Friday, January 1, 2010

The very essence of insanity

Albert Einstein once said that Insanity is: ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’ Is it then a surprise that government, anyone of them, make this sentence come true over and over again?

For instance, the Russian government has introduced a series of measures aimed at curbing alcohol abuse among its vodka-loving population. Among others a minimum price of about $3 a bottle.

You know, I don’t think there’s a single country on the planet that haven’t, one time or the other, had rulers trying to ban alcohol or at least lower the drinking. I know Swedish kings have tried it; US tried it during the 20’s and so on. How many times have they succeeded? Never, not a single time.

Russia should be no stranger to this either. Josef Stalin tried the same 60 years ago.

Let’s think about that for a moment. A totalitarian state wherein the government controls virtually everything in society, a country where KGB spied on everything and everyone, and all of it headed by a warmongering sycophant. In such a country were the punishment for drinking, selling or making vodka may have given you a trip to the Gulag, but still people didn’t stop drinking. In fact people drank even more then before the dictatorships decree. So why the hell do anyone thing it will ever work? It can’t. To all you absolutists, abolitionists and religious nuts that want to ban or outlaw alcohol, give up. You cannot win. Never. In the thousands of years of human civilization and hundreds of times tried it have never worked.

Give up and let people be.

4 comments:

  1. Perhaps the very rich rulers with two or more nice houses a fleet of cars four foreign holidays a year a pretty wife kids at a boarding school job for life fantastic pension scheme private health cover might take a minute to wonder why people with no job or a crap job aneathetise themselves with alcohol at every opportunity? When they figure that out perhaps they might have to work hard on causes of alcoholism and not availibility of the drug. Sheesh.

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  2. Russians drink their life, health and family away. Yes, they can be that stupid, so naturally the government is concerned that their potential tax-payers die 20-30 years sooner than the population in the neighboring countries.

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  3. "I BELIEVE THAT PEOPLE ON THIS PLANET, GENERALLY SPEAKING, ARE A VERY BRAINLESS BUNCH."
    Well, well well...Me too, actually!!
    And I also understand that the Russian state and taxpayaers, are not keen on paying the healthcare costs for them Brainless Alcoholic Bunch! You cannot win, u say. U are right about that, but you can improve this tragic situation...

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  4. No, you cannot improve the situation. As I wrote, every time any government has tried this, the people have been drinking more, not less. And if the government takes it too far, we get criminal organization which we noticed in the US with emerging Mafia and in USSR under Stalin. If people want to drink, they will. There’s no stopping it, you cannot reduce it. That’s my point. Whatever the government does, they will make things worse.

    Also, the very notion of having politicians deciding what we should drink or not is unethical.

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