1. Do you agree with the Iggulden brothers that we should allow boys to experience a certain amount of danger in their lives?
2. How about girls?
We often count on government rules to shelter us from dangers with which the market seems ill-suited to deal. Hence, we created the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to protect us from dangerous food, drugs, and medical devices (see Chapter 15). But sometimes rules do harm. Indeed, safety may not always be in our best interest. Some critics argue that boys, in particular, need a certain amount of danger in their lives. Brothers Conn and Hal Iggulden wrote The Dangerous Book for Boys as a manual of activities for boys. Their book describes how to make a bow and arrow, hunt and cook a rabbit, build a tree house, set a trip wire, and so on. They believe our “safety culture” has gone a bit too far. They point to that bygone era when every boy had a jackknife. They believe that taking risks is important to a boy’s joy and maturation.