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Obviously, part of the problem is that it's a very politically ugly topic. People hate thinking about death so much that they put off writing their wills until

Obviously, part of the problem is that it's a very politically ugly topic. People hate thinking about death so much that they put off writing their wills until the day they actually die, after all! With that being said, there are rational arguments against euthanasia. You need to be extremely careful with creating legal ways to kill people. Recall what governments have tended to do in the past when given power over, for example, forced sterilization or forced institutional commitment. Now imagine what can happen with a hostile actor in the mix... rightfully a scary proposition! I'm not against euthanasia, despite my counterarguments, but I do believe that this is the kind of thing that should be a constitutional right afforded to the individual and not a power that may be exercised over you by anyone else (not even by proxy or process). The stakes are simply too high, because there are no take-backs if someone screws up.

jliptzin 6y ago
Allow only doctors to do them along with the consent of the patient and/or family responsible for care decisions, doesn’t seem that complicated to me.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > along with the consent of the patient and/or family responsible for care decisions, doesn’t seem that complicated to me Dead people can't testify. If someone is euthanized, how do you show--after the fact--that the consent wasn't coerced? This is a problem that can be solved. But it is thorny, complicated and thus difficult.
dfxm12 6y ago
I do believe that this is the kind of thing that should be a constitutional right afforded to the individual and not a power that may be exercised over you by anyone else (not even by proxy or process). Some power a government can exercise is toat least prevent life insurance companies from putting suicide clauses into plans. These clauses withhold paying out benefits due to suicide.
- chaorace 6y ago
  That on its own is an interesting problem, isn't it? If you insure a car, then crash it for the payout, we would consider that insurance fraud. We make it against the law, because it has a negative externality in the form of making everyone else's insurance rates higher. In principle, suicide clauses exist for the same reason. If they didn't exist, you would actually be incentivizing people to kill themselves and raising insurance premiums for everyone else. These are both bad things that most people would want to avoid. Then again, it's not like you can kill yourself twice, so, unlike car insurance fraud, this is a self-solving problem! My gut tells me that awarding life insurance payouts to families of suicide victims is the wrong tool for this particular problem. Perhaps the government itself should insure individuals against family suicides? This would avoid creating undue drag upon the private insurance market while also ensuring that even poor families (those I suspect are most vulnerable to losing a bread-winner to suicide) are protected. Since the two systems are now decoupled, you could even independently disincentivize suicides for financial security by making the payout lower than a normal life-insurance payout typically would be.

jliptzin 6y ago

Allow only doctors to do them along with the consent of the patient and/or family responsible for care decisions, doesn’t seem that complicated to me.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> along with the consent of the patient and/or family responsible for care decisions, doesn’t seem that complicated to me Dead people can't testify. If someone is euthanized, how do you show--after the fact--that the consent wasn't coerced? This is a problem that can be solved. But it is thorny, complicated and thus difficult.

dfxm12 6y ago

I do believe that this is the kind of thing that should be a constitutional right afforded to the individual and not a power that may be exercised over you by anyone else (not even by proxy or process). Some power a government can exercise is toat least prevent life insurance companies from putting suicide clauses into plans. These clauses withhold paying out benefits due to suicide.

chaorace 6y ago
That on its own is an interesting problem, isn't it? If you insure a car, then crash it for the payout, we would consider that insurance fraud. We make it against the law, because it has a negative externality in the form of making everyone else's insurance rates higher. In principle, suicide clauses exist for the same reason. If they didn't exist, you would actually be incentivizing people to kill themselves and raising insurance premiums for everyone else. These are both bad things that most people would want to avoid. Then again, it's not like you can kill yourself twice, so, unlike car insurance fraud, this is a self-solving problem! My gut tells me that awarding life insurance payouts to families of suicide victims is the wrong tool for this particular problem. Perhaps the government itself should insure individuals against family suicides? This would avoid creating undue drag upon the private insurance market while also ensuring that even poor families (those I suspect are most vulnerable to losing a bread-winner to suicide) are protected. Since the two systems are now decoupled, you could even independently disincentivize suicides for financial security by making the payout lower than a normal life-insurance payout typically would be.