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> how is society helped by preventing me, a responsible and productive citizen, from buying some alcohol on one of my two days off from work? It's a cost benef

> how is society helped by preventing me, a responsible and productive citizen, from buying some alcohol on one of my two days off from work? It's a cost benefit calculation. Laws are primarily not drafted for the responsible and self disciplined people. They are there to prevent the irresponsible or vulnerable people from getting so wasted on a Sunday evening that they don't show up to work on a Monday, then lose their job, then become homeless, then start petty crimes to survive on the streets, then fall into drug addiction, then rob you, a responsible and productive person on a Tuesday when you are at work, potentially even harming your kids which might be already at home just to steal something stupid as someone's phone. Does the alcohol restriction prevent responsible and productive people from having a beer on Sunday? Not really, if they are responsible then they probably did a bigger shopping the day before and have some extra beers stocked in their fridge on Sunday. Just to be clear, I am not defending a particular law here, just highlighting that there is nothing inherently wrong with a government wanting to draft legislation in a cost/benefit effective way. In micro and macro economics the one law that all our economic models are based on is that everyone works for their own benefit, so at least from that perspective it's in the governments benefit to look after the people who elected them, so they will get elected again.

leetcrew 7y ago
> Just to be clear, I am not defending a particular law here, just highlighting that there is nothing inherently wrong with a government wanting to draft legislation in a cost/benefit effective way. it's important to note that this is an opinion, not a fact. clearly there are a few people here who don't share that opinion. personally I think to harm or even inconvenience people who haven't done anything wrong yet is one of the worst things a government can do. it's just my opinion though, clearly there are many people who are happy to grant even more power to the state so it can craft crude laws to protect them.
homonculus1 7y ago
> Laws are primarily not drafted for the responsible and self disciplined people. And yet, they still apply to us. Your benevolent intentions do not invalidate our stake in the restrictions that are imposed upon us. Many people find constant paternalistic intrusions on the part of the state to be a legitimately worse cost than a marginal increase in behavior by bad actors. Exercising authority over petty matters may be a free action in your utility calculus, but it adds up to a significant irritation and a material quality-of-life burden to those of us who value the freedom to simply buy a beer when we want to. Please consider this point of view. Society is not a sterile engineering problem to be optimized in terms of concrete inputs and outputs.

leetcrew 7y ago

> Just to be clear, I am not defending a particular law here, just highlighting that there is nothing inherently wrong with a government wanting to draft legislation in a cost/benefit effective way. it's important to note that this is an opinion, not a fact. clearly there are a few people here who don't share that opinion. personally I think to harm or even inconvenience people who haven't done anything wrong yet is one of the worst things a government can do. it's just my opinion though, clearly there are many people who are happy to grant even more power to the state so it can craft crude laws to protect them.

homonculus1 7y ago

> Laws are primarily not drafted for the responsible and self disciplined people. And yet, they still apply to us. Your benevolent intentions do not invalidate our stake in the restrictions that are imposed upon us. Many people find constant paternalistic intrusions on the part of the state to be a legitimately worse cost than a marginal increase in behavior by bad actors. Exercising authority over petty matters may be a free action in your utility calculus, but it adds up to a significant irritation and a material quality-of-life burden to those of us who value the freedom to simply buy a beer when we want to. Please consider this point of view. Society is not a sterile engineering problem to be optimized in terms of concrete inputs and outputs.