Yes, you can. A big argument against smoking was that second hand smoke harms people other than the smoker. For many civil libertarians, it was this third party physical harm that justified smoking regulations.
Stuffing your face with Cheetos and Coke may kill you, but it won’t kill your co-workers or the staff at 7-11.
And I hope you aren’t going to use the argument that poor health costs us all, because that road leads to banning or taxing about million different things that are nobody’s business. Skiing, for example. Or skateboarding. Or any other thing you do that has a negative impact on your health.
If only they still existed, but they have been hunted to extinction. Now you either toe the alt-right line or you get primaried by someone who will. Gone are the days of responsible Republicans like Everett Dirksen or Howard Baker or Bob Dole or Gerald Ford. Now you not only have to drink the koolaid, you have to dive into a vat of it.
I haven’t read the entire thread, but how about Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker? Just re-elected with 67% of the vote (in the state where Trump only got 33% of the vote 2 years ago), publicly anti-Trump, fiscally responsible, pro-education, pro-environment, has the highest approval rating of any governor in the USA for 8 quarters in a row (over 70%).
Please tell us your height, weight, and age. We’ll need a description of everything you’ve had to eat or drink in the last two weeks. We’ll need the results of your last physical exam and a list of any prescription drugs you use. We’ll need a list of all the recreational drugs you’ve ever tried. We’ll need a list of all your sexual partners, if any. We’ll need to know what kind of car you drive and how many miles per week. We’ll need a complete list of all interactions you’ve ever had with the police. We’ll need statements about your behavior in social settings and online from people who’ve known you for at least 10 years.
Get posting, big guy. If you cost us, even indirectly, this is our business. Tough.
I agree with this principle. Take traffic laws, as an example. I support laws like speed limits and DUI laws; because these regulate driving behaviors which could affect other people. But I don’t agree with laws that require people in cars to wear seat belts or that require motorcycle riders to wear helmets; those are both really good ideas but the effects of them will only apply to the individual so the choice should remain theirs.
But I don’t really see that as a Democrat vs Republican or conservative vs liberal issue. It was insurance companies that lobbied for seat belt and helmet laws while car and motorcycle companies led the opposition to them.
Really? You don’t see any societal cost in those things? How about family cost, then - is it *really *the case that “the effects of them will only apply to the individual”, not to loved ones left behind?
Seat belt and helmet laws *do *let us avoid the bother of scraping your sorry ass up off the pavement or out of the wreckage, maybe with enough left to get you to the hospital but maybe not. Worse, maybe you go to the Vegetable Warehouse - does *that *cost anyone else?
Those laws *do *limit access to your organs by people who could make better use of them, true, but that’s the trade-off we’re willing to make.
I really don’t think this is reasonable. People’s “choice” to not use a seatbelt is better described as a bias - people are often lazy, and often stupid, and often forgetful, and requiring that people wear seatbelts is essentially mandating that people not make incredibly stupid and dangerous choices. It is never the right choice to not wear a seatbelt - it’s just that sometimes people are dumb. Given the “choice”, who would ever choose not to wear a seatbelt if they actually have to think about it?
Interesting analogy, but there’s a difference. Even if political ideology is biologically determined, the physical manifestations of the amygdala-driven drive policy-making and voting patterns that have implications for everyone else, whereas the the physical manifestations of the biologically driven keen genital users affect only themselves. (In fact, the amygdalas often persecute the genitally keen.) So we’re not actually denigrating right-wing assholes for their unfortunate genetic predispositions; we’re denigrating them for acting like assholes.
I think it’s obvious that the loss of an individual includes the loss to the individual’s family. Having a family member die is a personal loss; not a societal loss.
What you’re saying is true. But I don’t like the idea that people should be compelled to do what’s in their best interests. I think the government is only justified in prohibiting acts that harm other people.
This has always baffled me - how some Republicans can win big in Democratic states and vice versa, when the voters there could just simply vote for a “real” Democrat or Republican instead.
Their is societal cost for not wearing helmets or buckling up. The poor cop who has to scrape victims off the pavement has to be paid. The surviving family has a statistically greater chance of requiring public assistance. The medical bills for those who survive great trauma where seat belt usage would have resulted in far less significant injuries get paid by society through increased insurance premiums. None of us are islands, what happens to one of us impacts society as a whole.
I ride a bicycle and choose not to wear a helmet. Granted, it is one of those silly bicycles that puts my feet up over the front wheel, which greatly reduces the risk of head injury in a crash, but even when I rode a regular-style bike, I much preferred not to use a helmet: riding amidst American drivers is pretty terrifying, and when a helmet bestows upon the rider a false sense of security, that feels like an undesirable benefit. Not to mention, the helmet I tried made my head hot, which was bad for my vital alertness.