h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ah what you're forgetting there is that some people know what's good for us, and believe their superiority means they have the right to enforce their belief upon us.

Doublethink requires a strong them and us philosophy. For example should people who partake of high-risk sports like say, hang-gliding be taxed for the problems they are eventually going to cause the health service ?

If there were as many people getting injured by hang-gliding and needing treatment as are damaged by poor diet or smoking, then yes I think the state would have some justification for putting disincentives in place. The problem isn't that people do health riksy things, it's when enough people do them to affect the overall health of a nation.

It makes total sense to me that the organisation that gathers and spends the collective money (tax) should have a responsiblity to the collective and be concerned when the collective start doing collectively stupid things like diminshing the overall health of the species. You can argue individual rights and freedoms all you like, but this isn't what is being addressed here. The state isn't interferring because it thinks that individuals need to be told what to do, it's interferring because it has a duty of care to the collective. Not that I agree with much of how and why it does that, especially in terms of health, but I agree that if we have a socialist system then there are times when the individual's rights and needs will conflict with the overall good and that it's the state's responsibility to mediate that.


I thought the libertarian paternalism was the monster child of the new left. It's what you get when you combine Labour and rightist economic policy

Hmm - surely the state only has the right to intervene when I start to harm the health of others. It's quick enough to jump in when it believes the rights of others are being curtailed. (prisoners should be allowed to vote for example)

The two sides are incompatible, either the state controls all, or their is no control. As both are equally unacceptable we arrive at a middle ground and call it freedom.

It's where that middle ground is, lately it's moving more and more towards totalitarianism. We now have lamp-posts that shout at us, and in many places you can't drink in the street. Thus the bottle of wine at a picnic loses out to the bottle of sherry on the bench.

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Dangerous ground there.

What if someone decides that individualism is inherently against the good of the collective?

The ultimate individual right is to do as I please with my own body. The state has absolutely no business dictating what I can or can't do with it.

As regards the exercise hour, once again the illusory bottomless pockets of business are to be raided again. Let us say that affects, oh, 5 million workers. One hour a day at say £6 an hour. That's £7.5bn a year charged to business. And that will be met by everyone through rising prices.

McKay, I do agree that there are very disturbing things going in with the English speaking socialist governments. I think the problem is that hybrid of socialism and new right *shrug*

We do have a very individualistic culture, but it pays to remember that many cultures value community more than indvidiual rights but are still good cultures to live within. Many indigenous cultures have a much stronger sense of community than modern western ones. For instance Maori have social justice systems far superior than anything I've seen from the west. They also place a very high value on family and extended family and tribal affiltiations, so that you see things like young men and women working for their people in ways I don't see young westerners doing. A friend said to me recently that there is no such thing as a solo parent in a Maori family - they would be looked after and taken in by the rest of the family.

It seems to me that western cultures are not in the middle, they are at one extreme (individualism) and at the other extreme would be places like China or communist Russia. There is another way that is neither of those things.


>> surely the state only has the right to intervene when I start to harm the health of others. <<

Ok, to give an example. Say the govt was to decriminalise all drugs. People are allowed the complete freedom to do what they want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. Even if we put aside the issues of harm to loved ones by addiction, do you really think that society would be functional if huge numbers of people were using stronger drugs regularly? I'm not wanting to debate drugs here (or the dubioud validity of the example eg the implication that drug users can't function), what I'm trying to show is that if we say the individual can do anything so long as they don't harm other individuals then what happens if say 75% of the population engages in something that renders the society unable to function?

Likewise, if most individual people end up eating crap food for several generations and then it becomes apparent that there has been a huge rise in health problems as a result and the society can no longer afford to take care of all the ill people, how is the freedom to eat what one likes not harming others?

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What if someone decides that individualism is inherently against the good of the collective?
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Many people already do believe that. I certainly believe that in our quest for the extreme individualistic society we have, we have lost many good things that come from collective responsibility.

My own view is that the middle ground consists of general laws like the no smoking in public places law, and education like smoking kills, and disincentives like tax on cigarettes. That way people can still smoke if they really need to, but the public is protected somewhat from the damage to the collective of lots of individuals smoking.

Cars and guns are fundamentally different to cigarettes, but out of interest, what is the logic behind fishing licences?

Licensing smoking is a step too far for me. More collectivist societies may have their benefits, but individual freedom is an aspect of quality of life too. Moreover, collectivism tends to quash difference and to result in a sort of small-scale corruption: cover-ups and keeping it within the family. Respect and politeness can become enforced deference all to easily.

Well, who'd ever have thought I believed so strongly in the American Way?

>>what happens if say 75% of the population engages in something that renders the society unable to function?

Then that society changes. Maybe for the better, maybe for the worse. Until later...
BCNU - Crescent

"It was John Stuart Mill who said "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient.""

So presumably SWL you are all for me being able to buy as much Cocaine, Ecstacy and Ganja as I want?

Actually yes. It's only the illegality of these drugs that leads to criminality after all. And if some people want to kill themselves on drugs, that's just Darwinism in action.

Some of the greatest artists, writers and thinkers were permanently shit-faced on drugs of one kind or another

...

On reading the article again, I think some of the posts here rather miss the point that is being made. It's not so much about a "nanny state" or "banning" things, more a case of making it slightly harder to do things that the government has decided are undesirable. So the point is not to ban unhealthy food or cigarettes, just to make them more hassle to get. It's all very well invoking John Stuart Mill and to speculate on future 'bans', but that's not really what's being proposed here.

A few months ago we had a debate here about "opting in" versus "opting out" organ donation systems. Should we presume consent and require an opt out from those who don't agree, or presume refusal and ask for an opt in? What should the default position be? This suggestion is similar in the sense that it changes the default position - this is clearest in the case of salt in food, by changing the default position from salty to less salty - but it's the suggestion that runs through the whole article.

Changing the default can be a powerful way of changing behaviour. How many fewer carrier bags are given out now that it's more common to have to ask for one, or to pay extra, or to confirm that you need one, rather than in the past where they were just given out?

We already have arrangements in place which require people to jump through certain hoops to do things. There are already restrictions on buying and selling alcohol which most people accept as an inevitable fact, but which actually are a similar act of paternalism or nanny-statism.

So although I'm not mad keen on all of the specific detail of the proposals, I think the principles behind them are perfectly respectable and worthy of wider discussion. They might at least be better understood.

So it's reasonable to make it more difficult to do things you don't like people doing - I can see the concept here - it's what they've done with fox hunting. The trouble with this is once you start where do you stop ?

Shall we make it harder for people to buy airline tickets ? Or petrol, perhaps - that'll stop those people polluting everywhere - hey lets have a license for buying gas, and you've got to prove you own a pressure cooker before you can have one.

Actually I'd better stop, this is starting to sound like a Labour party suggestions box.

Now if only we could stop this elections busines......

So they are opperating on the premise we are all thick as shit, hence don't realise smoking or whatever it is might be bad, so instead just give us hastle about buying the items in question, acheving, nothing, cept for pissing off a whole bunch of people. The whole notion is pointless, the 'ideas' behind it are utterly flawed and the idea doesn't even seem to know waht its outcome is/should be. They've already increased the age of purchasing cigarettes up to 18, if they want to see what effect this has had then just lettuce wait and see a while what effect its had. The idea is impractacle too as pointed out earlier, whilst we can't be bothered as a nation to fund the NHS because we prefer to spend the money on forign wars, its not a fantastic idea to then create pointless extra work for GPs to do.

There's a ban on gun ownership isn't there?

Actually, no there's not. Anybody can own some types of gun, all they have to do is to jump through hoops. But the perception is that there is a ban.

Smoker-bashing is a popular pastime amongst the chattering classes - they're the new social pariah. It's not the "done thing" to mock, criticise or harass Irish/Blacks/Jews/Asians any more but smokers are fair game. After all, it's a frightfully common working class pastime isn't it dahling.

BTW, what are they going to do about tourists or people visiting the country? Will they have to bring a doctor's note?

Yes.

Found a loverly pub this evening, they have set up teh 'outside' so its just like the 'insicde' of a pub. ceiling, (six inch gap at the side of the ceiling), walls on four sides, concrete floor, those funny gas exteranal in the air heater things, almost exactly in fact the same as being in the pub, cept it just about sneeks by the stupid law. Fantastic. a victory for insanity and pointless rediculusness over common sense and thought-through thinking. ya know, maybe one day they'll just incorperate the 'outside' almost like inside bit of the pub into the 'inside' almost like 'outside' bit of the pub and then it will be exactly as it was before. introduce the permit sytem into it and wow true insanity must result.

"So it's reasonable to make it more difficult to do things you don't like people doing - I can see the concept here - it's what they've done with fox hunting. The trouble with this is once you start where do you stop ?"

Well, you stop wherever it's felt appropriate to stop.

There are already limitations and restrictions in place on a variety of things - restrictions on when and how alcohol can be bought and sold, same for cigarettes in terms of age limits and pack sizes and so on. Same for fireworks. So it's not as if there's some unstoppable 'slippery slope' in operation here - decisions can be made on a case-by-case basis.

For the record, although I think the principle is sound and worthy of serious consideration, I do think the smoking license from the doctor is a very poor idea. In addition to all of the other arguments others have given, wouldn't having to apply for an annual license actually make it harder to give up? Imagine that my license expired and I resolved to try to give up rather than renew. I fail, and end up renewing. Do I redouble my efforts to give up or cut down, or do I just carry on smoking because I failed. I think the effect of an annual license might just be to psychologically create a single once-a-year window of opportunity to give up.

>>Cars and guns are fundamentally different to cigarettes, but out of interest, what is the logic behind fishing licences?<<

In NZ fishing licences fund the Fish and Game council who manage the inroduced species stock here (trout, salmon etc). F and G also take a proactive approach to protecting things like water quailty and public access.


I agree with the pricinciples that Otto is talking about but I still can't see the point of a licence to smoke. It's true that we have restrictions on alcohol but we don't need a licence to buy or drink it. Maybe the smoking licence is a way of registering addicts.

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Smoker-bashing is a popular pastime amongst the chattering classes - they're the new social pariah. It's not the "done thing" to mock, criticise or harass Irish/Blacks/Jews/Asians any more but smokers are fair game. After all, it's a frightfully common working class pastime isn't it dahling.
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Smoking is anti-social in ways that being Irish/Black/Jewish/Asian isn't