On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 23:06:44 -0600, Australopithecus scobis
presented an excellent dissertation:

|On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 21:42:36 -0700, Mark & Juanita wrote:
|
| personal freedom turned into a society of slaves to a dependency class
| and government regulators.
|
|I get ticked off by regulations from time to time. Consider this, however.
|Activities which might have been benign when the population was a couple
|of million suddenly become very harmful with 6 billion people running
|around. I kind of like the idea of clean air and clean water. Regulations
|can make things better, and keep them from getting worse.
|
|The real "Tragedy of the Commons" was loss of regulation. The topic is
|often misquoted. One pasture, everyone has a goat. Why not add a goat? It
|won't make any difference. Everybody adds a goat, and the pasture is
|ruined. So far so good. The "Tragedy" was that the case study was in
|eastern Africa. A war or a famine (It _has_ been many years since I read
|the original paper.) drove people into the area of the pasture (Somalia?
|Ethiopia?). The pasture and grazing rights had been regulated by the
|village elders. The refugees were of a different tribe and culture, and
|didn't respect the decisions of the village elders. The incomers were the
|ones who messed up the system.

Sounds like Tucson, Arizona. Californicated to death.
|
|When you understand the real story of the "Tragedy of the Commons," you
|come to an understanding of why regulations are important and useful.
|
|Now, I don't like bureaucrats; that's another side of the story. Recall
|the faux-prison psych experiments of decades past. People who are distant
|from the effects of their actions have less restraint in causing harm to
|others.

A real life example of this was just documented on "60 Minutes" a few
days ago.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/...in652953.shtml

As part of a "training exercise" a U.S. serviceman guarding prisoners
at Guantanamo was ordered to put on an orange jumpsuit and pretend to
be an uncooperative prisoner. He questioned the order, but did it
anyway.

The Army is now in cover-up mode, so the facts are never going to be
fully known as to who ****ed up, but the bottom line is that his
fellow soldiers beat his head into the steel floor and gave left him
with a life-long future of epilyptic seizures. The orange suit did
it, I'm sure.

One further lesson that comes out of this is what we can expect when
we get "tort reform". The government has given itself immunity from
lawsuit, so the poor ******* can't sue for damages and is destitute.
Can't drive, can't work and the Army doesn't want him back.

|
|Consider the notion that rights come with responsibilities. Your right to
|swing your arms ends where my nose begins. Regulations are a mass
|production way of keeping everybody's hands to themselves. It doesn't
|always work, but just as it would be impractical (however desireable) to
|have all furniture and cabinetry made the way we on the wreck like to make
|them, it would be impractical to have no broad regulations in a complex
|world.
|
|What to do? Lead by example, living and working responsibly. Work to
|modify silly, onerous regulations. Work to strengthen and enforce
|reasonable regulations. Hang all the lawyers.

I don't know about "all" of them but certainly the four who were
disbarred in my town in the last year. Oh---did I forget to
mention---they were all prosecutors in the County Attorney's office,
working to protect us from "criminals." And as proof that there
should be IQ tests required to vote, she got reelected.