Skip to main content

Too Much Protection

Too much protection plays into the law of unintended consequences.
Just today, we read that the ever increasing allergy to peanuts might stem from---not eating enough peanuts in the formative years, therefore not developing proper immunities to this allergy. So says the article written by .
"Too much protection"  stories abound today.  When society offers and sometimes forces protection on the individual, the result is oftentimes that the people begin to lose their ability to avoid danger.
It even happens with domestic cattle.  Many breeds of cattle are so domesticated that cows will not object to a predator attacking and carrying away a newborn calf.  Yet the Longhorn cow, not nearly as domesticated as, say, a Holstein cow, will not only "babysit" calves in a small group for other cows, but will get rather nasty if a predator shows up.
Advocates of expanding breadth of  government need to pay heed to the risk of weakening society as a result of overly protective governmental programs.  Many of these programs are designed to offer "protection" for individuals against all sorts of predators.
Thomas Sowell and Jason Riley both warn about how societal programs designed to help minorities in just about every life dimension actually produce the opposite effect.  Too much protection has long range effects which are not good.
Oh, yet another example of the effects of "too much protection":  A story in today's newspaper tells how a rather elderly man borrowed $500 from a "payday" loan place and ended up having to settle the loan by paying $810 in just a few months.  Now, the government comes to the rescue with the promise of yet more regulation to the loaning business.  A much more effective solution is to teach people how to manage their money.   One needs to  make teaching the concepts of personal money management so valuable that people flock to it, thereby learning how to avoid high cost solutions to their financial problems.They, then, provide their own protection.
Another example of protection:  Watch closely the children who get off the school bus and then walk to the left, in front of the bus, to get to the left side of the road.  Watch their eyes carefully.  Most times, you see that they do not even look to the left or to the right to see if there are any oncoming vehicles-----cars that may have ignored the bus's stop sign.   For years they have been assured of total protection from this danger and now do not demonstrate any self preservation instincts.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Aermotor Windmill Lives

The Aermotor windmill is probably the oldest iconic windmill In the United States today. We bought one that was very old at a seller's booth at the Round Top antique market. This was back in the late 1900s. So that makes it 20 years ago or so. We first erected this windmill In Fulshear in the backyard. We had to get Architectural Control Committee approval to do this. Because some of our neighbors may have some bad experiences with a neighboring windmill, we had to assure them that we would not let the brake slide and provide that nasty shrieking noise.  Other than that, there was no objection to looking at a windmill.  W e erected the windmill in Fulshear.  It was quite a chore for us as we had no idea where all the parts fit together and how they were arranged.  For example, we learned that the sail wheel with its struts is built with the same concept as a bicycle wheel with its spokes.  After much head scratching and consulting the internet we had it to ...

Back to Cuero, Texas

You may recall the museum display of some 2000 reamers, or "juicers" as we always called them---the kitchen device that you use to squeeze the juice from a half of an orange..  That display is enough to draw one to this museum, but we read more recently that the museum is the new owner of a vast collection of hand painted Japanese porcelain cups, saucers and tea pots. So, a trip to Cuero on the 25th of March,  but first lunch now that we have arrived in Cuero about noon. We went to a place familiar to us, the Main Street Kaffee haus and bakery.  The special for the day was either barbequed beef on a waffle or barbequed beef spaghetti.  I advised the congenial order person behind the order counter that both sounded horrible.  Dee made amends for me by saying that I was a traditionalist when it came to barbeque.  I picked up on that and ordered a bbq beef sandwich. It was good.  Here is  the inside of the self order café. The café is owned by ...

Cat's nightly Vigilance

The Cat, aka Amber, has taken up a position at the front door side windows for the last few months. These side windows go all the way to the floor, so she can crouch there and look out at whatever happens outside. There has been a stray cat that wanders by on occasions and we often wonder if the stray cat is what she waits for each night.  Not at all sure how a cat who has only seen her mother some years ago can recognize another cat out the window, but that is a whole other story. So, we happened to think that maybe the raccoon is her nightly visitor.  So, last night we put the game camera on the front step, and sure enough, there it is. We wonder what the raccoon thinks when it sees the cat grinning  through the glass pane?