

What a daft way to stop your spaniel eating the milkman - kvs
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/jeremy_clarkson/article7052392.ece

======
Dove
It is difficult, especially for politicians, to talk about injustice,
accidents, the death of children and innocents, in terms of acceptable loss.
It sounds callous. One wants to do better. But if we are to live in a society
with basic freedoms, it is exactly what is needed.

Intuitively we know this. Setting speed limits to a universal 5 MPH and
rigidly enforcing the rule is close to what would be needed to reduce traffic
fatalities to zero. But most people love their freedom and mobility. They look
at the risk of a fatal accident with the rules as they are and say it's
acceptable. And when someone beats the odds and has one, we don't generally
blame the laws. We say it's a tragic accident, which is a way of saying an
acceptable risk has been realized for someone.

We should think the same way about a great many things. Things like aircraft
bombing or child abduction are horrific, but low risk. The horror makes us
incorrectly disregard the fact that the risk is low--possibly low enough,
even, to be acceptable.

The problem is compounded by the political and human need to _do something_.
Even if the risk is acceptably low and cannot be meaningfully reduced without
draconian measures, people feel the need to bring it down by one means or
another. So they do things that don't help. For show. For comfort. Out of
confusion.

A bit of mathematical clarity and a willingness to label things mere accidents
would be helpful. Considering the many men willing to give their lives in wars
throughout history to secure better lives for their descendants, it would be a
shame if we threw it all away for fear of a few accidental deaths per year.
Paraphrasing Milton Friedman, the difficult thing about preserving freedom is
that one must be willing to accept some low level of evil without doing
anything legal to stop it.

~~~
axod
The problem is, people seem to genuinely like living in fear. Maybe it gives
them something to talk about, maybe it's like being on a roller-coaster, but
the media wouldn't blow things out of all proportion unless there was a market
for it. Politicians wouldn't make some of these crazy laws if the public
didn't demand it.

People buy newspapers less to hear about the real news but to be
worried/scared/concerned about stupid stuff they shouldn't care about.

I think it's societies fascination with that sort of thing that needs fixing.

The vast majority of us will live largely uneventful lives and will die of old
age/cancer/heart attack/etc. We're not going to have our kids abducted, be the
victim of terrorism, die from swine flu etc.

Maybe it's that "You're going to lead an uneventful life" bit that people just
can't bear to face.

The worst one recently is pedophilia. I went to my sons play at school a while
back, and we were told we must not video the play, and at the end we were told
we could take pictures, but only of our own children, not of other peoples
children, and not of groups of children together!

Of course everyone ignored the headteacher and instead used common sense -
taking group photos etc, but it's incredibly disturbing to see such ridiculous
policies come into place. What sort of message are we sending our kids?

(If you haven't seen the Brasseye pedophilia special you should definitely
watch it. Classic).

~~~
Semiapies
_"The problem is, people seem to genuinely like living in fear."_

I don't know; I suspect people react very easily to "leadership" hints and
cues about danger, and it's thus useful for politicians (of any stripe) to
encourage fear.

~~~
shrikant
<http://sivers.org/drama>

~~~
dkimball
J.G. Ballard makes the same point, in the opposite direction: if we can't have
both modern comforts and our hearts' desires, we may eventually give up on
what we have in favor of what we want -- and may even be right to do so.

There will always be some who do. G.K. Chesterton spoke of the "rational and
deliberate preference which will always to the end trouble the peace of the
world, the rational and deliberate preference for a short life and a merry
one." (_Napoleon of Notting Hill_, chapter 8.)

Theodore Dalrymple found that preference in many of the English homeless; he
was surprised to find that homeless wandering "is not without its
compensations," and sounds like he was half-convinced to turn vagrant himself
-- but read the article, <http://www.city-journal.org/html/6_4_oh_to_be.html>.
Dalrymple also detects this preference for adventure over security in some of
the English underclass... and, more worrisomely, Chesterton -- who knew of
what he spoke -- detected it in the Nazis.

In other words: if we value our prosperity and idleness -- or even if we value
simpler, more obvious ideals like "not torturing" and "not trying to
exterminate the Jews" -- we should probably do something to make life a little
less dull for those who prefer something else over dullness.

I don't support Ballard's methods, to say the least (read a book or two of his
and you'll see why not); but perhaps permitting Americans to fight as
mercenaries abroad, and relaxing our self-defense laws at home, might be a
good first step? Or making the military a better-paying and less bureaucratic
place?

------
chubs
Clarkson is awesome. Interestingly, his 'give me my freedom' bent would put
him at good stead with those types from alabama who ran him out of town.

~~~
gort
For those who find this comment cryptic: Clarkson is one of a trio of
presenters on BBC TV show "Top Gear". They do various challenges on their
show. Once, in a special where they drove across America, the challenge was to
get each other "shot or arrested" by painting slogans on each others' cars.
While they were driving across Alabama.

The slogan that attracted most ire was not "Hilary for president" or "manlove
rules OK" but "NASCAR sucks!"

And so a mob ran them out of one particular town. Apparently. Incidents on the
show have been known to be staged from time to time, so I can't say with
complete confidence whether this actually occurred.

------
msie
I mostly agree with the author, but I like keeping the smoking out of my
office.

~~~
jrockway
I agree, and I think we can add some stipulations. If you want to perform an
activity that measurably reduces the life of unwilling bystanders, then it
should be regulated. That's why you have to drive on the right side of the
road and not on the sidewalk, and why you can't dump your toxic waste into
peoples' drinking water. Similarly, you can't dump toxic waste into other
peoples' breathing air. Externalities -- it's unfair to push your costs onto
other people. If you want to smoke indoors, work from home.

~~~
BigZaphod
Most people would agree with this idea. In fact it's used to justify most of
the stupid laws reasonable people hate! In the case of the pet thing, making
owners get a license and pass a test and pay for insurance, etc. is all there
to protect _others_ from your potentially dangerous pet. The same is true of
all the TSA rules - they are justified under the guise of keeping people safe
from each other.

You can't use such a simple-sounding argument to counter anything because it
can be used just as well to justify the stupid stuff in the first place.
What's needed is good old fashioned human judgement - but that's no longer
allowed. We're slowly making it illegal to exercise your own discretion out of
fear that someone else's discretion might be dangerous.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
A pet may be "potentially dangerous", but cigarette smoke is "actually
dangerous". That's the difference.

~~~
derefr
Another difference is in the fact that all the regulation does nothing to stop
people from abusing their previously-safe pets until they become dangerous.
Before any consideration of whether a law is just, we should really stop and
notice whether a law would even be _effective_.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
IMO if the law states the desire of the people, for example the law makes it
clear that irresponsible dog ownership is not acceptable to the degree that a
law has been passed, then it is effective.

Will passing the law alone make everyone obedient to it? No, of course not.

------
boredguy8
Interestingly similar to DRM, where we have to deal with massive limitations
on legitimate use while having very little stopping effect on illegal use.

~~~
NathanKP
Indeed. However, I would suspect that considerably more than 5% of people
would download a torrent rather than buying.

------
vault_
A good reminder that people overreacting is often just as much of a problem as
whatever they're trying to solve.

One issue I had with the article though, is the overuse of hyperbole. There is
no indication of how much of it was fact, and how much was embellishments and
exaggerations.

~~~
J_McQuade
> One issue I had with the article though, is the overuse of hyperbole. There
> is no indication of how much of it was fact, and how much was embellishments
> and exaggerations.

No, I didn't notice that it was by Jeremy Clarkson to start with, either.

For the benefit of the non-Brits, that's just sort of what he _does_. Seeing
him on HN actually makes me feel a bit queasy.

~~~
frossie
> Seeing him on HN actually makes me feel a bit queasy.

I'm with you. I hate this style of straw man argument, for example:

 _"We see the same sort of overreaction to paedophilia. Just because one man
in your town likes to watch schoolgirls playing netball"_

Well obviously if paedophilia was limited to men like watching schoolgirls
play netball, and not to people employed in positions of trust to deal with
other people's children abusing them horrifically, then yes, that would be an
over-reaction.

This kind of cartoon argument also makes it hard to have a real debate on the
issue. For example we can legitimately discuss the "pants bomber" case - does
the fact that one man caught attempting something increase the chances of it
being done in the future, or are we like generals always fighting the last
war?

As to the dog argument I am rather astonished at the hysteria surrounding this
pronouncement, given the very high rates of micro-chipping in the UK. And
there are a whole number of reasons why dogs should be microchipped for their
own welfare.

~~~
axod
The point is, it _is_ a massive over reaction.

Pedophilia is extremely rare. Getting every teacher to have lengthly criminal
record checks done, having CCTV in schools, it's all theatre. But it's
damaging. Anyone would think there were monsters lurking outside schools
trying to get in to abduct children.

It just doesn't happen. Apart from to the 0.000001% unlucky people it does
happen to. Which is the whole point.

As for dogs, it should be up to the owner if they want their dog chipped or
not.

~~~
jws
s/0.000001%/0.003%/ – it is ~3000 times more common than you think.

(number estimated from 879,000 _substantiated_ child abuse cases in 2000, of
which 10% where sexual in nature. Granted most of those are in a home
environment not a school. If you want to just think about non-family member
abductions (about as rare as things get), then you get down to something like
one in 250,000 per child each year.)

~~~
mmt
According to which source?

 _Granted most of those are in a home environment not a school_

I understood this to be the whole point: that the danger from the general
public is vanishingly small. If you're saying that one in 250k is the stranger
abduction rate and that the pedophilia is one tenth that, the PC thinks it's 4
times more common than you do.

ETA: What's worse, expending any effort on the 1-in-a-million issues, at
_best_ , distracts from actually imporving ones quality of life.

~~~
frossie
Wow, I don't know why I am still posting so I can get more downmods, but I
really don't get all the hate.

The fact that child abuse by educators is rare is no reason not to do
something relatively simple (like a criminal check) to reduce its incidence.
Lots of things are rare - liver cancer; plane crashes due to mechanical
failure; Rackspace losing a whole data center, twice; I don't get the whole
"pshaw, it's rare, no worries" attitude. I thought many of us here spend a lot
of time eliminating rare events.

There are many professions which require background checks; for example
accountants. What's the big deal?

~~~
jodrellblank
[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/07/false-
po...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/07/false-
positives.html) false positives is one big deal.

On the radio the other day, a paediatric surgeon in the UK was lamenting the
hassle involved in background checks. Ok, he operates on children, he gets a
background check, so far so good. As one of only a few hundred dedicated
paediatric surgeons, his skills are in demand, he is called as a consultant to
another hospital. They don't accept any checks except their own so they do
another. Which takes another month during which he is unable to help. Repeat
for every hospital or every NHS zone, every year, for every applicable
surgeon.

But who cares that treatment for children is being hindered by repetetive
bureacracy, at least it's protecting children, right? Oh, wait...

In other words, having checks in place is a good thing, but only as far as it
is proportionally useful to the costs of doing it. Not just doing anything and
everything to anyone and everyone because it might help maybe.

 _I don't get the whole "pshaw, it's rare, no worries" attitude. I thought
many of us here spend a lot of time eliminating rare events._

How much do you spend on rare event insurance? You read HN so it's a fair bet
you earn living from computing, so you'll have particular insurance against
losing or damaging your hands, yes?

~~~
frossie
_But who cares that treatment for children is being hindered by repetetive
bureacracy, at least it's protecting children, right? Oh, wait..._

Well, that's just a stupid implementation. You evidently should only be
cleared once for any NHS facility and anyway, screening a paediatrician is not
that useful because (a) they don't typically have uncontrolled access to
children and (b) if you are a paedophile, putting yourself through med school
just to have access to children is really beyond unlikely.

I think the fact that there is a media hysteria is blinding people to the
actual issue - that's just like saying "PETA is nuts, let's all have battery-
farmed chicken". Many people correctly assume that paedophilia is rare (it
is). Also, not many people have unsupervised access to children (in fact only
childcare workers, educators and priests typically do). So people put two and
two together and say "a childcarer who is a paedophile is a very rare event".
But that assumes that the chance of being a paedophile and the chance of
having access to children are statistically independent events. They are not -
as this well publicised case shows:

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8284192.stm>

Moreover, the "leverage" of the event is quite high. This is the same problem
with plane crashes; they are rare, but when they happen, 300 people die.

You would be amazed how many professions in the UK require background checks.
Did you know you need a background check to work at the Meteorological Office?

And many, many people on HN are working the US on immigrant visas. Frankly if
you have been able to get a job without a background check or a drug test or a
work permit, you're pretty lucky.

 _How much do you spend on rare event insurance? You read HN so it's a fair
bet you earn living from computing, so you'll have particular insurance
against losing or damaging your hands, yes?_

Well losing my hands is just a sub-class of {unable to work for any reason} so
no, I don't have specific insurance against that (though for example, more
than one famous violinist or pianist does - because their lifetime earning
loss is much greater). But when I was pregnant I got screened for cystic
fibrosis. That's pretty damn rare. You'd be amazed if you thought about it,
how many rare events you insure against. For example, the chance of your house
burning down is actually very small. Yet most homeowners have fire insurance.

------
JoeAltmaier
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Benjamin Franklin Of course, he
flew a kite in a thunderstorm

~~~
elptacek
Franklin meant Us, not Them.

------
axod
Charlie Brooker 'newswipe' is fantastic. Like Jeremy he's a refreshing voice
of reason in a scaremongering political correctness gone mad world.

[http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6DD223447015D017&...](http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6DD223447015D017&search_query=newswipe)

------
Mz
"Idle hands are the devil's workshop".

"That government is best which governs least." \-- Thomas Paine

It seems to me: Politicians with idle hands are often the architects of
inanity of the sort complained about in the article. Once you "hire" them,
they have to spend their time feeling like they are accomplishing Something
Really Important.

Sigh.

~~~
derefr
Perhaps, like other government employees (public school teachers) we should
only be paying them for as many days of work as it takes to accomplish what we
hired them for, and expect them to take another job to cover the difference.

~~~
Mz
Originally, federal senators/representatives were part-time politicians and
also had "a real job". Over time, that changed. I doubt you can get the
country to go back to that.

~~~
GFischer
The former president of my country (Uruguay) maintained his "day job" (he was
an oncologist, and visited his patients for all 5 years of government).

It's not the same scale as an US senator, but you could compare it to a State
governor from the smaller US states.

We used to joke about the chairman of the hospital, who was "the president's
boss".

------
pkulak
Ah, yes, that's why I hate Clarkson: "Nor is it normal to stand outside in the
rain to have a cigarette..." I've heard this rant 100 times before. Wanna
smoke a cigarette around people's children, or beat your wife, or drive a car
with no cat that gets 2 MPG and spews 2 dozen cars worth of soot, or about 100
other things you regret not being able to do now? Well, too damn bad. It's not
the 50s anymore. Get over it and stop wining.

~~~
roundsquare
Yes, the cigarette part of his argument was the weakest one. I'm honestly not
sure why he included it... unlike his other examples its _not_ a rare event
and the cost of the new law is _not_ high.

However, if you exclude that line... what is your complaint about the article?

~~~
pkulak
My only complaint is that I've heard it all a million times. Maybe at 28 I'm
just old now and this is brand new to people, but I remember these Denis Leary
routines from the early 90's. It's just playing to the audience's sense of
victimhood, but it's always the rich, white, Protestant males who are supposed
to be the victims.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _it's always the rich, white, Protestant males_

I'll give you rich and male. He's definitely a pinky colour but I can let
"white" slide. I'm pretty sure he's not a Christian.

Do you consider "rich, white, Protestant males" should not be allowed to air
their opinions?

