Fasten your seatbelts or up against the wall and spread em'

Great Debates
81

Of course it affects others. The question is, does it affect others enough that it is right to make a law that impedes freedom? Last time I checked, I didn’t particularly enjoy looking at extremely ugly people. Does that mean that they should not be able to go out in public? Regulating the behavior of others because of something that I have a problem with is not acceptable. You have a chance of killing pedestrians as well. Does that mean that they should not be able to cross streets whenever a vehicle is within 500 feet of them? If you cannot handle the guilt of killing someone in a car accident (on the off chance that it happens), you should consider whether or not driving is for you. Cars are dangerous. To take the freedom away from others just so you can feel better if you happen to be involved in a fatal accident (which is not very likely unless you are a particularly poor driver) is not acceptable.

As for the whole saving lives thing, it doesn’t matter. I for one am not pro-life. I don’t mean pro-life in the abortion sense, I mean in favor of living. I consider life and death to be equals and do not favor one over the other. Thus, preventing me from killing myself (should I decide that my time has come) is yet another freedom that seat belts impose. Perhaps I choose to give fate a chance to speak for me and do not wear a seat belt ever. If I die, then my time has come. There is nothing wrong with behaving this way and the government should not prevent me from doing so. The fact that seat belts save lives is irrelevant. The government should not be in the life saving business. The government should be in the business of regulating those things that private citizens either cannot be trusted to regulate or would not regulate properly. Of all the things one has the right to regulate, it is one’s own life. It is not the government’s place to force me to take care of myself so that I do not die when the accident occurs.

At the moment, I have no desire to walk outside in public naked, but with all the government regulations that keep me alive, I probably have at least 40 more years to live and my desire can change at any moment. Thus far, I have not been able to come up with a single reason why I should not be allowed to walk outside naked, yet the law prevents it anyway. It leaves me so upset that I just want to drown my sorrows in a bowl of marijuana, but wait, I can’t do that either. You are right, each individual freedom that the government takes from us is small and has little affect on our lives. We have been sacrificing freedoms in the name of safety for as long as America has existed. But when you add up all those little freedoms that we have allowed our governments to take away, you realize that your life’s potential has been seriously reduced. There are so many minor paths your life could take that are not allowed. Yet most of these paths are not bad, only different. Marijuana may kill you. It also may cause you to enjoy yourself. Should it really be the government’s decision to decide that the bad outweighs the good and thus conclude that you cannot do it?

82

It’s purely a matter of degree. You can’t really compare the oh-so-horrible inconveniences of “clunk-click every trip” with even not having the right to take pot or walk out naked. The seatbelt is there. You stretch over and fasten it. This ‘hassle’ is not even approaching the annoyances of not being allowed to smoke weed. Slippery slope arguments in such a context are ridiculous.

Or shall we frame this in a utility context? The negatives experienced by those who don’t like such a law are minute when compared with the positives associated with lives being saved. If my mother kills herself it does not just affect her - it affects me too. I am more comfortable knowing that the law insists she fasten up. I have positive utility from such a law. On an aggregate scale I can well believe that the net utility derived from the law is positive, even allowing for the annoyance of loss of “freedom”.

OTOH I’m not sure I can debate this with a sociopath. If you truly believe that an individual human life is not worth preserving then we have no frame of reference. I’d prefer to answer to those who have some form of compassion.

pan

83

**dixiechiq: i don’t wear a seat belt cuz i don’t feel a need to. **

**sly: Wise up, dummy. **
[/QUOTE]

name calling does not assist your argument and is not appropriate for this forum. go to the pit if you feel the need to use insults.

84

how clever of you. you seem to believe that governments have some natural rights. i believe that individuals have natural rights. therefore i must leave?? guess again.

**

the power comes from the weapons they have. if the “mysterious power” comes from the people, why is the current president the president considering he received fewer votes than another candidate??

**

if i want to risk my life that is my choice.

**

they aren’t forcing me to use a seat belt?? but i’m responsible for following public law which stipulates i must wear a seat belt?? which is it??

85

dixie - you don’t like to be told to wear a seatbelt… why? I bet that you were a real handful for your long-suffering folks.

“Don’t put your hand in the fire!”
“You’re not the boss of me!”
(sticks hand in fire)
“aaaargh!”

Are you ethically opposed to being told to do anything, no matter how trivial and easy it is? No matter how little discomfort and how much benefit it does you?

Isn’t that a little… oh… childish?

pan

86

Ive been riding about 20 years, and have worn every kind of helmet. Many do restrict vision, I had a friend who like you swore they didnt, we tested his, and it did. I just had him face forward, moved my hand up slowly from one side, and had him tell me when he could see it. He doesnt wear one now.

More important, the restrict hearing, which I use to tell where cars around me are. The sound of the pipes reflecting off the cars around me warn if someone else is near. And they induce rider fatigue, causing you to subconsiously not look around you as much.

The are a lot of good reasons for helmets, and against. I’ve got a friend who is firefighter, and another who used to be an EMT who both refuse to wear helmets because they feel they are unsafe. Does that make them stupid? No, they just examined the facts, and came to a differant conclusion than you did. There are tons of statistics that support both arguments.

** this is not an argument that will ever be settled here,**, but my point is don’t assume someone is stupid just because they disagree with you.

87

Actually, dixiechiq is arguing from a position that is much closer to the reasoning of our country’s fathers than that of most contemporary Americans: Natural Rights.

The whole deal about “created equal” and “inalienable rights” are a statement about Natural Rights, or Natural Law, terms embraced by the philosophers of the 18th century Age of Reason: Thomas Aquinas, John Locke and Adam Smith among others.

This essay gives a better treatment than I could ever hope to, but in a nutshell, Natural Law is the philosophy that just by the benefit of being a human being (well, back then it was a white, male human being, but whatever) one had certain rights. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” as you will (although that’s a bastardization - replace “happiness” with “security” and it’s closer to the academic version). But at the time, when the church dominated everything, this was a blasphemous idea, even though Aquinas argued that these rights were God-given, whereas the more rebellious thinkers of the time, like Franklin, felt it just was…

Anyway, dix isn’t being childish. She’s offended as a matter of principle. Only people have Natural Rights. Governments DON’T. Corporations DON’T. Churches DON’T. And we seem to have completely forgotten that in the past 70 years or so, let alone agree or disagree with it.

These days it seems like corporations have more rights than individuals, and rich people more rights than poor. Especially when even the Supreme Court agrees that “money is speech.” So if I have more money than you, I have a right to more speech than you.

Applied to this topic, then, according to the original principles this country was founded on, only human beings have the right to decide whether or not they should wear a helmet, or smoke cigarettes, or wear seat belts. And these rights are inalienable, meaning even if a government makes a piece of paper that says your elected representative has signed your rights over to the government, it’s really not true. The only rights and powers that governments have are those granted them by the Constitution (although they did leave a really big loophole open for the States, in order to get them to sign the damn thing).

But people who subscribe to this philosophy today are labelled “radicals,” or “anarchists.” How ironic!

I dare say Franklin and Jefferson would have been horrified by the SCOTUS ruling last week. Combined with the whole property seizure thing on drug cases, it suddenly renders the 4th Amendment entirely too fragile.

One could hope that this prompts state and local governments to be careful about what they pass laws against – but I’m not holding my breath. Especially in an age where we’re so fond of hiring prosecutors, DA’s, and ex-cops to legislative and executive offices.

88

Forcing someone to live against their will demonstrates a lack of compassion based on a person weakness that most people have that causes them to feel bad when someone dies. Believing that a human life does not have value does not automatically make me uncompassionate. I believe that only you should have control over whether you live or die no matter how many people your death will affect. To reverse the coin (i.e. forcing people to lose their life instead of forcing them to save it) there are many people that the world would be better off without. Some people leave a foul taste in the mouth of everyone they meet. If the value of someone’s life is based a person’s value to the community and state, then, in addition to forcing some people to live against their will, it is only fitting to kill others against their will even if they have committed no crime. I feel that forcing non-criminals to live or die against their will is equally wrong.

Because the people have chosen to allow the electoral college to remain. It has its pros and cons, but in the end we have decided to keep it even after this past election.

Being given advice or even outright ordered to do something is one thing. However, when you are prosecuted for ignoring that order, that is when it goes too far. The government can suggest that I do a lot of things. It is when they back that suggestion up with a law that the problems arise.

89

more insults… your side seems to have run out of arguments.
as for your question above. yes!!!

thanks to bughunter. that post agrees with me and makes me feel warm inside. :slight_smile:

90

If I may, can I ask you to read the italicised bit, forget for a second that this was a philosophy propounded by the founding fathers of your country (after all, no-one’s right ALL the time) and ask yourself: How exactly, just by the benefit of being human, can any “inalienable” rights pertain to me?
What follows is a bit Socratean but please, bear with me:
Q: Are they granted by anyone? A: No, else that authority could rescind them.
Q: So they just attach themselves, fully formed, to every human being at the moment of birth? A: Yes, although there’s some debate about that “moment of birth” part.
Q: In practical terms, is it impossible for these rights to be infringed? A: No, quite the reverse.
Q: So these rights are purely theoretical then? A: Yes, but no less important for all that.
Q:So, in theory, what happens when the rights of two or more individuals collide? A: Whoever has the most to lose is given precedence.
Q: So these rights can in fact be infringed? A: Well, sometimes, yes.
Q: And who decides who has the most to lose, the individuals concerned? Or some other authority? For if the individuals are to decide, is there not a risk that the decision might hinge more on force and emotion rather than pure reason and absolute empathy? A: Some other authority.

Now, I could follow that further to establish that said authority would have to be chosen by all individuals concerned and thus be more or less a modern democracy but I know you can all see where I’m going with this. To quote another 18th century philosopher, (Jeremy Bentham) “To talk of “rights” is nonsense, and to talk of inalienable rights is nonsense on stilts.” No society can operate on the level of natural rights.

So, essentially, we have a social contract, whereby individuals “lease” to the government the authority to determine the limit of any and all individuals natural rights, in exchange for a protection of their own rights from the strong, and, generally speaking, the use of that collective authority (and power) to provide for the members of society.
So, to say that you have a “right” not to wear a seatbelt, false. What you mean to say is “I ought to be allowed to do what I want - as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else” N.B. even that sentence implys a limitation on your rights. So the question then becomes, “Who determines what harms others, and how?” Well, we can’t leave it to individuals to determine what harms others, for the reasons outlined above. (Remember, this isn’t a question over whether you have sound judgement in this regard, it’s over whether everyone does). So the government, taking a more objective view, decides that society is harmed if individuals refuse to wear seatbelts. Why? x number of deaths per year, costs to emergency services of dealing with easily avoidable accidents, protection of the civic body (a primary responsibility, yes?) They might be wrong in this assessment, of course. Happily, their “lease” of your rights comes up for renewal every four years. Of course, for something a touch more serious than the question of mandatory seatbelts (sheesh. I mean really, “slippery slope”? Yeah right. We’ve had it in the UK for most of my life; let me know when we’ve totally abbrogated our rights, because I sure as hell won’t have noticed) a degree more protest than merely casting (or not casting) a vote is required. The civil rights movement in America is a good example of how this aspect works (i.e. slowly, and at great cost to those involved, but do consider that the starting point was slavery) as is the Women’s Rights movement.
So where’s the problem? Arguments seem to be along the lines of

  1. Because I want to go “beltless”
    Gonna need a little more than that. Some people want to steal your car and they don’t get what they want. What makes you special?
  2. Because I don’t see the need.
    Maybe you don’t. Doesn’t mean it’s not there. Doesn’t mean you won’t change your mind in the interval between leaving the seat and bouncing off the tarmac. (I sincerely hope this never happens, by the way). It’s not opinion that they save lives, it’s a fact that’s been established in tests conducted all across the world.
  3. People engage in e.g. SCUBA diving, light plane flying/eating badly, being ugly without any infringement.
    Oh please. In the case of the first two, these are hazardous activities that do require the participant to conform to certain safety standards. Much like driving, really, except the (perceived) hazards of driving are considerably lower, leading to objection 2. If you eat badly once in your life, it will not kill you. If you drive without a seatbelt, even once, it may kill you. If you have an accident that one time, it will. As for ugly people, I submit that there’s a quantitive difference between feeling momentarily put off, and having the guy in the back seat of your car crush your skull (it happens) because he didn’t wear a belt.

Was the cop right to incarcerate the little old lady? No.
Is it right that she be mandated to wear a belt? Yes.

91

Well, my original post was mainly a defense against immature accusations of childishness made here… I don’t necessarily subscribe (fully) to the concept of Natural Law (and neither did our founding fathers, apparently, since only white male landowners qualified for those rights, originally). But I understand them and know how they were used as the basis for the construction of the U. S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

But, since you bring up Bentham, an empricist who rejected all abstract notions of “rights” or “power,” I can’t resist one small comment:

Functionally, in practice, we are granted rights by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Empiricism or no, this is the supreme law of the land. Thus your socratic chain falls apart at the first link.

Finally, your analogy with car theft is catastropically flawed and specious. Car theft carries an identifiable victim and loss of property. Failure to wear a seat belt has no identifiable victim and has nothing to do with property.

Helmet laws, seat belt laws, and even drug laws are what’s known as “paternalistic” – in other words, the government is acting as a parent, attempting to protect its citizens from their own ignorance or carelessness. Not everyone agrees this is the proper role of government, either out of a sense of entitlement to personal responsibility, or (in my case) a simple kind or darwinism that says that stupid people should be allowed to take deadly risks. None of these positions are worthy of ridicule, and an intelligent person should be able to understand them, even if they don’t agree with them.

But when the parent begins to abuse the child for such minor transgressions as not strapping themselves into a motor vehicle, new objections become valid, too: What right does the state have to make paternalistic laws when their agents demonstrably use such laws as an excuse to abuse their power?

If the State of Texas were a parent, in most US States she would have her children taken away for the kind of overreaction that occured in this case.

92

The slippery slope argument is not an unreasonable one if you look at the big picture. If you only look in your lifetime you may not notice much, but if you look at the beginning of America’s history you will see that the rights and freedoms of the people have been steadily declining over the past two hundred years and will continue to do so unless certain rare politicians are elected. New laws are made every year, yet few laws are ever repealed. As the number of laws steadily increase, the number of freedoms will steadily decrease. There are a lot of freedoms left and you may not notice them being taken away since it happens so slowly, but there is no end in sight at the moment and there in lies the problem. I haven’t ever heard a politician say, “Read my lips, no new laws” and the number of politicians that wish to repeal numerous old laws is quite small.

93

*Originally posted by amrussell *
**

**

i’ve signed no lease/contract. i am not protected by the government from the strong. i can be fired from a job or refused any public accomodation based upon who i am.

**

the government does not have rights. individuals do.

**

yes, i can see your point. <s> taking a car that someone else paid for is not even remotely similar to whether the government has the right to tell me i have to wear a seatbelt.

**

i have no interest in someone else trying to make my life safer. i make those decisions for myself. if i die from making the wrong choice at least i die free, which is better than living unfree.

94

True freedom is not negative. It is not merely freedom from something. True freedom is freedom to do the things that are worthy from a free person. True freedom is the right to self-government, not the freedom from government.

But, that is all to philisophical from this debate. Pick up some Socrates, and give me a call back.

95

The thing is dixie - you’ve rebutted once more with

But I deny that this is so, simply because I don’t think that you have defined what you mean by “rights”. You are making a tacit assumption that I will understand and embrace this concept, but I’m afraid that I am merely left somewhat bemused.

I was originally going to post along the lines of amrussell, but he got there first and better than I would have done anyway. So I’ll merely reiterate:[list=1][li]tell me what you mean by “rights”[/li][li]justify that they exist[/li][li]tell me how they fit into these circumstances[/li][li]tell me how to resolve conflicts of “rights” (e.g. I claim the right not to see you splattered on the tarmac due to not wearing your seatbelt)[/list=1]and I will give you more credence. I warn you however that we trod this path in aynrandlover’s thread on “What are human rights” and didn’t resolve much there either. I warn you too that not being an American, I am none too impressed by appeals to authority along the lines of “the founding fathers said so!”[/li]
pan

96

Actually to avoid this becoming a hijack into another “what are rights” debate, I’ll give you (1) and (2) in the context of the US constitution. In other words, I’ll grant that you do have rights, but only those rights that your laws say you have.

Your job then is to convince me that seatbelt laws are unethical (parts 3 and 4) in this context.

Any attempt to appeal to higher “rights” than those justified under US law must be justified and proved to exist. In that case you need to run through the whole of 1 to 4.

pan

97

Well, if you’ll permit me a chance to weld: I agree that “functionally, in practice” these rights are granted by some authority, in this case an authority above even the government, but I was trying to deal with the theory of natural rights (and show some flaws) before moving down to practicalities. The first link was just a re-statement of the basic philosphy of Natural Rights. Said philosophy does not require, in fact cannot admit, an external “grantor” of rights, because they apply to everyone “just by benefit of being a human being.” “<Authority> giveth, and <Authority> taketh away” cannot apply under that theory.

You’re right, it was bad analogy because we now live at a time where the statements “I want to” and “I want to as long as no one else suffers” are held to be categorically different, not merely members of the same class. The point I was aiming for (and missed) was that in any discussion about rights the argument “But I want to” is insufficient, because the individual is not the fittest person to judge whether and how his wants impact on society. You use the phrase “identifiable victim”. I think there are “identifiable victims” of failure to wear seatbelts, excluding the non-wearer. (Grieving family, medical services wasting limited resources on a pointless accident. Failure to wear a seatbelt in the rear of a car can kill the person directly in front.)

Actually, I’m afraid to say that I do find the “darwinism” position worthy of ridicule. The belief that someone who fails to put on a seatbelt is so manifestly stupid as to disqualify him/herself from the opportunity to breed, that the only important genes to be passed on are those of intelligence, that intelligence is purely genetic in any case and that stupid people cannot have intelligent children, and the underlying attitude of “it’s no skin of my nose if some schmuck I’ve never heard of get’s creamed in a car accident, in fact, we’re all probably better off as a result” strikes me as being callous and flawed (catastrophically so).

So, because a tiny minority of parents bear their children, no parents should have the right to discipline their child? The right of the state to make (paternalistic) laws derives from its legitimacy - a continual abuse of power (in contravention to the Constitution/Bill of Rights) would mean that the state has no legitimacy. If agents of the state demonstrably use any laws as an excuse to abuse their power, then the state does not have the “right” to make any laws.

Really? I had always thought the US had pretty good anti-discrimination laws - clearly not good enough though. Nevertheless, the government is protecting you: minimum wage ensures your need to earn a living cannot be exploited, the police (when not abusing their power) protect you from the criminal element, health and safety regulation protects you from e.g. working in a fire trap. You have benefited from the government in other ways, notably in your education, the provision of power to your home, the existence of infrastructure, etc. That’s the government’s side of the contract.

How far does that go? Would you refuse medical assistance (somebody trying to make your life safer by stitcing you up) after you’d been in an accident? Do you disapprove of drink driving laws and speeding laws, which are there to make your life safer by reducing the hazardous behaviour of others? It is better to die free than live unfree, but I don’t think this is a case which would merit death, nor do I consider being fined for not belting up to be living unfree. Is this a cause to shed blood over?

98

i am not impressed by appeals to authority either. but then, i’m not impressed by authority.

while you insist i define and prove that i have rights, you seem to tacitly assume that government has them. as you mentioned that i have stated, i don’t believe gov’t has rights. you do. there is no more burden of proof upon me than there is on you.

i believe each individual is born free. society and gov’t do their best to make the individual believe otherwise. lets say i am a creature of species “x”. i’m born on some wet rock that circles a ball of burning hydrogen. there are also many other creatures of various type in my immediate environment including others of my type. some of those of my type band together for mutual protection. they decide not to protect me because i am perceved to be somehow different than they, so i refuse to join.

the band grows in size and strength. i decide to move to an area they don’t use because they are obnoxious [not offering me protection, yet insisting i be obedient].

now, the band has grown more. grown so much that there is literally no place that i can go to avoid them. i’m unable to avoid them, not protected by them, yet subject to their whims. why should i have any respect for them?? why should i obey them?? why would i even consider allowing them to govern the details of my life?? i don’t respect them. i don’t obey them [my actions may follow their rules in the main, but that is merely coincidence rather than obedience.] and i certainly do not allow them to get into the details of my life. i do not grant them that right.

99

**

i am born what is labeled transgendered. people labelled so get fired for that reason all the time. sometimes they get refused medical treatment and die. sometimes they they are not protected by the police from criminals. sometimes they are abused by police. sometimes they are jailed for no reason other than perceived difference.

the “notable” education i wish i had never been subjected to. i hated every single day of it. it was not a benefit, it was a torture.

government does not provide power to homes in the us [least not where i live], it is provided by private companies. they do provide roads. of course taxpayers pay for the roads. let me supply you with something by forcing you to pay for it, then i make rules for it.

merely being fined for not belting up is merely aggravating. being hauled off to jail for 48 hours is an outrage. but it gets far worse. the law of the government says the maximum punishment is only a fine for that offense, yet someone is jailed for it!! getting even worse, the highest court in that government upholds that illegal act [illegal as defined by that government] to be lawful.

“is that a cause to shed blood over?” maybe not if it is the only such act, but since the highest court has just changed what is legal/illegal, ultimately it is. and though i have no intention of causing blood to shed, i think that blood will be shed over it.

100

I take issue. I have nowhere declared that government has “rights”. In fact quite the reverse - I have expressed scepticism towards the “rights” even being well-defined in this context.

Burden of proof

I have simply said that if you want to use the concept of “rights” to justify your opposition to seatbelt laws, you must follow my 4-step program first in order to convince me that your argument is valid. I have, however, conceded that for the purpose of this debate I will accept rights as defined under US law. AFAIK though, mandatory seatbelt laws do not violate these rights.

If you wish to claim rights above and beyond US law, please define these and justify why they should be respected, otherwise I see no reason why I should accept your arguemnt as valid.

This is the key. You believe it. But you can’t demonstrate it. In fact I would claim the the opposite is palpably evident.

Your analogy to a hypothetical member of a hypothetical species I do not see as supporting your argument that being forced to wear a seatbelt conspires against some kind of “natural” law. If anything it demonstrates that the rule of the majority is the natural law and is an argument in favour of accepting compromise in order to coexist in a social group.

You say that you don’t “grant them the right” to dictate anything to you. Fine. Well in reciprocation, they do not grant you the right to exist independently from them. Whose rights win? Well, that’s what we have governments for - conflicts of interest. Some you win, some you lose.

pan