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From: nrh@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Seat belt law justification
Message-ID: <117200228@inmet>
Date: Thu, 9-Oct-86 10:35:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: inmet.117200228
Posted: Thu Oct  9 10:35:00 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Oct-86 06:28:20 EDT
References: <492@dshovax.UUCP>
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Nf-From: inmet.UUCP!nrh    Oct  9 10:35:00 1986


Summary: Seatbelt laws are used to illustrate one difference between
freedom and slavery.

>/* Written  5:28 pm  Sep 29, 1986 by howarde@mmintl.UUCP in inmet:talk.pol.misc */
>AI don't think that's quite the same thing.  If you drive without your
>seatbelt, you're not doing it to better your life or somehow improve
>society.  If you start a company, you are presumably doing so to make money,
>make services/products available to the community to better the quality of
>life for everyone and in general, add to your surroundings.  

So stipulated.

And now the problem: it is just this quality of "doing it for no reason
that others find valid" that is the essence of freedom.  If I choose to 
print up a thousand posters showing myself throwing up, I am free to do so.
I need not "convince" anyone (although I must willing suppliers: printers
and so on) that this is a worthy thing to do.  It is within the 
domain of actions open to me as a free person to do this: I do not have
to justify it, explain it, argue that it improves my life or prevents
some evil from happening.  I have the *right* to do it.  

One hears often that the "end justifies the means", but in fact, only the
right to employ those means justifies those means.

If I now wish to paste those posters all over your shopping mall, I must
now convince the owners that this is a good thing: my freedom does not
extend to the use of their property.

>Driving without
>protection from accidents cannot possibly be perceived as an asset to anyone
>or anything.  

Oh, absolutely!  Except, of course, it is not "driving without protection"
that the seatbelt law debate is all about: most of the people I've talked
to who are against it insist they would buckle up anyhow.  The debate
is whether the State has the right to make you buckle your safety 
belt whether you choose to or not.  

Let's get a little more obvious: the state passes a law to make everyone
eat all their vegetables.  The state may convincingly argue that this
will result in fewer people in state-run hospitals and so forth.  
You may not LIKE a state trooper giving your date a ticket when she
refuses to finish her broccoli, but you're bound to accept it, just
as you accept seat-belt-laws: same reasoning.

>If you start a company, you're putting society's resources at
>risk.  If you're succesful, everyone wins.  If you go bankrupt, everyone
>(including yourself) loses.  In an accident w/o seatbelts, if you avoid
>injury, YOU win.  If you get mangled, society (and YOU of course) loses.

So therefore, in the case of any risky action, I should be required to
take precautions dictated by the state?  How about emotional actions,
such as breaking up with a MOTOS, or health actions, like not
finishing my broccoli?  Why not?