PART 1
Your common sense is your natural ability to make good judgments and to behave in a practical and sensible way. As many people will say now, common sense is no longer common. Common sense has become a super power that only few people possess. I believe that every human being has the capacity to make good judgments but what we lack is selflessness. How we deal with issues is also now heavily dependent on political leaning. We never see the common good but how our position supports our political bias of left or right.
Every warehouse has bay doors and man doors. Man door is for people to walk in and out while bay doors is for docking of trailers. Simple. Right? A driver delivered a trailer to my work place and brought in the papers for signing. He passed through the man door. The bay door beside this man door was open and no trailer docked. I sign his papers and send him on his way. That's when he did an interesting thing. He ignores the man door he used to enter the building and decided to jump down through the bay door. He had a bit of a struggle doing this. He didn't know whether to sit down on the dock and jump down or stand on the dock and jump down. He got on his knees but couldn't get down. Eventually he jumps down, lands awkwardly and gingers off woth a slight limp. The man door was right there. He used it once. It worked. Use it again. Avoid possible injury. Before you laugh, I did, let me tell you that if you start paying attention today you will see that many people solve problems that way. That includes you and me.
When humans are faced with issues we seem to always find a way to ignore the simple common sense solution to the issue but start applying the hard things that only attack the symptoms but not the root cause.
A good example is climate change and the greenhouse effect. I have to state unequivocally that I am not an expert on anything. I am just stating my opinion. Now that I have that out of the way, let's keep going. Fossil fuel has become the fall guy in all this and for good reason. We want to replace combustible engines with electric vehicles, EV. This is brilliant and will reduce the greenhouse effect. Never mind that lithium, the material needed for batteries, has to be mined from the earth and causes damage to the environment. Also, bear in mind that commerce and trade cannot happen with lithium batteries. Fruits, vegetables, and meat for example, have to be transported from areas that have competitive advantage to areas that don't. Trains are greener than planes. If people stop flying and use trains more then more trains will go on rails. Does this increase the carbon footprint of trains or not. You tell me. With the population of the world projected to be nearly 10bn by 2050 I don't know what the numbers will look like when crunched. This means more food, more production, more driving, more everything. We all know that our growing number is the root cause of greenhouse but no one dares say that.
Let's move on to speeding and road safety. Remember, I am not an expert. I am just left wondering why we make engines that are powerful enough (more power means more gas usage) to reach 200km/hr in 5 minutes but our roads have speed limits of 100km/hr or even less. Why do we waste money on research and production of these cars but we have roads that won't allow those speeds? There's photo radar to check for speed but the vehicles have to be clearly marked so I can slow down when I see them and speed up when I'm past them? The reason given for why they are clearly marked is excellent. If you are obeying the speed limit why do you need the photo radar to be visible? The xirt of Edmonton spent $100,000 to make 28 photo radar trucks visible. It made about $40m from photo radar speed enforcement in 2019. Don't address the root cause. Treat the symptoms.
These are just thoughts that I have and wonder why the common sense things aren't done. Why do we spend money on things that don't seem to matter or things that matter because of political correctness/considerations? This is the first part. Meet me in the second part and be ready to have your bias challenged.
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