News and Rants
Aug. 20th, 2004 09:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsWhat is it with W? The man can't speak English to save his file. In a recent speech, he described the war on terror as "a struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world." Y'know, a single "And" would have saved his whole attempt.
I adore living in a century where people write sentences like this one: "New memories are fragile and persist only if they undergo consolidation, a strengthening regimen involving protein synthesis." When remembering might mean forgetting.
Did you know that, in high school at least, Love is a spanning-tree network with no 4-cycles? Neither did I.
Yesterday, on some talk radio station, I was listening to some airhead liberal host (and I mean the airhead part) whining at some caller about "the libertarians." He spun some weird theory about how a fast food restaurant-- oh, let's call it Tainted Meat In A Bun-- could sell tainted meat, and get away with it for a while, and sure the stock market would punish TMIABco. "eventually," but in the meantime people would get tainted meat and die, and TMIABco. would be able to pull in profits in the meantime. That, he said, was why libertarianism was "dumb" and that goverment regulation was always necessary in all facets of our daily life. And then he cut the caller off.
The host was simply wrong. The punishment for selling tainted meat is swift and sure and immediate; Jack in the Box went through a hellish year and has not yet recovered from their hepatitis incident; other chains have had similar difficulties. The attention of regulators and the attention of the public are both simply business risks, and you run the negative consequences of those risks as part of doing business if you take unwise chances. TMIABco. runs that risk just as surely as other businesses did, and if they did so purposely, they'll pay for it swiftly enough.
It's also quite clear that regulation did not help the existent victims. It did not preempt the cases we know about. So what good has it accomplished, that the massed attention of the press and the people has not?
I adore living in a century where people write sentences like this one: "New memories are fragile and persist only if they undergo consolidation, a strengthening regimen involving protein synthesis." When remembering might mean forgetting.
Did you know that, in high school at least, Love is a spanning-tree network with no 4-cycles? Neither did I.
Yesterday, on some talk radio station, I was listening to some airhead liberal host (and I mean the airhead part) whining at some caller about "the libertarians." He spun some weird theory about how a fast food restaurant-- oh, let's call it Tainted Meat In A Bun-- could sell tainted meat, and get away with it for a while, and sure the stock market would punish TMIABco. "eventually," but in the meantime people would get tainted meat and die, and TMIABco. would be able to pull in profits in the meantime. That, he said, was why libertarianism was "dumb" and that goverment regulation was always necessary in all facets of our daily life. And then he cut the caller off.
The host was simply wrong. The punishment for selling tainted meat is swift and sure and immediate; Jack in the Box went through a hellish year and has not yet recovered from their hepatitis incident; other chains have had similar difficulties. The attention of regulators and the attention of the public are both simply business risks, and you run the negative consequences of those risks as part of doing business if you take unwise chances. TMIABco. runs that risk just as surely as other businesses did, and if they did so purposely, they'll pay for it swiftly enough.
It's also quite clear that regulation did not help the existent victims. It did not preempt the cases we know about. So what good has it accomplished, that the massed attention of the press and the people has not?
no subject
Date: 2004-08-21 04:49 am (UTC)Not that I really disagree--President Bush mangles the English language frequently--but this was an intentional joke.
"We actually misnamed the war on terror. It ought to be the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world.
And, you know, that's what they do. They use terror, and they use it effectively." (from PBS)
(Thanks to the Volokh Conspiracy for the pointer