Aretae

The virtue of excellence

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

PoTD

I will soon be back with some of my own words.   For now, consider Mike Munger on Jared Diamond.

Q:  What's the rest of the list besides guns?
Posted by at

5 comments:

crazychicknlady said...

Child abduction. Fewer kids are allowed to play outside unsupervised, walk to school or the school bus, go to the neighborhood store on their own, etc., even though stranger abductions are in the range of 50 per year in the US.

http://www.freerangekids.com/

-crazychicknlady

January 30, 2013 at 12:32 PM
rightsaidfred said...

Q: What's the rest of the list besides guns?

You mean causes of death, or causes of homicide?

In this day of illegal immigration and unprosecuted financial crime, I wonder how effectively realized Congressional action against guns would be. I'm thinking we need a corner of the country set up as an isomorph to the larger, and we could test run all these wonderful laws. Then we could look at their efficacy and decide if it is realistic to inflict it upon the larger populace.

January 30, 2013 at 12:38 PM
drpat said...

To extend crazychickenlady's point. If 50 children per year are abducted, and keeping most children locked inside stops that being what? Twice that amount? Ten times?
The abduction paranoia may be saving between 50 and 450 children/year.
Now, how many Americans die per year of heart attack or stroke, because they never got into the habits of doing any sport or activity, because they were locked up all day? To the nearest 100 000 say?

January 30, 2013 at 10:14 PM
rightsaidfred said...

Tangentially, if we foster a risk averse society with all our helmets, lawsuits, worries over stranger abduction, etc.; do we lose in the long run from the loss of innovation or taking worthwhile risks?

January 31, 2013 at 12:28 PM
drpat said...

I'm not prepared to hazard a guess...

January 31, 2013 at 8:53 PM

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