Monday, May 23, 2011

Solutions

A hotel worker is raped in NYC; a guy leaves his kid in a car in Italy and the kid dies. A politician in Brooklyn thinks the answer is to make all hotels provide employees with panic buttons in case they are attacked by patrons. Miscellaneous do-gooders want all cars to have a system that automatically keeps cars cools whether anyone is in the or not so no one who forgets their kid is in the cars accidentally kills them. It is unfortunate that either thing happened but the proposed solutions are misplaced.

There are alternative positions: It makes no sense for hotels to provide panic buttons. Who does this guy think is going to pay for that? The answer is that people who do not rape hotel maids. Is there a rash of such incidents? Should the Post Office provide all its workers with panic buttons in case a disgruntled former worker goes postal? How about retail workers or what about when the plumber shows up?

People do stupid things. It is not a function of government to spread the costs of stupid mistakes over the entire population. The majority of people are bright enough to know that there is a kid in the back seat and to make sure there are no children playing behind the car before they back up. If people want to buy back up screen and automatic car cools that is their business but politicians should have better things to attempt to mandate things designed to prevent stupidity. That isn’t going to work anyway.

Since there are other stupid mistakes and potential crimes to be avoided, why not provide everyone with their own government worker who would be responsible for reminding people that they had kids, that it was a bad idea to back up the car without looking, to floss frequently and to eat sensibly. It is a full employment program but there is still the issue of the government worker remembering to do all that stuff.

The solution to stupid mistakes and preventing crimes is not for the government to another service that the vast majority does not need or passing another cost on to business

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