Darky
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- 29 Palms, CA
Matthew Currie said:Let's not forget that a main reason we get coffee cups with "caution, contents may be hot," and window screens with warnings not to use as a child restraint, and stickers all over the sun visors, is not just that some meddlesome big-brother type dreamed up potential problems, but because some fool (or more likely many many fools) did something stupid and then sued over it, or otherwise burdened the public weal with the consequences.
We would like to think we don't need protection from ourselves, but too many other people do, and we pay the price. I agree there should be lines drawn, especially in areas where participation is optional or obviously recreational, and the risk clearly one that is willingly assumed. I think there's a difference, for example, between requiring seat belts and motorcycle helmets, and requiring roll cages or bicycle helmets. But we need to keep those risks in mind and be prepared to take our lumps if we accept them.
If we want to be free of regulation, we must be willing not only as individuals to assume responsibility for our actions and our injuries, but as a society either to cut loose those who cannot or will not, or be ready to commit public resources to them. That second part may be harder than you think. It's not really simple. If those who are crippled, pithed, maimed and killed by their own negligence become the responsibility of the general public, then the general public (in its manifestation as the government) has some legitimate concern in trying to avoid those consequences. We, as a society, have to make decisions on collective and individual responsibility which can be very complicated. Joe Schmoe goes out four-wheeling with his kids in his cageless beltless Jeep, and dumps it and his innocent 7-year old is crippled for life. Joe is bankrupt, uninsured, maybe killed too. Who pays for the kid's medical expenses and lifetime of special care? Someone, somewhere, has to decide where the line is drawn between our personal freedom to do stupid things, and the relative economy of paying out some of that freedom in exchange for not having to pay out for the consequences of other people's stupidity.
I don't know just where that line should be drawn, but I think this is more than just a knee-jerk us-and-them, liberals-versus-libertarians issue.
Posted over in the gov't mandated safety thread, this is the basis of what I've been thinking but couldn't quite figure to put in words. Some idiot somewhere did something stupid, hired a crooked lawyer and sued. Now its not just that persons problem its everyone's as the costs of the lawsuit get absorbed by the company who raises prices. That's where a lot of the laws that many see as unnecessary come from.