Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal

[DanaC]

To me it is interesting that we talk about choice being a value in our society but real choice is swept away.

A similar situation is in play in the UK. Our politicians seem obsessed with offering 'choice' regardless of whether that's actually wanted, then each successive governent brings in measures which give an illusion of increasing choice whilst actually reducing it. We've seen it in education, health, transport etc. The idea is always to free these up to allow competition and choice to drive the market towards improvements. But, it's always done so cackhandedly that no actual choice or improvement ensues. In the case of health and education they sold us the choice concept, but didn't put in place enough of an infrastruture to deliver it. In the case of transport, we just end up with one major consortium or company running most of the transport in any one area and the independants clear up the scraps and fill in the blanks on the timetable. On telecoms, they basically allowed a monopoly to develop and the monitoring body have managed over a period of years to force them to loosen their grip on the market slightly (not before it had held us back in developing our internet usage, by several years).

If I go to a doctor and he needs t send me for a test, I really don't want a brochure...I want him to tell me which hospital/clinic will deal with my problem best and send me there. If I have a child starting school, a degree of choice is a good idea, but it's no choice at all if it's between a successful school and a failing school, especially since the schools which are more popular aren't able to take all applicants.

When I go to buy a train ticket, I ask for a ticket for the town to which I want to travel. He then hands me a ticket that takes me there. If I need to leave at 10am I leave at 10am, if i need to leave at 12:30 I need to leave at 12:30. I am really not taking on board the fact that the early train is a Virgin train and the later is Arriva. Nor, do I care that the tracks and stations and trains are all owned by different companies. Nobody says "which train companies are running trains to location x?" when they go to the ticket booth, they say "ticket to location x please" and the companies just work out the timetable between themselvles.

All these areas have been 'freed up' to pursue markets and choice, and a handful of people have become very rich in the process (stuff like rail travel and amenities were sold off practically to the lowest bidder, then heavily subsidised in the early years, costing the tax-payer money in the short term and removing their assets in the long term) meanwhile the customer/consumer is left with a reduced service at higher costs. Dismantling a primarily state-owned infrastructure (note just infrastructure, we're not anti-business inthe UK, we aren't called a nation of shopkeepers for nowt :P)

Basically I think I am saying that we (Brits) do American style capitalism as badly as people say you'd do European socialism.

[edited to note] Sorry...I went off on a bit of a drift there...:P

[Griff]

Drift is good.

We do see this thing differently. I'll have to consider this more deeply to see if there is a way to allow folks of opposing ideologies the choice they both crave.

[Hime]

Wow, that was a depressing read. The main reason why I don't eat meat is that the practices of the meat industry are so fucked-up. I hope that Salatin has some luck getting his message out -- it's not one that many people want to listen to.

[xoxoxoBruce]

BUILD A HOUSE THE WAY I WANT
You would think that if I cut the trees, mill the logs into lumber, and build the house on my own farm, I could make it however I wanted to. Think again. It’s illegal to build a house less than 900 square feet. Period. Doesn’t matter if I’m a hermit or the father of 20. The government agents have decreed, in their egocentric wisdom, that no human can live in anything less than 900 square feet.

Our son got married last year and wanted to build a small cottage on the farm, which he now oversees for the most part. Our new saying is, "He runs the farm, and I just run around." The plan was to do what Mom and Dad did for Teresa and I — trade houses when children come. That way our empty nest downsizes, and the young people can upsize in the main family farmhouse. Sounds reasonable and environmentally sensitive to me. But no, his little honeymoon cottage — or our retirement shack — had to be a 900-square-foot Taj Mahal. A state-of-the-art accredited composting toilet to avoid the need for a septic system and sewer leach field was denied.

When the hillside leach field would not meet agronomic standards and we had to install it in the floodplain, I asked the health department bureaucrat why. He said that essentially the only approvable leach fields now are alongside creeks and streams, because they are the only sites that offer dark-enough colored soils. Sounds like real environmental steward-ship, doesn’t it?

Look, if I want to build a yurt of rabbit skins and go to the bathroom in a compost pile, why is it any of the government’s business? Bureaucrats bend over back-wards to accredit, tax credit, and offer money to people wanting to build pig city-factories or bigger airports. But let a guy go to his woods, cut down some trees, and build himself a home, and a plethora of regulatory tyrants descend on the project to complicate, obfuscate, irritate, frustrate, and virtually terminate. I think it’s time to eradicate some of these laws and the piranhas who administer them.