Re: Well, duh!

Miss Elaine Eos <Misc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:Misc-8C9CBD.08370213062008@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

You have an example of the only means of saving someone's life or limb
is by appropriating someone else's property...?

Sure. I'm thinking of a made-for-TV movie I saw a couple decades
ago: A baby is born out in sticks with some complications.
It's hotternhell out and they manage to rig up an aquarium,
put wet towels on it and blow a fan over it to keep the baby
cool. The power has gone out, but there is a generator.
They can't get more gas for the generator because the pumps
rely on electricity. There's a classic "fat greedy slob"
character who has full gas cans in his trunk, but declines
to give it. Without the gas, the generator shuts down and
the baby will die. In the movie, the greedy guy gets guilted
into giving them the gas in the end. But if he hadn't,
the dad would have been justified in doing whatever he
needed to take the gas away from greedy guy.

Here's another that really happened. I was working for
the city at the time, and local grain elevator was building
new silos. The new silos were going next to the sewage
treatment ponds. Space was tight. We were running new
powerlines and such, while the construction crews were
building. At some point, the levee broke on the sewer
pond and sewage started running down the city streets.

There was a backhoe handy, and my boss told him to dig
a trench _from here to here_, thereby diverting the
flow of sewage to a safe place. The trench went across
someone's private land. The city essentially took a strip
of land away from the owner, who got quite irate, but
it was either put in an emergency sewer trench across
his land, or make the entire city sick. (OK, the "entire
city" was 2000 people, but still.) Yes, he was compensated.
He got about 1/20 of the price he decided that strip of land
was worth.

B.

--
Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
.

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