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Posted on 12/04/2006 8:01:45 AM PST by traviskicks
When the government tells you that you can’t smoke marijuana or that you must wear a helmet when you ride your motorcycle even if you happen to like the feeling of the wind in your hair, it is being paternalistic. It is largely treating you the way a parent treats a child, restricting your liberty for what it deems to be your own good. Paternalistic laws aren’t very popular in this country. We hew to the principle that, children and the mentally ill apart, an individual is a better judge of what’s good for him than the state is and that people should be free to do what they wish as long as their actions don’t harm others. Contrary to what many people believe, you can even commit suicide legally (although if you don’t live in Oregon, you should think twice about seeking assistance).
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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This is what you get when you let rats elect rats....
RAT CRAP.....folks....RAT CRAP
These are queried from a strictly conservative secular viewpoint.
I'm not sure, it's sort of a grey area, because a person is voluntarily asking the state to restrict them. However, I'd assume there are taxpyer burden costs ass/ with this.
I think the debate is sort of interesting, cuz I've never seen the issue addressed head on like this.
I am loathe to put a price tag on freedom.
When the welfare rules, the 'arts' and other benificiaries (or leeches)of more direct taxpayers dollars get goverment control, then we can talk about whether the government ought to be paying for our freedoms, or whether the risks are ours to bear.
Today's soft paternalism is tomorrow's hard paternalism. Your 'voluntary' agreement will be soon be mandated through oppressive surcharges, insurance premiums, sin taxes and other forms of state coercion. And of course, a large bureaucracy will be needed to keep an eye on all this...
This article? IN THE FRIGGIN NY TIMES? Hey, dopes, THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PUSH DEMOCRATIC POLICIES, YOU @$$HOLES! When the government pays for healthcare, they want to know what you're eating, drinking, and smoking. That's why socialized medicine is the end of freedom in this country, period.
What country is he refering too? In the USA I live in "paternalistic" laws are legion, backed up by people in uniform wielding guns. I suppose his focus is simply on laws regarding anal sex between consenting adults, not smoking, seatbelts, helmets, pot, gun ownership, hunting, canoeing, hair cutting, manicures, vacinations, etc. etc.
It seems pretty strange to see the NYT decrying the nanny state they so fervently support.
Our lovely Mike Bloomberg here in NY is one of the godfathers of paternalism.
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Generally I agree, but I read an article about another "soft paternalism" approach that did not involve government (at least not directly) and I'm not so sure it's objectionable. A company offered tax deferred savings accounts (IRA's) to its employees, and only about half of the eligible people signed up. They switched to automatically enrolling employees in a basic plan, with an option to opt out or to switch to different plan options. The choices available hadn't really changed, but now 75% wound up in a savings plan. They weren't coerced, because they could opt out (and a quarter did). But participtation went way up just because of the way the offer was structured (opt out rather than opt in). Was the autonomy of the employees violated?
Since I don't smoke or drink, and maintain a somewhat healthy diet, why should I have to subsidize the lower health insurance premiums of those who do? Just as Life Insurance costs more if you're a smoker, so should health insurance. If you're a drinker, your car insurance premiums should be higher as well. In fact, why not charge higher premiums for cell phone owners? (except I own one of those, doh!) You should be responsible for the results of your own "free" choices, and I should not have to subsidize them.
If one chooses to smoke, by all means do so, but don't polute the public air (restaraunts, airplanes, offices), and if you get a smoking related disease, don't ask the Insurance company (or medicare) to cover it.
So please don't get high and ride your streetbike helmetlessly into my car at 80 mph to commit suicide, because if you do, my car insurance will go up, even though I'm not at fault! Now that's conservative compassion!
For example, RFK jr. and Al Gore harangue us about our energy wasting ways while flying around in private jets and using limousines.
The answers to those questions depend entirely on government policies. The first question for example, re insurance premiums: if insurance companies are permitted to operate on a free market basis, and there is no tax coercion of employers into providing medical insurance for their employees (and with identical costs/benefits to all employees regardless of their behavior), then the premiums of responsible people will not go up due to the irresponsible behavior of others. This vicious circle is but one example of the insidious nature of socialism, which inevitably breeds more socialism.
Life insurance costs more for smokers because they die earlier, statistically speaking. It isn't clear that their health care costs more -- at least not if one takes into account the costs to Medicare (as opposed to employer provided insurance), since old age maladies can be very costly.
Please note that once we've accepted the reasoning that smokers, the obese, etc. are costing us too much money, the next step is to apply the same logic to the disabled and the elderly. Why should I pay to maintain a child with spina bifida or Down's syndrome if the parents had the option to abort and chose to have the child? Why should I pay to maintain a 90 year-old who has't contributed to the system in decades?
BINGO!!! This amounts to coerced charity, which then is not charity at all. How about I take care of my elderly/disabled family members, and you take care of yours? And non-government charities take care of those who can't?
However, abortion is not an option. Would you abort a child because their learning ability would require they go to an exclusive, expensive college?
You are right. I didn't read the article. I should have known that the NYT would not betray its pinch philosophy. However, I suspect that his "path" is more like a toll road.
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