King County, Washington, home of Seattle, is passing an ordinance requiring all swimmers to wear a life preserver. Generally speaking, I would imagine if you’re actually swimming in the water, you probably know how to swim. If you don’t know how to swim, and you’re swimming in the water, you’re probably actually drowning. Presumably King County wants to stave off the possibility of someone who does not know how to swim trying to do it, and drowning.
Personally, I think all this interference with natural selection is going to come back and bite us in the ass in a few generations.
King County – The Water-Wing Capital of the World!
Rent the movie “Idiocracy”
Last year I went on a cruise, and got a chance to go snorkeling. I had brought my own gear: flippers, mask, and snorkel. Only to be told I had to wear a bouyancy compensator as well…
I went ahead and complied (their island, their rules). I found out shortly that they had told others to inflate their own BCs…
Too late. Decades of mandatory seat belt and helmet laws have allowed a whole new generation of better, more stupid idiots.
If I have to wear a life preserver to keep me from being killed by water, then I should have to wear a gun to keep me from being killed by criminals. So, where’s the mandatory carry law? We are trying to save lives here, aren’t we? Why mandate one piece of survival equipment, but prohibit another? They aren’t just trying to disempower us and push us around like they owned us, are they?
This notion that such laws prevent the death of stupid people, and therefore increase stupidity in the gene pool via natural selection, is just plain idiotic. Do you really think that the death of 17 people from the years 2005 to 2009 is going to affect the gene pool at all?
And that’s assuming that those 17 people were stupid! Or that this asinine law is even going to save lives!
I’m sick and tired of nanny-state city councils who are so concerned about our safety, but have no clue about the risks involved–or, if they do, they don’t give a darn. And they do it to “save just one life”–never mind the life-force drained from those individuals who are forced to comply with this law, either by buying unnecessary life vests, or paying fines (and going to court), or by enforcing the law when they could be investigating burglaries instead.
All this, when the sensible thing to do would be to give out warnings: “High river this year! Risk of drowning even greater than normal! Even if this were a low river year, a river can still drown you!”
If we really wanted to decrease stupidity in the gene pool, we should be putting rocks around the necks of such lawmakers and dumping them in the river–or better yet, life vests, because they probably are stupid enough to drown even with that–rather than expect non-life-vest swimmers, who typically know what they are doing anyway, to drown.
Shouldn’t they just cut to the chase and ban swimming instead?