Originally Posted By: benjammin
Tom, you missed the point.

It's not about who you save, it's about holding people accountable. I don't think you can equate someone stuck on a hillside with a daypack and a sore back seeking a quick fix to someone in cardiac distress, and they don't have to be treated the same either.

Regardless of the circumstance, though, I believe everyone should be accountable for their own welfare, at least to the extent that their situation at any given time is a personal circumstance, and not the result of some common need, as with a natural disaster for instance. Everyone should make provisions to pay their own way through life, right up to the end. To the extent they can't, I believe they have failed a fundamental requirement for being here.


I don't believe I did, but I probably didn't explain what I meant well.

There is always going to be a class of people that are afraid to ask for help, and need it, let's call that group "T" for timid. There is also always going to be a group of people that are clueless or arrogant and will call for help when they don't need it. Let's call that group "C" for clueless.

You can't change the way these people behave any more than you can teach sheep to read. When you try to change things to fix it, holding people accountable financially for example, you make the T people more timid, but don't make the C people less clueless. In short, you've made the problem worse.

Or in other words - legal systems put in place to make things better in an attempt at changing people's behavior often work backwards of the original intent.

It goes along with the saying "You can't teach a pig to sing. It doesn't work, and it annoys the pig." I'd add that it's also very frustrating for the people trying to give out the singing lessons...and I believe what people are talking about is singing lessons.