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Individuals have immediate, direct incentive to wear seat belts. Seat belts are not a collective action problem the way climate change is.

by kauffj 9y ago

barrkel 9y ago
When health costs are socialised - and insurance is a way of socialising costs - it does become a collective action problem, because the negligence of the few increases the costs of the many.
- conanbatt 9y ago
  That is applicable to alcohol, unhealthy foods, lack of exercise, improper sleep, smoking, etc. Should we ban all those too?
  - azinman2 9y ago
    At some point unhealthy foods might get banned, or other mechanisms like the soda tax put in place to help push things in the right way. You can't take an all-in or all-out approach to things. Each case is its own contextual matter that must be independently considered. If you want to see an example of where anything goes, the world has many examples of lawless societies. Not somewhere I'd want to live.
    - conanbatt 9y ago
      > You can't take an all-in or all-out approach to things Sure, but its important to notice that the grave inconsistency with the which we apply policy has to be a consequence of systemic failures. For example, cigarettes have to show pictures of diseased people, but cheese doesnt have to show pictures of obese or diabetic people. Cars dont have to make a diclosure that "you might kill people with this" and show you pictures of that. The picture policy on cigarettes is pretty morbid to me. And then the defense for it is that "its good for people". Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons does not provide me satisfaction.
  - barrkel 9y ago
    This is one of the downsides to socialised medicine - people feel the right to judge people for their weight, for example. Taxes are high on tobacco because of the harms. Here in the UK, there's support for minimum alcohol prices, to stop alcohol getting too cheap. We already have loads of bans on smoking in different contexts. If politicians could find an easy way to try and force poor people to eat less fast food, they would; they don't have much moral compunction stopping them, rather they feel they have the right, because obesity etc have costs that need to be managed.
    - conanbatt 9y ago
      > Taxes are high on tobacco because of the harms. Here in the UK, there's support for minimum alcohol prices, to stop alcohol getting too cheap. I will argue that the reason taxes are high on tobacco is because its become social suicide to defend tobacco. The taxes are high on tobacco because its an easy case to make that gets no opposition. Alcohol is next in line. I'd argue that if something is bad but popular its hard totax (i.e. special TV tax, special Netflix tax, special Facebook tax), or that something is good but unpopular its too easy to tax (tax foreigners, tax the poor, etc).

Individuals have immediate, direct incentive to wear seat belts. Seat belts are not a collective action problem the way climate change is.

by kauffj 9y ago

Individuals have immediate, direct incentive to wear seat belts. Seat belts are not a collective action problem the way climate change is.

barrkel 9y ago

When health costs are socialised - and insurance is a way of socialising costs - it does become a collective action problem, because the negligence of the few increases the costs of the many.

conanbatt 9y ago
That is applicable to alcohol, unhealthy foods, lack of exercise, improper sleep, smoking, etc. Should we ban all those too?
- azinman2 9y ago
  At some point unhealthy foods might get banned, or other mechanisms like the soda tax put in place to help push things in the right way. You can't take an all-in or all-out approach to things. Each case is its own contextual matter that must be independently considered. If you want to see an example of where anything goes, the world has many examples of lawless societies. Not somewhere I'd want to live.
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    > You can't take an all-in or all-out approach to things Sure, but its important to notice that the grave inconsistency with the which we apply policy has to be a consequence of systemic failures. For example, cigarettes have to show pictures of diseased people, but cheese doesnt have to show pictures of obese or diabetic people. Cars dont have to make a diclosure that "you might kill people with this" and show you pictures of that. The picture policy on cigarettes is pretty morbid to me. And then the defense for it is that "its good for people". Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons does not provide me satisfaction.
- barrkel 9y ago
  This is one of the downsides to socialised medicine - people feel the right to judge people for their weight, for example. Taxes are high on tobacco because of the harms. Here in the UK, there's support for minimum alcohol prices, to stop alcohol getting too cheap. We already have loads of bans on smoking in different contexts. If politicians could find an easy way to try and force poor people to eat less fast food, they would; they don't have much moral compunction stopping them, rather they feel they have the right, because obesity etc have costs that need to be managed.
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    > Taxes are high on tobacco because of the harms. Here in the UK, there's support for minimum alcohol prices, to stop alcohol getting too cheap. I will argue that the reason taxes are high on tobacco is because its become social suicide to defend tobacco. The taxes are high on tobacco because its an easy case to make that gets no opposition. Alcohol is next in line. I'd argue that if something is bad but popular its hard totax (i.e. special TV tax, special Netflix tax, special Facebook tax), or that something is good but unpopular its too easy to tax (tax foreigners, tax the poor, etc).