7 ms·

When our actions can harm others, the government absolutely has the right—and the obligation—to step in.

denkmoon 6y ago
Not at the expense of individual liberty. This principle is well established in the USA at least, given the continuing presence of 2A.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Frondo 6y ago
  Yes, at the expense of individual liberty. Traffic laws are an obvious and rights-restraining example of this. I may or may not cause harm by running a red light in the middle of the night, or speeding on a freeway -- in fact, I know a guy who habitually runs reds at night, "just because" -- yet the constitutionality of ticketing people for running reds or speeding is not, as far as I know, in dispute. How this maps onto public health in a pandemic, I don't know.
daenz 6y ago
>can harm others Can you be more specific? It's the nebulousness of what "can harm" that rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Taken to one extreme, there's almost nothing you can do that doesn't potentially harm others. For example, I could leave my stove burner on and burn down the entire apartment building. So many things come with risks to others, and those things are just part of existing in society.
- TylerE 6y ago
  Does the Bill of Rights give the police the right to arrest you for driving drunk?
  - daenz 6y ago
    It comes across as bad faith to ignore my question and expect me to answer yours. What is the definition of "can harm" that excludes activities like leaving my stove burner on?
    - djannzjkzxn 6y ago
      You could be charged with crimes (eg. arson, child endangerment, negligent homicide) depending on the scenario in which you left the burner on.
      - daenz 6y ago
        But I wouldn't be preemptively barred from turning my burner on in the first place, which is my point.
        ajmurmann 6y ago
        In that scenario there also would be an investigation. It would find you left the stove burner on and you might be charged with arsen or similar. If we put tracing in place and if you left your house for no essential reason and without a mask and infect someone else and they die you get charged with manslaughter, that would certainly work. If we can overcome the practical problems and actually enforce this, I think it would be a great practice that I think would make all the freedom over community people happy as well. But is it realistic that we can do this in practice?
        daenz 6y ago
        I'm honestly not opposed to the theory, though I think we both agree it is impractical.
  - mistermann 6y ago
    I think there is a bit of a difference of opinion and a lack of conclusive evidence (but no shortage of questionable evidence), on the degree of risk involved in various activities involving this pandemic. Now I'm not marching in the street or anything like that, but the more I'm told we must follow authoritarian orders without significant compelling evidence, while dissenting voices are being censored, the more appealing the idea is to me, just as a matter of principle. Favor force over reason, and you might get the same in return.
- bsder 6y ago
  Fine. I doubt you're arguing in good faith, but let's go there ... Vaccines. The government has the right to require your children to have vaccines before they go to school because not doing so has extremely harmful effects on others when we drop below herd immunity. Smoking. The government has the right to create anti-smoking laws because the market simply wouldn't produce a non-smoking bar that wouldn't affect the health of the people actually working there. Shall I go on?
  - daenz 6y ago
    >Shall I go on? You should, because you'll quickly realize that there are far, far more activities that potentially cause harm to others than there are laws that prohibit them. Also, vaccines and smoking have a history that are peppered with lawsuits about their legality, so as far as examples go, they are not the ones I would hold up as evidence of laws that people clearly think are constitutional. The flu killed ~50,000 last year in the USA. Do we require all non-essential businesses to shut down and everyone quarantine? Is there some magical cutoff number between 50,000 (flu deaths) and 80,000 (COVID deaths) where we decide to shut down the entire country? Also you're conflating "the government has the right" with "there exists a law." The government has the right to enforce the law, but there is no innate right in that law itself. If we overturned smoking laws tomorrow, it doesn't remove rights from the government, it removes laws that the government enforces.
    - singlow 6y ago
      The government does not have to protect its ability to ban potentially harmful actions by banning every possible harmful action. The purpose of the legislative representatives is to make judgement calls about which things have enough potential harm to warrant restriction. I really don't understand the argument here that because not all harmful actions are banned, that banning harmful actions is not constitutional. Am I just not understanding what your argument is?
      - pdonis 6y ago
        > The purpose of the legislative representatives is to make judgement calls about which things have enough potential harm to warrant restriction. That's what they currently claim, but it's not what they're supposed to be doing. We made a huge mistake when we allowed the government to morph from "enforce the minimum basic rules that are necessary to have a civil society" to "solve everything that anyone thinks is a problem".
pdonis 6y ago
> When our actions can harm others, the government absolutely has the right—and the obligation—to step in. No. When our actions have harmed others, then the government has the right to step in--because we delegated that power to them. But the government does not have the right to step in just because some government official things our actions "can" harm others. That's not their call to make. We are adult human beings and don't need keepers or nannies. We make our own choices, and if those choices do harm others, we take the consequences. But if they don't, the government needs to leave us alone.
- ajmurmann 6y ago
  > We make our own choices, and if those choices do harm others, we take the consequences I am all for this! How can we make this happen? Maybe we put tracing in place and if you left your house for no essential reason and without a mask and infect someone else you get shared with manslaughter? Let's do it!
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > Maybe we put tracing in place and if you left your house for no essential reason and without a mask and infect someone else you get shared with manslaughter? Who says what counts as "no essential reason"? How do you know whether I infected anyone else? Not everyone without a mask is an asymptomatic COVID-19 carrier. If you're basically arguing that the government needs to have invasive surveillance and micromanagement powers to ensure that every possible way someone might harm someone else is captured, then no, I don't agree.
    - ajmurmann 6y ago
      So how does your "if those choices do harm others, we take the consequences" get enforced in practice and doesn't turn into a situation where a few people who don't take care to not infect others will kill millions?
      - pdonis 6y ago
jb775 6y ago
1.6+ million deaths YEARLY are directly caused by diabetes[1]. According to your logic, shouldn't the government mandate that all restaurants only be allowed to sell healthy foods? Better yet, let's have Google and Apple build an app that tracks everyone's blood glucose, so we can only purchase foods that keep us below our daily blood glucose allotment. And while we're at it, let's have Twitter/Facebook/Google/Etc censor any searches for cheeseburgers/milkshakes/butterfingers. Oh and Bill Gates wants to help, so he's working on a sugar vaccine (but will require 50% of the vaccine patent royalties paid in advance). [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes

Not at the expense of individual liberty. This principle is well established in the USA at least, given the continuing presence of 2A.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Frondo 6y ago
Yes, at the expense of individual liberty. Traffic laws are an obvious and rights-restraining example of this. I may or may not cause harm by running a red light in the middle of the night, or speeding on a freeway -- in fact, I know a guy who habitually runs reds at night, "just because" -- yet the constitutionality of ticketing people for running reds or speeding is not, as far as I know, in dispute. How this maps onto public health in a pandemic, I don't know.

daenz 6y ago

>can harm others Can you be more specific? It's the nebulousness of what "can harm" that rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Taken to one extreme, there's almost nothing you can do that doesn't potentially harm others. For example, I could leave my stove burner on and burn down the entire apartment building. So many things come with risks to others, and those things are just part of existing in society.

TylerE 6y ago
Does the Bill of Rights give the police the right to arrest you for driving drunk?
- daenz 6y ago
  It comes across as bad faith to ignore my question and expect me to answer yours. What is the definition of "can harm" that excludes activities like leaving my stove burner on?
  - djannzjkzxn 6y ago
    You could be charged with crimes (eg. arson, child endangerment, negligent homicide) depending on the scenario in which you left the burner on.
    - daenz 6y ago
      But I wouldn't be preemptively barred from turning my burner on in the first place, which is my point.
      - ajmurmann 6y ago
        In that scenario there also would be an investigation. It would find you left the stove burner on and you might be charged with arsen or similar. If we put tracing in place and if you left your house for no essential reason and without a mask and infect someone else and they die you get charged with manslaughter, that would certainly work. If we can overcome the practical problems and actually enforce this, I think it would be a great practice that I think would make all the freedom over community people happy as well. But is it realistic that we can do this in practice?
        daenz 6y ago
        I'm honestly not opposed to the theory, though I think we both agree it is impractical.
- mistermann 6y ago
  I think there is a bit of a difference of opinion and a lack of conclusive evidence (but no shortage of questionable evidence), on the degree of risk involved in various activities involving this pandemic. Now I'm not marching in the street or anything like that, but the more I'm told we must follow authoritarian orders without significant compelling evidence, while dissenting voices are being censored, the more appealing the idea is to me, just as a matter of principle. Favor force over reason, and you might get the same in return.
bsder 6y ago
Fine. I doubt you're arguing in good faith, but let's go there ... Vaccines. The government has the right to require your children to have vaccines before they go to school because not doing so has extremely harmful effects on others when we drop below herd immunity. Smoking. The government has the right to create anti-smoking laws because the market simply wouldn't produce a non-smoking bar that wouldn't affect the health of the people actually working there. Shall I go on?
- daenz 6y ago
  >Shall I go on? You should, because you'll quickly realize that there are far, far more activities that potentially cause harm to others than there are laws that prohibit them. Also, vaccines and smoking have a history that are peppered with lawsuits about their legality, so as far as examples go, they are not the ones I would hold up as evidence of laws that people clearly think are constitutional. The flu killed ~50,000 last year in the USA. Do we require all non-essential businesses to shut down and everyone quarantine? Is there some magical cutoff number between 50,000 (flu deaths) and 80,000 (COVID deaths) where we decide to shut down the entire country? Also you're conflating "the government has the right" with "there exists a law." The government has the right to enforce the law, but there is no innate right in that law itself. If we overturned smoking laws tomorrow, it doesn't remove rights from the government, it removes laws that the government enforces.
  - singlow 6y ago
    The government does not have to protect its ability to ban potentially harmful actions by banning every possible harmful action. The purpose of the legislative representatives is to make judgement calls about which things have enough potential harm to warrant restriction. I really don't understand the argument here that because not all harmful actions are banned, that banning harmful actions is not constitutional. Am I just not understanding what your argument is?
    - pdonis 6y ago
      > The purpose of the legislative representatives is to make judgement calls about which things have enough potential harm to warrant restriction. That's what they currently claim, but it's not what they're supposed to be doing. We made a huge mistake when we allowed the government to morph from "enforce the minimum basic rules that are necessary to have a civil society" to "solve everything that anyone thinks is a problem".

pdonis 6y ago

> When our actions can harm others, the government absolutely has the right—and the obligation—to step in. No. When our actions have harmed others, then the government has the right to step in--because we delegated that power to them. But the government does not have the right to step in just because some government official things our actions "can" harm others. That's not their call to make. We are adult human beings and don't need keepers or nannies. We make our own choices, and if those choices do harm others, we take the consequences. But if they don't, the government needs to leave us alone.

ajmurmann 6y ago
> We make our own choices, and if those choices do harm others, we take the consequences I am all for this! How can we make this happen? Maybe we put tracing in place and if you left your house for no essential reason and without a mask and infect someone else you get shared with manslaughter? Let's do it!
- pdonis 6y ago
  > Maybe we put tracing in place and if you left your house for no essential reason and without a mask and infect someone else you get shared with manslaughter? Who says what counts as "no essential reason"? How do you know whether I infected anyone else? Not everyone without a mask is an asymptomatic COVID-19 carrier. If you're basically arguing that the government needs to have invasive surveillance and micromanagement powers to ensure that every possible way someone might harm someone else is captured, then no, I don't agree.
  - ajmurmann 6y ago
    So how does your "if those choices do harm others, we take the consequences" get enforced in practice and doesn't turn into a situation where a few people who don't take care to not infect others will kill millions?
    - pdonis 6y ago

jb775 6y ago

1.6+ million deaths YEARLY are directly caused by diabetes[1]. According to your logic, shouldn't the government mandate that all restaurants only be allowed to sell healthy foods? Better yet, let's have Google and Apple build an app that tracks everyone's blood glucose, so we can only purchase foods that keep us below our daily blood glucose allotment. And while we're at it, let's have Twitter/Facebook/Google/Etc censor any searches for cheeseburgers/milkshakes/butterfingers. Oh and Bill Gates wants to help, so he's working on a sugar vaccine (but will require 50% of the vaccine patent royalties paid in advance). [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes