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From: Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,us.politics
Subject: Re: Exploding pagers
Date: Sat, 5 Oct 2024 14:54:16 +1000
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On 5/10/2024 9:08 am, Cursitor Doom wrote:
> On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 15:06:26 -0500, Crash Gordon <uucp@crashelex.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> On 10/4/2024 9:58 AM, john larkin wrote:
>>> The real killer here is Chinese fentanyl.
>>
>> Fentanyl is only a problem because of the War On Drugs.
>>
>> A hundred years ago Americans could buy opium and cocaine legally.
>> Addiction rates per capita were similar to today.  To re-quote a tired
>> old saw, when blah is illegal only criminals will blah.  Criminals care
>> a lot less about quality and consistency and that's where the danger
>> appears.
>>
>> If aspirin were invented today the FDA would never approve it for
>> over-the-counter sale because it's too dangerous.  But it is legal;
>> consequently I can buy a hundred generic aspirin for five bucks and be
>> confident that each tablet will actually contain 325mg aspirin and no
>> fentanyl or arsenic.  If aspirin were illegal then 100 "street aspirin"
>> would cost a lot more than $5 and might contain anything.
> 
> As a Libertarian myself it's become increasingly clear that any
> government 'intervention' is frequently a bad thing.

It is the necessary delusion that reliably sets you up to be a Libertarian.

> Every time the
> government 'declares war' against something, someone or some country,
> it typically:
> 
> a) achieves nothing or makes things 10X worse, and
> b) costs a fortune for the taxpayer with nothing worthwhile to show
> for it.

Covid-19 didn't fit that pattern. We got a vaccine against it remarkably 
quickly, and it's not killing a lot of people any more. People like 
Cursitor Doom who swallowed the anti-vaccination myths are still 
vulnerable, but herd immunity mostly protects them from winning a Darwin 
award.

> And no lessons ever seem to get learned, either - despite this pattern
> recurring over and over and over and over again. :(

When you are very selective about the the patterns you will recognise, 
this can appear to be true.

-- 
Bill Sloman, Sydney