Posted on 11/11/2008 10:29:12 PM PST by Pinkbell
I really do think that the goal of leftwing politicians is to turn societies and cultures into a one size fits all airport terminal where every single facet of life is scrutinized and controlled.
It will reach a point where some of us might be looking at more primitive societies (even governed by despots, where formally there are no rights) with a certain longing for their immediate-type UNLEGISLATED freedoms.
No doubt it is all mean well, but - well - before buidling bridges and highways, some people measure the “environmental impact”... perhaps they ought to do the same thing with human beings and ask: “what’s the good social / cultural / kids-growing-up stuff that is lost in such hyper-legislation?”
We had bake sales and junk food at school when we were growing up and there weren't a bunch of fat kids walking around. Today kids sit in class all day, then go home and sit in front of the computer, video game or TV. My mother used to throw us out in the yard and we rode bikes, climbed trees and were very active. Bake sales don't make kids fat!
I would *never* eat any brownies that were baked in CA.
I couldn’t agree more. I spent so much time outside; I was probably one of the healthist kids around. We also used our imaginations. We had all kinds of games we played.
Today, kids don’t do that. If they are outside; they are in structured groups for a period of time if it fits into the schedule or they hang.
I remember those. It was cool.
If they really want to do something about childhood obesity, they would start requiring PE again, re-institute recess with bona fide playground equipment and ban high-fructose corn syrup in all products.
Nintendo Wii’s Opera brower with no cut-n-paste, nor keyboard.
That's high tech! My hat's off to ya.
Why don’t “they”, the government/Democrats/Marxists, just leave us alone and get out of the way so that the free market and individuals can find solutions to any real or manufacturd “problems”.
Democrats are always looking for government solutions to any made up or imaginary “problem” like global warming. Friedman showed that only the free market can get milions of people to cooperate voluntary to produce all the products that are needed by the people and the economy. So only the free market works and government can never work.
So, in order to make a pencil, you would have to be able to do all of these things. There are probably thousands of people who have cooperated together to make this pencil. Somehow or other, the people in South America who dug out the graphite cooperated with the people in Malaysia who tapped the rubber trees, cooperated with, maybe, people in Oregon who cut down the trees.
“These thousands of people don’t know one another. They speak different languages. They come from different religions. They might hate one another if they met. What is it that enabled them to cooperate together?
“The answer is the existence of a market.
“The simple answer is the people in South America were led to dig out the graphite because somebody was willing to pay them. They didn’t have to know who was paying them; they didn’t have to know what it was going to be used for. All they had to know was somebody was going to pay them.
“What brought all these people together was an enormously complex structure of prices - the price of graphite, the price of lumber, the price of rubber, the wages paid to the laborer, and so on. It’s a marvelous example of how you can get a complex structure of cooperation and coordination which no individual planned.
“There was nobody who sat in a central office and sent an order out to Malaysia: ‘Produce more rubber.’ It was the market that coordinated all of this without anybody having to know all of the people involved.”.
http://alexbarnett.net/blog/archive/2006/11/18/Nobody-knows-how-to-make-a-pencil.aspx
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.