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Phones Went Dead After Hurricane Sandy | 397 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Phones Went Dead After Hurricane Sandy
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 17 2012 @ 03:36 PM EST
It is not in dispute that "fat" needs to be accumulated. I think
every family should be prepared for bad times. The question is who is
responsible for this. Communism leaves it to the state. In the United States,
it has traditionally been left to the individual to freely choose for himself
what, where, how, and how much he should prepare. I am the expert on what is
best for me, not the government.

As to cell phone service, yes you could have daddy government mandate what is
best for us. On the other hand, if there really is a demand for communication
during times when the power might go out, then a cell phone company can put in
the equipment to do that and tout it strongly in commercials. My guess is it
would not win the business much new business, but that is up to the consumers
and the free market to determine. Anyone right now can buy a satellite phone,
but most do. Yes, people died in Sandy. But I think you would be hard pressed
to show that anyone died due to a lack of essential communication. Government
has an emergency communication network, mostly radios. Amateur Radio operators
assist in essential communications.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

15th century - Black Death
Authored by: Wol on Saturday, November 17 2012 @ 07:13 PM EST
Actually, late 14th century iirc.

But this goes back to my continual harping on how we have too much labour
nowadays. Catastrophe is a necessary pre-requisite to economic well being :-(

Before the Black Death, Europe had a growing population it was struggling to
provide for. New resources had to be found to feed all those extra mouths. And
providing those resources was expensive.

Then the Black Death wiped out a third of the population. All that resource was
freed up to provide a better standard of living. It took the population about
five centuries! to recover back to pre-black-death levels - about the point that
the industrial revolution started, actually.

Anyways, to get back to my point about today, I think the reason there is so
little fat in the economy is that once again, we have a (by historical
standards) high population, and are having difficulty finding new resources to
provide for said population. Should we have some sort of population catastrophe,
the effect on the survivors will be very beneficial as all those resources are
freed up.

Cheers,
Wol

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

If you take the American argument seriously
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 18 2012 @ 03:32 PM EST

There would be

* No police (you should protect yourself)
* No fire department (you are responsible for putting out fires)
* No armed forces (you are responsible for defending the country)
* No roads
* No border patrol
* No citizenship
* No courts

You can extrapolate from there.

I will note that the United States is the only First World country that doesn't

have state run health care, and has a very high infant mortality rate.

Wayne
http://madhatter.ca

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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