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by nerdsniper 29 days ago
In general for me, the default position for recreational activities should be “okay” until they’re proven dangerous to others.

Wanna jump out of an airplane with no parachute and see if one of your buddies can strap one on you before you hit the ground? Totally fine with me.

Wanna base-jump off a skyscraper in NYC with a wing-suit ? Fuck off. You’ll probably hurt someone else who didn’t sign up for that.

That said, I’d also like the CPSC to look into whether products like this are safe and hold manufacturers accountable for their consequences.

I’d also very much appreciate it if the FTC and FDA actually did thorough random testing of drugs and supplements (recreational or therapeutic) to ensure that the actual ingredients and doses match the label. The FDA requires drug manufacturers to be in compliance, but doesn’t actually test drugs themselves, they mostly just look over paperwork to see if the processes followed would probably produce the correct product and assume the paperwork isn’t manipulated.

In fact, the FDA actively works to prevent people, even the Pentagon, from doing independent 3rd party drug testing of common pharmaceuticals [0]

0: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-12-05/pentagon-... / https://archive.is/eyWSn

1 comments

>Wanna jump out of an airplane with no parachute and see if one of your buddies can strap one on you before you hit the ground? Totally fine with me.

>Wanna base-jump off a skyscraper in NYC with a wing-suit ? Fuck off. You’ll probably hurt someone else who didn’t sign up for that.

Are they not the same?

Also the aeroplane itself is a highly regulated piece of this system

Not the same. One is generally over very sparsely populated land. The other is in between manhattan skyscrapers.

Also the first example (jumping out of plane with no parachute at all) is perfectly legal.

So who decides the threshold of public risk that is appropriate?