Quote:
Here’s a little story for you. Once upon a time, one of the greatest threats to the lives of American children was the common household refrigerator. This was because refrigerators closed with big honking latches that couldn’t be unlatched from the inside. Kids, being creatures with underdeveloped brains as a rule, climbed inside them to pretend to be glazed hams or something, and they couldn’t get out and suffocated.
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So people got upset about this, as Americans are wont to do when children die and are American, and the refrigerator manufacturers quickly formed a commission dedicated to informing consumers that a commission had been formed. They did not redesign the refrigerators. They resisted any government attempts to force them to redesign the refrigerators. They used a set of excuses that are so standard they should be sold on Amazon as the Corporate Excuses Starter Kit.
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• The problem is not really a problem.
• To the extent that the problem is a problem, the problem is not our problem.
• You know who we blame? The victims. If they weren’t so dumb, they wouldn’t have been victimized.
• The problem cannot be solved.
• To the extent that the problem can be solved, it can’t be solved by us.
• To the extent the problem can be solved by us, it can’t be solved by us without destroying the United States economy and plunging us into a despotic nightmare of government mandates and low-quality products.
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While Big Refrigerator was a powerful lobby, it was nowhere near as powerful as Big Oil is today, so these excuses were seen as a pathetic attempt to maintain the status quo, rather than a wise pronouncement from those able to see past the greed and power-lust of a monolithic conspiracy of, um, research scientists, and the Refrigerator Safety Act was passed.
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Fridge makers were required to do what they claimed was impossible: create a refrigerator that does not kill children.
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They put their best minds to the task, because they had to, and came up with an incredible invention called a “magnet.†Turns out if you line the doors with magnets, then the door stays closed and dumb little kids can get out if they need to. Go fig.
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By the way, no child in the U.S. has died from suffocating in a fridge designed after the Refrigerator Safety Act was passed. Not bad for impossible.
Reply
Here’s a little story for you. Once upon a time, one of the greatest threats to the lives of American children was the common household refrigerator. This was because refrigerators closed with big honking latches that couldn’t be unlatched from the inside. Kids, being creatures with underdeveloped brains as a rule, climbed inside them to pretend to be glazed hams or something, and they couldn’t get out and suffocated.
.
So people got upset about this, as Americans are wont to do when children die and are American, and the refrigerator manufacturers quickly formed a commission dedicated to informing consumers that a commission had been formed. They did not redesign the refrigerators. They resisted any government attempts to force them to redesign the refrigerators. They used a set of excuses that are so standard they should be sold on Amazon as the Corporate Excuses Starter Kit.
.
• The problem is not really a problem.
• To the extent that the problem is a problem, the problem is not our problem.
• You know who we blame? The victims. If they weren’t so dumb, they wouldn’t have been victimized.
• The problem cannot be solved.
• To the extent that the problem can be solved, it can’t be solved by us.
• To the extent the problem can be solved by us, it can’t be solved by us without destroying the United States economy and plunging us into a despotic nightmare of government mandates and low-quality products.
.
While Big Refrigerator was a powerful lobby, it was nowhere near as powerful as Big Oil is today, so these excuses were seen as a pathetic attempt to maintain the status quo, rather than a wise pronouncement from those able to see past the greed and power-lust of a monolithic conspiracy of, um, research scientists, and the Refrigerator Safety Act was passed.
.
Fridge makers were required to do what they claimed was impossible: create a refrigerator that does not kill children.
.
They put their best minds to the task, because they had to, and came up with an incredible invention called a “magnet.†Turns out if you line the doors with magnets, then the door stays closed and dumb little kids can get out if they need to. Go fig.
.
By the way, no child in the U.S. has died from suffocating in a fridge designed after the Refrigerator Safety Act was passed. Not bad for impossible.
Reply
The horror! The horror!
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“Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it.†– Richard Feynman
