2008-05-10

A random philosophical musing

This isn't a very thought out piece, just a random thought that occured to me walking to the liquor store this afternoon.

The modern world has taken to regulating and criminalizing more and more things (everything from smoking within 3 metres of a doorway to operating a crane alone with less than 1000 hours experience).

The problem becomes one of equivalency. It's fairly well known that MAID actively wants to villify and criminalize all driving while intoxicated so that in society's eyes [ignore this notion of "society" having human physical characteristics -ed] drunk driving is morally equivalent to breaking and entering.

The problem as I see it is that it seems that everything goes the other way: murdering and raping a small girl is criminal, but then so is failing to properly maintain your company's MSDS datasheets. In our haste to make more and more things less and less acceptible, the opposite has occured. And that can't be good.

(Again, comments are a good place for debate and discussion of this topic: as I say, I've only partially formed it and was carrying heavy booze at the time)