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Which unnatural deaths form an acceptable part of a free society?

Should government stop people from making deadly dangerous decisions?

  • Yes -- by the force of law.

    Votes: 4 8.7%
  • Yes -- by taxing harmful items.

    Votes: 6 13.0%
  • No.

    Votes: 36 78.3%

  • Total voters
    46

SCitizen

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I must give credit to Howler63. Indeed, guns are used for about 30,000 suicides and homicides a year.

Automobiles also account for 30,700 deaths per year. These deaths can be eliminated by imposing very high gasoline taxes and expanding the system of public transportation which is much safer (by a factor of 60) then cars. In Norway gas costs $10/gallon due to taxes.

Smoking does not cause deaths directly, but it shortens peoples lives.
 
I must give credit to Howler63. Indeed, guns are used for about 30,000 suicides and homicides a year.

Automobiles also account for 30,700 deaths per year. These deaths can be eliminated by imposing very high gasoline taxes and expanding the system of public transportation which is much safer (by a factor of 60) then cars. In Norway gas costs $10/gallon due to taxes.

Smoking does not cause deaths directly, but it shortens peoples lives.



divorce harms society. so lets end divorce by getting rid of the institution of marriage?
 
Lets not get into this discussion here.

why not, its more intellectually valid than your silly opening post and the suggestion we ought to ban everything that could cause death. Being Born leads to death. Don't have children because they are DOOMED TO DIE.
 
I must give credit to Howler63. Indeed, guns are used for about 30,000 suicides and homicides a year.

Automobiles also account for 30,700 deaths per year. These deaths can be eliminated by imposing very high gasoline taxes and expanding the system of public transportation which is much safer (by a factor of 60) then cars. In Norway gas costs $10/gallon due to taxes.

Smoking does not cause deaths directly, but it shortens peoples lives.

the thing with European societies is, they developed along different lines then us, "sprawl" as we know it in the US and Canada doesn't occur in Europe, urban areas are urban and rural areas are rural, unlike the US where large swaths of land are "in between" or "suburban" which is why mass transit works there, also cities were centrally planned along transit corridors (some US cities like Chicago and NYC followed this model as well which is why transit works well there) jacking up gas taxes to 10 bucks a gallon and funding busses won't deal with the fact that many communities are isolated in ways transit can't effectively fix.

personally I delineate based on the risk factor of death due to personal choices.

while mass shootings are media events, they are statistically rare, you are guaranteed to not be killed by a random nut-job statistically speaking, that's not the face of gun deaths in this country. if you are dealing drugs on a rival gangs turf or owe large amounts of money you can't repay to a drug lord, you knew full well getting shot was a consequence. the majority of gun violence victims in this society themselves have criminal records. that doesn't mean it's ok to shoot someone because they have a criminal record, but those people should understand, and most do, that dealing with dangerous people has dangerous consequnces.

if the 30,000 deaths was innocent school children getting gunned down in school I would certainly favor stricter gun laws. but that's rarely the case, and ironically, among the easier gun violence problems to manage without direct gun control.
 
I must give credit to Howler63. Indeed, guns are used for about 30,000 suicides and homicides a year.

Automobiles also account for 30,700 deaths per year. These deaths can be eliminated by imposing very high gasoline taxes and expanding the system of public transportation which is much safer (by a factor of 60) then cars. In Norway gas costs $10/gallon due to taxes.

Smoking does not cause deaths directly, but it shortens peoples lives.

There are already a huge number of safety regulations on cars that have significantly reduced the death rate due to auto accidents over the last few decades despite the fact there are many more cars on the road. If guns were regulated to the extent that cars are, you would only have a fraction of the type of guns on the market that we do now. I am not saying we should regulate guns like we do cars, but rather I am just pointing out that its a bad comparison.

Personally, I think health insurance rates and medicare taxes should be higher for smokers to reflect the actual costs they place on the system. Basically, if you want to smoke then fine, but if the actuaries decide that you should be paying twice the health insurance rates and twice the medicare rates, then so be it. That is true with a lot of health choices though. No other insurance works like health insurance. For example, if you are a bad driver and get into lots of accidents and get lots of tickets, you will be paying a significantly higher auto insurance rate than a contentious driver. However, you can be morbidly obese, smoke two packs a day, and still pay the same health insurance rate or medicare rate as a vegetarian triathlete. What was particularly deplorable prior to the ACA is that someone born with something like Cerebral Palsy would be practically uninsurable in the private sector while someone that by their own choices in life was obese and a smoker could get health coverage easily.
 
There are already a huge number of safety regulations on cars that have significantly reduced the death rate due to auto accidents over the last few decades despite the fact there are many more cars on the road. If guns were regulated to the extent that cars are, you would only have a fraction of the type of guns on the market that we do now. I am not saying we should regulate guns like we do cars, but rather I am just pointing out that its a bad comparison.

That is definitely the case -- thus regulations do work.
 
There are already a huge number of safety regulations on cars that have significantly reduced the death rate due to auto accidents over the last few decades despite the fact there are many more cars on the road. If guns were regulated to the extent that cars are, you would only have a fraction of the type of guns on the market that we do now. I am not saying we should regulate guns like we do cars, but rather I am just pointing out that its a bad comparison.

Personally, I think health insurance rates and medicare taxes should be higher for smokers to reflect the actual costs they place on the system. Basically, if you want to smoke then fine, but if the actuaries decide that you should be paying twice the health insurance rates and twice the medicare rates, then so be it. That is true with a lot of health choices though. No other insurance works like health insurance. For example, if you are a bad driver and get into lots of accidents and get lots of tickets, you will be paying a significantly higher auto insurance rate than a contentious driver. However, you can be morbidly obese, smoke two packs a day, and still pay the same health insurance rate or medicare rate as a vegetarian triathlete. What was particularly deplorable prior to the ACA is that someone born with something like Cerebral Palsy would be practically uninsurable in the private sector while someone that by their own choices in life was obese and a smoker could get health coverage easily.

that's really silly because we haven't had near the safety problems with guns as we have had with cars.
 
Violence appears to be a part of human nature, part of our make up.

When you take into consideration the long term, our balance sheet of violent deaths in the Western Hemi vs the Eastern, over time we have had far less violent/unnatural deaths than those folks on either other side of the ponds due to war, genocides/ethnic cleansings etc... perhaps its a convenient, however sad and horrific, societal safety valve to let off the steam of tensions that regularly and inevitably build up in any society... and our releases, while violent, are nearly insignificant compared to the historic violence occurring in Europe...or Asia... or Africa. And if you put them all together, wow.
 
There are already a huge number of safety regulations on cars that have significantly reduced the death rate due to auto accidents over the last few decades despite the fact there are many more cars on the road. If guns were regulated to the extent that cars are, you would only have a fraction of the type of guns on the market that we do now. I am not saying we should regulate guns like we do cars, but rather I am just pointing out that its a bad comparison.

Personally, I think health insurance rates and medicare taxes should be higher for smokers to reflect the actual costs they place on the system. Basically, if you want to smoke then fine, but if the actuaries decide that you should be paying twice the health insurance rates and twice the medicare rates, then so be it. That is true with a lot of health choices though. No other insurance works like health insurance. For example, if you are a bad driver and get into lots of accidents and get lots of tickets, you will be paying a significantly higher auto insurance rate than a contentious driver. However, you can be morbidly obese, smoke two packs a day, and still pay the same health insurance rate or medicare rate as a vegetarian triathlete. What was particularly deplorable prior to the ACA is that someone born with something like Cerebral Palsy would be practically uninsurable in the private sector while someone that by their own choices in life was obese and a smoker could get health coverage easily.

That's not nessecarily the case though, in my case at my work smokers have to pay more for insurance.

The thing is, the smokers and morbidly obese are not the ones running up the tab on healthcare costs, the biggest lost cost is providing medical car to those who don't have insurance and can't pay, or like illegal immigrants do, use aliases to get medical care and once they're back out "in the shadows" you can't find them to collect payment.
 
There are already a huge number of safety regulations on cars that have significantly reduced the death rate due to auto accidents over the last few decades despite the fact there are many more cars on the road. If guns were regulated to the extent that cars are, you would only have a fraction of the type of guns on the market that we do now. I am not saying we should regulate guns like we do cars, but rather I am just pointing out that its a bad comparison.
.

I know you weren't advocating for gun control so I'm not going to hammer you, rather just point out another reason it's a bad comparison, nearly all automobile injury is accidental (hell why else do we call car crashes "accidents" ) and if nearly all of the injury is accident then yes safety regulations and standards are a great solution, most gun incidents are intentional, statistically almost no gun deaths are accidents. I do however support requiring hunters education, and safe storage from young children, I don't even have so much of a problem with a particular california law requiring handgun purchasers to have a safety certificate to buy. but that's the point, regulation can cut down on accidents, but intentional harm is criminal, and people know they're committing crimes when they do it.
 
I must give credit to Howler63. Indeed, guns are used for about 30,000 suicides and homicides a year.

Automobiles also account for 30,700 deaths per year. These deaths can be eliminated by imposing very high gasoline taxes and expanding the system of public transportation which is much safer (by a factor of 60) then cars. In Norway gas costs $10/gallon due to taxes.

Smoking does not cause deaths directly, but it shortens peoples lives.

Yes, like taxing cars more heavily? Tax Pepsi more? Tax TV's since people sit around not getting exercise that leads to obesity?

Don't think you really thought this one through at all.
 
Smoking does not cause deaths directly, but it shortens peoples lives.

It's simply a childish word game to claim that smokinng does not cause death directly. No one ever stabs someone w/a cigarette and it causes death.

Smoking directly contributes to death, and that is simply undeniable reality.
 
I believe that medicine is the 3rd leading cause of death in the US with mistakes, hospital viruses/bacteria, etc., with c. 225,000 deaths annually. The important thing is not the number of deaths but the tradeoffs. It is OK to have so many medical treatment related deaths since there is an upside that most would consider greater. Mass shootings result in a negligible percentage of deaths. Suicide seems like a choice that people should have.

A famous photographer died last week, Bill Cunningham. He had a great quote. “Money’s the cheapest thing. Liberty and freedom is the most expensive.” We own ourselves and our bodies. They do not belong to the state, as in Nazi Germany in which everyone had to be fit and smart for the country.
Doctors Are The Third Leading Cause of Death in the US, Killing 225,000 People Every Year
 
that's really silly because we haven't had near the safety problems with guns as we have had with cars.

That is a good point, but thats also because they are much more simple devices. However, we also have a lot of regulations on the types of cars you can legally drive on road.
 
I would rather be dead, then live in a society that does not allow me to risk my own life if I so choose.

'It's better to be dead and cool. Then alive and uncool'
 
I must give credit to Howler63. Indeed, guns are used for about 30,000 suicides and homicides a year.

Automobiles also account for 30,700 deaths per year. These deaths can be eliminated by imposing very high gasoline taxes and expanding the system of public transportation which is much safer (by a factor of 60) then cars. In Norway gas costs $10/gallon due to taxes.

Smoking does not cause deaths directly, but it shortens peoples lives.

What is it with you and government controlling everything we do that might cause us harm?

You a big fan of boredom or something?
 
Did anyone watch Ninja Warriors? One of the guys lost a leg in a motorcycle accident, his brother died in a motorcycle accident, yet he still rides.
Fact is, life is a risky business. Some make it through without scars, others don't.
 
I must give credit to Howler63. Indeed, guns are used for about 30,000 suicides and homicides a year.

Automobiles also account for 30,700 deaths per year. These deaths can be eliminated by imposing very high gasoline taxes and expanding the system of public transportation which is much safer (by a factor of 60) then cars. In Norway gas costs $10/gallon due to taxes.

Smoking does not cause deaths directly, but it shortens peoples lives.

And how many die from food born illnesses? Greater regulation and oversight could cut those numbers too. There's a lot that could possibly be cut into. Some of it could be reasonable, some of it could be too grievous an infringement upon freedom and liberty.

The short answer is yes, it is acceptable. Free is never going to be safe, it cannot be by its very nature. We all assume risks because we recognize the rights and liberties of the individual.
 
People are clearly to stupid, ignorant and misinformed (sometimes intentionally by marketers) to make smart decisions. True libertarianism would be an absolute unmitigated disaster for this country. If anything, as society grows more and more complex we need increased guidance in order to keep up.

No more legal selling of snake oil. Regulate and ban where science indicates such should be the case.

I've had enough with bullsh*t being tolerated in the name of freedom. Do what our smartest minds indicate should be done. Don't leave it to a bunch of ignoramuses to decide for themselves.
 
People are clearly to stupid, ignorant and misinformed (sometimes intentionally by marketers) to make smart decisions. True libertarianism would be an absolute unmitigated disaster for this country. If anything, as society grows more and more complex we need increased guidance in order to keep up.

No more legal selling of snake oil. Regulate and ban where science indicates such should be the case.

I've had enough with bullsh*t being tolerated in the name of freedom. Do what our smartest minds indicate should be done. Don't leave it to a bunch of ignoramuses to decide for themselves.

I agree, only people with PhDs in science and math should be allowed a voice.
 
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