You can't idiot-proof anything

My weekend started with a laundry list of items my Middle-Eastern-Princess tenant "urgently" needed repaired, only to find out that nothing was broken, she simply didn't know how to do or use anything. This got me thinking that you really can't make anything idiot-proof, people will always find excuses to be dumb, the most egregious excuse being "you never told me so". Should we really design society for the lowest common denominator of human common sense?

Take seat belts and Russian roulette as examples. We all know it's a law that you have to wear seat belts while driving, any first grader will tell you click-it or ticket, but do we really need a law making it illegal to drive without a seat belt? Shouldn't self-preservation be motivation enough to put a seat belt on? If not wanting to die from crushing ones skull against a tempered piece of glass doesn't compel you to click-it, what is a $50 fine going to do? Do we really need a law for this? Can't we just be happy to know that people who are too stupid to use a device designed to save their life probably won't live long enough to reproduce. It would be like making a law saying it's illegal to play Russian roulette (if there isn't already one). It seems to me that this problem corrects itself and we don't need to waste precious resources enatcing legislation or enforcing it. If you want to play Russian roulette or drive without a seat belt, by all means, go for it, you're only hurting yourself.

How about the fact that all coffee cups now have "Caution: Contents may be hot!" written on them. This is a great example of the "you never told me so" defense to stupidity. The last time I checked coffee is served fucking hot unless you specifically ask for it iced. Why do you need to be reminded it's hot? Do all your coffee mugs at home have the caution written on them? No? Then how do you know if the contents are hot or cold? If you order a coffee, then spill it on your balls, is printing a reminder on the cup that what's inside it is hot going to change anything? Not really, it just makes it harder for the idiot with the scalded nuts to sue and win money from the poor sap who sold it to him. This doesn't make a product safer, it's lawyers at work attempting to make something as simple as a cup of coffee "idiot-proof". You can't do it. How long until some blind dude burns his sack and they have to print that in braille on the cup?

Here's a real life example. Two weeks ago I got a call from an admin at my office who told me that she broke her big toe walking out of the ladies room because someone opened the door too quickly as she was leaving, and the door hit her toe. I listened to her for ten minutes about how dangerous the door was, and that there should be a sign stating "Open door slowly" on all the restroom doors. That makes about as much sense as putting a sign on the inside stating "keep toes away from swinging door". Really, am I responsible for idiot-proofing doors now? If you can't leave a restroom without breaking your toe I think we should have a long talk with your manager and see if you're really competent enough to do your job.

Ever wonder why all rear view mirrors on cars have "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear" written on them? You know some dumb fuck merged left into a truck, got clobbered, then sued claiming the truck looked one-three-hundredth of a mile further away than it actually was. I bet that asshole merged without ever looking, and now every car we buy costs $30 more because the manufacturer has to print that warning on my mirrors.

If these examples don't make sense to you, you're one of the ass clowns I'm talking about. The rest of you should be insulted that The Man feels your not intelligent enough to survive without rules and laws like this.

Take "No Turn On Red" signs at intersections. Once in a while I come to an intersection with a bad blind spot and it makes sense that you should wait for a green light to turn right. But by and large the majority of these signs are up because some fucking jagaloon pulled out into traffic and caused an accident, so the city decided it was easier to put up a sign than teach people to drive. You can't idiot-proof the streets with signage. If someone can't make a right turn on red without pulling into oncoming traffic or running over a pedestrian, no amount of signage is going to prevent them from eventually getting into an accident. Wouldn't it make more sense to take away his or her license than hang a sign? I've never gotten into an accident making a right on red, my record is clean, why am I being forced to sit at lights? Another one that pisses me off is sitting at a red arrow waiting to make a left turn, in the middle of the night, on a deserted street. There's no one coming, I can see three hundred yards in every direction, why can't I turn?

Can someone please explain to me why we have a minimum wage rate when unemployment is at ten percent? If you're willing to work for $4 an hour, what right does the government have to tell you you can't? I'm constantly reading about how the US is no longer a viable manufacturer. I'm no economist, but if we did away with minimum wage, and everyone went back to work making widgets, wouldn't that make our country a viable manufacturer? What ever happened to the "free hand" of the market?

If you want to see a true free market economy, uninhibited by government interference, go to the parking lot of Home Depot on Rhode Island Avenue and hire a day laborer. It's Econ 101. If the market is up, the demand for day laborers goes up, so wages increase. When the economy sucks, demand for day laborers goes down along with wages. You see it in real-time. Two years ago guys would work for $6-8 an hour. The economy seems to have improved a bit, and now no one will work for $6 an hour, the rate has gone up to $8-10. If a guy is really eager to work, though, shouldn't he have the right to do it for $5 an hour? Isn't this good for everyone? Labor has been around for twenty thousand years, why are we trying to idiot-proof it with regulation?

What it boils down to is that no one is willing to take responsibility for their actions. Some chicks is driving and spills a hot cup of McDonald's coffee on her twat, she gets embarrassed and needs to blame someone, and her lawyer convinces her that McDonald's is to blame because they didn't tell her the hot coffee she ordered was hot. She's stupid, her twat is deformed, so she sues. And since the jury on the case is a group of her equally dumb peers (because let's face it, anyone with half a brain can get out of jury duty if they want to) she wins millions and McDonld's has to print warnings on a billion cups. You're just never going to idiot-proof anything.