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Undertoad · 01-14-2002, 12:38 PM

One thing that occurred to me is, what if all people were forced to carry around a gruesome image of how they'd look when they were about to die? What if all people were forced to carry around an image of the worst possible result of their choices?

Smoking is dangerous, but there are other dangerous activities. Take ice climbing for example. Want to force ice climbers to carry around pictures of cold, dead, mangled, frozen bodies at the bottom of tall cliffs of ice? Gee, why not?

Most forms of death are kinda-sorta optional. Heart disease is aggravated by diet and stress and inactivity. Cancer is too. Most accidents are preventable (through training and good infrastructure and systems). Almost all of us make choices that will kill us, they're just not as visible and obvious and not as legislatable. They're just not at the forefront of public opinion, not so subject to the public whim and political fantasy.

In the end, it's all really a weird form of politics, you know. When everyone's doing it, oh, well you can't change it if *everyone's* doing it. If 20% are doing it? Well they're a very visible minority, so we can make ourselves feel better and have more confidence in our OWN choices, by publically putting THEIR choices down.

Now an attempt to really fan the flames. I can think of one activity that is seriously dangerous to the public at large, seriously dangerous to the people who do it, and banning it would have almost no impact on the economy. I'm talking about general aviation.

As we have just seen, general aviation can be easily abused for terroristic purposes. Not a week goes by where you don't hear of some all-too-young person offing themselves by crashing in a forest. It can wreak havoc at any airport, just as much or MORE than a guy running the wrong way down an elevator does. The system appears to be fraught with problems and causing a ton of expenses in homeland security.

We can't ban general aviation without appearing to be too draconian. But we can force pilots to carry with them images of crash scenes. It's just common and fiscal sense to deter these people from making a choice that's inappropriate for society.

We may not be able to force these pilots not to fly, but if we just make them THINK about not flying, I'd consider such a program a success.

01-14-2002, 12:38 PM	#54
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	One thing that occurred to me is, what if all people were forced to carry around a gruesome image of how they'd look when they were about to die? What if all people were forced to carry around an image of the worst possible result of their choices? Smoking is dangerous, but there are other dangerous activities. Take ice climbing for example. Want to force ice climbers to carry around pictures of cold, dead, mangled, frozen bodies at the bottom of tall cliffs of ice? Gee, why not? Most forms of death are kinda-sorta optional. Heart disease is aggravated by diet and stress and inactivity. Cancer is too. Most accidents are preventable (through training and good infrastructure and systems). Almost all of us make choices that will kill us, they're just not as visible and obvious and not as legislatable. They're just not at the forefront of public opinion, not so subject to the public whim and political fantasy. In the end, it's all really a weird form of politics, you know. When everyone's doing it, oh, well you can't change it if everyone's doing it. If 20% are doing it? Well they're a very visible minority, so we can make ourselves feel better and have more confidence in our OWN choices, by publically putting THEIR choices down. Now an attempt to really fan the flames. I can think of one activity that is seriously dangerous to the public at large, seriously dangerous to the people who do it, and banning it would have almost no impact on the economy. I'm talking about general aviation. As we have just seen, general aviation can be easily abused for terroristic purposes. Not a week goes by where you don't hear of some all-too-young person offing themselves by crashing in a forest. It can wreak havoc at any airport, just as much or MORE than a guy running the wrong way down an elevator does. The system appears to be fraught with problems and causing a ton of expenses in homeland security. We can't ban general aviation without appearing to be too draconian. But we can force pilots to carry with them images of crash scenes. It's just common and fiscal sense to deter these people from making a choice that's inappropriate for society. We may not be able to force these pilots not to fly, but if we just make them THINK about not flying, I'd consider such a program a success.