What;s wrong with kids these days?
I don't want you or the government to dictate to me what I can or can't do, whether it be smoking a cigarette or anything else. You preach about banning them, well why not ban beer or hard booze? How about chewing gum? Coffee?
Sometimes it's fun to revert to spazzed-out-six-year-old temper tantrum kinds of behavior like this -- NO! I DON'T WANNA! YOU CAN'T MAKE ME! I CAN DO ANYTHING I WANT! -- but just for kicks, let's put our grownup thinking caps on (have you got one?) and consider your position. Chewing gum, coffee, beer, and hard booze are on the very long list of things which, when thoughtfully used as intended, do not kill or maim the user. Tobacco's not on that list because when used as intended, it kills half its users and maims and disfigures many of the other half, similarly (but to a greater degree) than yesterdays' lawnmowers and power saws and kids' bicycles and automobiles.
But let's roll with your idea for a few moments: Government shouldn't ban anything. So no ban on leaded gasoline -- the kids will have diminished intelligence and ability to learn and they'll have
serious, criminal behavioral problems later on, but that's a worthwhile price to pay for getting rid of government interference, right? And while we're on the subject, no ban on companies dumping mercury and other toxic crap into the land, air, and water. Don't like drinking poisonous water or breathing filthy air? Too bad.
Cars! No auto safety regulations because the glorious free market is successful at deciding that people didn't actually want to be impaled on steering shafts and torn in half by flying shards of non-safety glass and pulped on ejection through the windshield. Note how well Chrysler's new-for-1964 door latches worked (not) to prevent the doors flying open in a crash:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siT-SIfOnQw"]‪1960s Crash Tests‬‏ - YouTube[/ame]
I see a
lot of very dead and very maimed people when I view that video, but the big, bad government shouldn't have stepped in and stuck its big do-gooder nose into the private lives of drivers and passengers. Or maybe you think they should've just stopped after putting forth basic common-sense safety regulations like requiring seat belts in every car and that kind of thing? Well, here's what happens when a '78 Plymouth -- with seat belts, collapsible steering column, side-impact door beams and the whole rest of the list of basic safety equipment mandated by '78 hits a barrier at 65mph (the really revealing views start at about 0:50):
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVqxxIqu5TU"]YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.[/ame]
And here's what happens when the Chinese built a car just a few years ago for sale to the general public without any pesky government interference:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mbe5ILICT4M"]‪New Chinese Car Crash Test Disaster - 2007 Brilliance BS6‬‏ - YouTube[/ame]
No health codes! That's nanny-state interference with private lives and free markets! The free market will decide if you really want to eat at a restaurant, swim at a pool, shop at a grocery, or work at a workplace without fear of contracting dread diseases. And they call them "engineering standards" for things like roads and bridges and airplanes and power lines, but they amount to BANS on roads and bridges and planes and power lines that don't happen to meet nanny-state big-government intrusive "standards", the same way closing tax loopholes for billionnaires amount to "job-killing tax increases".
Y'know, lemme tell you a little about my day last Friday. I woke to my alarm clock, powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the local water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to an FCC-regulated channel to see what the National Weather Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather will be, using satellites designed, built, and launched into orbit by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast, which has been inspected for safety by the US Department of Agriculture and took my medicine, which has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
At the appropriate time, as regulated by the US Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I got into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration certified automobile, and set out to work on the roads designed and built by the local, state, and national Departments of Transportation, stopping to purchase fuel at a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, at a pump certified by the local Bureau of Weights and Measures to have dispensed what it says it did, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door, I dropped my mail in the outbox for the US Postal Service, which can deliver a note anywhere in the country in less than a week, and dropped my kids off at the local public school.
After work, I drove my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to a house which had not burned down in my absence because of state and local building codes and a fire marshal's inspection, and which had not been vandalized or plundered of its valuables thanks to the local police department.
I then logged onto the Internet, which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and griped on freerepublic.com about how "socialism" is bad because the government can't do anything right. That's what my Friday looked likeÂ…how 'bout yours?