Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Give me liberty or give me a smoke detector

This is a good case for how intrusive governments should be: NSW is looking at, or has already made, laws to force all new homes and rental homes to be fitted with smoke detectors.

In effect this is identical to making seat belt wearing mandatory. It is in your best interests to wear the seat belt, but since we can't trust people we're gonna make it illegal not to use them.
The arguement could, of course, be applied to drugs.
Not that I'm suggesting it's a slippery slope from installing smoke detectors in my house to having drug squad sweeps twice weekly, but you get the idea.

Should we let those people who are too stupid to take basic precautions gradually weed themselves out of the population in a series of horrible domestic accidents?
I say yes, and preferably on TV. I mean the only deaths you see on TV these days are Australian sketch shows. Certainly my position that all people capable of foolish domestic death should do so is based on the fact I think most people are a waste of time and their sole use seems to be to make the lines to the checkout or ATM longer. This gets my goat and they should all die.
Now I admit this is a totally indefensible position, but it is kinda funny, and in my book funny counts for lots, whereas serious stuff (such as too much punctuation in the one sentence) counts for very little.
That is why I hate John Howard. He simply isn't funny. Sure, he's funny looking, but the only joke I heard him say ("W-w-w-What's brown and sticky? Bob Brown") was only mildly amusing.

That is why shows such as "Worlds wildest Police Chases" and "World most violent public servants" are intrinsically good. Funny? Yes. Horrible deaths? Also.
Concise? Yes. Plagarising the Office? Also.

The question is: where would you draw the line? What obviously benefitial thing could the government not make mandatory without offending your libertarian ideal?

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