Hey Beady and Billy Joe,
This is fun. I've never gotten a chance to talk about my views on (extremely) limited government with anyone who doesn't either a)agree with me (boring) or b) call me names (and I'm sooo sensitive). Will the moderator allow this discussion to continue here, or should we move it to the politics forum?
Beady,
To repeat a point that I attempted to make but that looks like it got buried: Where do you make allowances for human fallability?
That's just my point. The government is made out of people. The same fallible humans you're talking about. Politicians and bureaucrats don't receive any training in how to run the country. There's no school for that, no "government licensing" board to make sure the politician knows what he is doing. Most regulations that restrict our choices are not legislated, they are written by fiat by bureaucrats in unelected positions.
Where do you take into consideration that, if the ad agencies do their jobs properly, the average person can be seduced into just about anything and everything that will measurably shorten his life?
I believe I covered that when I said that was an incredibly elitist statement. Do you think that ad agencies can talk you, Beady, into any of that, without your consent? Do you consider the average person a moron who is certain to fall for every ad pitch that comes along? Does the average person not realize that ads are trying to sell a product, and part you with your money? I don't believe it. The "average" person is quite capable of seeing through the bull.
Where do you consider the abnormally trusting and suggestible, such as the stereotypical senior citizen (and stereotypes exist for a reason)?
For any of you senior citizens who wish to write to Beady, (Dr. Randi, are you listening?), I'm sure his e-mail address is available somewhere. Beady! Age is not a disease, nor does it automatically turn your brain to mush. Most senior citizens are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. For those who can't, there are family members who can. For those who don't have families, there are private institutions (who receive no federal or state tax monies -- dare I say it? religious institutions, among others) who help a lot. I belong to one myself as a volunteer. As for the ones who fall through the cracks, why don't you tailor the regulations for the non compos mentis and leave the other 98% of us alone?
And what about children? Monitor the TV and their playtime all you want, how are you going to protect them from being acculturated by our self-indulgent, consumerist society?
You can't. What you
can do is teach them how to think for themselves, how to think critically, how to take care of themselves physically, etc. It's called parenting. A parent's job is not to isolate their children from the world, it is to teach them how to live in it as moral citizens who take care of themselves. And it is darned hard, believe me! Now where it gets sticky is with those children who have no one to parent them. You've got me there. My wife and I help all the ones we can, and I belong to the local child advocacy center. This is a center that is not part of the government, and you would not
believe the amount of obstructionist regulations, red tape, paperwork, on and on, that must be met just for us to function. This is one of the reasons I can't stand our present system of unlegislated regulations that restrict everyone that tries to help someone. It just drives me nuts!
Aside from that, I'm not sure what your point is. How are you going to regulate cultural mores? What regulations would you suggest?
If you mean that children should be protected from others by laws, then that's a no-brainer. Of course they have to be protected from people that want to hurt them. However, they cannot and should not be isolated from all the consequences of their own decisions. That's how they learn to take care of themselves.
Personally, I believe that children should have a graduated introduction into the privileges of citizenship, not just give it to them when they reach a magic age. But that's for another thread.
Were Big Macs and wine clips regulated by special laws on a case-by-case basis, or do they fall under a generic law? If the latter, is it a good or a bad law? If it's an overall good law, are you going to remove special items from its jurisdiction on a case-by-case basis, or are you going to repeal it entirely? If it's a bad law, why don't you (yes *you*) have a word with your congresscritter?
The examples I gave were frivolous, I know. Other than that, I think we may be talking about two different things here. I have no problem living under a system of laws, as long as they are equally applied to all citizens (which ours are decidely not, but that's for another thread, also). Laws require an elected official to be accountable for their passage. I'm mostly talking about regulations that are written by bureaucrats who aren't accountable to anyone. And have you ever tried talking to a congresscritter? They are almost completely inaccessible. You end up talking to aides, secretaries, etc., unless you represent a large voting block or want to contribute huge sums of money. Believe me, I've tried.
I drove an ambulance for several years, and I've seen people die because they or someone else was using marijuana when they shouldn't have been. Substance abuse is all of a piece.
Couldn't agree more. However, all the laws and regulations you care to pass have only filled up the jails with druggies, and the drugs are even more accessible on the street now than they were 10 years ago. Most everybody who uses marijuana doesn't abuse it. Alchohol has a much higher abuse potential, and tobacco is much more physically addictive. Yet our government not only declares them legal, it subsidizes their manufacture with everyone's tax dollars. Go figure. I don't think legalizing marijuana will increase its use or abuse. It will only take its production and distribution out of the hands of criminals, give millions of people a cottage industry, and give the government another tax revenue source.
Plenty of watchdogs, watched by other watchdogs, and all of them subject to replacement.
You don't have that now, believe me. Especially the "subject to replacement" part. Ever tried to hold a bureaucracy accountable for anything?
But above all, I demand free access to the courts and to the legal system as a whole. You are proposing to restrict that last, through your removal of the protective regulation by which the courts operate and I can seek redress.
I think you misunderstand my position. There should be laws. Everyone should abide by them, they should apply to everyone, and everyone should have access to the courts to seek redress when they have been damaged by someone who broke the law. We agree on all of that. Where we seem to differ is that you seem to believe that if you think you wasted your money on what you consider a useless gadget, or if you cannot stop yourself from gorging on Big Macs, or whatever, then it is the government's job to step in and make those items unavailable to everyone. My position is that if you didn't buy the gadget because you were intentionally deceived, and you were not forced to eat the Big Macs, then why should I be denied the right to buy or eat those items, just because you think they're bad for me? The purpose of laws and regulations should be to define where your rights end and mine begin, not restrict choices to everyone for some government perceive good.
And how, precisely, does requiring McDonalds, General Motors, Wineclip Enterprises, whomever, to adhere to certain standards restrict that choice?
Who gets to set the standards? Government standards should be for those things for which you have no option (the public water supply, for instance), or for which your choice affects other people (GM shouldn't be allowed to sell a car that endangers everyone on the road because its wheels fall off at moderate speeds, thereby causing multi-car pile ups). The standards should not be for those things for which you do have an option. The government should not tell you what menu items at McDonald's you can choose from, nor what gas mileage your car must adhere to.
When a product has killed, maimed or disabled enough people, their revenue will be diminished to the point where they'll have to change things.
You and I agree on this one. Market forces simply cannot correct safety hazards fast enough without some sort of safety standard being enforced.
I don't have a problem with that. I do, as I said, have a problem with denying government the tools and abilities to protect me and mine.
I think we would only disagree on the details of what tools and abilities the government should have. In general, I agree.
Yes you can, by requiring certain standards in medication and construction methods (dealing solely with the cases mentioned). Just about the time you originally posted, a doctor in Oregon(?) was giving people last year's flu vaccine. This vaccine was not harmful, in itself, but it is ineffective against this year's strain of flu and, coincidentally, it was several months past its expiration date. The harm done was that those people left the clinic thinking they were protected.
No, you can't protect them from disease by regulation. Here's a factoid for you. Did you get a flu vaccine during any year? Guess what? Doctor's
never know if the vaccine will be effective against the strain that happens to appear that year. They make educated guesses. Last year, they were wrong.
No one who got a flu vaccine last year (including my son) got the right strain. That's because the influenza virus has a multitude of strains, and the vaccine has to be made before the flu starts to spread. Which one will it be? Who knows? Ask any doctor and they will tell you its pot luck. They just hope that if they get it wrong, there will be some cross protection from the vaccine for the strain that actually shows up. But in your example, the people bought the vaccine under false pretenses, and the doctor should be prosecuted for that, not for some imagined harm they suffered from their getting a useless vaccine - that could happen almost any year, whether the vaccine is out of date or not.
One of the lessons of Hurricane Andrew was that Florida needed better building construction requirements. One of the lessons that every hurricane teaches is that buildings shouldn't be constructed directly on the beach, but such regulation would restrict people's choice. As it now stands, your freedom to build a flimsy house on the beach is driving up my insurance rates.
It shouldn't drive up your rates. Anyone stupid enough to build on the coast in a hurricane zone should have to pay extra for insurance and it should not affect everyone else. But wait.
I do own a house on the waterfront in a hurricane zone. And I do pay very high insurance rates. And there are many companies that don't sell insurance for waterfront property, so if you buy insurance from them, your rates won't be affected. And I do not think that federal funds should be spent on people who build their homes on the waterfront in hurricane zones, or knowingly build in flood zones, etc. I didn't claim any FEMA money, and I got no state assistance for the clean-up of my property. I footed the entire bill, except for what insurance covered. What my insurance company is willing to cover is up to them, and other companies exist for people like you who don't want to share my risk. That is all as it should be.
Without regulations, government has no authority to halt or to remove the charlatans' activities, or to give the victims redress. How do you recover damages if wrongdoing and negligence doesn't violate a law or regulation?
Again, I agree. I'm not against all laws and regulations. Just those that restrict choices that affect only me, or that force me to contribute funds to something I don't want to do just because someone else thinks its good for me. Obviously, someone selling rotten meat affects more than himself, just as "Dr. Butcher" would. There should be laws against that. The latest referendum in California that forced taxes to be payed by everyone to fund stem-cell research was wrong.
Apprenticeships already exist where they have grown naturally. By what means are you now going to "encourage" them to grow where they have not, or have failed?
Now that's a good question, and
should be where government weenies spend their intellectual energies, not writing regulations that needlessly restrict my freedoms.
My brother rose through an apprenticeship system to be a master millwrite(sp?), but he still works for a licensed company. Even if he worked for himself, he'd still have to have a business and/or tax license. The government would still regulate him.
Why? What further assurance does that government license give you that your brother knows what he is doing? His business license and tax license is for revenue production for the government, not public protection. I doubt there is a millwrite(sp?) in the government licensing office, or even anyone who knows what they do.
Affirmative action cannot obtain legal protection for someone if there is no legal protection to obtain.
It's late, so I may be just dense, but what is your point here? Another example for my original argument would be hate crime laws. Why should any segment of the population be worth more punishment if they are victimized? Why should any segment of the population be singled out for special treatment?
Try this: laws come into being because there is a percieved need for them. They are, by and large, only enacted after people have suffered harm, and are intended to mitigate further harm. The legal system fills a gap left by other systems, and that gap existed because the other systems proved unable or unwilling to close it.
In an ideal world, yes. Unfortunately, most laws that try to micro-legislate people's behavior are enacted in order to make the legislator look good. Most of them are unenforceable, and the legislator knows it. He/she just wants to claim it on his/her resume in order to pander to some segment of the population or other in order to get re-elected. Regulations are generally enacted by bureaucrats with no accountability whatsoever who just think they know the best way for you and I to live and therefore eliminate choices that conflict with that view.
On that cynical note, I must go to bed.
