[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
What costs more: Dying of lung cancer at 55, or dying of Alzheimers at 92? Which person do you think is going to absorb more state resources? The one who was healthy and rarely went to the doctor, then required six months of treatments before dying of lung cancer, or the one who retired at 65, drew social security for 27 years, and during that time perhaps was hospitalized 10 times for various age-related illnesses and conditions, maybe had a joint replacement, cataract surgery, an increasing dependence on subsidized drugs, and eventually had to be hospitalized for the last five years in a hospice anyway before dying?
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I’m not going to be responding to the rest of your points in this post primarily because my answer here will in my opinion cover all of them and also because I feel your individual points were not differentiated enough to justify point-by-point response, and finally because I’m generally not in the mood to get into a lengthy process where we both quote every paragraph of one other for 10 pages.
The issue is not one of looking at people as a commodity for society. It is one of dealing with externalities. In a market system, anytime a buyer and a seller engage in business, both benefit. When I buy razor blades, both me and Gillette benefit. If Gillette didn’t benefit in some way, they wouldn’t sell the blades. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t buy them.
That’s all well and good, it means that doing business is good for both sellers and buyers and everyone is happy and the economy gets stronger. However, certain transactions between buyer and seller have costs associated with the transaction that neither buyer or seller have to shoulder in a truly free market. Instead, society has to shoulder the burden of these costs. This can be bad in the long run. If Gillette uses manufacturing processes that cause massive amounts of pollution, that causes large costs to society. Sans pollution regulations or pollution taxes, the cost of that pollution doesn’t became part of the transaction, neither me or Gillette has to shoulder any of the burden. By implementing pollution controls/taxes, forcing Gillette to clean up their act and et cetera, it shifts at least some of the costs of that pollution into the transaction between buyer and seller. What it will usually mean is Gillette has to sell at a lower margin or they have to raise the price (which may mean the product is no longer something I want to buy, it all depends.)
In bringing up long-lived people, or when you talk about banning sports, you’re entering an area irrelevant to anything I’ve said. I’m not proposing we tax people for being unhealthy or tax people for being fit. I’m not proposing we ban smoking or junk food. I’m saying we should try to associate the costs of negative externalities with the transactions that create them. In so doing we have to consider various things. Is there clearly a negative externality associated with a transaction? Is it feasible to associate that externality with the transaction through taxation? Is it desirable to do so? All of these enter into the equation. How would you tax those who live long lives? I guess you could levy excise taxes on healthy foods, on gym memberships, on sports equipment, and et cetera.
I think that in the case of gym memberships, consumption of health foods, and such transactions the positive externalities are significant and outweigh the negative externalities.
It isn’t realistically feasible to associate the costs (or even benefits) of all externalities with their associated transactions. So, as a society we have to pick and choose. In general I think society is right on the mark, and that it is better to do this with transactions like the purchase of tobacco products than it is with the purchase of gym memberships or health food. Part of the reason is, while there very well may be positive externalities to tobacco transactions and negative ones to gym memberships and health food purchases, there is an extremely clear link between tobacco products and the costs associated with them. Such a link does not exist to the same degree with most other products. “Youth Sports” isn’t a transaction. It clearly has serious costs associated with it, but what product would we levy a tax on that is clearly linked to those costs? Cleats, helmets, bats, balls, knee pads? Many of those products can clearly decrease costs to society because they work to prevent injury. Whereas in normal usage you cannot use tobacco products without causing some level of societal harm. Furthermore an excise tax on tobacco products is more effective at helping society recoup costs because tobacco users have to continually purchase their product. People who participate in sports do not, and in fact many sports can be participated in with no commercial products at all.