California's Nanny State?

Great Debates
1

California’s Governor Jerry Brown just vetoed a bill that would require minors to wear helmets while skiing or snowboarding.

His reasoning:

I was debating some friends a while ago about a similar bill that is winding its way through the sausage factory in California. The bill would prohibit minors from using tanning beds.

My friends’ argument was “the nanny state” where the state crosses the line and unduly removes parental discretion.

My argument was that the state has a role in protecting minors from harm, including the harm resulting from crappy parents who would allow their kids to engage in risky things. Sometimes parental discretion needs to be removed.

They responded that there are already laws on the books dealing with child endangerment… just enforce them if the parents do something dumb.

My response was that child endangerment laws can’t always adequately protect kids form known risks of harm. If you let your kid play with dynamite then get hauled in for endangerment, well, the kid may be all blown up by the time the courts sort it out. There should be laws removing parental discretion and proactively protecting kids from specific and known risks of harm.

I think requiring child car seats is reasonable, for example, as is prohibiting the sale of cigarettes to minors. There is no room for parental discretion there.

I also think the state should not require parents to helmet their children 24 hours a day.* There’s a line to be drawn… somewhere.

I support the ski helmet law and the tanning bed law, in concept. I haven’t read the actual bills. I think those ideas are narrowly drawn to reasonably and proactively protect kids against a specific risk of harm.
*Will that sentence derail the thread?

2

I think there’s also a big issue of practicality here. We can enforce a law requiring minors to wear helmets while bicycling, because they generally do so on public roads, and usually within actual cities. I don’t think we have many cops patrolling the slopes.

3

So why don’t you start the actual debate about where you think this line should be drawn. Why don’t you think parents should be forced to helmet their children 24 hours a day?

Can you give us even a general idea of what your actual argument is here? You’ve told us that you think it’s a good idea, but you haven’t given us your reasoning as to why you think that.

Without that there is no actual debate.

My personal view is that unless an act is carried out with *intent *to cause harm to a child, the state should stay the hell out of it.

The only other just alternative is to quantify what level of risk we think is unacceptable, and ban all activities that are above that threshold. Note that I say this is just, no necessarily workable.

Applying any other policy becomes nothing more than a means of social engineering.

We say that children can’t use tanning beds, with a risk of one in a million. Yet at the same time we allow children to be raised by single parents, where the risk is one in thousand.

We say that children must wear helmets, where the risk is one in a million, yet we allow children to be raised by smokers, where the risk is one in thousand.

We say that children must be placed in car seats, where the risk is one in a million, yet we allow children to be fed a vegan diet, where the risk is one in a thousand.

How exactly dow e justify these discrepancies? If the welfare of the child is justification for interfering in parenting decisions, then how do we justify not interfering in extremely high risk situations? Who exactly is deciding when risks can be ignored regardless of probability?

To me this is more than a slippery slope to enforced totalitarian social conformity. It is enforced totalitarian social conformity. the state gets to decide what parents can teach there children and how entirely at whim, without even any pretence at justice.
[SIZE=“1”]* NB: All probability figures obtained via extrapolation from revealed self-evident sources. ie I pulled them out of my arse. They are just random examples to illustrate a point, folks.
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4

If a law is not likely to be enforced, then it could be viewed rather as a very strong advisement toward some particular thing, which effectively only gets enforced when someone engages in flagrant disregard of the principle on a very large scale–kind of like litter laws.

5

To further what’s already been said, when you look at the justification for this law we have, “because [action] is dangerous.”

But we’re not willing to ban skiing. We’re not willing to say no one under 21 may ski.

When the state decides to intervene, it’s obviously aware of the risks involved. But why start and end with helmets? Require training and licencing. Ban jumping and tricks. Limit the steepness of a ski slope. Add knee pads, elbow pads, and wrist guards.

Reminds me of the Sienfeld joke, "Why do skydivers wear helmets, if the chute doesn’t open at that point the helmet is wearing you. When you hit the ground, the helmet probably says to the other helmets, ‘I’m sure glad I had that human strapped to me.’ "

There is also the flip side to this rule, where adding the safety equipment leads to riskier behaviour. The presence of a parachute means people will jump out of planes.

Same thing goes for cars and child seats. We’re all well aware that driving is an inherently dangerous at. If we are actually concerned about the safety of children, we really shouldn’t allow children in cars:

Motor vehicle injuries are the leading cause of death among children in the United States.1 But many of these deaths can be prevented. Placing children in age- and size-appropriate car seats and booster seats reduces serious and fatal injuries by more than half.

It still leaves the other half. But we’re not actually willing to make children safe, we just want to dance around the issue and act like we’re doing something. So we add seat belts, airbags, abs. Then we have licencing, vehicle inspection, speed limits, alcohol limits, ban cell phone use. It’s still dangerous.

“This is my safety”

6

The one argument in favour of all this is that the law helps good parents be better. A parent may try as hard as they can to get their kid to wear a helmet, but without constant supervision it’s hard for the parent to enforce. Having it a law lets the parent say, “it’s the law, do it.”

But then, who do we punish when the law is broken? The nature of this regulation is saying that children aren’t capable of making their own decision. So can they be expected to follow the law?

Lastly, how many exceptions are we going to need? Are we going to force Sikhs to wear them? What about skiing on private property?

7

Risk of what?

8

The risk of a tan of course!

9

Take your pick:

One-Parent Households Double Risk Of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Single parent families are at a higher risk of poverty than couple families, and on average single mothers have poorer health than couple mothers.

Similar risk differences were seen for alcohol problems, and the increased risk for drug addiction was even higher than for other problems.The study also showed that 2.2 percent of girls and 1 percent of boys living with a sole parent either killed themselves or ended up in the hospital after an attempted suicide by the age of 26, compared with 0.8 percent of girls and 0.3 percent of boys living with two parents.

As supported by the databelow, children from fatherless homes are more likely to be poor, become involvedin drug and alcohol abuse, drop out of school, and suffer from health and emotionalproblems. Boys are more likely to become involved in crime, and girls are more likelyto become pregnant as teens.

10

No need. You only need screw the ski lift people somewhat, the way the state screws cigarette salesmen somewhat: by holding them responsible if they ever let a minor go up the mountain without a helmet, and handing out punitive fines. Then have a bunch of inspectors randomly test or observe ski lifts pour encourager les autres.
That way private management has an incentive to train their personnel in the new laws, and even police themselves if they catch one of their guys letting kiddies up the mountain without the helmet before the gummint can.

Of course, the kiddies could ditch the helmet once they get up top… but what else are they gonna do with it, really ? Tie it on their belt in an effort to Screw the Man ? Leave it there and buy a new one each time they want to go back up ?

11

Where I live (northwestern Ontario), ski helmets are now cool (fashionable), so most kids like to wear them. Although I would prefer laws requiring all kids to wear them, I realize that the increased number wearing helmets when compared to the numbers already wearing them will not be that great, so it is not a huge issue for me either way.

As an adult, I took a long time to start wearing a ski helmet. At first, I only wore one when racing. I didn’t like the thing, for it was heavy and not ventilated. As the years went by, I noticed that more and more adults, and almost all children, wore helmets, I read a lot of literature on the subject (in short, ski helmets significantly reduce head injuries, but only slightly reduce deaths), and I had many discussions with other skiers. For the last few years, I have been wearing a helmet – a light helmet with adjustable ventilation and built in earphones – and lo and behold, not only do I like it for it’s climate control (it keeps me warm on cold days but is ventilated for warm days), but just as with my vehicle seatbelt, I feel exposed when skiing without it. And yes, on a couple of occasions a ski helmet has saved me from injury: in one crash at speed a released ski sailed down onto my head, and in another crash at speed I landed on the back of my head.

Unfortunately, a lot of parents and children who are new to the sport simply do not understand the benefits of a ski helmet, and the severity of injury that a ski helmet can protect against, so they are not able to make an informed decision. That’s where the state should step in, in my opinion.

There are some intermediate steps that I submit should be taken that might go a long way to getting children in ski helmets while stopping short of absolute legislation. First, race governing associations, instructional associations, and ski resort associations, can promote or require the wearing of helmets by children for participation in activities put on by their members. Second, these associations can make efforts to educate skiers of the benefits of helmets. Third, insurers can offer rate incentives if the wearing of helmets by children is required at the insured activity. Third, governments can require that ski rentals for children must inclued helmets and that renters are briefly advised of the risks of a child not wearing a helmet. By doing this, most children will be protected, without the occasional anti-nanny parent being put out by the government requiring that the parent be responsible in his or her decision for the child.

More importantly, once a generation of kids grow up wearing ski helmets, I expect that they would continue the practice with their children, just as people who grew up using seat belts will continue that practice with their children. Can this be accomplished without legislation? Yes, I think it can – the proof being what I see on the hills these days. Would legislation help the process along? Yes, I think it would.

12

Am opposed. Stupid and idiotic, and you’ll never catch me in one.

However, I would wear neck protection in a heartbeat. I don’t care if I get killed on the slopes. I just don’t want to go home paralyzed.

13

You’ll have to argue with these guys who say that car seats work just as well as seat belts for children older than 24 months.

I wear a helmet on the slopes. I’ll make my kids wear a helmet. I wont make your kids or you wear a helmet, that’s your own damn business. You and others should stay out of my business and I will stay out of yours. In fact, even if you dont stay out of mine, I will still stay out of yours. I agree with Brown and hopefully this is a continuing trend.

14

I have two objections to your position. First, you say that the government should protect kids from harm resulting from crappy parents. But who’s going to protect kids from harm resulting from a crappy government? You say that sometimes parental discretion needs to be removed. But who’s going to remove government discretion? Government has harmed kids and adults by everything from bad dietary guidelines to overzealous prosecutors to banning medical marijuana. Given that, I think we should be cautious about giving government more power to regulate what we do in our private lives.

Second, there’s a type of moral hazard at work in these kinds of issues. If the government puts strict regulations on everything, people start relying on the government regulations rather than investigating for themselves and using their own judgment. For instance, fifty years ago anyone who bought a home would probably have thought carefully about how much money they had, how much they earned, and how those figures compared to the amount they were agreeing to pay on their mortgage. Five years ago, some people took out mortgages without thinking about those things, in some cases probably assuming that regulations and guidelines ensured that their mortgage wouldn’t be too large to handle.

15

Two responses: first, the government isn’t in the habit of beating children, so clearly it’s ahead of lots of parents. Secondly, this particular regulation clearly isn’t of that type — I don’t think anyone would argue that wearing a helmet while skiing or not using tanning beds is going to harm children.

You’ll need to come up with a citation for that last claim — as wild speculation goes, it’s pretty wild, and it goes against the empirical evidence that countries with more carefully regulated banks didn’t have the same collapse. More importantly, children often don’t get a say in such things anyway; their parents decide. Thus, it’s not taking discretion away from the children, but their parents, and the “moral hazard” effect (if indeed that exists —it’s another argument in need of empirical support) thus never comes into play. I always dislike anti-government regulation arguments, because the argument ends up sounding like an argument that parents own their children. In situations where there’s no especially valid reason to do things the less safe way (if you can afford skis, you can afford a helmet), why is parental discretion so important?

16

I agree with Gov. Brown. Here is a quote on this issue from Lenore Skenazy, Free Range Kids founder:

17

What about highly dangerous situations where the parent fails to appreciate the risk or just doesn’t give a damn, such as allowing a 6 year old to play unsupervised with matches and highly explosive fireworks? I think certain fireworks have an age limit of 18, no? … or leaving kids unattended in a car in the summer?

That quote suggests that as long as the parents think something is ok for their kids, then parental discretion should be left unfettered by the state.

18

There already exists a criminal charge for child endangerment. If a prosecutor thinks that not wearing a helmet fits that crime, then let them put it in front of a jury. Why is there a specific need to call out helmets while skiing or at tanning salons?

19

Because anyone ditzy enough to use a tanning salon needs the protection of a helmet when they fall of the tanning bed.

20

…because by the time a child endangerment charge gets to the prosecutor and jury, the harm is already done to the child at no fault of the child. It’s better to have a proactive law in certain cases to prevent the harm than to have a child with melanoma, brain trauma, cigarette addiction, blown-up fingers, etc., watch from the hospital bed as the parents get thrown in jail after the fact.