ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

Last night my coworker friend sent me an e-mail after reading my post, curious to find out just where I fall on the scale of libertarian lawlessness (my word, not hers!). And I realized I hadn’t thought about it to as great a depth as my post might have implied, other than my nebulous disdain for how it seems like a lot of people just want to be comfortable and have some benign, parental government take care of them and remove all mentally and physically unpleasant elements from their lives, rather than face the scary possibility of having to take some responsibility and direction for themselves. And at first I felt a little defensive while writing my response, afraid that my conscientious friend would regard my opinions as heartless or inhumane. But thinking about it in terms of defending the opinion was a good thing, and it has kind of sharpened my resolve, as well as clarified some of my personal definitions for what government is supposed to represent.

I excised the part where I rambled defensively about how I am not immoral or uncaring, bla, bla, bla, and I’ve thought it over, etc. etc. The important (and less boring) thing is that this kind of forced me to do some critical thinking about my opinions. Harsh self-examination is a good thing to do occasionally, you know. It can help you revise attitudes and opinions that don’t adequately serve you and others, and strengthen your support of those that do. Also, if you’re terrified of being a hypocrite, this is a great way to avoid that fate.

. . . I think it’s safe to say that most people are against things like [child labor and violent crimes], and I am no different. I know that idealogically we differ a bit, but I think it is pretty obvious that we both agree the broad strokes are both reasonable and necessary. Nobody but an extremist would seriously try to say that murder should be legal. And I’m pretty sure you know well enough already that I don’t favor child labor or drunk driving.

. . . In general, I think the function of government, particularly federal government, should be to contribute overall to running society as smoothly as possible. I think it is reasonable to have legislation that restricts behavior that could have a negative effect on a relatively large number of people - therefore speed limits, drunk driving laws, and mandatory immunizations before public school make sense to me. Some of the others are more subjective - particularly the ones where the person is primarily hurting themselves and immediate family if they don’t behave in a certain manner, but where the harm does not extend to threaten the general population, such as with helmet and seat belt laws. I don’t have a terrible problem with these laws personally, but I also support the general principle that people should be free to make their own decisions - even dangerous or terrible ones. I also feel it’s reasonable to restrict what people can do under a certain age - drinking and smoking. The reason I feel this way is that at a young age people don’t have the maturity of judgment they need to make a decision that is appropriate for them. When they are adults, I feel that what they do is their business. The government should not really have a hand in most decisions like this, as far as I am concerned.

As for drug legalization, I don’t exactly support it, but I think it’s pretty apparent that the current system doesn’t really work. Not that it’s a good comparison, but think about how [the company we used to work at together] discouraged employees from talking - so they only did it on the sly or in ways that they thought they wouldn’t get caught. I’m concerned that making something against the rules and having a big system of punishment when it’s something people would be doing it anyway usually drives it underground and makes it more difficult to address the real issues at work. They want to avoid the punishment, but not so much that they stop the behavior. I think that once a person is addicted to drugs, they are just addicted and the threat of jail doesn’t really do much to deter them anymore - there is something stronger working against them at that point. I think a system that was less punitive and more curative would be a better approach.

As far as my comment from the other day [I remarked in an unrelated discussion that a smoking ban will never go over in my county and she commented that the state might force it on the county and I remarked that I hated that idea] goes, I think a state-enforced smoking ban is entirely possible in this current climate, and it bothers me. If the local government has held a vote and the smoking ban didn’t pass, I don’t agree with the forced legislation being pushed down from above. I think it is reasonable for the citizens of an area to have differing laws on this type of thing. Yeah, I hate smoke and smoking and I think it sucks. But I don’t interpret that to mean that I should have the right to never run into it, or that the state should come in and force this on Wyandotte if people have voted against it. If Wyandotte votes for the smoking ban, so be it.

I know you have expressed in the past that when people make decisions that turn out to be self-destructive or that they know could harm them, this is evidence that they are being stupid. And I don’t entirely disagree with that. But . . . I don’t think that stupidity should mean they are too dumb to make the decision from themselves, or that they should have government interaction forced on them to save them from their own stupid decisions. In my view, the government is there to provide structure and order, and not to be our parents. There are other social conventions and organizations to help people, and it seems like it often winds up being costly to everyone and done poorly when the government steps in on things.

Thinking on it, what I’d like to add to this is that she wrote back and largely agreed with my remarks, commenting that she thought the main difference in our opinions was that we had different ideas of what constituted enough harm toward others to require a law preventing it. To quote her (sans permission):

I basically think the government should be able to enact laws that prevent one person from hurting another. You would probably agree with that, but I would probably go farther in my definition of what constitutes hurting someone else. For example, I would say that not wearing a seat belts hurts someone else if you get in an accident and file an insurance claim or if you die and your kids get social security survivor benefits.

I do see her point. Expensive insurance claims that could have been avoided but for carelessness can raise premiums for everyone else, which is actually something entirely separate from government, unlike the survivor benefits. And seat belt laws don’t hack me off too much, although to be honest, the reason is that I’d be wearing them anyway so it’s all the same to me.

I have a variety of complaints against the notion of completely universal health care. The self determination argument (as Zogar put it). People should have the option to decide that health care is not important enough to them to pay for, in which case I think that it is unfair to expect the rest of us to pay for it. The quality of care argument. Countries with socialized health care have such shitty medical treatment available to them that if something really awful happens to them, the ones that can afford it would rather pay full dollar here in the US, where there’s still a profit incentive for people to specialize. Not to say we can’t improve the system and make it more affordable, but really, why turn it over to the government so they can screw it up just like SSA? And the selfish, but no less real, I don’t want to pay for you argument. I already get raped on social security tax to the tune of several thousand dollars per year, and now that the Boomers are reaching retirement age, I’ll get the dubious honor of continuing to support them until they are too old and senile to listen to their Byrds vinyls anymore. Do I really need to have my income further reduced to pay for other people’s kids who broke their arms jumping out of a tree to attack neighborhood animals or shot themselves while playing with daddy’s pistol in the bedroom?

Well, that got pretty disjointed. I think my true objective of that last paragraph was actually just to insult the Baby Boomers. Because, seriously, my parents have some pretty terrible taste in music.