Re: Exploding pagers

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