define safety valve theory for sale

The Supreme Court has reinforced the theory of the First Amendment as a "safety valve," reasoning that citizens who are free to to express displeasure against government through peaceful protest will be deterred from undertaking violent means. The boundary between what is peaceful and what is violent is not always clear. For example, in this 1965 photo, Alabama State College students participated in a non-violent protest for voter rights when deputies confronted them anyway, breaking up the gathering. (AP Photo/Perry Aycock, used with permission from the Associated Press)

Under the safety valve rationale, citizens are free to make statements concerning controversial societal issues to express their displeasure against government and its policies. In assuming this right, citizens will be deterred from undertaking violent means to draw attention to their causes.

The First Amendment, in safeguarding freedom of speech, religion, peaceable assembly, and a right to petition government, embodies the safety valve theory.

These and other decisions rest on the idea that it is better to allow members of the public to judge ideas for themselves and act accordingly than to have the government act as a censure. The Court has even shown support in cases concerning obscenity or speech that incites violent action. The safety valve theory suggests that such a policy is more likely to lead to civil peace than to civil disruption.

Justice Louis D. Brandeis recognized the potential for the First Amendment to serve as a safety valve in his concurring opinion in Whitney v. California (1927) when he wrote: “fear breeds repression; . . . repression breeds hate; . . . hate menaces stable government; . . . the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones.”

The safety valve theory was a theory about how to deal with unemployment which gave rise to the Homestead Act of 1862 in the United States. Given the concentration of immigrants (and population) on the Eastern coast, it was hypothesized that making free land available in the West would relieve the pressure for employment in the East. By analogy with steam pressure (= the need for work), the enactment of a free land law, it was believed, would act as a safety valve. This theory meant that if the East started filling up with immigrants, they could always go West until they reached a point where they could not move any farther.

A distinction has to be made between (1) the safety valve theory as an ideal and (2) the safety valve theory as embodied in the Homestead Act of 1862.

There is a dispute whether and to what extent the Homestead Act did or did not succeed as a safety valve in ameliorating the problem of unemployment in the East.

Hume’s involvement gave rise to a lot of conspiracies relating to origin of Congress. Controversy was created by W. C. Banerjee statement that Hume was acting under Lord Dufferin. R. P. Dutt analysed that the Congress was formed under a British viceroy to act as a safety valve against popular discontent. This theory originated from William Wedderburn ‘s biography of Hume published in 1913. He wrote that in 1878 Hume came across seven volumes of secret reports showing discontent among the lower classes and conspiracy to overthrow British rule. He met Lord Dufferin and they decided to form an organisation with educated Indians serving as a safety valve by opening up a communication between rulers and the ruled preventing mass revolution.

The imperialist historians discredited Congress as being a creation of the British. Marxist historians used it to build up a conspiracy theory. R. P. Dutt argued that Congress was born out of a conspiracy of the British to end any possibilities of an uprising and bourgeois leaders were a part of it. This conspiracy theory is discredited by opening of Dufferin s private papers revealed that no one in ruling circles took Humes predictions of chaos seriously as Sumit Sarkar points out. This was also proved wrong as there was no evidence found of the existence of the seven volumes of secret report in any archives of either India or London. Dufferin criticised Congress as representing only a microscopic minority and this statement shuns the safety valve conspiracy theory. Historians like Bipan Chandra have called the seven volume report a fiction.

The extremist elements in India like Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, etc. laid down the theory known as ‘Safety- valve’ theory.

Some people have proposed a “safety valve” to control the costs of a cap-and-trade policy to fight global warming. This post explains what a safety valve is, and why it provides only an illusion of cost management.

The “safety valve” or “escape hatch” is meant to address this. It specifies that when prices reach a predetermined dollar value, businesses no longer have to rely on the established supply of allowances available in the market. Instead, the federal government makes new allowances available for sale at a specified price – potentially in an unlimited quantity.

There are two problems with this approach:A safety valve destroys the cap. The hard limit on emissions is the cornerstone of a cap-and-trade policy. Without a solid cap, we can’t be sure our emissions will go down enough to avoid the worst consequences of global warming. A safety valve gives the illusion that we are controlling emissions while allowing more greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere.

A safety valve limits the economic opportunity of those who develop cleaner technology. Higher permit prices signal the market to invest more in innovative low-carbon technologies – happy news if you’re in the business of inventing and selling ways to cut pollution. A safety valve would sharply curtail incentive for innovation. This drives up costs in the long run, and discourages the development of the clean technology we need.

A safety valve seriously undermines the main advantages of a cap. Its ability to control costs is an illusion, it lets more pollution into the atmosphere, and discourages entrepreneurs from investing in pollution-cutting technology.

Although I agree with the notion that catharsis is beneficial due to the fact that it allows one to release their suppressed emotions, I would argue that desensitization is a far more accurate theory in regards to what effect it has upon the general population. The resources present day electronic media provides us with has drastically changed our world as well as the way its population behaves on a daily basis, particularly in how we act upon our emotions. The safety valve theory of catharsis suggests that exposure to said events benefits the audience by allowing them to purge themselves of repressed emotions, therefore providing relief from acting upon these emotions with actions in the real world. However, the theory of desensitization indicates that as exposure to said events increases, the audience will have an increasingly diminished emotional stimulus to said events. It could be argued that catharsis is an accurate theory regarding how humans choose to cope with their emotions, however, I propose that the theory of desensitization more accurately characterizes the effect exposure to traumatic experiences has upon the general population.

Safety Valve theory: The INC was started under the official direction, guidance and advice of Lord Dufferin, the Viceroy, to provide a safe, mild, peaceful and constitutional outlet or safety valve for the rising discontent among the masses, which was inevitably leading towards a popular and violent revolution.