At 05:50 PM 10/17/00 -0700, Nathan Saper wrote:
On Tue, Oct 17, 2000 at 12:07:00PM -0400, David Honig wrote:
Not yet. But I believe the UK takes samples of everyone arrested (not necessarily guilty) of minor crimes, and some US states and cities do or periodically propose doing this or more.
The next question is: What do they do with this info? Insurance companies and the like use it to justify discrimination against people likely to develop certain medical conditions.
Discrimination in the good sense, like discriminating dangerous vs. safe. What do you think insurance companies *should* do, if not make various discriminations about risk? Are you against car insurers asking about your other genetic characteristics (e.g., sex)?
The point is, the government is being used to do corporations' dirty work.
What a government can legitimately do should be reigned in by a constitution. And no more.
And I'm much less afraid of a government that is (in theory, if not always in practice) somewhat connected to the people
What are you smoking?
(representatives want to get reelected, after all) than I am a corporation that can do basically whatever the fuck it wants, with little or no hope of punishment.
Corps have to please their customers or go extinct. Real simple. Only govt can print money. You *should* be concerned about various individuals (legislators, their wives, cultists, etc.) trying to get the government to use its violence to accomplish their way. You *shouldn't* be concerned about the _mutually consensual interactions_ of the individuals (and voluntary associations thereof, like corps.) within your borders. Government should *only* be concerned with nonconsensual interactions. dh