It's an Ill Wind

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

On Sat, Mar 14, 2020 at 8:55 PM Peter Fairbrother <peter at tsto.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On 15/03/2020 02:46, Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH wrote:
>
> The point of government is to prevent crime,
> > not tragedy.
>
> There I must disagree. The point of government is precisely to prevent
> tragedy.
>
> As in protection against invasion by foreign hordes, or for that matter
> viruses.

I slightly misspoke - the mission of government is to prosecute crime,
not prevent it, because ultimately prevention is impossible.

But here we see the problem with your scope of government - everything
unfortunate becomes defined as a tragedy, and therefore legitimizes
all government intrusion into the private sphere.

War, that is, invasion by a foreign power, is a species of crime.
Illness is not.

Kurt