On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 20:47:56 GMT, "Leon"
wrote:

Chris,,

I have no affiliation with SawStop nor do I have any plans to except to
perhaps buy their product or a like product in the future.

Thank you.


It seems strange that so many are oposeed to this device because of the way
it has come to morket. I can respect that. If they only knew how much of
their lives revolves something governmant mandated and are thankful that it
was. Take quality of water supplied to you by your city water department or
Electrical codes to prevent elecctrical fires for instance.

Leon, you don't seem to see a very important distinction between these
things and Sawstop. All of these government mandates, along with
required auto liability insurance, act to prevent other people from
hurting me. Water quality mandates prevent my city from mishandling
water and making me sick, electrical codes prevent the electrician
from doing substandard work in my home and burning down my house, and
liability insurance prevents everybody from legally driving without
making sure that they have some way to compensate me if they hurt me
while driving improperly. Sawstop is not at all similar...it is a
device meant to save me only from me. The best analogies are seat
belt, air bag, and helmet laws. Yes, those are imposed on us all of
the time. It does not mean that everybody agrees with that
imposition. It only means that legislatures did what many people see
as wrong. Frankly, I don't much care for those laws; I would use a
seat belt whether it was mandated or not, and I don't ride a
motorcycle, but I certainly wouldn't want to without a helmet...even
though my state does not require it. Similarly, when I can buy a
tablesaw, I probably will want Sawstop. But I want it to succeed on
its own, I don't want it to be forced on us. This is not an area
where the government needs to step in.



But what really
confounds me, is that while they seem to think their freedom will be lost if
the SawStop company get its way and those same people seem to think that I
don't have the freedom to voice my openion on the matter.



Eric Ryan
E-mail me at eryan /at/ qconline /dot/ com