Outlaw warning labels, they’re ruining the natural selection process

Great Debates
1

I wrote this as a humor piece for the now defunct themestream last summer. I thought it was obviously a joke, but some of the people who left comments seemed to think it was actually a good idea!
Outlaw warning labels, they’re ruining the natural selection process

Like others, I’m concerned about the population problem. However, I don’t think that controlling the number of people born in this country would be affective. That has been tried for several years in China, and the results are not great, an increase in the cases of infanticide involving female babies seems to be the most noticeable result. The other problem that controlling population by limiting births is that doing so will only increase the problems anticipated with supporting the aging baby boomer population- there are already many more middle aged people than the young. If baby boomers live until their 90’s, children born in the near future will be part of the population supporting them in their old age.

My solution to the population crisis is simple, and it would involve only one step- remove the warning labels from everything. There would be far fewer people than there are now if people were not protected from their own stupidity. By putting labels on things, like the warning “do not use in shower” on hair dryers, the natural selection process is being falsely retarded. Without warning labels, nature could take its course and weed out those who are truly too stupid to live.

Maybe this seems like a harsh solution, but it’s the dumb zebra who are eaten by lions when they are healthy adults. Many make the case that humans are animals, so it’s time to put our money where are mouths are, and let people be held accountable for drinking lemon scented dishwasher liquid that they think is lemonade

To be fair, once the warning labels are removed from everything, each person should receive a book that has helpful reminders about what is dangerous  (“common sense for morons” is a possible title) which will tell the reader things like “don’t mix bleach and ammonia” and “you will be electrocuted if you stick a knife in an electrical outlet.”  The book would be required reading starting in elementary school, and by age ten every child would be expected to have common sense.

Besides helping to achieve zero population growth, the removal of warning labels will have positive financial impacts. Having a book that contains the information that used to be on warning labels will free the manufacture from the price of printing separate warnings for every product they produce, and would make suing them for being a moron not be grounds for financial restitution. If you don’t consult the book before doing something that might not be safe, well, you’re now accountable for misusing things so maybe you’ll be more careful. And if not, one less person taking up space on planet Earth. . If you want to smoke or ride a motorcycle without a helmet, feel free to, but you have to accept the consequences of your actions – warning labels let people blame others, which is the second biggest reason to eliminate them; society can’t afford to pay for what people should accept personal culpability for. Imagine how much less products would cost if manufacturers didn’t have to pay out to people who have sued them after improper use of their products.

Removing the warning labels from things will make parenting more interactive, because the vast majority of people would like to see their children live to maturity. More parents would do things with their children, in the interest of keeping them safe, but maybe parents and children would in time grow to like each other’s company.

Oh sure, at first there will be a huge increase in accidental deaths, what with people mixing drugs and alcohol alone, but the results will be worth it. Imagine a utopia in which everyone is responsible for their own welfare…how sweet it would be.

Like I said, it was supposed to be a joke, but…would the realistic ramifications for inacting such a policy be positive or negative?

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Remember now, the only reason companies even bother putting the warning labers there in the first place is to avoid lawsuits. What we need to do is change the law such that companies would not be liable for damages resulting from misuse of their products or violations of common sense.

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:rolleyes:
The problem, elfkin477, is that your proposal would weed out the young (not children, but teens and young adults) much more quickly than it would the middle-aged and older folks.Like the grand plans you mention, it would only make matters worse.
We humans are much too far removed from the food chain for natural selection to work it’s magic.
Pity.
Peace,
mangeorge

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I disagree. If the teaching of the replacement (guide to common sense), was implimented in early elementary grades as proposed, young people would better suited to existance without warning labels than their elders. Of course, a provision to teach those over 10 when it’s first outlawed would have to be in effect.

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I have noticed that some people tend to elevate “survival of the fitteset” from a general trend in nature to some sort of moral imperative. Such attitudes have always struck me as absurd.

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I’m basing my opinion on a general knowledge of the rate of injury and death due to to activities such as driving, drinking, drug overdose, gunplay, and the like.
I could add smoking, because that almost always begins at a young age. But because of the slow process of death from smoking, I guess it doesn’t count.
Isn’t the rate of injury and death due to some activity by the victim higher among the young than the old?
Peace,
mangeorge

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It may be, mangeorge, that the TRULY inept and asinine have either weeded themselves out by the time their peers reach middle age, learned from their mistakes by the time their peers reach middle age, or did something so amazingly, profoundly stupid that the warning label could never have accounted for it, and got rich enough from a lawsuit stemming from their profound ignorance and lack of sense to have someone follow them around all day to make sure they don’t try it again.

–Tim

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I wonder just how much, per item, these extra bits of labeling actually cost. There’s one, about fetal alchohol syndrome, on a bottle of wine sitting on my counter. How much of the $10-$12 price of that pretty good merlot went to pay for that small blurb? I don’t know. I did a little search, but didn’t find much.
Of course what we’re really talking about here is annoyance, but the question of cost always comes up.
One could ask elfkin477’s question about stop signs, could one not? I know better than to smash into another car, but I’m sure that stop signs do save lives and injury. Even among the better educated. :wink:
But I’m sure that eliminating all traffic control would also go a long way in weeding out the ol’ gene pool.
Besides, like someone mentioned, those labels save companies a lot in lawsuits.
And stupidity isn’t heriditary, nor is it confined to any social group. Come to Berkeley sometime and observe the actions of some of these professors. :smiley:
So, to address the OP, I think that a cost/benefit analysis would find the effect (of elimination) to be somewhat negative. Elimination of labels, that is. Not, well, you know.
Peace,
mangeorge

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I would be tempted to agree with the OP, except for one fact: those who would really benefit from a warning label instructing them not to place the chainsaw in any of their body cavities by and large would be the ones who don’t read the warning labels. Following from that, removing the really stupid warning labels wouldn’t change anything. Removing the important and useful ones would tend to kill the more advanced among us, as they are the ones using complicated systems that actually need warning labels.

The vast majority of warning labels I have ever seen appeared to be carefully thought-out reminders on complicated equipment. A little reminder now and then is exactly what people need. Mixing bleach and ammonia? Well, heck, it’s completely logical that it produces chloramine gas. If a two year old child can’t just look at those products and tell immediately that they’re dangerous, they are inherently less valuable to the population than those of us who can deduce chemical interactions on simple observation. Woe betide you if you do not know EXACTLY what your cleaning products contain without being told by a a label. That reminds me of a physicist I worked under, who informed us one day that a metal bar ‘looked magnetic.’ The same goes for lemon and other food-scented cleaning products.

Human society has, by its nature, subverted natural selection and introduced enough artificial situations that it wouldn’t really work properly any more. Natural selection is not taking place in the same sense as it does in the wild.

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I kinda like the OP. One caveat… I think the listing of ingredients on foodstuffs should be maintained. I don’t hold people responsible for their allergies, just their stupidities.

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Personaly, I fail to see what is wrong with weeding them out at the teen and young adult level. More likely to eliminate them from the gene pool before they have a chance to breed and pass on the stupid genes, but allows them to live long enough to be “judged” stupid by their own actions.

You aren’t convincing me that this is a bad thing, mangeorge.

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pretty funny OP (although a little scandalous).
Not feasible to me though. I’m betting that the countries that have the most warning labels are also the ones with the lowest birth rates. I don’t know if anyone noticed, but the GenXer’s aren’t exactly breeding like rabbits.

What really might happen is that we wind up with a bunch of crippled people who get rushed to the emergency room.

If you want natural selection to kick back in, I think you’d have to get rid of health care. This wouldn’t make any allowances for intelligence of course. Stephen Hawking would have died a long time ago under that plan.

Actually, natural selection, in general, has little to do with intelligence. It just happens to be one of the adaptive strategies that humans excel at. So what you’re proposing is not natural at all, it’s really an artificial form of selection which values one adaptive strategy over others.

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No, ephedra, we’ve bypassed natural selection long enough ago that we should be in the bloom of intellectual selection, or “only the intelligent survive”. How can we evolve and mature intellectually as a society when the major dum-dums are still hanging around and fucking it up for us? I say get rid of the damn warning labels and weed out the idjits. It’d make for a smarter, less frustrating life for everyone remaining. Keep health care, because even smart people get hurt. It’s the truly stupid ones that manage to wipe themselves out in one fell swoop. The moderately stupid ones may manage to severly injure themselves, but with health care, there’s a chance that after living they’ll reform their asinine ways. I say, if you’re dumb enough to do something that kills you, you’re probably too dumb to live. Hey, wait. You were too dumb to live. I must be right… :smiley:

–Tim

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Hell people, stupidity (or it’s close cousin: stoopidity) isn’t an ‘either-or’ issue. Very few people are stupid ALL of the time (although there are some) just as very few people are intelligent all of the time. Most of us are blindly stupid at times and complete and utter genius’ at others. Most of the time, however, we’re plain average. I’m thinking this labelling idea would, at best, eliminate a few true bozo’s and the rest would simply be unlucky. But what the hell: maybe luck is genetically inheritable too!

So I guess I’m all for it… :wink:

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You’re right, Wabbit, stupidity isn’t an ‘either/or’ issue. But that’s because stupidity isn’t related to intelligence. It’s more a component of common sense, and does tend to wax and wane in most people.
But I don’t agree that warning labels should be discontinued. They don’t diminish my enjoyment of life at all, and they can be entertaining.

particlewill sez;;

Oh yeah? So who’s gonna hand you that quarter pounder at Mc D’s? :wink:
Peace,
mangeorge

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You know, I read something startlingly similar in George Carlin’s book, “Napalm and Silly Putty”. Pick up the book if you like anything by GC, he’s a genius.