hakase

joined 2 years ago
[–] hakase@lemm.ee -4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Absolutely - we make decisions every day on the assumption that the people around us are making smart decisions as well, and that's not always the case, and other people sometimes suffer negative outcomes as a result of those stupid, but legal, decisions.

And when you've come to the point where you're having to fabricate the kind of incredibly specific scenario you're proposing to get even a hypothetical externality, you're probably dealing with a situation that should be left to individual choice.

I'd also be completely fine with immunity to charges of manslaughter against anyone hit while not wearing a seatbelt, or something of that nature (and significantly higher insurance rates too, of course).

I understand the counter-argument that you'd probably suffer increased trauma in this incredibly specific scenario that you've concocted, but death is a fact of life, and with how far removed we are in this scenario from the likelihood of direct negative outcomes, I still feel that the agency to make one's own choices far outweighs any hypothetical marginal social good of legislation.

[–] hakase@lemm.ee -5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm not the person you responded to here, but the difference is that all of those things are very likely to cause negative externalities to other people, while, as I've pretty definitively shown in this thread, that's not at all the case with the negative outcomes of not wearing seatbelts, which are almost entirely limited to the person making the decision.

[–] hakase@lemm.ee -5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

We seem to be in complete agreement then, except that I'm at least a little bit sad for the idiots that make this choice.

I just don't believe in forcefully preventing other people from making decisions I think are stupid, as long as those choices don't significantly affect others around them. And from the way everyone in this thread is grasping at straws to fabricate incredibly flimsy "harm" scenarios, I think we can safely conclude that that's not actually the case with seatbelts.

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