?One of my pet peeves is what I see as a growing tendency toward no longer expecting people to be responsible for themselves.

It seems that there is constant agitation for legislation to either make products safer or take potentially dangerous products off the market. There is a current campaign in my community to outlaw lawn mowers because of the number of serious accidents due to fools operating them.

If the tricycle (or worse yet, the bicycle) were invented today, it would be declared unsafe and illegal for use by children under the age of 16.

There are also what I consider to be frivolous lawsuits, which do not consider the actions of the so called victims. For example 5-10 years ago a woman spilled extremely hot coffee in her lap and successfully sued Macdonalds. She was awarded about two million in punitive damages (over medical expenses), later reduced by the judge to about half a million. That is the worst case I am aware of, but there are others. Half a million for making the coffee too hot. Nothing considered to be her fault for spilling the coffee. There used to be a concept of contributory negligence. If the victim was partially to blame, she/he was considered responsible for some of the damages, and nothing would be awarded if the victim were considered the primary cause.

Many years ago, a person who sued because he was damaged by smoking would be laughed out of court. Who forced him to smoke? 50 years ago everybody knew it was not healthy. Back then, they just did not realize how unhealthy it was.

When I was young, almost everybody was able to buy fireworks, which were lots of fun. I even made some potent explosives, like nitrocellulose. Now there are laws about such products and activities. Until 1913, there were no laws in the US relating to controlled substances. If you wanted to buy and drink cyanide, it was OK with the government. Nowadays, using relatively harmless marijuana can get you put in jail (BTW: I do not use it or any other illegal substance).

Damn it all, why not try to educate fools and spend money informing people about hazardous products and activities, instead of trying to protect them from or reward them for foolish behavior? In the long run, trying to protect fools from their folly seems like a bad idea. From an evolutionary point of view, it is counter productive.