangential.

As a relevant aside, many slaves did do self-harm, such as deliberately breaking bones, cutting off digits or limbs, defacing themselves, and other practices to make themselves less valuable to present or future masters.

And when resistance was thought impossible, some did the ultimate self-harm to escape slavery entirely, even infanticide in a desperate, wrong-headed move to keep their children from the Living Death of slavery.

A ship scene from Amistad shows this, but I found it very hard to watch and too hard to repeat. I wouldn’t insist anybody watch it who’s not braced for it.

If stopping self-harm is the goal. a campaign of persuasion is always the better route, not coercion.

[—Participant]

_Robert_ wrote:

You are correct however that intellectual risk takers have advanced us, but riding around without a seatbelt or a helmet only advances the availability of organs for donation if the family allows.

The relationship between helmet and seatbelt laws to risk is also the inverse of the train scenario Enco proposed. Negative outcomes were evident prior to the creation of these laws.

[DavisModerator]

Enco, multiple fallacies in your reply including false equivalency and slippery slope. Comparing seat belt laws with taking away virtually all autonomy from a human, is derranged Enco. Resisting a law because of civil considerations because of some paranoia it will lead to unbearable fascist control is ridiculous.  You are incapable of ever conceding a point.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by  Davis.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Enco, don’t be discouraged.

Why should government ban sale of anything? That ain’t libertarian. And implied warranty of merchantability is a construct that is late on the scene. How does that obviate libertarian concerns? It is not paternalistic to ban dangerous shit but wearing a seatbelt is? We are taking a risk every time we sink our teeth into broccoli, chicken or another human. Seat belt mandates are the same in requiring manufacturers and by extension consumers to avoid needless harm. Consumers use the product in the manner that is reasonably merchantable and merchantability means in this context operating as safely as is reasonable in the circumstances. And by the way smoke alarms are mandatory in certain areas.

“And just what do you think slavery is? It is ownership i.e. control, use, and disposal, of one human being by another human being” Oh so you are finally talking about capitalism. I agree that working fifty percent of the time one is not sleeping 5 of 7 days per week (or greater if we include commutes and overtime” especially in a blue collar, menial and quotidian kafkaesque nightmare just to get a roof and a few vittles is indeed a form of slavery. Oh, wait! You mean wearing a seatbelt? Oh yeah the capitalism scenrio aforementioned compared to the second or two of fastening a seatbelt and having that monstrous appendage of Satan wrapped around us.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Jake,

It is not paternalistic to ban dangerous shit but wearing a seatbelt is?

The difference is between unknowng, unwilling assumption of risk (buying defective, adulterated products) and knowing, willing assumption of risk (not buckling a seat belt.) The former Government should curtail, the latter it should not.

I agree that working fifty percent of the time one is not sleeping 5 of 7 days per week (or greater if we include commutes and overtime” especially in a blue collar, menial and quotidian kafkaesque nightmare just to get a roof and a few vittles is indeed a form of slavery.

So you are saying that the life of not just every human, but every animal in the Animal Kingdom and indeed the life of every plant, protista, procaryote, eucaryote, and fungus in every other Kingdom of living things is a life of slavery???

Now that is making trivia of slavery if anything does.

Every living thing by it’s nature has to exert effort to attain what is required for it’s self-sustaining, self-generated locomotion! No whip from a master dictates that. Nature does.

The difference between work in freedom and work under slavery is choice and who benefits. Freedom means chosen work to mutual benefit and slavery means one is forced to propose, while wnother gains and disposes.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Spelling
• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Spelling again

[DavisModerator]

No Enco, it is common knowledge by now that microwaves would be dangerous without a radiation shield. Should I want to have a microwave without one, so I can fully see my food, despite the ludicrous risk, I cannot…because the evil slave owning fascist government tries to control us and won’t allow it. You are justifying what should be, in your ideology, unfair intrusion by the government to keep people from taking ludicrous risks off of the excuse of “ignorance” and that the consumer needs to be protected from the dangers they don’t know about. And yet are utterly so aghast by the government insisting people wear a seatbelt (who by the way are woefully unaware of just how dangerous it is not to wear one judging by the non-use of the belt in every country I’ve been to that doesn’t have such laws) that you vilely compare this to the overarching subjugation of one human by one other human. Make up your mind Enco. Should we be utterly autonomous and able to make our decisions on our own and assume risk or not? Should we be responsible for our own knowledge about products/vehicles and make our own choices or not? Are you ever, ever, ever capable of admitting you have a conflicting view, on even just one element of a point you make…ever?

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by  Davis.

[_Robert_Participant]

Imagine the nightmare if every house was wired differently or every airline could decide what types of navigation, radios, RADARs they can use, causing inference to the others and totally fucking up air traffic control? Every week around here a dozen restaurants around my town get shut down because they keep raw chicken above a safe temperature or don’t clean the walk-in fridge. Every company can just dump their used chemical waste in fields, ponds, rivers. Yet even with all the penalties, people still do all this stuff. Never a shortage of assholes. So no, it’s not the government that’s the problem. It’s every cheap. lazy asshole who doesn’t give a damn.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Davis,

No Enco, it is common knowledge by now that microwaves would be dangerous without a radiation shield. Should I want to have a microwave without one, so I can fully see my food, despite the ludicrous risk, I cannot…because the evil slave owning fascist government tries to control us and won’t allow it. You are justifying what should be, in your ideology, unfair intrusion by the government to keep people from taking ludicrous risks off of the excuse of “ignorance” and that the consumer needs to be protected from the dangers they don’t know about.

In every microwave I’ve ever seen or used, the radiation shield is a mesh that allows viewing of the food inside. Strawman thoroughly tumbled and set on fire.

Mind you, someone in a tinkering way could take off the shield, but it would void the manufacturer’s warranty and the tinkerer couldn’t get repair or replacement.

Make up your mind Enco. Should we be utterly autonomous and able to make our decisions on our own and assume risk or not? Should we be responsible for our own knowledge about products/vehicles and make our own choices or not? Are you ever, ever, ever capable of admitting you have a conflicting view, on even just one element of a point you make…ever?

There’s no conflict here. Manufacturers are responsible for making safe products and consumers are responsible for their own decisions on how they use those products. If a product causes harm, the manufacturer is responsible. If the consumer misuses the product and harms themselves or others, the consumer is responsible. This need not be hard.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addendum

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Robert,

Imagine the nightmare if every house was wired differently or every airline could decide what types of navigation, radios, RADARs they can use, causing inference to the others and totally fucking up air traffic control?

Pop-Up Video Factoid: The U.S. Government runs the whole show on Air Traffic Control in the U.S. and still shifts around strips of paper to route and track airplanes. They even still used vacuum tube technology in the late Nineties and may still use it. And airlines experience delays because Air Traffic Control is Government-run, union-dominated, non-competitive, and unwilling to change technology.

By contrast, Canada and 60 other nations have fully or partially privately-ran Air Traffic Control systems with electronic flght strips and fully-IC microchip technology, with airline safety the same or greater than the U.S.

And private, competitive airlines do wonderful to avoid crashes despite Government inefficiency because they know dead flyers can’t pay. There hasn’t been a commercial airline crash in 14 years. This could be made both safer and efficient with private, competitive Air Traffic Control.

Privatize Air Traffic Control!

Every week around here a dozen restaurants around my town get shut down because they keep raw chicken above a safe temperature or don’t clean the walk-in fridge.

And inspections, combined with local private radio stations and private Internet services like Yelp keep restaurants on the up-and-up and encourage new restaurants to open and offer better service and variety.

Every company can just dump their used chemical waste in fields, ponds, rivers. Yet even with all the penalties, people still do all this stuff. Never a shortage of assholes. So no, it’s not the government that’s the problem. It’s every cheap. lazy asshole who doesn’t give a damn.

And ponds and rivers are publicly-owned i.e. Government-owned, lwading to The Tragedy of the Commons. When everyone owns something, everyone uses it and nobody cares for it. Polluters would be trespassing if they dumped in private waterways and would have to find alternte uses for their waste to avoid suits and prosecution.

Again, a very dismal view of human beings. Life can be better and will get better with both greater freedom and responsibility, because what doesn’t last can’t last.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Spelling and addendums
• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Spelling with tiny text

[_Robert_Participant]

When they say privatized ATC, it just changes who pays the employees. I worked for 35 years in that field, so I know all about the gazillions of regulations that keep flight safety to around 0.2 deaths per 10 billion passenger-miles. And any airline that flies into the airspace of another country must follow their regulations. Fortunately, unlike your libertarian dystopia do as you see fit model, the governments of nations get together to keep those rules and equipment uniform. As soon as they gave Boeing the benefit of doubt, lowered the FAA budget and allowed them to use employees as certification checkers. what did they do? Cheap it out and we watched TWO 737 Max jets go down.

How many examples of human beings being dismal does it take for it to sink in that you can’t just leave it to the people? How many prosecutions, murders, thefts, jails filled to the top, white collar criminals, internet scams, illegal dumping of toxic chemicals, wars, suicide bombings, posers as doctors, child rapists, torturers, school shootings.

Yelp will protect you from food poisoning? LOL. For all you know, half the good reviews are from the owner and their buddies. There have been cases of owners even paying people to delete negative reviews.

Let’s elect Trump. He’s a government outsider, drain the swamp. Pays off a sex worker with campaign funds and tries to coerce election officials to “find votes”. Drain the swamp, LOL.

[_Robert_Participant]

When the institutions of this country fail, stick a fork in it, we are done.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Robert,

When they say privatized ATC, it just changes who pays the employees. I worked for 35 years in that field, so I know all about the gazillions of regulations that keep flight safety to around 0.2 deaths per 10 billion passenger-miles. And any airline that flies into the airspace of another country must follow their regulations. Fortunately, unlike your libertarian dystopia do as you see fit model, the governments of nations get together to keep those rules and equipment uniform. As soon as they gave Boeing the benefit of doubt, lowered the FAA budget and allowed them to use employees as certification checkers. what did they do? Cheap it out and we watched TWO 737 Max jets go down.

All right, give the date and place of the two jets downing.

How many examples of human beings being dismal does it take for it to sink in that you can’t just leave it to the people? How many prosecutions, murders, thefts, jails filled to the top, white collar criminals, internet scams, illegal dumping of toxic chemicals, wars, suicide bombings, posers as doctors, child rapists, torturers, school shootings.

So you’re equating all of these horrors with not wearing seat belts and helmets?

And where have I have I ever opposed laws laws protecting Life, Liberty, and Property against all of these horrors?

Another Strawman sacked and smoked.

Yelp will protect you from food poisoning?

Yes, if you read it. You know in advance which ones are the worst. And combined with the “Dirty Restaurant Thursday” featurette on the radio, you know even more. And once word goes out in the ether, that can’t be pulled back.

For all you know, half the good reviews are from the owner and their buddies. There have been cases of owners even paying people to delete negative reviews.

Again, that’s not possible with radio or podcasting.

Let’s elect Trump. He’s a government outsider, drain the swamp. Pays off a sex worker with campaign funds and tries to coerce election officials to “find votes”. Drain the swamp, LOL.

I’ve never supported Trump either. Are you sure your true profession shouldn’t have been Strawman mass production? Maybe marching them out of the factory like The Sorcerer’s Apprentice? 🧙😁

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addendum

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Robert,

And privatization doesn’t just mean changing the masthead of the paycheck. It means the ATC company is subject to the rigors of competition, which means incentive to adopt new technologies that don’t use bulky, fragile, energy- and heat-wasting vacuum tubes and clunky, easily-lost paper flight strips. That does nothing but good for airline safety.

[Author]

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