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I don’t entirely disagree, but I think you lean too far in seeing the world as entirely populated by independent individuals whose actions don’t affect others.

I don’t entirely disagree, but I think you lean too far in seeing the world as entirely populated by independent individuals whose actions don’t affect others. I am 100% fine with seat belt laws because other peoples’ fatality collisions affect me financially and in traffic jams. Society is a complex system and I don’t think “just let everyone do whatever they want” is a great answer when many of those things impact others, directly or indirectly.

jonhohle 3y ago
[flagged]
- pas 3y ago
  why assign more inherent value to life than the one actually dying does?
  - jonhohle 3y ago
    It’s a stretch to directly couple seat belt wearing to one’s own value of their life. While (afaik) seatbelt research is pretty definitive a very closely related area, car seat research, is plagued with confirmation bias, FUD, and a lack of interest in exploring alternatives (car seat makers are the ones who fund the crash tests)[0]. It’s crazy to go to hyper modern cities that don’t put children in car seats (Seoul, for one) while in the US you’d hear shrieks of horror if your kindergartener got into a car without one. So who benefits from car seat laws? It seems like primarily car seat manufacturers. Back to seatbelts, I don’t know why someone would choose not to wear one, but if they have a reason that they value more than the safety a seatbelt provides, ultimately it affects them and their family far more than it would ever affect me. People need agency over their own lives. Not wearing a seatbelt seems like a minor inconvenience to most people, may impede others. New Hampshire doesn’t require adults to wear seatbelts and doesn’t have as many per capita motor vehicle fatalities as neighboring states. In fact, it has the second lowest rate of deaths per 100M miles traveled in the country (obviously very different from large urban areas). So an assumption about seat belt laws equaling fewer vehicle deaths may not even be a valid assumption. 0 - https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-much-do-we-really-care-about-children-ep-447/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-much-do-we-really-care-...
- bumby 3y ago
  I think the generous interpretation is that the risk of being late or paying more is a reason to balance the freedom of someone to do something irrational. (I tend to disagree on this particular topic)
- silveraxe93 3y ago
  wow yeah. There's good arguments against libertarian thinking / seat belt laws. This might be the worst.
- omginternets 3y ago
  I would venture to say he doesn’t want someone dying for the usual reasons, but that isn’t the point. The point is whether or not the state should prevent someone from engaging in risky behavior. That is what the pp thinks is justified due to traffic jams and insurance premiums (etc).
- AlexCoventry 3y ago
  They're making an enlightened- altruist argument within the framework of radical libertarian values, so they need to motivate it in terms of personal benefit. If you're talking to someone who already thinks top-down regulation can be justified by saving sufficiently many lives, you don't need an argument like this.
roenxi 3y ago
We've currently got the West panicking about a war in eastern Europe and ratcheting up the escalations (speaking of, I see we now have a couple of incursions into bone fide Russian territory - hope they weren't armed with NATO weapons). The odds of a global nuclear conflict are hopefully not in the double digit percentages, but I can't see why they aren't at a historic high in history. Before that, we had mass lockdowns, economies shut down and people under something that wasn't house arrest because it was too industrialised. based mainly on evidence that turned out to be wrong and with solutions that didn't work as advertised. Prior to that, we were seeing the start of the general economic catastrophe likely because the major economies refuse to let people secure long term access to cheap energy. There has been a big push to lock economies into inflationary currencies that are being used to prop up what appear to be failed, wealth destroying businesses. There is a pretence that companies making regular sustained losses are normal and investable. I don't want to talk about seatbelts. I don't think they are that important. I don't care. I want people to stop this hyper-collective power accumulation that is doing a remarkable amount of damage. All of the major problems are being caused by huge, centralised moves of organised and (in 2 of 3) frightened people not thinking clearly about where priorities ought to sit. We knew all the way through that people aren't good at predicting outcomes of policy.
- nathan_compton 3y ago
  I'd argue that none of these things are hyper-collective, though. These things are authoritarian. I'm not going to argue with you about the Covid response. But in the case of economic management, the policies you describe aren't meant to benefit the collective. They are meant to benefit a small elite.
  - baremetal 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - nathan_compton 3y ago
      Cool story bro.

jonhohle 3y ago

[flagged]

pas 3y ago
why assign more inherent value to life than the one actually dying does?
- jonhohle 3y ago
  It’s a stretch to directly couple seat belt wearing to one’s own value of their life. While (afaik) seatbelt research is pretty definitive a very closely related area, car seat research, is plagued with confirmation bias, FUD, and a lack of interest in exploring alternatives (car seat makers are the ones who fund the crash tests)[0]. It’s crazy to go to hyper modern cities that don’t put children in car seats (Seoul, for one) while in the US you’d hear shrieks of horror if your kindergartener got into a car without one. So who benefits from car seat laws? It seems like primarily car seat manufacturers. Back to seatbelts, I don’t know why someone would choose not to wear one, but if they have a reason that they value more than the safety a seatbelt provides, ultimately it affects them and their family far more than it would ever affect me. People need agency over their own lives. Not wearing a seatbelt seems like a minor inconvenience to most people, may impede others. New Hampshire doesn’t require adults to wear seatbelts and doesn’t have as many per capita motor vehicle fatalities as neighboring states. In fact, it has the second lowest rate of deaths per 100M miles traveled in the country (obviously very different from large urban areas). So an assumption about seat belt laws equaling fewer vehicle deaths may not even be a valid assumption. 0 - https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-much-do-we-really-care-about-children-ep-447/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-much-do-we-really-care-...
bumby 3y ago
I think the generous interpretation is that the risk of being late or paying more is a reason to balance the freedom of someone to do something irrational. (I tend to disagree on this particular topic)
silveraxe93 3y ago
wow yeah. There's good arguments against libertarian thinking / seat belt laws. This might be the worst.
omginternets 3y ago
I would venture to say he doesn’t want someone dying for the usual reasons, but that isn’t the point. The point is whether or not the state should prevent someone from engaging in risky behavior. That is what the pp thinks is justified due to traffic jams and insurance premiums (etc).
AlexCoventry 3y ago
They're making an enlightened- altruist argument within the framework of radical libertarian values, so they need to motivate it in terms of personal benefit. If you're talking to someone who already thinks top-down regulation can be justified by saving sufficiently many lives, you don't need an argument like this.

roenxi 3y ago

We've currently got the West panicking about a war in eastern Europe and ratcheting up the escalations (speaking of, I see we now have a couple of incursions into bone fide Russian territory - hope they weren't armed with NATO weapons). The odds of a global nuclear conflict are hopefully not in the double digit percentages, but I can't see why they aren't at a historic high in history. Before that, we had mass lockdowns, economies shut down and people under something that wasn't house arrest because it was too industrialised. based mainly on evidence that turned out to be wrong and with solutions that didn't work as advertised. Prior to that, we were seeing the start of the general economic catastrophe likely because the major economies refuse to let people secure long term access to cheap energy. There has been a big push to lock economies into inflationary currencies that are being used to prop up what appear to be failed, wealth destroying businesses. There is a pretence that companies making regular sustained losses are normal and investable. I don't want to talk about seatbelts. I don't think they are that important. I don't care. I want people to stop this hyper-collective power accumulation that is doing a remarkable amount of damage. All of the major problems are being caused by huge, centralised moves of organised and (in 2 of 3) frightened people not thinking clearly about where priorities ought to sit. We knew all the way through that people aren't good at predicting outcomes of policy.

nathan_compton 3y ago
I'd argue that none of these things are hyper-collective, though. These things are authoritarian. I'm not going to argue with you about the Covid response. But in the case of economic management, the policies you describe aren't meant to benefit the collective. They are meant to benefit a small elite.
- baremetal 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - nathan_compton 3y ago
    Cool story bro.