Why can’t safety be a matter of consumer choice and value versus cost, instead of an imposed government diktat? From Eric Peters on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:
People have been trained not to think with precision – to use words sloppily – a necessary bit of groundwork for authoritarian demagogues to succeed.
For example, it is easy – because people don’t think about it precisely – to characterize Libertarians as “selfish” because they (supposedly) don’t want to “help” others.
You know, like Democrats (and Republicans) do.
But hold on. When a Democrat (or a Republican) politician talks about “helping” others, doesn’t he mean taxing others? Is he reaching into his pocket?
Or someone else’s?
Defined with precision, “helping” others in modern political parlance means the use of state power to redistribute wealth – with the politician acting as a middleman. This is a very different thing – morally as well as actually – than one person freely giving of his time or resources to assist another person in need, the precise (and intellectually honest) definition of helping others.
So how about “safety”?
The federal government – the politicians and bureaucrats – claim that anyone (like me) who opposes things like mandatory air bags in cars is opposed to… “safety.”
No, not at all.
I hold that anyone who wants to – and is willing to pay – should be able to purchase a car with as many air bags as they like. Throw in back-up cameras, anti-whiplash head restraints (that make it hard to see anything behind you) a roof that will support the weight off the car if it turns upside down (even if it adds several hundred pounds of weight to the car and so makes it use a lot more gas) and so on.
I am opposed to none of these things.
I am opposed to being force-fed these things.volvo wagon
And to being made to subsidize these things.
If – as we are regularly told – America is a free country, then why on earth are we not free to choose for ourselves how much “safety” we want and are willing to pay for? And why are some of us made to subsidize the “safety” other people want but aren’t willing to pay for themselves?
Isn’t this – forcing everyone to buy (and so, subsidize) the degree of “safety” deemed appropriate according to the arbitrary decrees of unelected, ensconced-for-the-duration apparatchiks within the bowels of the federal regulatory agencies – exactly the same as being required to buy only “nutritious” food?
Well?
And if we can be forced to buy things like air bags because a federal bureaucrat or politician believes they are “good for us” then why couldn’t we also be forced to buy “nutritious” food?
Why not?
The only reason why not is because the politicians and bureaucrats have gotten around to that…. yet.
But, they will. They must. It is inevitable.
To continue reading: “Healthy Choices”
