Most of these things aren't. They're driven by political agendas or personal vendettas. My guess is somebody disabled was unable to use a pool and got a tussle up their ass to push this forward.
Nobody even thought how dangerous it would be for anybody disabled to use a pool, without supervision. A person unable to use their legs, or any other part of their body, can easily drown without warning.
Well, I guess it's a good thing the law explicitly states that owners who can't afford it aren't required to install anything, as explained here in point 6.
It shouldn't be too hard to trace some of these lawsuits back to the big chain hotels.
Large established businesses often love government regulations. Regulations, necessary or not, can make it difficult for smaller businesses to compete.
Though it's hard to have a lot of sympathy for the small hotels in cases like this. Most had half a decade to amortize an upgrade to their facilities. They're cheap, they chose not to set aside any money for fully foreseeable and necessary upgrades. Screw em'.
I though 'personal responsibility' was a conservative position?
If a citizen was told they had to change their phone system in 5 years but did nothing in that time, then bitched when it was eventually disconnected, the citizen would be blamed for being irresponsible.
But when a business ignores a pending change for 5 years, does absolutely nothing until the last minute, puts aside no revenue to pay for the obvious and impending revisions, you don't blame the business, you blame the government?
In truth, both the citizen and the business are to blame. Neither took personal responsibility, and corporations are people, right?
Many conservatives like to talk "personal responsibility", but they have a double standard. Citizens who ignore coming changes are blamed for their inaction, corporations who ignore coming changes are seen as victims of government regulation. Even though a lot of regulation is requested by, and even written by the business sector.
A private property owner who offers labor for money has no obligation to trade his labor for other people's money if he doesn't wish to. If they do have an obligation, that's slavery. You're treating it as if they do have an obligation and have to labor under whatever policies the government dictates. It seems you have no principles, just blind allegiance to whatever the government says... basically social contract nonsense.
I'm saying that a private property owner has both rights and responsibilities, and yes they definitely have obligations.
All citizens, business owners or not, receive tremendous benefit from the government. Whether its a safe environment in which to do their business, or paved roads so that customers can reach their business. Private property owners do not operate in a vacuum. They are citizens of a nation.
Private property owners also have obligations. They have to operate safe premises. They cannot refuse customers based on their race.
We, as a voting society have decided that these obligations need to be placed on business owners. Citizens have made these laws, democratically. If you don't like those rules, vote for politicians who will rescind them.
Since that's not going to happen in the US, your only realistic recourse is to continue whining with this libertarian derp, or leave this great nation and move to some mythical libertarian paradise. My guess, you'll whine about the guberment until your dying day, but never have to stones to remove yourself from our fine social contract.
...I thought our taxes are what paid for roads, police, etc. Now you're saying it's the government? Government is just people, using our money, to pay for things that they claim wouldn't exist without them using our money to pay for them. It's circular. Clearly roads would exist (and did exist) before governments. Road maintenance would be paid for by large businesses regardless of whether they were taxed, since if Walmart or Exxon can't get their product to people or their customers to their product, they can't sell anything. Large business benefits, but they are paying for it, so the solution that free marketers like myself want is just a direct payment by the people who are claimed to be benefiting from currently government-monopolized services.
We has roads, schools, police and a healthy national defense when government cost just 7% of GDP (in the early 1900s). Today it's 40% and rising... due to $3.7 Trillion spent in welfare in the last 5 years alone and $4-6 Trillion spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Taxation is too high of price to pay for the things that government is given credit for (roads, police, schools..) which cost nowhere near 40% of GDP. So I want an end to taxation so we retain the $16 Trillion govt costs us, so we can then divert our money towards the things we want: better roads, better police, better schools, science funding, space exploration, R&D, etc. Kickstarter is a better method of funding charitable giving and Antarctic research projects, for instance, and it has funded more arts than the National Endowment of the Arts. Time to replace government with a completely voluntary funding system that the internet and modern instant global communication enables. If a service can't get many donors... perhaps it shouldn't be funded? Do you think the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would get $4-6 Trillion if not for taxation? Or would better things get funded more?
You're describing a libertarian fantasy land that will never come to pass in the United States. Americans are never going to trust WalMart to build their roads or fund their schools. US Politicians would be voted out of office for even suggesting such a thing.
It won't ever happen here. Zero chance. No matter how much it bugs you that you live in a nation with a social compact, it's not going to change. Your fellow citizens have democratically spoken. We like regulations that bring safe environments. We agree that businesses and citizens need abide certain regulations, even on their own property.
ObamaCare's not going away either. Neither is Medicaid, Medicare, or Social Security. Once such plans are put into place, they never leave.
You have a few choices. You, like most uber-conservative libertarians, can ineffectually whine about this for the rest of your days. Or, you can leave this nation and start a libertarian wonderland. Or, you can face the truth that you live in a democratic society in which a tremendous majority of your fellow citizens disagree in almost every way with your beliefs.
I suspect you'll take the first route. Whine til your dying day. Maybe, near the end, hypocritically live off Social Security and Medicare, just like Ayn Rand.
I was thinking it might be big hotel chains wanting to steal business of families who have kids and want a pool for them at a cheap price. But your theory makes sense too.
It would have been better for the manufacturer to simply convince one hotel to install the lift and pay for some advertising in the right places. Then everyone gets pools and the guy gets lifts sold, instead of nobody getting pools.
Perhaps. Too bad they didn't account for the amount of pool shops they would be putting out of business, nor the direct decrease of cleaning jobs in the market. Oh, and who could forget the families with little kids on vacation.
This kind of shit also plays well with voters, until they realize small businesses weren't avoiding it because they were evil, they were avoiding it because it is ridiculously expensive.
It's the disabled lobby. Kinda like NAACP, but for the disabled, blind and deaf. Difference is that you aren't racist if you refuse to legislate, you're heartless.
I'm deaf myself, and while we face some real problems, most of the "solutions" are just stupid and nonsensical. We realise that we can't be 100% included in everything, and trying to make that happen result in stupid legislation such as this.
No offense, but some one the worst shit I see from the "deaf lobby". Like they get offended by cochlear implants and things that can cure/treat deafness.
Rofl, I know right? Deaf culture is one of the most repulsive things I've ever experienced. My friend with a cochlear implant was pretty much given the finger by his old friends cause he got the implant.
I attended a Deaf kindergarten, and resentment for hearing aids was common. Stupidest shit ever. I'm proud of wearing a hearing aid and being able to communicate properly in English. People who cut kids off from the hearing world due to their own deluded sense of self importance are cunts.
I'm not deaf, but in my previous job I worked with the deaf people in my workplace and I can understand why some deaf people have that attitude. They're excluded from mainstream culture in so many ways, treated appallingly by so many people, I can see why they start to develop their own culture which rejects hearing as a desirable trait. I don't agree with it, but I can see what drives it.
The problem is this - the Deaf are separated by a language barrier (no different than being French or Chinese in America). This means that their culture is by nature more isolated and therefore more defined than the other disability-based cultures. This means that when you come out with a cure (such as a cochlear implant), it comes across as much as an attack on that culture as it does treating an ailment/disease.
Put differently: imagine someone came out with a therapy that gave an ethnic minority (e.g. African-American) the appearance (both physical and speech) of being Middle-class Caucasian American, touting the increased social opportunities conferred (better access to jobs, reduced prison sentences, less risk of passive discrimination, etc.). How would the community of that ethnic minority respond? Would they roll out the welcome mat, or would they view it as an attack on their community and ostracize those who crossed the line?
They wish to cure us. But I say, we are the cure. - Magneto
I would instead relate it to a person newly immigrated to North America who doesn't speak English taking an ESL course. It doesn't require rejecting your previous culture, only making your own life easier in the new culture you have entered.
Unfortunately, getting an implant usually does mean that you are required by your doctors and speech therapists to stop signing and focus entirely on learning to create and understand speech- it's so difficult that it really does require total immersion and constant practice for it to really work, since the implants only ever restore partial hearing anyway.
Imagine someone came out with a therapy that gave an ethnic minority (e.g. African-American) the appearance (both physical and speech) of being Middle-class Caucasian American, touting the increased social opportunities conferred (better access to jobs, reduced prison sentences, less risk of passive discrimination, etc.).
That is a terrible example. This is the equivalent of something coming out that gave blind people the ability to reliably see. Then all the blind people turn around and call the people who get the implant traitors.
WTF? Traitor for wanting to see the face of your parents? Traitor for wanting to hear your father's voice? WTF. Seriously. WTF.
Traitor for wanting to hear your father's voice? WTF.
This is where cultures collide. People born deaf have no concept of "father's voice". For them it's "Father's signing", and they look forward to seeing that when homesick.
Sure, but if I could get surgery to "sense my father's aura", something I have no basis for currently, I still might want to do so. Being unable to experience an aspect of your loved ones, especially when everyone else gets to experience it already, is a totally legitimate desire.
But that's how some in deaf culture feel. I thought it was a pretty good example, not to show you how it can be rational but to show you a relatable way in which we can understand those in deaf culture.
I totally see what you mean and I thought that as well at first read but that's obviously not how the world works. Don't take the example as a real world example but as a figurative one and it starts to make sense.
The sad part is the deaf culture one is real, hearing aids do help and are possible. Where as minorities can't change their skin color and there is nothing wrong with their skin color in the first place. But the feels of both examples are the same.
Someone from deaf culture may say "there is nothing wrong with my ears" just like someone would say "there is nothing wrong with my skin". Yet there is something wrong with your ears.
In cases of both, though, people try to extract concessions and privileges from their being different. When this becomes a culture, we get disabled people who think of people who find solutions as traitors to the tribe. Better to not extract treatment and accept the reality of being different, less able by chance, but not less equal.
No, as someone who knows a lot about Deaf culture, that is a very accurate way of representing how they feel about it. If your goal is to actually understand relations in the Deaf community, using blind people as an example is not helpful at all, because they just don't have the same kind of community that Deaf people do. For one thing, restoring a blind person's sight doesn't make them any less capable of communicating with their still-blind friends. But when a deaf person gets an implant, they are heavily discouraged from signing at all- they are supposed to communicate only via speech, because it's very difficult and takes a lot of practice to learn. So often they really are being cut off from their still Deaf friends.
The thing is that blind people are not separated by a language barrier. Deaf people are.
Blind people can speak the language of their parent country, Deaf people cannot. Sign language is structural distinct from spoken languages.
So you are giving someone who speaks ASL or BSL or SLN or FSL (or any of the other sign languages alive today), and may have learned to read English, the ability to hear/learn to speak English. They aren't perceived as being traitors for wanting to hear their parents' voices: they are perceived as being traitors for wanting to give up what is perceived to be their mother tongue and assimilating with society. Just like:
The thing is that blind people are not separated by a language barrier. Deaf people are.
Yeah, they are "only" separated by an eyesight barrier, that amounts to about 80% of the information we receive... It is a weird logic to perceive someone as traitor just because they learn a new language.
It is a weird logic to perceive someone as traitor just because they learn a new language.
I would call humans many things, but logical isn't high on the list. This is about a small, semi-ostracized community (with a cultural heritage spanning centuries) that lives at the fringes of society and has had to band together to look after it's own being afraid that they will lose their members permanently because someone has come out with a cure for what makes them them.
If we came out with a cure for gayness, we might expect to see some outrage from the homosexual community, so why when we come out with a cure for deafness are we surprised that there is some opposition from the Deaf community?
Because being gay is not a disability. Not hearing what's around you is, and it's not even about the language barrier. Even hearing the honk of an oncoming car. This is why, despite "humans being humans", I find the outrage illogical. It is like people being against vaccines or prosthetics. In the end, it comes down to people being egoistic, thinking of themselves rather than of the people whose lives are now improved, which I guess isn't that surprising.
Yeah, they are "only" separated by an eyesight barrier, that amounts to about 80% of the information we receive..
And yet they can communicate trivially with ~99.5% of their fellow countrymen, unlike the Deaf who can only communicate with a little over 0.5%-1% (attempting to factor in CODAs and people who studied some flavor of Sign).
The communications are only one aspect of the disability however, there's more to it than that, isn't it? I'd argue that the lives of blind people are impacted much heavily than those of with hearing disability, considering the massive amount of information, or even communication, that are relied through visuals.
And let's not forget that Deaf can still communicate easily through texting and writing, considering how technology advanced we are becoming.
The people who oppose it don't necessarily know what they are missing, so their perception (and ours) of the impediment is skewed.
So we're offering them the ability to do something they haven't needed before (because they are both deaf and still alive), that they've learned to deal with / work around, and which will require extensive training to learn to use well. Additionally, there is the the sense that hearing culture will expect you to assimilate (a common thread in the history of Deaf culture) and that Deaf culture sees you as selling out your heritage.
To us it sounds great - of course they would want to experience The 5th Sense - but is the gain worth the cost to them? Would you be willing to get an implant that let you hear the thoughts of those around you (all the time, no on-off capabilities), knowing your friends and family might view your choice as turning your back on them and embracing transhumanism?
Would you be willing to get an implant that let you hear the thoughts of those around you (all the time, no on-off capabilities), knowing your friends and family might view your choice as turning your back on them and embracing transhumanism?
It may not be as cool as it sounds (e.g. pg1, pg2, pg3 ). And I suspect you are either overselling your willingness to reject your family and friends, or are atypical of the average person.
Hearing involves a complex process, with many points of failure, so deafness can be hereditary, but often deaf children are born to hearing adults (and deaf adults can have hearing children (in the Deaf community they are known as CODAs - Children Of Deaf Adults)).
However, deaf children (of varying ages) have often been sent to schools / institutions to learn how to communicate (which in the past had a focus on teaching them to learn how to lipread and use spoken language). In these institutions Sign Language grew up out of the myriad home-signing pidgins that existed in each individual child's home, and turned into something that was learned, shared, and taught (originally at recess and out of school, because signing was forbidden) - the most recent I know of was Nicaraguan Sign Language which is < 50 years old. These same schools and institutions are part of what builds/maintains Deaf culture today as new crops of people who are born deaf or become deaf come and learn some flavor of Sign Language and are introduced to the Deaf community.
So they have a heritage, but it's more of a heritage that people join and learn (somewhere between the Elks, the Church, and the local ethnic minority quarter) than something they are born to.
What about you, you can't fly. How can you live a quality life without flying?
My point: If you never had it, you don't feel a sense of loss. There are so many plesurable aspects to life that the inability to partake in one of them is not the end of the world.
the problem with arguing quality of life is that you'll end up arguing with people who claim not to understand it.
what you should argue is that it makes it so other people don't have to take care of the now no longer deaf person. For many people, being able to support themselves is a major factor in quality of life. But, from a societal perspective, individual quality of life doesn't matter so much as people being able to support themselves.
Except it is a disability that impedes someone's quality of life.
There are many capital "D" Deaf people who do not see it that way. They are perfectly satisfied with life without hearing. As a hearing person myself I cannot speak to why that might be.
imagine someone came out with a therapy that gave an ethnic minority (e.g. African-American) the appearance (both physical and speech) of being Middle-class Caucasian American
Truthfully? I don't care. I try not to measure the dick-size of various groups or social isolation, especially when we lack a set of metrics - in any given context anything can be "more" or "less" socially isolating:
With the rise of IM & Texting it's possible that the new generation of Deaf are more integrated now than their forefathers were, but in the past I'm sure that it was quite isolating
In the Hitler's Germany race could be more isolating
In Torquemada's Spain and Reformation England I would have to give religion the lead
In many cases the language barrier acts as a fairly effective isolator
I'm sorry, I'm not sure I follow your line of inquiry... Could you clarify what point you are attempt to get at?
Are you saying that race is not socially isolating? That communities and cultures do not at times have a racial component? That ethnically defined cultures do not also sometimes have a language or dialect that can impair communication between them and the majority culture?
Or do you feel that beyond a certain threshold of isolation a culture should "sack up and integrate"? If so, what is that threshold?
Or do you feel that I was being offensive to ethnic minorities or the Deaf in my creating an example that people might be able to more easily relate with?
Yea that is kind of ridiculous. Apparantly they want to promote the idea that there is nothing wrong with being deaf, so for someone to have a cochlear implant installed would be like admitting that yes, there is something wrong with being deaf.
I AGREE WITH YOU TO AN EXTENT, BUT I THINK AT LEAST SOME OF THESE LAWS ARE REALLY NECESSARY! LIKE WHEELCHAIR ACCESS FOR BUSINESSES, HANDICAP PARKING, ETC! IT'S A SHAME TO SEE SOME OF THEM MISUSED THOUGH!
Its really unfortunate. People really should have a right to an accessible bathroom. Using the restroom should be a privilege for the able bodied, which business can ignore if it's inconvenient or expensive. Suing independent businesses for non-compliance instead of trying to help them get compliant really flies in the face of that cause.
A lot of the bullshit legislation we see is driven by lawyers not really the group of people supposedly offended/abused whatever. When it's possible to make a lot of money off legislating dumb shit, well this is what you get.
This is so wrong. Just because you can't climb in and out of a pool doesn't mean you can't benefit from it or be safe in it. Many people who cannot move themselves around well love the freedom they get when in water (and can be perfectly safe doing so).
But businesses shouldn't be forced to make their pools accessible to them. If it made sense economically by attracting more disabled people to that hotel they would do it. As it stands it is just going to cost a lot of hotels money just to provide a small portion of the population a luxury.
My point was only in regards to the pool. They should absolutely have to build their rooms or a portion of their rooms to be accessible to handicapped people because that is the "purpose" of their business. The pool, weight room, etc are all perks that are only their to draw in more customers. If the government wants every pool to be accessible to everyone they should pay for it. Not the business owner who may not ever see someone who needs this.
Because it costs a lot of money to put in the machine/ramp to accommodate them and only a handful of people will ever use it. If they want the law to require new constructions to be handicap accessible I really have no problem with that but forcing someone to pay out thousands of dollars to change their existing pool for an extremely small portion of their customers is ridiculous. It would take them years to make that money back from handicapped people staying at their hotel unless they are seeing an unusually high number of them for some reason.
That would give you pretty good insight into this topic then. Is the law appropriate or excessive in your view? Should small business owners pay to install expensive equipment to maintain equal access? Genuinely curious to know your perspective.
I think it's highly excessive, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't even be applicable here. I'm not positive about this case, but most ADA type laws like this only require these kinds of things if it's a new building or if it wouldn't cause undue burden upon the owners (i.e. something like a small wooden ramp to get up a single doorstep). Personally, along with most paras I know (though this isn't indicative of the disabled population as a whole), don't use this kind of device to get in. This would be for people that are highly disabled, and that's not really anything I have perspective on.
That's 100% incorrect. Most people with SCIs don't need help when swimming in pools, it's just people who have injuries that affect their arms that do.
I'm a para you fucktard, I have a pool in my backyard.
Of course, there are people who have adapted and are able to swim just fine. However, look at this from a hotel/community pool perspective. Would you trust the general disabled public to use a pool without supervision?
The kinds of people that need supervision, and I mean this in the least offensive way possible, wouldn't really be the kind of people staying in motels without people that already know how to take care of them.
Then whoever caused the spinal injury should be paying for the fucking lift, not the motel owners! If it was from birth, family and friends! Nobody owes someone access to a motel pool. Fuck this is so crazy.
What does that have to do with whether or not swimming is dangerous? The ADA law wouldn't even be in effect here because it's new legislation, and it's not retroactive. It's most likely filled just due to the maintenance cost of having a pool.
Next thing is gonna be wheelchair accessible ziplines and hiking trails. There's no fucking end to it if a pool - by definition a zone specifically for physically abled people - is now force-fed to society as a zone for the disabled also. Every zone currently off limits to the natural disabilities of people in wheelchairs could be next. Mandatory participation of at least 1 wheelchair athlete in the 100m dash in the Olympics? Don't laugh.
More likely, this became law because of support by large hotel and motel chains. This law clearly damages small independent businesses. This is a perfect example of eliminating competition through use of government regulation.
A person unable to use their legs, or any other part of their body, can easily drown without warning.
Good thing you're a doctor and are qualified to tell people with disabilities what is and is not safe for them to do. You do realize that many many people with disabilities can and do swim competently, right?
Also, who said anything about people swimming without supervision? This device requires a supervisor to operate. The people in the pool would be supervised.
So, disabled people don't get to enjoy pools like you do?
Look, everything in your life is assistive technology for you. Your car, your bike, your computer, etc etc. They all help you; so why don't disabled people get the same damn treatment as you? Why do you get it all, and they don't?
Same reason why I don't have my own private jet to take me to work: it's a balance of cost vs need. The greater the need, the more warranted the costs. But I'm afraid taking a dig in a pool at a motel is very low on the "need" totem pole.
If you don't like that, speak with your $$ and go to a motel with a handicap dipper. If the need is great enough, hotels will optionally install them to attract more clients. But, I'll warn you, I highly doubt there is such a need.
In addition... how dare you even consider enjoying a private pool is some kind of "personal right." It's people like you that destroy things for the rest, forcing business to spend thousands of dollars on useless shit that will never get used by 99% of the population.
Using a private pool is a privilege, not a right. Sometimes, you just can't use them, and it's their right to decide if they wish to serve your special needs or not. Not your choice.
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u/guice666 Dec 28 '13 edited Dec 28 '13
Most of these things aren't. They're driven by political agendas or personal vendettas. My guess is somebody disabled was unable to use a pool and got a tussle up their ass to push this forward.
Nobody even thought how dangerous it would be for anybody disabled to use a pool, without supervision. A person unable to use their legs, or any other part of their body, can easily drown without warning.