Nanny State

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I could write a long and copiously footnoted essay on this topic and why it pisses me off so much, but I found these videos that make the point much better than I can, and are short and funny too.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlAkUjNIK-g[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4YbZ7iXFDA[/youtube]

The rest of the series is here, just in case you enjoy laughing while simultaneously being made very angry.

It's all to easy to view this as a binary state. Are there bans that are reasonable for government to impose? Most assuredly.

- The ban on unlicensed individuals from practicing medicine, law, accounting and other professions
- The ban on DDT
- The ban on false or misleading product labelling.

Are there bans that it is unreasonable for government to impose? This is equally certain.

So what about the middle grounds? Is there a public policy rationale for banning trans-fats? There is. Is it a compelling enough interest to justify the ban? That's open to debate.

At the end of the day, the so-called "nanny state," is a trite argument for those who choose to reject the entire complex of government regulation without going through the exercise of evaluating each matter on its own merits.

Personally, I think a ban on foie gras is dumb. I think a ban on smoking in certain areas is justifiable, and important, but that does not mean that it should be universal.

The public sector bears a huge cost (particularly a huge health care cost) from many practices. It is insufficient to simply claim the freedom to "do what I want with my own body," when the public sector is going to have to pay for some, or all of your health care when your heart/lungs/liver start to deteriorate.

^ What he said. Sometimes there is a legitimate public interest in prohibiting certain behaviors. If there weren't we wouldn't need government at all. Sometimes laws cross the line into being petty and ridiculous, but those are things that have to be addressed as they come up, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

What they said ^

peace j

My point is more that given power's well known tendency to corrupt, it should be doled out as judiciously as possible and rights should not be given up lightly. In this case, people don't seem to realized that by legislating their petty grievances they open the door to further restrictions down the road, till pretty soon we're at 1984. Better to put up with a few public annoyances than to allow wide scale restrictions on what people are and are not allowed to do, especially to themselves.

Thee should be an opt-out modality whereby a citizens forgoes medical aid from the state and he is forgiven his share of the taxes that support such aid. In which case he can do what he damned well pleases to his own body, which is HIS property in the first place.

Just because the State offers medical coverage to citizens is not grounds for asserting the ownership or stewardship of the bodies and health of the citizens. If it were the case, we should all soon be slaves.

ruveyn

For one, there is no property in a human body. A property interest can only arise once the person is deceased.

For two, opting out is not economically sensible. Going back to Adam Smith, there are certain services that it is in no one's direct commercial interest to provide. We do not allow you to opt out of supporting the police, the armed forces, infrastructure, or primary and secondary education. Health is no different.

After all, the cost of self harm is not limited to the medical care used to cure that harm. It also accrues to losses of productivity, and to support for the dependents of that person.

Actually, there are various opt outs available for those services, infrastructure is generally built on voter approved levies, as are municipal police and fire firefighters. Some areas are going to charter schools, which is an opt out of the public school system. I've never heard of private fire fighters, but private schooling is widely available, as is private security and private medicine, thus invalidating the idea that there is no commercial interest in these areas. Whether or not medical even belongs on this list is still subject to vigorous debate, and come November in the States it might go back to being a majority private industry.



Even if I took that statement at face value, none of that makes it any business of the state.

One's productivity and the talent to produce is the property of the individual, not the state. No one has the duty to work, provided it is understood that he who does not work, neither shall he eat.

ruveyn

What is it that voters are approving when the approve levies: either the issuance of public debt, or the imposition of a public charge. Whether capital expenditure is financed through taxes or through debt, it is still, ultimately, a liability of the taxpayer. Some components of infrastructure can be built on private capital--bridges being a prime example, where the possibility exists of imposing user fees. But that creates a commercial interest in a small component of infrastructure--not its entirety, which remains the public sector's obligation.

The opt outs you refer to are impracticable in extended on a macroeconomic scale. You are only considering the supply side of the equation when it comes to public services, but not the demand side. Consider schools:

A person who sends their child to private school is not exempt from paying school taxes, so that person continues to support the public infrastructure. Vouchers and charter schools are still an expenditure of public funds.

Suppose, though, that everyone were to exclude their children from public schools. How do parents who cannot afford the cost of their children's education pay for it? The majority of taxpayers pay less in school taxes than the actual cost of educating their children. Without a public sector activity, those funds no longer are available. The argument with respect to health is somewhat different, since people's demand for health services is episodic, so you will go through periods where you pay as much or more in premiums that services that you consume. But on the macroeconomic scale, 15% of US government expenditure goes to health care. If that money is not spent by the public sector, and returned to taxpayers, there is no pool of money to provide for the health care of those who do not pay tax, or pay less in tax than they receive in services.

The commercial interest in health and education extends to a filling a demand that is provided through public aggregation. If the government was completely disconnected from the provision of health and education, then the supply of these services would be limited to those who had the private means to pay.



Here is where we fundamentally differ. I do not believe that any economist can credibly argue that the state is in a fiscally neutral position as a result of the injury and disability of a citizen. I suggest that it is perfectly fair public policy to impose a obligation of minimal intrusion in order to protect the state's interest in having healthy and productive citizens.

At root, it is so utterly wasteful. As a physician I see countless cases of care being extended for injury or disease whose cause was entirely preventable. Those are resources that are being spent that did not need to be. There is plenty of demand for my services, without them being used in cases that need not have existed in the first place, through a minimal intrusion.

I'm not ignoring the first part of your rebuttal, I can argue with you on some of the points but on reflection this section seemed like the heart of our difference of opinion, so it seemed more efficient just to speak to it.

Which is why I'm not going to make that argument. What I will say is that the state has chosen to put itself in that economic position, and if it finds it's fiscal challenges incompatible with individual rights it either has to figure out a way to make it work or back off, they don't get to use that as a back door to curtail freedoms. If I decide to pay for someone's hospital bills out of pure charity, do I then have the right to force lifestyle changes on them?



Government is wasteful, it's the nature of bureaucracy. If the numbers don't work, cut some administrative people, renegotiate with the unions, make the system more efficient, all of those things are legitimate responses that do not require the sort of intrusive nanny laws that so offend me. Perhaps we may have to agree to disagree on a definition of "minimal intrusion", I seem to place that threshold a bit lower than you do.

States don't choose anything since they are not sentient beings. However States are emergent artifacts of sentient beings (in our case, people). That way the State got to supervene in the minute details of the public is because most of the public acquiesced to such an involvement.

The public sold its birthright for a mess of promises.

ruveyn

In National Socialist Germany workers were paid a decent living wage and given housing and vacations.

If you refused to get a job then you went into a work camp where you HAD to work.

Sounds fair to me.

In general social behavior demands that the entire population contribute to the well being of all. Being part of a society requires that all contribute as they are able so that society as a whole benefits. One may choose to send one's child to a private school and to use private means for health but the industry which society depends upon is the result of a pool of educated and healthy people to provide the work force to sustain all the amenities society can donate. Health and education are not privileges for the few, they are the basic infrastructure upon which society depends and when they are limited society as a whole suffers.

I guess it's better to owe one's soul to the company store.

Actually I don't really disagree with this. I don't believe in forcing people to behave in a certain manner for the "good of society", but I certainly believe that it's in everyone's interest to have a healthy and educated population. I just think that achieving such a goal doesn't require pernicious laws and restrictions, those seem to be more about minding other people's business than any real societal benefit.