Sunday, October 21, 2007

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

Tim Wu on our laws.



just because they are laws we shouldn't forget that they are also,
in the end, experiments. They're like furniture in the living room of the
nation-state, they are supposed to make our lives better.

But if they don't
work, they should be abandoned, or changed.
found
here.


Conservatives have used the Amish to advance their "less government is better" agenda. I don't disagree in principle with the idea that less is more. Growing up on a farm and being the youngest of eight boys, the first thing my father taught me was to stay out of the way. It's good advice, not just for the sake of safety, but also for the sake of productivity. If something is working don't f**k with it! That said, It's under Republican leadership that the Amish are using more farm subsidies than ever, which begs the question. Who is the bigger phony?
But my real concern is the guise under which the legislative "hands off" approach has been sold. Which is along the lines of, the less the Amish have to deal with the government, the closer we are to what America was meant to be. The problem is that these laws are only for the Amish, and as Wu suggests, they're just experiments. Who's going to pay the price if it turns out they were a dumb idea. Could it be that Republicans are guilty of what they scorn democrats for, social engineering?
Might a little opposition be a good thing, so Rep. Pitts thinks things through before he fucks with my people?

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