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I'm not sure if you're being somewhat ironic but your hypothetical scenario is of course today's reality, where large parts of the US have put someone in power

I'm not sure if you're being somewhat ironic but your hypothetical scenario is of course today's reality, where large parts of the US have put someone in power primarily in the name of 'protecting their safety / way of life / jobs' (i.e. making themselves great again). It's hardly, then, a stretch to postulate that many would lack the discipline to do the Right Thing without stricter measures incentivising them

pdonis 6y ago
> I'm not sure if you're being somewhat ironic I'm not. But the kind of "protecting safety" I am talking about is narrower than what you appear to be assuming. > large parts of the US have put someone in power primarily in the name of 'protecting their safety / way of life / jobs' (i.e. making themselves great again) I'm not talking in general terms about things the government does that affect people's safety, way of life, jobs, etc. (At least, I'm not talking about such general things in this particular discussion.) I'm talking about a specific thing that many people appear to want the government to do: dictate what individual people can and cannot do, at a very detailed level, in the name of "protecting safety", instead of allowing individual people to use their common sense and discipline, which is what is supposed to happen in a free country. Lockdowns in response to COVID-19 are just one example of this thing; the US is full of nanny-state laws that micromanage people's lives in all kinds of ways in the name of "protecting safety". (Actually, as P. J. O'Rourke pointed out many years ago, "nanny state" is much too charitable a term, as "nanny" implies at least some amount of actual empathy and compassion; a better name would be "Nurse Ratched state".) All of those laws have as an underlying assumption that people in the US do not have the common sense and discipline to act in their own best interests. That assumption is incompatible with a free society. If the assumption is actually true for a majority of people in the US, then it is a very, very bad thing for the US, since the benefits that everyone wants will also go away if the US is no longer capable of being a free society. For example, as the events of 2020 have starkly shown, many people in the US are harassed, or worse, by cops and other government officials for no good reason. But the only reason the cops and other government officials even have the ability to harass people that way in the first place is all those nanny state laws: any cop that wants to mess with a citizen is going to be able to find some law that citizen is violating. Giving the government the power to micromanage people's lives, whether it's in the name of "protecting safety" or anything else, is giving government officials the power to mess with citizens, and that power will inevitably be abused. The only way to avoid the abuse is to not give the government that much power in the first place. And that means that every adult citizen needs to take responsibility for having the common sense and discipline to do the right thing without having to be micromanaged into it.

pdonis 6y ago

> I'm not sure if you're being somewhat ironic I'm not. But the kind of "protecting safety" I am talking about is narrower than what you appear to be assuming. > large parts of the US have put someone in power primarily in the name of 'protecting their safety / way of life / jobs' (i.e. making themselves great again) I'm not talking in general terms about things the government does that affect people's safety, way of life, jobs, etc. (At least, I'm not talking about such general things in this particular discussion.) I'm talking about a specific thing that many people appear to want the government to do: dictate what individual people can and cannot do, at a very detailed level, in the name of "protecting safety", instead of allowing individual people to use their common sense and discipline, which is what is supposed to happen in a free country. Lockdowns in response to COVID-19 are just one example of this thing; the US is full of nanny-state laws that micromanage people's lives in all kinds of ways in the name of "protecting safety". (Actually, as P. J. O'Rourke pointed out many years ago, "nanny state" is much too charitable a term, as "nanny" implies at least some amount of actual empathy and compassion; a better name would be "Nurse Ratched state".) All of those laws have as an underlying assumption that people in the US do not have the common sense and discipline to act in their own best interests. That assumption is incompatible with a free society. If the assumption is actually true for a majority of people in the US, then it is a very, very bad thing for the US, since the benefits that everyone wants will also go away if the US is no longer capable of being a free society. For example, as the events of 2020 have starkly shown, many people in the US are harassed, or worse, by cops and other government officials for no good reason. But the only reason the cops and other government officials even have the ability to harass people that way in the first place is all those nanny state laws: any cop that wants to mess with a citizen is going to be able to find some law that citizen is violating. Giving the government the power to micromanage people's lives, whether it's in the name of "protecting safety" or anything else, is giving government officials the power to mess with citizens, and that power will inevitably be abused. The only way to avoid the abuse is to not give the government that much power in the first place. And that means that every adult citizen needs to take responsibility for having the common sense and discipline to do the right thing without having to be micromanaged into it.