quote: | Originally posted by Meat187
Yeah, and I guess everything would indeed be fine if only we could expect our governments to always make the best choice. Sure, I'd have no problem giving them the right to regulate everything when I know they'll make good decisions. Personally, I believe exactly the opposite. Will the naive idealists please raise their hand? |
I prefer to think of myself as the articulate, naive idealist with perfectionistic demands.
I had a friend who worked in the Public Relations Department for a small-town city manager's office. They wanted to install rail-rode crossing arms for one of the crossings near the main boulevard. They raised the proposal at a city-council meeting and it got clobbered with protest. A few years later, one of the people who killed it, had their daughter driving to school.
She crossed it and stalled, right on the tracks. The train hit the car but was already stopping before the impact. No one was hurt but that didn't stop the phone calls to the city manager's office, who heard nothing less than an earful from many of the same angry residence who had previously kiboshed his crossing arm proposal, for not having crossing arms installed, in the first place.
Invoking many of the same sorts of arguments you're making - basically, because it costs too much, and if someone gets hurt, oh well - they killed the deal that an emergency city-council meeting was called for, afterwards, to demand explanations as to why crossing arms weren't there, in the first place.
It would seem that hippies aren't the only people who believe in a perfect world.
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