How Safe Are We? Our Blindness To Systemic Dangers
by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
ZeroHedge.com
Fri, 05/11/2018
How do we explain our obsession with relatively low risk dangers and our collective blindness to manufactured/marketed scourges that kill tens of thousands of people annually?
If you’ve bought a new vehicle recently, you may have noticed some “safety features” that strike many as Nanny State over-reach. You can’t change radio stations, for example, if the vehicle is in reverse. Who knows who or what you’ll run over in reverse if you were allowed to change radio stations while in reverse gear?
How many injuries can be traced to people changing radio stations while in reverse?
A friend recently told us that the California Legislature is considering a law that makes it legal for parents to let their children walk to school unattended.
Perhaps this is “fake news,” but it’s certainly plausible, given that leaving any child unattended is now viewed as not just irresponsible but criminal.
How the Free-Range Kids Movement Is Helping Parents Embrace Their Libertarian Side
The mainstream “news” is chockful of worried-looking news anchors announcing another e coli outbreak or recall of a consumer product, many of which now sport absurd warnings, including scary-sounding ones such as “This product contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer.”
This is scary until you realize it’s on practically every consumer product in the state of California, which mandates the warning.
The narrowness of this obsession with safety comes into focus if we ask: how can a society so obsessed with safety have spawned an opioid addiction crisis that kills tens of thousands of people and ruins the lives of millions of Americans?
How safe are we when products that addict millions and kill thousands are readily available via prescription within our healthcare system?
While addictive illegal drugs have long been targeted with extremely harsh criminal penalties, how is it that the legal drug industry and the officially sanctioned and regulated healthcare industry created the vast destruction of the opioid crisis without anyone tasked with “safety” noticing?
How do we explain our obsession with relatively low risk dangers and our collective blindness to manufactured/marketed scourges that kill tens of thousands of people annually? (Tobacco and alcohol come to mind.) Then there’s the well-documented impact of rising wealth and income inequality on public health–for example, The Health Effects of Income Inequality: Averages and Disparities.
The Rest…HERE
