riddle@im4u.UUCP (07/26/85)
> An interesting idea ... except that it would tend to cause stupid people > to use seat belts ... and you know what that does to the world population's > average intelligence. So social darwinism rears its ugly head on the net. I was just reading something like this earlier today. Let me see... here it is: Social Darwinists, following the English social theorist Herbert Spencer, thought all such regulation unwise. "Very many of the poorer classes are injured by druggists' prescriptions and quack medicines, Spencer willingly conceded. But there was nothing wrong in that; it was the penalty nature attached to ignorance. If the poor died of their own foolishness, the species would improve." -- Paul Starr, "The Social Transformation of American Medicine," quoted in the Texas Observer Funny. I thought that the cruder examples of this sort of thinking had died out some time ago. Obviously they haven't (unless our friend was merely being facetious). I've got an even better idea -- why not actively discourage the use of seatbelts with a heavy tax? If the social darwinists are right, that should increase not only the world's average intelligence but its average wealth as well! :-{ --- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.") --- {ihnp4,harvard,seismo,gatech}!ut-sally!riddle riddle@ut-sally.UUCP --- riddle@ut-sally.ARPA, riddle%zotz@ut-sally, riddle%im4u@ut-sally