Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 35, No. 234.
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        Date: 2021-09-13 13:27:37+00:00
        From: James Rovira <jamesrovira@gmail.com>
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 35.228: dystopic reflections: the ungovernmental

The private sector gave us the worldwide 2008 economic crash. The private sector
gave us multiple cases of cancer by poisoning the ground water and lying about
it in numerous localities around the US. The private sector gave us a US foreign
policy driven by short term profitability rather than a concern for human life.

But what’s really misguided is the belief that somehow government and private
industry are separate, when in most cases the former drives the latter.

Government gives us regulations that saves millions of lives a year through
traffic regulations. It makes our cars safer, or hospitals safer, our buildings
safer, and overall allows society to run in thousands of ways a day that you
don’t even have to think about because it’s there. It gave us regulations that
prevented things like the 2008 crash until they were repealed, and have been
preventing it since then.

So we need to think about this a little more specifically and carefully rather
than resort to uninformed right wing clichés about “government.”

Jim R

> Yeah: let’s get the government into that. That will make things better. Oh,
> wait, it won’t. I lived in a dystopia for 25 years.
>
> Hooray,
>
> Jan Rybicki
>


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