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Old March 17th 17, 02:37 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
AMuzi
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On 3/16/2017 7:38 PM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 16 Mar 2017 07:48:28 -0500, AMuzi wrote:


---A whole bunch deleted ---
No one analyzed this subject better than the genius Ludwig
von Mises:

“Opium and morphine are certainly dangerous, habit-forming
drugs. But once the principle is admitted that it is the
duty of government to protect the individual against his own
foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against
further encroachments... Why limit the government’s
benevolent providence to the protection of the individual’s
body only?” Mises asks. “Is not the harm a man can inflict
on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily
evils? Why not prevent him from reading bad books and seeing
bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues and
from hearing bad music?”

and further:
“He who wants to reform his countrymen must take recourse to
persuasion. This alone is the democratic way of bringing
about changes. If a man fails in his endeavors to convince
other people of the soundness of his ideas,” Mises
concludes, “he should blame his own disabilities. He should
not ask for a law, that is, for compulsion and coercion by
the police.”

Which of course brings us right down to 2017.


This insane urge to protect the ignorant, or just stupid, from their
own folly seems to be a legacy of the "Middle East" religions and the
is largely missing from the "Far East" religions, and would seem to
fly in the face of the Darwin theory, which might be termed "survival
of the fittest".

But something I've always wondered about. We have all these groups
striving to protect the poor ignorant purchaser from those spiteful
manufacturers who fail to tell them that "not tightening this nut may
cause the wheel to fall off". Why isn't there a law to protect the
poor maligned manufacturer from the totally inept users who, for
example, order a cup of hot coffee and than proceed to spill it in
their own lap and than argue that it was the vendor's fault that they
got burned.

Or to use a bit more recent theory, "It is the bank's fault that I am
in debt since if they hadn't loaned me the money I couldn't have spent
it" :-)




That's just crazy talk. Removing impediments like that from
American industry would make comparable goods cost the same
to make here as in Thailand! No one who gets to decide wants
any part of that.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971


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