The Rights of Men

[warpus]

Seat belt laws save lives, this has been shown over and over. Even if you don't care about your own life personally, seat belts save the lives of others. This is not about you or your rights, this is about the lives of other people.

 

[Flying Pig]

I also don't consider myself a libertarian. I am too enamored with positive liberties in the face of human failings. That said, I also find seat belt laws enforced against adult persons to be offensive. I also find laws enforced against people who want to die with dignity to be offensive for much the same reason. Our communal discomfort with how people choose to address the safety, duration, and end of their own lives simply does not justify our trampling of their agency.

I don't think that's the problem with euthanasia laws (at least from my perspective) - if somebody makes a free and informed choice, without pressure from family, carers or finances, to end their life, they should be able to do so with society's help. That could, however, easily end with people feeling expected or pressured into doing this so as to not feel like a burden, which would be a bad thing. There's also the argument that most people who feel that life is not worth living could be persuaded otherwise if we were more energetic about improving their care. In summary, the issue isn't that some people should be allowed to be helped to die: the issue is that we can't agree on how to design a law that caters to those people while avoiding serious abuses of the system.

 

[Farm Boy]

Seat belt laws save lives, this has been shown over and over. Even if you don't care about your own life personally, seat belts save the lives of others. This is not about you or your rights, this is about the lives of other people.

I question not the fact that they save lives. I'll stipulate it. You are correct it's about lives in one regard. But it is about my rights. It is also about the rights of others. Not putting on your seat belt is stupid. I always wear mine, and I won't drive a car without everyone having theirs on. But I don't do this because you and likeminded individuals want to peepeesmack me into compliance, I have more respect for myself than that. And the people being dumb and not buckling up? I have too much respect for them to support treating them so badly as you advocate.

I don't think that's the problem with euthanasia laws (at least from my perspective) - if somebody makes a free and informed choice, without pressure from family, carers or finances, to end their life, they should be able to do so with society's help. That could, however, easily end with people feeling expected or pressured into doing this so as to not feel like a burden, which would be a bad thing. There's also the argument that most people who feel that life is not worth living could be persuaded otherwise if we were more energetic about improving their care. In summary, the issue isn't that some people should be allowed to be helped to die: the issue is that we can't agree on how to design a law that caters to those people while avoiding serious abuses of the system.

Oh I agree. It's problematic for exactly the reasons you point out. This is a wonderful point to make in light of Sampson's objections to our gently oppressive seat belt overlords too. The problem isn't in the desire to do good. That's almost never where the problems lie.

 

[warpus]

I question not the fact that they save lives. I'll stipulate it. You are correct it's about lives in one regard. But it is about my rights. It is also about the rights of others. Not putting on your seat belt is stupid. I always wear mine, and I won't drive a car without everyone having theirs on. But I don't do this because you and likeminded individuals want to peepeesmack me into compliance, I have more respect for myself than that. And the people being dumb and not buckling up? I have too much respect for them to support treating them so badly as you advocate.

If you do not question the fact that they save many lives, then you should end the discussion there. They save lives, they don't unnecessarily inconvenience you, they don't make you have to bend over and have your rear inspected by someone with a glove each time you want to drive to the store or whatever, it is perfectly reasonable.

The feelings of the individual don't matter here, since the end goal is very many saved lives. If more than just feelings were on the line I might have to agree with you, but..

 

[Akka]

I thought that the main idea behind the problem with euthanasia was more how some people could abuse them to push others to be killed.

 

[Flying Pig]

If you do not question the fact that they save many lives, then you should end the discussion there. They save lives, they don't unnecessarily inconvenience you, they don't make you have to bend over and have your rear inspected by someone with a glove each time you want to drive to the store or whatever, it is perfectly reasonable.

The feelings of the individual don't matter here, since the end goal is very many saved lives. If more than just feelings were on the line I might have to agree with you, but..

No. Mandatory Weightwatchers programmes would save lives, but the government shouldn't implement them. You can never look at only one side of the coin.

 

[warpus]

No. Mandatory Weightwatchers programmes would save lives, but the government shouldn't implement them. You can never look at only one side of the coin.

Not a very good comparison, since forcing people to attend such classes would not be reasonable and would definitely inconvenience a lot of people. It might also be logistically impossible to implement, given the huge volume of people Weightwatchers would have to taken on as customers.

 

[Samson]

If you do not question the fact that they save many lives, then you should end the discussion there. They save lives, they don't unnecessarily inconvenience you, they don't make you have to bend over and have your rear inspected by someone with a glove each time you want to drive to the store or whatever, it is perfectly reasonable.

The feelings of the individual don't matter here, since the end goal is very many saved lives. If more than just feelings were on the line I might have to agree with you, but..

There has to be a balance here. If it saves 1 life, causes 1,000,000 people to be criminalised and 10,000,000 people to be racially victimised then I would say it is not worth it. Reverse these numbers and it is. I do not know what they really are, but I am not sure it is worth it.

 

[Flying Pig]

Not a very good comparison, since forcing people to attend such classes would not be reasonable and would definitely inconvenience a lot of people. It might also be logistically impossible to implement, given the huge volume of people Weightwatchers would have to taken on as customers.

It's an intentionally ridiculous comparison to make a point. Politicians only ever talk about one side of the argument - they tell you that an increase in health spending is good because it will cut waiting times, or a decrease in defence spending is good because it will save money. These sort of arguments are fundamentally useless because there is always a trade-off involved. If you start off with statements like 'if it saves lives, it's worth it', you quickly end up in the ridiculous, usually justifying quite a lot of bad things along the way.

 

[warpus]

There has to be a balance here. If it saves 1 life, causes 1,000,000 people to be criminalised and 10,000,000 people to be racially victimised then I would say it is not worth it. Reverse these numbers and it is. I do not know what they really are, but I am not sure it is worth it.

You definitely have not done your homework if you think that it saves 1 life here and there. It saves a lot of lives.

And if your police departments are too corrupt to be trusted with such powers, that is a problem with your police departments, and not seatbelt laws.

It's an intentionally ridiculous comparison to make a point. Politicians only ever talk about one side of the argument - they tell you that an increase in health spending is good because it will cut waiting times, or a decrease in defence spending is good because it will save money. These sort of arguments are fundamentally useless because there is always a trade-off involved. If you start off with statements like 'if it saves lives, it's worth it', you quickly end up in the ridiculous, usually justifying quite a lot of bad things along the way.

Fair enough, I shouldn't have said "they save lives so case closed", but in this case a lot of lives are indeed being saved, and there is virtually no inconvenience to the driver. At all. It's a no brainer of a law.

That there is some corruption and racial profiling or whatever happening is beside the point. That is on the police departments and whoever else. It wouldn't make sense to nix seatbelt laws because police departments in some places can't be trusted to not be racist in their enforcement.

 

[Farm Boy]

How laws are expected and able to be enforced has everything to do with what laws should be enforced.

 

[Flying Pig]

Good soundbite, but I'm not sure. We know, for example, that black people are disproportionately stopped and searched by the police. This means that black people are more likely to be caught carrying a knife and sent to prison. This does not, to me, have any bearing on whether we should ban carrying knives in public.

 

[warpus]

How laws are expected and able to be enforced has everything to do with what laws should be enforced.

The argument then should be one against the police departments and how racist they are, and not one against seatbelt laws in general. Seatbelt laws work very well almost everywhere they are implemented. There is nothing inherently wrong with them, so there's no reason to argue against them.

 

[Farm Boy]

How enforcement shapes up isn't the whole equation, but it's a pretty darned important part.

Warpus: I don't agree. I think seatbelt laws are fundamentally flawed. I understand that you don't view yourself as being unnecessarily authoritarian, even if you are. That's where the whole original point comes in. That the laws are enforced in a secondarily flawed manner, and that we know they are, is just additionally damning of the whole condescending statute. But now we're into -=Randroid=- or whateverelse territory, right?

 

[Ryika]

That there is some corruption and racial profiling or whatever happening is beside the point. That is on the police departments and whoever else. It wouldn't make sense to nix seatbelt laws because police departments in some places can't be trusted to not be racist in their enforcement.

I'd say that once again depends on the law. If the law is something that's basically meaningless anyway but used to be racist against black people or whatever other racial group, then in practicality just getting rid of the law may be the right thing to do, at least as long as it is obvious that it is used by racist cops and that that cannot be easily changed in the near future.

 

[warpus]

Warpus: I don't agree. I think seatbelt laws are fundamentally flawed. I understand that you don't view yourself as being unnecessarily authoritarian, even if you are. That's where the whole original point comes in. That the laws are enforced in a secondarily flawed manner, and that we know they are, is just additionally damning of the whole condescending statute. But now we're into -=Randroid=- or whateverelse territory, right?

They save a lot of lives and they don't inconvenience you in any way whatsoever. There is nothing flawed about them, practically speaking, unless you're trying to make some sort of an ideological stand.

And in my opinion making an ideological stand when lives are at risk is not cool.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

Hey Warpus let's say the government wants to monitor people so that they can call an ambulance automatically if they have a medical emergency. Let's ignore the logistics of actually doing that, it's a hypothetical. In order to do this, they want to install video cameras in every room of your house. That doesn't inconvenience you in any way since you're a law abiding citizen who is doing nothing wrong, and will definitely save a lot of lives, so it's totally cool right?

 

[Akka]

Seatbelts are safety practices mandatory when you're using your car on state-owned/public property (roads). As such I don't see any problem with the state enforcing them.

If you drive on your own property, you are not required to wear them (AFAIK).

 

[warpus]

Hey Warpus let's say the government wants to monitor people so that they can call an ambulance automatically if they have a medical emergency. Let's ignore the logistics of actually doing that, it's a hypothetical. In order to do this, they want to install video cameras in every room of your house. That doesn't inconvenience you in any way since you're a law abiding citizen who is doing nothing wrong, and will definitely save a lot of lives, so it's totally cool right?

The logistics are very important here though, so you can't just ignore them. The reason seatbelt laws don't inconvenience the user in any way has everything to do with logistics.

If you could truly think up an example in which nobody's inconvenienced and lives are saved on a similar scale (as the lives that seatbelt laws save), I would probably agree with it.

Like for example getting rid of speed limits on highways. As far as I know studies in Germany show that it can save lives. It also doesn't inconvenience anyone, so I'd be down, assuming that all my assumptions check out. Likewise, if it turns out (via data obtained from case studies) that implementing speed limits (as opposed to removing them) saves lives instead, then I say, go for it. It doesn't inconvenience anyone and it saves lives.

There is also a huge difference between the privacy of your own home, and you making use of a service provided for by tax dollars (i.e. the road system).

 

[Farm Boy]

The positive right to health in my own body is a service provided for in part by tax dollars, so I'm not going to buy in here either. If that's our line then we already own all of us. And to an extent this is always true. Selective service cards exist for a reason.