Safety Third

We live in a culture where "Safety First" is increasingly taken for granted, and has been since roughly the mid-1980s following a series of moral panics and zealotry in general.  While it is generally a good thing that safety has largely improved since then (prior to that, Americans were really quite cavalier overall, and it really showed in the statistics across multiple domains), there can also be too much of a good thing as well.  

Most people at least intuitively know this on some level, and that's why even the most die-hard safety zealots seldom (if ever) practice what they preach in all areas of life all of the time, at least not for very long.  Even they still conveniently carve out selective and arbitrary exceptions for themselves and their own chosen "guilty" pleasures and activities.  

From the abomination that is the 21 drinking age to the War on (people who use a few particular) Drugs to increasingly stringent rules and heavy monitoring of youth to lack of free play among children to prison-like schools to actual mass incarceration to the sexual counterrevolution dressed up as "culture wars" to the ever-encroaching nanny state to finally the ultimate culmination of safety zealotry, the pandemic lockdowns and related restrictions, we have clearly been sold a bill of goods in that regard.  And yet paradoxically, actual health safety statistics from life expectancy to violent deaths to traffic casualties have in the USA actually lagged behind peer nations, often well behind.  Thus, it's long past time to take a fresh approach.

We call that approach "Safety Third".  And it's really not an entirely novel idea, having been promoted in some form by diverse folks from "Dirty Jobs" pundit Mike Rowe (largely right-wing) all the way to contemporary philosopher Charles Eisenstein (largely left-wing).  That does NOT at all mean that safety is trivial or should be disregarded as such, far from it.  We do value safety as important, of course, but not THE most important thing, let alone the ultimate end-all-be-all of human flourishing.  

So if safety is third on the list of priorities, what are first and second then?  For example, Charles Eisenstein says "giving and receiving", not necessarily in that order.  That makes sense, if a bit vague perhaps, but we at the TSAP and Twenty-One Debunked would alternatively answer, "liberty and justice for all", not necessarily in that order.  Anything short of that is un-American.

Even the biggest safety zealots have to concede that.  For example, we could theoretically save even more lives by making the speed limit 21 and the drinking age 55 rather than the other way around, but we don't and never will.  Because deep down, we all know on some level that there are other important considerations as well in any free society worthy of the name.

It was indeed one of our Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin, who said, "Whoever gives up essential liberty for a little temporary safety, deserves neither and loses both."  After all, safety is a great servant, but a terrible master.  We would be wise to recognize that, in all areas of life.

At The End Of The Day, We're Not Japan

There are a lot of wonderful things about Japan.  The culture, the food, the technology, the games, the general lack of street crime and violence, and so on are all great.  But at the same time, there are some things about Japan that would absolutely NEVER fly in America, and for very good reason.

Take their extremely strict (even by global standards, not just by American standards!) approach to DUI, for example:

• The BAC limit for driving is a mere 0.03%, where as little as ONE standard drink will almost certainly put you over the limit for at least an hour or two (effectively zero tolerance).  For ALL ages, period.
• Penalties can range from up to three years in prison, a $5000 fine, and losing one's license for at least three months (which wouldn't matter if one is locked up for three years).  And you will almost certainly lose your job as well.  Again, for as little as ONE drink before driving.  OUCH!
• And if you have the audacity to exceed 0.04% when driving, which translates to one or at most two standard drinks in a couple hours or so (depending on body weight, gender, time, pace of drinking, food, etc.), it gets even worse still:  five years in prison, a $10,000 fine, and cancellation of one's license altogether.  DOUBLE OUCH!
• Above that second threshold, though, there are no further graduated penalties at the margin:  driving after one or two drinks is treated the same as driving after ten.
• But wait, there's more!  As if that wasn't bad enough, it's NOT only the driver who is on the hook for such harsh penalties.  Anyone who allows someone to get behind the wheel after drinking even ONE drink, including the passengers and anyone who served the driver, such as in restaurants and bars, and anyone who provided a vehicle to the driver, will also face roughly the same penalties.  It is collective responsibility taken to the extreme, basically.
• Oh, and this also applies to bicycle riders as well, by the way.  (But hey, at least they don't apply it to pedestrians though, as there are no laws against drunk walking or public drunkenness there.)
• And this is all very strictly enforced, of course.

In a word, WOW!  They are so strict that bars and restaurants will simply not let you order even ONE beer unless they confirm with you first that you will not be driving home.  They even have "skipper" taxi services for hire with two drivers:  one to drive your vehicle home, and one to pick up the first driver afterwards.  (Or sometimes just one driver with an e-bike to ride themself back, and then onto the next customer.) And the popularity of non-alcoholic beers and wines has predictably skyrocketed in Japan since these laws were passed in 2002 and 2007.  

And yes, it is true that Japan saw alcohol-related traffic fatalities drop by over half instantly, and by up to 80 percent over the next few years following the passage of these super-strict laws.  Significant decreases in such casualties were seen after each of both the 2002 (i.e. lowering the BAC limit from 0.05% to 0.03%) and 2007 (penalties for passengers, servers, and vehicle lenders) law changes, and both also involved a great stiffening of DUI penalties in general, as opposed to merely making the law harder to satisfy.  So on its own terms, it seems to have worked wonders, at least on the surface.  But at what cost, really?  

Baby, meet bathwater, basically.

Try to implement such a draconian law over here in the USA today, especially the part about punishing servers and passengers, and the very best you could hope for in terms of unintended consequences in our culture would be a deep-freeze chilling effect on what is left of in-person socialization, and it goes downhill from there.  

In any case, such a law is WAY outside of the Overton window for an individualistic society (not to mention a car culture with vast rural areas!) like the USA, so the odds of this ever happening here are quite slim to none indeed.  It is truly un-American, to say the least.  But both less extreme (in terms of criminal penalties) AND more extreme (in terms of lower BAC limits) versions of this have of course been applied to Americans under the arbitrary age of 21 for decades now:  just think of zero tolerance laws and social host liability laws.  And internal possession laws, constructive possession laws, use and lose laws, keg registration, and other face-saving ancillary laws to prop up the failed experiment that is the 21 drinking age as well.

Oh, and even with this law in place for two decades, Japan STILL has stubbornly refused to lower the drinking age to 18.  Even after lowering the age of majority from 20 to 18 effective in 2022, they still kept the drinking age and smoking age at 20, because reasons.  And that whole thing about easily getting beer and sake in vending machines (!) for the past few decades or so?  Well, now the vending machines will need to see (and scan) some ID, at least most of them, apparently, according to Reddit.

That said, Japan is actually surprisingly lax in general by American standards about things like public drunkenness (as long as one is not being disorderly, of course), drinking in public, drinking on public transportation, and even drinking in a car (!) as long as the driver isn't drinking.  And alcohol is available almost everywhere, from convenience stores to supermarkets to vending machines and even in fast-food restaurants as well. That's largely because no liquor licenses are required for serve alcohol on-premise in Japan, and even though such licenses are required to sell alcohol for off-premise, they aren't exactly hard to get.

Twenty-One Debunked strongly opposes drunk driving, of course, but still does NOT support such an extreme approach to it like they have in Japan.  Rather, we support a graduated BAC limit of 0.05% for administrative-only penalties, 0.08% for criminal penalties, 0.15% for "aggravated DUI" criminal penalties, and a limit of 0.00% if driving recklessly, and grudgingly support 0.00-0.02% zero tolerance for young and novice drivers, ideally based on number of years of licensed driving rather than age alone.  Riding a bicycle under the influence should be a traffic violation, not a crime.  (Walking under the influence should not be illegal at all in itself, of course.)  And we believe in individual responsibility, thus the only people punished should be the drinking drivers themselves, not the passengers or servers, as that would be un-American.  Thus, we also believe that dram shop and social host liability laws should be repealed, or at least greatly watered down, as far as consenting adults are concerned.

Crack down HARD on actual drunk drivers, with sobriety checkpoints (provided that they follow the Constitution, of course) and especially roving and saturation patrols as well.  "Rovin' Eyes....are watching YOU!!!"

(Contrary to what some believe, something approximating de facto "random breath testing" actually IS possible in the USA, they just have to be more creative about it.)

Repeat or high-BAC offenders, and especially those driving recklessly as well, should lose their licenses immediately and permanently, and go directly to jail.  Do NOT pass GO.  Do NOT collect $200.  Do the crime, do the time.  

Even first offenders (who have likely been doing it hundreds of times before getting caught the first time) should still be punished harshly enough to be a very serious deterrent as well.  We also need to expand the use of ignition interlocks for ALL DUI offenders, as well as things like DUI Courts and South Dakota's highly successful 24/7 Program.

Kill or maim someone else as a result of driving under the influence?  Throw away the key!  NO MERCY!

And yes, the "skipper" taxi and rideshare services are an excellent idea that should be implemented everywhere, as well as also extending the hours of public transportation where it currently exists.  There is no reason to make the perfect the enemy of the good, after all.  And that will also help the hospitality industry survive as well.

To Japan's credit, they have proven that it is indeed possible to completely separate drinking from driving.  We certainly have to give them kudos for that, no doubt.

But criminalizing and jailing experienced and responsible adult drivers (let alone those around them too!) for having ONE glass of wine or beer with dinner?  That is simply a bridge too far for any free society that has even the slightest hint of a car culture.  That's not public safety, that's lunacy!

(And as Japan has shown, it's NOT like even that will be enough to appease the ageists into lowering the drinking age, as there is really NO appeasing anyone like that.  Meanwhile, far less strict countries, even with car cultures, still have no qualms about letting 18 year olds drink, as long as the don't drive under the influence of course.)

And of course, we strongly believe that the drinking age should be lowered to 18, period, and yesterday is NOT soon enough.  Let America be America again.  If you're old enough to go to war, you're old enough to go to the bar.  'Nuff said.

After all, at the end of the day, we're NOT Japan.  We never were, and we never will be either.

One Silver Lining Of The Pandemic And Its Aftermath

Four years after the pandemic began, and roughly one year after the very last traces of the illiberal restrictions have been removed, one can observe that one particular and very platitudinous phrase seems to have vanished entirely from our lexicon.  It was a phrase that long predated the pandemic, and first became common about 40 years ago, which was used to cover any number of illiberal policies, most notably the 21 drinking age.  So what is it?

"If it saves even ONE life, it's worth it"

Those nine words have clearly been a very, very slippery slope towards totalitarianism, which really came to a head during the pandemic.  And both sides of the lockdown and mandates debate have since given that idea up for the time being recently.  Thus, we may actually have a chance temporarily to finally end other illiberal policies like the 21 drinking age and similar abominations.  Pendulum Theory can therefore be used to our advantage. 

Better thing to replace it with:  "Safety Third".  So what's first and second then?  Liberty and justice for all, not necessarily in that order.

What are we waiting for?

Safety Third

We live in a culture where "Safety First" is increasingly taken for granted, and has been since roughly the mid-1980s following a series of moral panics and zealotry in general.  While it is generally a good thing that safety has largely improved since then (prior to that, Americans were really quite cavalier overall, and it really showed in the statistics across multiple domains), there can also be too much of a good thing as well.  

Most people at least intuitively know this on some level, and that's why even the most die-hard safety zealots seldom (if ever) practice what they preach in all areas of life all of the time, at least not for very long.  Even they still conveniently carve out selective and arbitrary exceptions for themselves and their own chosen "guilty" pleasures and activites.  

From the abomination that is the 21 drinking age to the War on (people who use a few particular) Drugs to increasingly stringent rules and heavy monitoring of youth to lack of free play among children to prison-like schools to actual mass incarceration to the sexual counterrevolution dressed up as "culture wars" to the ever-encroaching nanny state to finally the ultimate culmination of safety zealotry, the pandemic lockdowns and related restrictions, we have clearly been sold a bill of goods in that regard.  And yet paradoxically, actual health safety statistics from life expectancy to violent deaths to traffic casualties have in the USA actually lagged behind peer nations, often well behind.  Thus, it's long past time to take a fresh approach.

We call that approach "Safety Third".  And it's really not an entirely novel idea, having been promoted in some form by diverse folks from "Dirty Jobs" pundit Mike Rowe (largely right-wing) all the way to contemporary philosopher Charles Eisenstein (largely left-wing).  That does NOT at all mean that safety is trivial or should be disregarded as such, far from it.  We do value safety as important, of course, but not THE most important thing, let alone the ultimate end-all-be-all of human flourishing.  

So if safety is third on the list of priorities, what are first and second then?  For example, Charles Eisenstein says "giving and receiving", not necessarily in that order.  That makes sense, if a bit vague perhaps, but we at the TSAP and Twenty-One Debunked would alternatively answer, "liberty and justice for all", not necessarily in that order.  Anything short of that is un-American.

It was indeed one of our Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin, who said, "Whoever gives up essential liberty for a little temporary safety, deserves neither and loses both."  After all, safety is a great servant, but a terrible master.  We would be wise to recognize that, in all areas of life.