[Republic of Reagan]

While I love Ann to death, she is flat out wrong with this quote. This argument is the same one people use for seat-belt laws. "If someone hurts themselves, we are all responsible." That reasoning leads to the complete societal control of every aspect of individual life so as not to harm society. The problem with "liv[ing] in a country that will not allow people to live with their own stupid decisions" is a problem of socialism, not stupid decisions. You correct the problem by removing the socialistic tendencies of the country, not by removing people's right to make stupid decisions. No offense, but that's what she was saying. She was saying that the argument doesn't work because the people who "pay" for their actions are not the people harming themselves, in that in reality (which we are speaking of here), the taxpayers pay for other peoples screwups. She might agree in a "perfect world" one in which people do not have to pay for other people being idiots, that those people can do whatever harm they wanted to themselves.

[tnlibertarian]

While she diagnoses the problem correctly, she still wants to use the situation, which she disagrees with, to control people's lives instead of trying to sever the ties of group responsibility. Two wrongs don't make a right. What's wrong with fixing one of them? It may even lead to people recognizing they shouldn't be responsible for other people's dumb decisions and help end our socialist groupthink.