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 Jehan-reznor wrote:
The laws that are used for "Security" always end to be used on its own populace.

It is fair to say that when laws are enacted for security, there is a risk that they will end up being used on their own populace. By instead rephrasing it as an absolute with a dash of historical inevitability, you move in to hyperbole and make your case much weaker.

 feeder wrote:

 CptJake wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
What about drugs? Do you think recreational drugs should be legal?

It is a question I am not sure about - on one hand, they do not harm anyone else if you decide to use them, but on the other hand the drug dealers are absolute dicks who like to trick people into becoming addicted (and once you are hooked it is damn hard to get off it, even if you want to).

State-owned drug-selling might work, but drugs being legal still means someone clearly addicted who wants but can't stop can't be arrested and given help.

My personal opinion is that sure, if you want to fill your body with stuff, go for it.

Freedom of choice always, NEVER freedom from consequences.

You hurt yourself or others while under the influence, consequences should be severe. In the case of you hurting yourself zero tax dollars should go towards making you well again. If your insurance company drops you or massively raises your rates because you use/abuse certain drugs, so be it. If your employer fires you for using/abusing certain drugs, so be it. Mitigating consequences rewards bad behavior. Allow folks to suffer the full weight of the consequences of their choices.

While I generally agree with your sentiment here, there are a multitude of things that can affect our daily lives. Smoking, eating too much/not enough, drinking, sports, RVing ATVing, too much/not enough sun, many many choices we make can result in needing medical aid, time off work, or other means of mitigating consequences.

I've thought about this. I'm all for healthcare, as any one of us could trip and fall and need it, or accidents happen.
I live in a country where our Emergency waiting rooms are filled with people suffering from alcohol abuse related injuries/sicknesses.

I wonder if excluding blatantly self inflicted illness (tobacco/alcohol/drugs/obesity related problems) from public healthcare would significantly reduce the cost to taxpayer while encouraging better life choices.

 =Angel= wrote:
I wonder if excluding blatantly self inflicted illness (tobacco/alcohol/drugs/obesity related problems) from public healthcare would significantly reduce the cost to taxpayer while encouraging better life choices.

We can observe right now that despite knowing unhealthy habits will lead to a shorter life filled with painful and uncomfortable medical issues, people continue with those medical issues. They make the irrational choice to continue with those habits because, basically, people are irrational. As such, it's quite unlikely that people will suddenly become rational and start considering their long term health if you tell them they'll be stuck with the bill for it.

The better solution is to tax them for it now by placing an excise on the products they consume.


Oh, and it's also worth pointing out that a lot of things don't actually increase the cost to the public health system. Cigarettes, for instance, probably reduces the cost on the system because smokers die nice and early. It's people who live to 100 with a steadily increasing list of physical and mental ailments that cost the system a bomb. Smokers who die at 70 after a 3 month battle with lung cancer are cheap

Freedom means you have the ability to make your own choices. Therefore freedom is inherently dangerous because it's just as easy to make bad choices than it is to make good choices.

Security requires that choices be limited and "bad" choices eliminated so security inherently reduces freedom.

It is possible to create a society that is secure and is free but the two will always be at odds with each other.

Prestor Jon wrote:
Freedom means you have the ability to make your own choices. Therefore freedom is inherently dangerous because it's just as easy to make bad choices than it is to make good choices.

Security requires that choices be limited and "bad" choices eliminated so security inherently reduces freedom.

It is possible to create a society that is secure and is free but the two will always be at odds with each other.

Relevant:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-06-10


I suppose that social rules and laws that restrict freedom seemed more fair when they were the result of small tribes/towns agreeing what was acceptable.
'In this village we don't defecate in the well and we ride our horses with due care around the children'.
Having kings and rich politicians far away dictate your limits removes that aspect of community law.

 =Angel= wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
Freedom means you have the ability to make your own choices. Therefore freedom is inherently dangerous because it's just as easy to make bad choices than it is to make good choices.

Security requires that choices be limited and "bad" choices eliminated so security inherently reduces freedom.

It is possible to create a society that is secure and is free but the two will always be at odds with each other.

Relevant:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-06-10


I suppose that social rules and laws that restrict freedom seemed more fair when they were the result of small tribes/towns agreeing what was acceptable.
'In this village we don't defecate in the well and we ride our horses with due care around the children'.
Having kings and rich politicians far away dictate your limits removes that aspect of community law.

The bigger government gets and the more people it attempts to govern the less concerned it becomes with the individuals that are governed. The federal government doesn't know me at all, they only know of my existence in the aggregate. The federal government, therefore, can't know what's best for me because they are ignorant of me, my situation, abilities etc. yet they will presume to know what is best for me anyway. Hence the conflict that results between their desire to make things more safe at the expense of my individual liberty. Ever come across a policy or rule that leads to somebody telling you that while you might be trustworthy/competent you can't be allowed to do whatever because then other people would have to be allowed to do it and that would lead to dangerous chaos? That's how government works. The government doesn't know me, has no idea if I'm dangerous or competent or whatever but they'll pass laws removing my ability to legally choose to do stuff not because of me but because if everyone was allowed to do it then somewhere some idiot would do it in a stupid and dangerous manner. That leads to government growing into a nanny state leviathan trying to save us from ourselves because it sees us as the lowest common denominator of dangerous ignorant idiots which breeds contempt and conflict.

Prestor Jon wrote:

 =Angel= wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
Freedom means you have the ability to make your own choices. Therefore freedom is inherently dangerous because it's just as easy to make bad choices than it is to make good choices.

Security requires that choices be limited and "bad" choices eliminated so security inherently reduces freedom.

It is possible to create a society that is secure and is free but the two will always be at odds with each other.

Relevant:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-06-10


I suppose that social rules and laws that restrict freedom seemed more fair when they were the result of small tribes/towns agreeing what was acceptable.
'In this village we don't defecate in the well and we ride our horses with due care around the children'.
Having kings and rich politicians far away dictate your limits removes that aspect of community law.

The bigger government gets and the more people it attempts to govern the less concerned it becomes with the individuals that are governed. The federal government doesn't know me at all, they only know of my existence in the aggregate. The federal government, therefore, can't know what's best for me because they are ignorant of me, my situation, abilities etc. yet they will presume to know what is best for me anyway. Hence the conflict that results between their desire to make things more safe at the expense of my individual liberty. Ever come across a policy or rule that leads to somebody telling you that while you might be trustworthy/competent you can't be allowed to do whatever because then other people would have to be allowed to do it and that would lead to dangerous chaos? That's how government works. The government doesn't know me, has no idea if I'm dangerous or competent or whatever but they'll pass laws removing my ability to legally choose to do stuff not because of me but because if everyone was allowed to do it then somewhere some idiot would do it in a stupid and dangerous manner. That leads to government growing into a nanny state leviathan trying to save us from ourselves because it sees us as the lowest common denominator of dangerous ignorant idiots which breeds contempt and conflict.

I'd make the point that they do (or at least should) know what is best for you. This is the point of government, no? You may feel it is not best for you, or it may not be best for you, but is best for the majority. We use government to try secure a level playing field, which requires that some people will see limits they regard as stupid, but they must still apply to them, or we get discrimination, preferential treatment, etc. Thus, we can't judge laws based solely on the effect it has on us as individuals

You probably don't agree. But making the claim that the government can't know what's best for you seems a little... over the top? Wrong phrase, can't think of what it should be.

People have trouble dealing with the inherent complexities of governance, especially when applied to populations in the hundreds of millions, so the simplify and repeat trite truisms like "big government is bad". In reality, people are complex and there are many different viewpoints on effective governance. Ideally, a functional government is better than anarchy and should do a decent job in the goals of government, that is securing the public welfare. But with increasing complexity and hierarchy comes opportunity for disconnect, inefficiency, and corruption. What people seem to ignore is that these are only defects of "big government" in that the are defects of humans generally. Large, unorganized groups don't tend to behave any better.

So, for large groups of people, large government is practically unavoidable. The questions of how to manage such a system, and to what extent they should extend are valid, but simply dismissing the notion is "big government" naïve and ignores the history of how we got here.

The government does not know what's best for the individual. They know what's best for the group which doesn't always align with the individual. The Constitution and Bill of Rights were written with this in mind. The powers not listed in the Bill are automatically delegated for the States who are closer to home to take care of. However the intent of the Constitution and Bills has been perverted and the government has over reached and gone beyond the original purpose of strong states, so instead of a State which is more relevant to the individual being the primary governing body and who has a much better sense of individual needs, you have Nanny Goliath who is more than happy to trample individuals for the so called majority good, even though what's good for people in one area, sucks for people in another. Caring for the individual was never the job of the federal government, its job was making sure interstate commerce and international stuff was taken care of as long as the States remembered they had to abide by the Bill of Rights.

 CptJake wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
What about drugs? Do you think recreational drugs should be legal?

It is a question I am not sure about - on one hand, they do not harm anyone else if you decide to use them, but on the other hand the drug dealers are absolute dicks who like to trick people into becoming addicted (and once you are hooked it is damn hard to get off it, even if you want to).

State-owned drug-selling might work, but drugs being legal still means someone clearly addicted who wants but can't stop can't be arrested and given help.

My personal opinion is that sure, if you want to fill your body with stuff, go for it.

Freedom of choice always, NEVER freedom from consequences.

You hurt yourself or others while under the influence, consequences should be severe. In the case of you hurting yourself zero tax dollars should go towards making you well again. If your insurance company drops you or massively raises your rates because you use/abuse certain drugs, so be it. If your employer fires you for using/abusing certain drugs, so be it. Mitigating consequences rewards bad behavior. Allow folks to suffer the full weight of the consequences of their choices.

The problem with choice and consequences is when someone not doing the choosing is the one suffering the consequences. Drugs being the example here, it's like the mother who, while high on meth, put her baby in the washer with tragically predictable results.

I don't think that is an example of a situation that is soluble.

Chopping off the mother's ears and nose as a punishment isn't going to make meth heads stop being meth heads.

Legalising meth doesn't seem likely to turn meth heads into responsible citizens (merely stop them being criminals by default.)

Legalising other, more benign drugs, such as cannabis, might help prevent future generations of meth heads because they would be able to use cannabis instead. This still doesn't address the question of meth.

How is meth related to security anyway?

 Kilkrazy wrote:

How is meth related to security anyway?

People hopped up on meth is dangerous as feth...

Think PCP...

 whembly wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

How is meth related to security anyway?

People hopped up on meth is dangerous as feth...

Think PCP...

I guess the idea here is that, at what point do you decide something is too dangerous for the common good that you then restrict it in the name of safety?

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

How is meth related to security anyway?

People hopped up on meth is dangerous as feth...

Think PCP...

I guess the idea here is that, at what point do you decide something is too dangerous for the common good that you then restrict it in the name of safety?

There's no guide book or one set of criterias.

It should be a case-by-case basis

'Tis why wrapping up cannibis in the same class as cocaine/meth/heroin/ect... is crazy pants.

Prestor Jon wrote:
Freedom means you have the ability to make your own choices. Therefore freedom is inherently dangerous because it's just as easy to make bad choices than it is to make good choices.

Security requires that choices be limited and "bad" choices eliminated so security inherently reduces freedom.

It is possible to create a society that is secure and is free but the two will always be at odds with each other.

In a purely ideological context they are on opposite sides.

In a real world that trade off is largely fictitious. As an example, trans fats are being banned in various places around the world. People fixated on the freedom vs safety thing will say people have a right to choose the unhealthy option. But its a tasteless thickening agent, replaceable by other thickening agents that cost slightly more. No-one 'chooses' the transfat food, they just buy it because they don't know its in there or they don't know what it does to their body. The 'choice' distinction is false, and so the argument itself is false.

In other cases the safety argument is non-existent. There is no causal connection between sexually explicit material and sexual predation, sacrficing the freedom of reading that stuff doesn't actually increase safety at all.

Freedom is important. Safety is important. Generally the trade off between the two close to nothing, when you get down to the nuts and bolts of actual policy decisions.