@terdon Now suppose the state could be trusted to only protect people against themselves when it was against death, and proportionally so. Then the answer to 1) would be "I am the state, and I must protect my people against death", and to 2) "you can tell me democratically what to choose, but I am willing to accept any other way you think is better".
@Cerberus But the state should not protect against death. For example, those idiots a few years back who thought that the mothership was coming behind the comet and killed themselves to get on board. The state has an obligation to talk them out of it but no right to stop them from killing themselves as their beliefs dictated.
( the idiots in question killed themselves because only their souls would be boarding and yet still packed a suitcase with clean underwear and a toothbrush!)
If you don't prohibit putting dangerous things in food, for instance, and it's cheap to do so, you can educate people all you like and they will still eat it because there is no alternative.
@KitFox That is entity A (the maker of the food) affecting entity B (the consumer). B had no real choice in the matter. If B were putting the stuff into their food themselves, I'd consider it their right.
@Cerberus Because I'm not the government, I did not make a law that said that walking on a ledge is illegal. It is the legislative aspect I object to.
@KitFox No. The government may be made up of individuals but it is also an abstract entity whose whole is more than the sum of its parts. Also, laws outlive the individuals who penned them.
@terdon What about companies that manufacture and sell things that are proven to have significant negative effects on all consumers of the product as well as anyone else in spatiotemporal proximity, when those products have no beneficial effects?
@terdon But the state can have legitimate interests in making walking on that ledge illegal. Even if they don't particularly care about any individual's suicide.
@KitFox The government just makes it illegal to smoke anywhere public.
because A's right to smoke shouldn't affect B's right to avoid smoke.
@KitFox Right. They allow the sale of the product, but with restrictions: advertising restrictions, labelling laws, etc. And the product is legal to own and use, but with restrictions.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes. Making it illegal to walk on a ledge when there is a restaurant below and you can fall on someone seems fine. Just don't make it illegal to walk on ledges in general.
@KitFox That does not conflict with my right to smoke. Only with my "right" to smoke wherever I want.
@Cerberus Well, I think it's the idea of the state setting rules that I object to. It should have the right to stop me from harming others but it should stay the hell away from what I choose to do to myself. \
@Robusto Yes, it is the same name, but originally pronounced differently, no doubt. But Caius just isn't really used, I believe—only the abbreviation C. for Gaius. Lewis & Short says Caius is "less correct".
@KitFox Yeah. And you can expect the government to (slowly) move to make some of the 2nd/3rd-hand smoke scenarios illegal too. Example: in some jurisdictions it's illegal to smoke in the car if there is a minor present.
When that law was enacted it had the hilarious consequence of a boy (16yo) being ticketed for smoking in a car; while the cop was ticketing him his gf (14yo) got out and lit up.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 And yet, it is legal to allow children to live in cities? Inhaling car exhausts every day? Not to mention all the other crap in the air. It's my cigarette that bothers you?
@Robusto I am. For those who live in places where such laws are enacted.
@terdon Yes. Specifically, the concentrations of toxic chemicals in the car's limit airspace is much much worse than the air pollution in cities. And anyway, there are practical limits on what you can do: it would be impossible to force all children out of cities, but it's not impossible to get parents to wait a few minutes before lighting up.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I find it offensive that anyone would smoke in a car with a kid. And I'm a heavy smoker. I don't think that laws are the way to deal with that though.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 By the way, I was talking about your own car's fumes. I very much doubt that they are less harmful than a cigarette smoked a half hour ago.
@terdon What if education doesn't work in a certain situation, and outlawing does? Not saying I can think of such a situation (which is why I am against it in practice), but just in theory I'm not against outlawing certain kinds of self-harm if it is effective and proportional (which I think it rarely is).
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I'll need to see data to back that up. There is a hell of a lot of unfounded paranoia about second hand smoke (also quite a lot of very well founded paranoia, don't get me wrong).
@Cerberus As you said, I can't think of such a situation. So, since we're discussing impossibilities, I still don't think the state has any business dictating what I can/cannot do to my own self.
@terdon When I get in a car, I don't start coughing uncontrollably due to the car's engine. When someone smokes in a car, I do. How can you claim the levels of concentrations of "smoke" are negligible? Even many smokers only smoke in cars with their windows open, to minimize the effects
Again, I find it horrifying that children today can be raised as religious and/or racist bigots. I wouldn't support a law that makes it illegal for people with different ideas than mine to have kids though.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I did not. My original statement was about a cigarette smoked a half hour ago. Also, you cannot extrapolate from smell to harmful effects. There may well be a connection but there might not. For example, most of the free radicals (the main causative agents of cancer in cigarettes) will be long gone.
@Cerberus Why should even a little bit of harming the children be allowed? Just make the parents wait until the kids are out of the car. And there are lots of smokers who don't open the windows.
@terdon The law isn't about a cig smoked half an hour ago. It's about a cig smoked while a kid is in the car.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Oh, sorry. I thought it was about 3rd hand smoke. Anyway, having children involved is a different matter, they can't make informed decisions so legislation is appropriate.
@KitFox Hardly! Abuse is a very harsh word, don't use it lightly.
@KitFox Well, it's kind of hard to define. What of people who take their children to sunday school? From where I stand, they are intentionally causing serious negative psychological effects on their children.
@KitFox No, and I'm also not defending the practice.
I just wouldn't call it abuse. I reserve that for far harsher things. But let's not argue the semantics, we agree that smoking in a confined place with a child around is a big no-no.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I prefer laws that take into account effectiveness and proportionality. Is it proportional to set up check-points where all cars with kids are stopped to measure the smoke participles inside? Will they get a fine if the window was open? What if there are cigarettes in the car but they have not been smoked (yet)? It all depends on the details. Laws should not be about education or punishment as an end, but as a means. And the end is what matters most.
And the law in question gives a traffic ticket to someone caught smoking with kids. We have other laws too, like distracted-driving laws or talking-on-cellphone laws or seatbelt laws or carseat laws.
@terdon Yeah, I hate those word games. People are trying to lump medium offences and severe offences together by using the same word; that's Newspeak and bad.
@terdon All the helicopters and kevlar suits and detention centers. That money is going -somewhere-. It's helping the economy by giving people jobs to create all that stuff.
I'm not sure I like that arbitrariness, and I think there are many traffic laws that don't really work, but are just used as an excuse by the police to lump charges on people when they are in a bad mood. So perhaps some arbitrariness is necessary, but it is a disadvantage.
Example: speed limits. They are enforced by police being at certain places and using a radar gun to identify speeders. The police's presence is random. But the potential for getting a ticket exists anywhere. So speeding is, to some degree, kept in check.
Seatbelt laws: if a policeman sees you not wearing a belt, you get ticketed. Sometimes they stand around near lanes of traffic and look for offenders. 99% of the time they don't. But the law's purpose is to save lives. Put your belt on because it will save your life, or because if you don't you could be fined.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes. But it is still a very inelegant solution, and it has problems. A huge burden on the justice system and on police capacity, giving power to computers, etc. But perhaps the advantages outweigh the disadvantages in the case of speeding. Still, you have to admit it's ugly and arbitrary. For example, rich people can afford to speed.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 studies on rats show that a random but slightly biased in the favored direction conditioning is the best (slowest extinction rate) for learning a fixed action pattern.
Seriously though, taxation pays for all sorts of things, many of which I object to. Should we make junk food illegal because I have to pay your healthcare costs when you get clogged arteries?
@Cerberus No, there are further rules I didn't get into. If you speed more than a minimal amount you get demerit points on your license. If you speed more than 50km over the limit your car is impounded AND you get demerit points. If you have too many demerit points your insurance rates rise and you can eventually lose your license.
@KitFox People dying in biking accidents never reach old age, which is by far the most expensive part of your life, healthcare-wise. So that argument is bs. The same applies to smoking, I believe.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 In the US, if you have a class A (semi truck) license, you get double points, even if you are driving a class C (passenger vehicle) car.
@Cerberus So rich people can speed, somewhat more than poorer people, but only up to a limit, or only if they speed below the demerit-point scale. Fines based on income would be neat, but that'd make the court challenges worse.
@Cerberus What I meant to say is suppose the government passes a new law, that you can't alligator meat. You don't learn about that in school, you'll learn about it in Das Bild or USA today or Entertainment tonight. That is, not reliably.
I wouldn't be against having smokers pay higher taxes for example. If your lifestyle is such that it increases the likelihood of the state needing to pay your health costs, I could accept having to pay for that in advance. Not to make it illegal though.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 They have those in Sweden and some other countries, I believe. Anyway, you might be able to win me over for the "don't smoke in a car with a child under 12" law, but...I'd want to see an exhaustive study into the effects on privacy, health, police behaviour, etc. first.
@Cerberus it supports the communities in which those businesses reside. The employees at the pepper spray plant keeps the local lunch businesses afloat.
@terdon They put them in small print on the side of the package and it's weasel wording. In Canada, they don't mess around. It's right there on the front, plainly stated "Cigarettes cause cancer." "Cigarettes will kill you."
@terdon Smokers are cheaper on insurance, actually. They die young and from relatively cheap diseases, so not need to take care of them as old people or suffering from expensive diseases. On average.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Nah, I just shop around a bit. I tend to go for "Cigarettes can cause fetal injury or premature birth". I never understood all those idiots who buy the lung cancer ones.
@Cerberus If it were true, why would insurance companies charge smokers more? Their entire business model is research on who gets sick more and who dies sooner.
Guys all laws need to be exhaustively researched. We need to know whether they will be effective, if they are the best way of achieving our objective, whether they will cause more harm than good etc.
@Cerberus There is evidence that quitting smoking increases you life expectancy (duh) but also increases health care costs (because you'll live longer and die of something worse.
> If people stopped smoking, there would be a savings in health care costs, but only in the short term. Eventually, smoking cessation would lead to increased health care costs.
@Robusto No, the argument was the inverse. We should force people to choose one lifestyle that we happen to approve of because if not, we have to pay their health costs. Cerb was pointing to research indicating that in fact smokers are cheaper in the long run.
@terdon The life expectancy quoted in that article is 69 years old. That's barely past retirement and suggests that lots of them are dying before retiring.
@JohanLarsson It's staged. My parents' "full benefits" retirement age was 65, but mine is 66. People 10 or 15 years younger than me are 67, and I think it goes up to 68 for young people. Not sure.
@JohanLarsson I mean people usually die of something, right? And apart from accidental deaths, we're talking death from sickness. And no matter what age you die from sickness, the last n years of your life would be the ones where you consume the most medical care.
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…