Thank you MikeMarotta. That is very helpful. So if Ayn Rand says that we can look at an environmental situation at a workplace and predict a likelihood of harm to a worker and then take action against the employer - before harm to an employee has occurred, then that implies a set of standards external to the workplace against which the employer's environment can be compared. If fault is found with the results of that comparison, then action may be taken against the employer (even in absence of a actual case of injury) for the crime of 'having generated a dangerous environment'.

Hmmm.

Jan

Yes. It is what family and friends and tribes and nations are for.

Jan

I like the image, but will add to it: But not totally nude - wearing a revolver. And drinking a beer too...

Jan

Haha...yeah. I hang with the rattlers around here sometimes - finding them fascinating. My neighbor, a snake collector, picks them up with his bare hands (no thanks).

Kids run rampant all over the place. I get a bit paranoid - clearing the yard of black widows and snakes. Lots of black widows here too. I friggin hate those things! They are nasty.

Elton John once said that true luxury is being able to mow your lawn in the nude.

Don't forget that you never "own" your home, as you always owe property taxes

Right, you are. With freedom comes responsibility. The snake owner has the freedom to own a poisonous reptile. He, therefore, has a responsibility to protect people from it. Since he was negligent, he should be prosecuted.
I can see both sides of the problem over the purple jungle set. I live in a small town where a person who owned a large building painted it a very bright shade of pink. The people who live near this structure saw their property values go down, and they also lost some of their peace and quiet because of all the cars driving by to take a look.
This country could use some common sense.

Not to beat a dead horse. . . . (or any other aphorism wherein one takes on the common wisdom).
About a dozen years ago I was vice president of a Homeowner's Association in good old California. It was a high end new development. Rules were strict about almost everything, and everyone who bought in (or rented there, or purchased a used home) had to agree to the then current CC&R's as part of their recorded deed.
For a certain percentage of homeowners, the CC&R's represented something representing authority for them to attack, almost constantly. On homeowner built a custom home and painted the outside quite gaudily (almost purple, actually) in defiance, and had his lawyer present at every conversation where we pointed out his transgressions. (Did I mention he was a leftist history professor who had recently won a Pulitzer, which he reminded everyone of at each meeting?)
But I digress, and here's the point:
IF one gives one's word (signs an agreement, executes a contract, use your own vernacular) is he or she not bound to that agreement, and if he/she chooses not to comply with it, then of course he/she (gotta be PC) has the opportunity to relocate and thereby void the agreement? As others on the list point out, it is a choice, and free people make choices. Free people also keep their agreements, IMHO. The idea that it's "unfair" or "takes away my rights" is to me invalid since one has already made an agreement giving away certain rights.
By the way, I resigned after one year. It was a constant fight. One of the rules in the CC&R's was that "garage doors shall always be closed." Yet somehow everyone was able to get into and out of their garages, apparently without breaking the rules. You buy into fascism, that's what you get.

one person's logic is another person's rationalization!!! -- j
.

Why would you waste being born stupid?;-)

Actually, Jan, I agree with you completely. I particularly like your thought that the owner should pay for the cost of finding the snake and also for any damage done.

Kill all of his snakes so it can't happen again and if he doesn't like it let him move. of course kill the one that got away when you find it.

The hardest things to plan for are the unexpected ones to be sure. I still remember learning how slippery bricks can be during a slight drizzle. I found out going about 1 mph in a Sam's club parking lot trying to turn into a parking slot. Right into another car- so slow, but totally out of control !!. I dont know what a king cobra really looks like, but anything slithering and 8 feet long would send me running

Cobras regularly kill people in populations that live around them. Those folks surely know all about them. They are nasty critters. I can't imagine running across that snake anywhere in America. Pretty hard to plan for that. We live around rattlers and my kids know about those. Rattlers are pretty shy, though. I wouldn't necessarily place all the blame on the parents if some toddler wandering around in his back yard gets nailed by this thing. I was using a little bit of sarcasm above, by the way. A little... In general, society doesn't like kids, surely doesn't really value them. Playset bad. Wild cobra, eh...

I don't think that proving that a king cobra is a risk to anyone with. A functioning Brian stem.

HOA follies: My property is on a private dirt road in a cypress bayhead on a brown water canal, I have been here 25 years, I am "grandfathered in" as it applies to zoning, property use, etc. - as long as I am the property owner, no one can impose their will on me. A few years ago the 40 acre sod farm adjoining my property was sold to a developer, they sold "conservation lots" that overlooked the bayhead - my bayhead, for $800,000.00 a pop, they also imposed a strict HOA that restricts the color of paint, what type of vehicle you can park in your driveway, etc. Well, to say I was not happy about the development is an understatement, but, as a free market kinda guy, I did`nt cause too much of a ruckus. I chose to embrace MY free market principals in response, namely, we can shoot on the back property, so we do. We have celebrations of Freedom on our property a couple times a year, upwards of 200 people gather for a weekend of live music, food, drink and various merriment activities. We also decided to expand our event photography business to offer multi camera video shoots for local bands for upload on their websites, as well as the occasional movie scene shoot. The point of all this is, the folks that paid large for their house and pay large monthly sums to an HOA that regulates their life to minutia cannot regulate, control, or otherwise alter my chosen use of my property, which renders the HOA as effective as an 8 foot stuffed king cobra. Is it wrong that I enjoy setting up a live band on a Saturday morning in the woods several hundred yards beyond the control of the HOA ? Is it wrong that I take great pleasure in shooting in the same location? I maintain it is not, as I, unlike the poor fools that paid outrageous sums for "security", refused to allow my property rights to be usurped by a select group of would be authority figures. I am, however friendly and always smile wide and wave at those poor souls from my treestand that overlooks the "community".

The problem is proving a risk. The EPA would claim that they have proven that there is a terrible risk from CO2 so they can severely punish financially any company that is producing CO2.

When you are dealing with unrealized risks the word 'proved' becomes very important.

One small correction, John. SOME of you are really good at logic, some not so much, and the rest, YOU'VE GOTTA BE KIDDING!

I understand that argument, but it troubles me. First of all , the HOA rules transcend the owner who agreed to them. They stay with the land. True, future owners can decide NOT to buy there. I am one of those. I wont live in a place that has HOA. HOA rules tend to get more and more restrictive over time and they can be changed by "votes" of the board. What if the rules prohibited any display of ones philosophy or religion, or forbid being a jew or mormon. Other than the fact that it would be illegal today, what about the morality of it? It just seems like a bad road to go down. I think that working with the neighbors to have an attractive community would be a better way to go. Maybe one of the neighbors has arthritis and cant bend over to pick weeds and someone could actually help him instead of reporting him to the HOA where he gets fined. Maybe someone wants to plant snapdragons because it reminds him of a better time in his/her life, but its against the HOA rules that you cant change the flowers that are in the yard?

What if you bought into a neighborhood with an HOA that prohibits weed filled yards. You agree to it. You are assured the neighbor across the street agreed to it (thereby giving up his right to a yard full of weeds). You paid extra for this assurance. At that point don't you have some right to not see a yard full or weeds across the street? And isn't that neighbor trampling on your right?

It could be if the rules let the gulch group take away its citizens rights. I say if you either own your house or you dont. If you do, you should be able to do with it what you want. If what you want takes away the RIGHTS of the others, then there is a problem. Somehow I just dont see how a few weeds in the yard, or the planting of 'unapproved' plants violates anyones rights.

Don't know about circuses - Having a 3-ring circus in DC and 50 semi-local circuses seems to be enough for me...
You bring up a good point regarding the flu, or any other infectious desease and associated immunizations. I've been on the fence on this issue. Seems to me that both sides have valid points. In Japan people voluntarily put masks on when they have a flu, yet I remember when my son was in child care, there was one kid who had green crap running out of his nose all the time and we had to keep our son home because of that (while paying for the child care). Eventually, the resolution was to pull our kid out of that childcare. But that begs a question - does the owner of the childcare has the right to stop the infectious kid?

I think you make a good point

just because there was a practical conclusion in that case, does not mean there was a moral basis for such onerous methods. Prescriptive is what all true regulatory rules are based on. That is not how a free society works.

Unfortunately I am in a place where I can't talk or listen to the radio.