291–300 of 430 posts
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Big difference between banning something outright and regulating a substance.
> Big difference between banning something outright and regulating a substance One could frame this as a substance regulation for anyone under 18, with the age moving one year every year henceforth.
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>But putting that aside, if a citizen supports banning cigarettes for people born after a certain date, but not alcohol, that certainly seems hypocritical to me. Why does everyone on HN seem to have a hate boner for alcohol? The main problem there is car culture, not the alcohol. In any case, the hypocritical part is where the UK, like many US states, has legalized marijuana for medical use and is well on its way to…
> Why does everyone on HN seem to have a hate boner for alcohol? The main problem there is car culture, not the alcohol. I don't really see how car culture has anything to do with stuff like domestic violence, child abuse, or various other side-effects of alcohol culture.
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Big difference between banning something outright and regulating a substance.
> Big difference between banning something outright and regulating a substance One could frame this as a substance regulation for anyone under 18, with the age moving one year every year henceforth.
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It’s awesome to decide what your children, once they are adults, can’t do? Seems borderline psychopathic. Kinda sums up democracy in current times though.
> It’s awesome to decide what your children, once they are adults, can’t do? You do realize that this is what basically every single law in existence does, right? That my kids, and likely yours, once they're adults, can't drive under the influence, rob a bank, impersonate a cop, lie under oath, exercise medecine without a licence, walk downtown naked, jaywalk, evade taxes, criticize the King?
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Safety inspection. It's a moving violation in this state (of course it wasn't initially, frogs are best boiled slow). That's the magic of it. Frame it as a "safety" issue and everyone who can't think critically about how that sausage might be made will knee jerk approve.
If I was an auto insurer, I would want to know that my policy holders were properly maintaining their vehicles. I would also have a strong interest in ensuring that non-policy holders did the same. And as a driver, I certainly want everyone around me to be required to properly maintain their cars.
What you're saying seems to make sense on face value but in reality letting insurance leverage safety inspections is just a politically less thorny wealth proxy. The inspections themselves don't provide all that much value (IMO this is because of how comprehensive they are, 90/10 rule and all that) and multiple states have ended their programs because they don't actually provide meaningful improvement for the money.
Regardless, even if there is somme hand wavy justification for it that some people agree with, it's flawed to the point it's probably not something we want to do with medical because it would make insurance unaffordable for so many people on flimsy at best pretexts.
My main problem with this is the "do as I say not as I do" intergenerational conflict. It just seems completely absurd to me that a government thinks it's acceptable to treat a generation unable to vote differently from the generations who can. It's really an absurd unfreedom and a kind of tyranny. Why not just pass a law that says people born after 2008 have to pay higher taxes, and work longer hours for less pay? P…
This is one of the ways they broke the unions in the US. They offered agreements where new hires would get lower pay and fewer benefits than the old workers. Evil.
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Taking away smoking still solves the secondhand smoke issue.
Not the second-hand vape issue though. Those of us who don't smoke or vape can smell that shit a couple of hundred metres away.
It's sad that the UK, which invented liberal philosophy, is increasingly accepting of paternalism. It's important that people have an inviolable personal sphere inside which they can live their lives as they see fit. That includes making decisions of which society disaproves. Moreover, essentially all behavior plausibly has "diffuse negative externalities". We should be very careful about adopting that ("harms others…
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Awesome! Where can I sign?
It’s awesome to decide what your children, once they are adults, can’t do? Seems borderline psychopathic. Kinda sums up democracy in current times though.
Running government budgets further and further into deficit, believing that, as a result, your children will, some day, be in a stronger financial position to repay the resulting debt that, until that day, continues to grow at an ever-increasing rate?
That seems psychopathic.
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That's not a separate category, that's the general principle in a free society: There is a limit to "doing what you want" when it impacts others/imposes on them. That's why smoking is already heavily regulated in order to limit and minimise the impact that your choice has on others.
In sweden it's forbidden to smoke at public transport stops. Nobody cares though so you often have to choose between cancer or getting soaked.
Personally - aside from the smell - I have no concerns about people smoking near me outdoors or even in very well ventilated areas. I understand though that for some people (such as asthmatics) it can be a real problem that goes beyond simply being unpleasant.