XPost: alt.politics   
   From: k8mn@frontiernet.net   
      
   Nate Edel wrote:   
   > In rec.arts.sf.misc Dave Heil  wrote:   
   >> How much time does it take to decide which brand of butter to purchase?   
   >>   After all, it is all butter.  After one thinks, "salted or unsalted",   
   >> it is possible to pick up a favorite brand or to choose the brand which   
   >> is cheaper.  Do you know anyone other than yourself who would choose a   
   >> system of government based upon the overwhelming decisions involved in   
   >> choosing butter?   
   >   
   > That's easy, in part, because we've got the FDA to insure that one of the   
   > questions you have to ask when buying butter is not "which one of these is   
   > least likely to poison me" and you have a reasonable hope that if it says   
   > butter, it actually is.   
      
   Oh my!  I've lived in many places where I bought butter from a farmer or   
   beef straight from a farmer.  I've lived in a couple of places where   
   there was canned, unrefrigerated butter and long-life milk in a waxed   
   paper carton sitting on a store shelf.  Have people really become so   
   timid and isolated from the source of production that they worry about   
   which product is less likely to poison them?   
      
   > I don't think our implementation of it is great, but it could be a LOT   
   > worse... in general, I think a mixed economy is the right approach   
      
   We in the United States do not not yet live under socialism.  I mean to   
   spend my remaining years ensuring that we never do so.   
      
   Dave Heil   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)