I like focusing on good things that are happening in the world today, but I have to be honest about concerning things that are going as well. Here are a few of the latest, involving feeding the homeless, spying drones, and drug-resistant diseases:
1. Increasing bans on feeding the homeless. Reason explains with frustrating detail the growing trend of local governments restricting volunteers from feeding the homeless in their city. Some of it has to do with liberal-minded regulations about tracking the health and safety of the food. Thankfully, it’s not all bad news – the article also discusses how most of these laws have inspired challenges, some of which have already had some success.
2. Spying drones. While local governments are limiting our abilities to feed the hungry, the federal government is expanding its ability to spy on its citizens with new drone technology. In February Congress passed a bill “to make it easier for the government to fly unmanned spy planes in U.S. airspace.” Judge Napolitano is outraged about an Air Force memo about drones being deployed “to collect information about U.S. persons.” I might be tempted to chalk those fears up to libertarian paranoia, but this week we learned the EPA is already using drones to spy on cattle farmers. Somehow I expect we’ll be hearing more stories like this.
Certainly, the coming wave of drone technology has many potential positive uses, especially for the mapping and agricultural industries and the like. On the privacy front, maybe citizens will use them to spy on the government, or to spy on the spy-ers in a high-tech version of the radar detector arms race. But I can’t say I’m looking forward to any of that. Privacy is quickly becoming inevitably impossible.
3. Diseases growing in resistance to drugs. This week we saw headlines about the growing spread of drug-resistant gonorrhea. But don’t think this is only a problem for the sexually promiscuous; it’s just the latest example of a disturbing trend of diseases developing resistance to antibiotics along with a decrease in the approval of new ones. Now maybe stifling regulations are the only reason for the slowdown in new antibiotics, and we will see the light to demolish those rules before the deadly diseases of previous centuries overcome all of our medicines and wipe us all out. Or maybe there are other reasons not to be worried; after all, we haven’t seemed to have any huge health crises in the modern developed world yet. But there seems to be evidence that the chance of having one is growing.
Many liberals are only liberals because they believe the left is the compassionate side. If #1 continues to grow, it may end up just pushing liberals into the conservative and libertarian camps.
For #2, as technology increases, the potential misuses of technology also increase. It’s an interesting question whether governments or citizens will win the technology race, but it’s definitely something to keep an eye on.
For #3, while there is growing antibiotic resistance, I think there’s also good reason to believe we’ll stay one step ahead. New classes of drugs have broader targets than traditional antibiotics, giving bacteria and viruses little to no chance to adapt. And the emerging field of synthetic biology has the potential to revolutionize the struggle against disease.
Many liberals are only liberals because they believe the left is the compassionate side. If #1 continues to grow, it may end up just pushing liberals into the conservative and libertarian camps.
For #2, as technology increases, the potential misuses of technology also increase. It’s an interesting question whether governments or citizens will win the technology race, but it’s definitely something to keep an eye on.
For #3, while there is growing antibiotic resistance, I think there’s also good reason to believe we’ll stay one step ahead. New classes of drugs have broader targets than traditional antibiotics, giving bacteria and viruses little to no chance to adapt. And the emerging field of synthetic biology has the potential to revolutionize the struggle against disease.