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This is nuts Found on Cantillon's Paradise, Tuesday, March 15, 2005
The parents of a 23-year-old activist killed while trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home is suing Caterpillar Inc., the company that made the bulldozer that ran over her. The federal lawsuit... alleges that Caterpillar violated international and state law by providing specially designed bulldozers to
Israeli Defense Forces that it knew would be used to demolish homes and endanger people. Tuesday, March 15, 2005 posted by David Skarbek @,
http://cantillonparadise.blogspot.com/
Bulldozer B.S.
The parents of a 23-year-old activist killed while trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home is suing Caterpillar Inc., the company that made the bulldozer that ran over her. The federal lawsuit... alleges that Caterpillar violated
international and state law by providing specially designed bulldozers to Israeli Defense Forces that it knew would be used to demolish homes and endanger people.
So this activist chick jumps in front of a bulldozer and gets run over and her parents blame the bulldozer maker? This is nuts. Clearly, the woman jumping in front of the bulldozer should shoulder the blame. Heck, you can even blame the guy driving it! But how in the world are you going to blame the shareholders of a company that built the
bulldozer?!
I imagine the pain that this dead girl's parents are feeling is very strong and very real, and I don't diminish that one bit. But attacking Caterpillar with lawsuits is not going to help this. This is a symptom of the disease that is rotting away society. The disease is everywhere. It is on campuses, in homeless shelters, in the welfare line,
in the halls of government at the local, state, and federal level. This disease, the obsession that "I'm a victim!", is quickly cutting away the foundation upon which a just, prosperous, and virtuous society is built. Individual responsibility is certainly being obliterated if a person can in all seriousness blame Caterpillar for this death.
I hope that the true motivation is greed. Why you ask? While I don't consider "greed is good" to cover all instances of it's existence, greed seems like a better trait than the refusal to take responsibility for one's actions. In an environment with well defined property rights, I believe that Adam Smith got it right "It is not from the
benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." Greed, as the engine of self interested action, runs the capitalist system that has brought great prosperity and wealth to society as a whole. In juxtaposition to this, refusal to take responsibility carries no benefit
to society. It is only a parasite.
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