Ah, hyperbole! Queen of the rhetorical techniques. Whassa matta, your straw man in the shop this week?
Oooo! Oooo! If the government doesn’t subsidize every form of foolishness I wish to engage in I am not truly free!!! Help! Help! The MAN is repressing me!
By god, that’s what freedom means! It means being able to do whatever the hell I want and relying on the rest of society to pick up the pieces for me.
Let’s look at it this way: I believe if I choose to engage in an activity, I should pay the costs associated with that activity. For instance, if I want to go to Disneyworld, I should pay for the tickets, the lodging, the travel, etc.
Certain activities bear an additional cost in the form of risk that injuries or other expenses will be incurred. Arguably, (I do not wish to argue statistics at this point) riding without a helmet increases the risk of injuries or death to the rider. This is a cost of engaging in the activity. Who should pay this cost? You, the rider who is engaging in the activity and deriving whatever benefit it provides, or me, who is completely removed from the process?
Freedom is a great thing, but with it comes responsibility. Do whatever the hell you want, so long as you don’t hurt me (or cost me anything). Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. Want to ride without a helmet? Fine. But YOU take the consequences and YOU pay the costs. And spare me your adolescant raving about “freedom”.
Ah, hyperbole! Queen of the rhetorical techniques. Whassa matta, your straw man in the shop this week?
Oooo! Oooo! If the government doesn’t subsidize every form of foolishness I wish to engage in I am not truly free!!! Help! Help! The MAN is repressing me!
By god, that’s what freedom means! It means being able to do whatever the hell I want and relying on the rest of society to pick up the pieces for me.
Let’s look at it this way: I believe if I choose to engage in an activity, I should pay the costs associated with that activity. For instance, if I want to go to Disneyworld, I should pay for the tickets, the lodging, the travel, etc.
Certain activities bear an additional cost in the form of risk that injuries or other expenses will be incurred. Arguably, (I do not wish to argue statistics at this point) riding without a helmet increases the risk of injuries or death to the rider. This is a cost of engaging in the activity. Who should pay this cost? You, the rider who is engaging in the activity and deriving whatever benefit it provides, or me, who is completely removed from the process?
Freedom is a great thing, but with it comes responsibility. Do whatever the hell you want, so long as you don’t hurt me (or cost me anything). Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. Want to ride without a helmet? Fine. But YOU take the consequences and YOU pay the costs. And spare me your adolescent raving about “freedom”.
I’ll spare you my rants on freedom as long as you keep your socialist “everone pays” retoric to yourself.
While were at it what say we drop all those damn commie re-distribution of wealth programs. I fucking bet you they cost me PLENTY more than paying for unsafe motorists do.
Come to think of it, I wager that the lions share of your so called “social burden” comes from nice non risk taking people like yourself.
Or did you just assume that the majority of people on medicare were crazed bikers.
Bikers, like all motorists carry insurance and comply with state and federal safety regulations. Penalize them for non-compliance and you have to penalize all non-compliants. Nice to know grandma looses her health care because her defective tail light caused an accident.
Face it Frankie, the impact of motorcycle accidents (both helemeted and non) on the overall medical outlay of the country is next to none. Your rant is nothing but anti-bike propaganda.
If you want to bitch about the damage to society caused by smoking and butter consumption, take it elsewhere. We’re talking helmets here fuckstick.
(fuckstick included at Spuds request, direct all fuckstick related comments to him).
BTW I agree with your assertion that freedom is responsibity. You’ll be happy to know That I have never taken a dime of your precious state support.
Since you’ve basically agreed with everything I’ve said, why are you flaming me? What do you disagree with?
Where did I say there should be helmet laws? Where did I say anything “anti-bike”? How do you know anything about me personally such that you can characterize me as a “non-risk taker”?
Since you apparently were not clever enough to derive the meaning of my earlier posts, let me spell it out again – this time in nice short words…
Bikers should be allowed to ride without helmets.
Bikers who choose to ride without helmets should not be able to impose the additional costs involved on the public.
Therefore, bikers who ride without a helmet and without adequate insurance (both health and life if they have dependants) should be penalized for their irresponsibility.
Next, a word about social costs. Social costs does not equal socialism. Social costs are created when the individuals responsible for paying for something cannot or do not pay their bills. For instance, when someone declares bankruptcy, their creditors take a hit – and then pass the costs of that bad debt on to the rest of their customers. BINGO – a social cost. Kindly explain how the belief that people should pay their own bills makes me a communist. I think someone who supports state subsidies for injured bikers’ health-care sounds like more of a communist to me.
To be perfectly clear, I think this should be a universal policy. This shouldn’t just apply to helmetless bikers but to anyone who makes choices to incur additional costs. It’s simple – people should pay their own freight. If you can prove that my lifestyle causes additional social costs, I should pay them.
I don’t have enough of the facts to debate whether helmetless riding causes more injuries or more severe injuries or whatever. Intuitively it seems clear to me that riding bareheaded is more dangerous. We may disagree about the existance or amount of the social costs involved, but can you agree that, in principle, the persons responsible for incurring costs should be responsible for paying them?
Here’s another example – I’ve never climbed a mountain before and I decide to climb Mt Everest. I get stuck and an expensive rescue operation has to be mounted to retrieve me. Who should bear the costs of that rescue? Me? The taxpayers? What’s fair?
Or hey, maybe you should have the unrestricted right to do whatever the hell you want and screw the rest of us. Because anytime someone dares suggest that riding a motorcycle without a helmet is anything less than a god given right we’re accused of being Attilla the Hun. You fuckstick you!
Well I suppose if you were to get stuck on Everest someone would have to come get you. But since I don’t pay taxes in Asia I doubt any money I paid would be used.
While it is possible that your statment was not anti-bike per say, the same old “public burden” arguments are used time and again by the helmet lobby. Usually they are so transparent that even the legislature can see through them. Their main purpose is to fuel hatred towards those damn irresponsible bikers. I suppose for the, “How dare they pick my pocket” type response. Pure propaganda.
My main objection towards your ideas was that they are overly simplistic and for obvious reason, would not work. In fact, if your recall the first line of my “bland new world” post, I thought you were joking.
Amid the flaming, sarcasm and over all satiristic tone of my replies I hid plenty of hints as to why. Little did I know you could actually believe such a plan had any merit.
So allow me to present a brief explanation as to why I feel your waiver system is bunk.
According to your logic, people have no right to expect others to pay for something that they derive no benifit from. (direct or indirect) So you propose that those taking part in high risk behavior should waive any claim to public services. (hereby refered to under the blanket term of SSI).
So lets imagine EvilGhandi and all others like him decide, “Hey sounds good to me!” “Sign me up”. Unfortunately, under the same logic, EvilGhandi and his minions could never receive any benifit from SSI, so therefore can no longer be compelled to pay into it.
It wouldn’t be long before word got around and the stampede to file waivers claimed more lives that the risky behaviors they excused did. Not to mention the exodus would cause the Ponzi scheme that is SSI to collapse within weeks.
Perhaps it wasn’t clear that I wasn’t seriously suggesting that helmetless bikers waive their rights to government entitlement programs. That was hyperbole. I didn’t mean to posit it as a workable proposal.
The point is, people should be required to be financial responsible for the actions they take, including bikers. Looks like we agree on that. N’kay? Communication is a wonderful thing.
My father rode bikes until his 50’s, when he died of a stroke. He ALWAYS wore a helmet. He said, “Anyone too dumb to wear a helmet hasn’t got brains worth protecting.” Helmet laws didn’t bother him because he wore one ANYWAY, get the drift? Had they forced him to do something he DIDN’T want to do, the case would’ve been different.
I have to agree with everyone here, helmets are a DANGER and not to mention not very fashionable I have been riding for almost 2 years and with some of the close calls i’ve come across, i would of been thankfull to of become an organ donor, rather than live with the constant reminder that this wonderful helmet is responsible for letting me continue to live life as a vegi- and i can’t even RIDE!
The helmet will keep you from being a veg. I’m living proof of that, and I’ve been around bikes long enough to see the following:
no helmet = brain damage/retardedness;
helmet = being able to look back and say, “Damn! That fuckin’ sucked!”
“Bikers are a rare breed. Harley riders are a dime a dozen.” – seen on a T-shirt at Bike Week
I have been riding for almost 2 years and with some of the close calls i’ve come across, i would of been thankfull to of become an organ donor, rather than live with the constant reminder that this wonderful helmet is responsible for letting me continue to live life as a vegi- and i can’t even RIDE!