🚀 go-pugleaf

On 04 Jun 1994 03:12:19 PST, jpietras@netcom.com (Joseph C. Pietras) said:

> rlm@helen.surfcty.com (Robert L. McMillin) writes:
>> On 25 May 1994 13:15:15 PST, jpietras@netcom.com (Joseph C. Pietras) said:
>> In article <jpietrasCqDn1F.GwA@netcom.com> jpietras@netcom.com (Joseph C. Pietras) writes:

>>> Write a new constitution that addresses our current reality!
>>> Life, Liberty and pursuit of happiness are great - why not 
>>> add polution/chemical/Electro Magnetic Fields free environment.

>> I agree that you, in particular, *should* be free from electromagnetic
>> fields.  Therefore, you should be transported to a cell many hundreds
>> of feet below the earth's surface, where you will be free from the
>> dreadful electromagnetic radiation of the sun.  Oh, and no computers,
>> electric lights, telephones, blenders, microwave ovens, electric
>> stoves -- none of that, because, after all, we have a right to be free
>> from e/m fields, right?

>> Sheesh.  What will the Luddites think up next?

> Robert,
> I learned a lesson from you on this one! It was late when I wrote my
> reply to the L.A. Times survey.  Once cast upon the net the bits are
> out there forever (give or take several eons :-).  I should have left
> it with "pollution" and let it go at that.

But this is also a dangerous idea, because it doesn't bother to
consider cost/benefit tradeoffs.  What exactly does 'pollution-free'
mean, anyway?  If we start, as many environmentalists do, with the
assumption that *anything* man-made is suspect, then the definition of
pollution covers a lot of ground.  At one point, carbon dioxide was a
pollutant!  Farting cows threatened the earth, to hear the eco-
hysterics tell it.  It is, of course, shoddy science in the service of
paranoiac hysteria, but from a more cynical perspective, it serves the
expansion of the state for people who BELIEVE in the state's ability
to Do Good and to Never Be Wrong.

Right.

>   2) I do not want my original idea to be lost in a debate
>      over whether I am a Luddite. (Thou I must confess I
>      don't know what a Luddite is - really I don't, I assume
>      someone with passionate believes about the environment). 

A Luddite is a person who wants to destroy technology out of massive
paranoia.  Their brethren read and believe such periodicals as the
{UFO Journal} and even the {Weekly World News}.
-- 
Robert L. McMillin  | rlm@helen.surfcty.com | Netcom: rlm@netcom.com
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