fett on 31/3/2010 at 05:10

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Wrong again, I'm pretty much dying all the time. Wasn't trying to be funny, I just think you have a rather draconian view of freedom as Americans understand it. Not to be "ra-ra U.S.A.!!" or anything. Maybe I just didn't get the sarcasm in your post or something. :confused:

I'll put my ex-pastor hat on for a moment. Paul said something I still believe to be very profound in a letter to the church at Corinth: "All things are permissible, but not all things are profitable." Within the bounds of laws established by mutual or democratic agreement, I think it's a good mantra for a free society. There's nothing inherently dangerous about any object, be it a toy train, a blunt, a gun, or a Miley Cyrus CD. Much could be said about someone using any of these things to harm others, but as it pertains to them harming themselves, it's none of my fucking business. And that sentiment is at the heart of freedom in my mind.

It's the primary reason I think seatbelt laws (as stupid and simple as this sounds) are an infringement on my personal rights, just as much as helmet laws are for motorcyclists. I defy anyone to show me a case where an un-belted person has harmed anyone other than themselves. If I want to fly through my windshield head first into a ditch, it's my own fucking business, and as long as I'm not hurting anyone else by doing it, fuck off. This is a ridiculous example, but it is the essence of freedom.

Also it's late and I've had way too much Bacardi so I could be talking out of my ass here.

Muzman on 31/3/2010 at 05:44

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Heh, well as my uncle used to say when doing advanced driver training with police and reservists so on; you wear the seatbelt so me and the country medics don't have to lever you off the steering wheel at the scene of the crash and explain to your wife and kids that she's single again when you could be walking home instead.
At the most bare utilitarian level, preventing unnecessary injuries saves resources. Plus things like the US car industry wouldn't have needed such over sensitive, high pressure air bags, that break noses at random, if so many weren't so anal over their rights regarding a really simple strap mechanism.

And Princess Di would still be alive if she'd used hers and I wouldn't have had six hours of stupid funeral crap on every channel that day. Man, that still burns.

Erm, so you see Kols it's a case by case thing when it comes to how best to use the law with regard to harm.

Muzman on 31/3/2010 at 07:56

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And I was saying that it wasn't in the smokescreen of freedom that the (way) above was being said, for what it's worth.

Other than that you're dead right. So much centres on the percieved moral component (of merely changing the law a lot of the time, it's permissiveness that troubles people more than what the drugs actually do) that we can't really discuss it and its effects properly.

PigLick on 31/3/2010 at 08:29

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#94 gets my vote

scumble on 31/3/2010 at 11:53

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Is that the one where the kid gets a bloody nose after taking his mother out? Very useful piece of education I'd say.

Making seat-belt wearing mandatory doesn't actually guarantee people will wear seatbelts, so it can make a bit of a mockery out of making a lot of laws that can't be enforced in a meaningful way.

I'd say it is pretty pragmatic to move resources away from enforcement and slap it onto education. Probably most people who call for this or that to be banned don't consider that enforcement is an expensive thing, and may be totally impossible.