Solutions to Regulatory Problems
Let's just analyze the problem of "Regulation" more closely. I have recently wrote an article about how Regulation actually makes more harm than good:
In that article I mostly debated @telos and debunked his very bad arguments, which I debated with him in mostly comments and past articles.
Now I have without a shadow of a doubt demonstrated that Government Regulation does more harm than good in pretty much all situations, in the past article. However I wasn't very articulate, and I didn't really touched all aspects of this problem, plus this is a very complex problem so it's not like you can sum up the past 200 years of human development in a Steemit post.
Let me put it this way, it is absolutely true that Government Regulation doesn't work, but that is not the end of it, this actually opens up more questions, because the issues do exist, it's just they are not treated well. Like the issues addressed by Regulators do exist, and they are very big problems, it's just that the bureaucrat is doing nothing to solve them, and quite frankly in most cases it actually aggravates the situation.
Let me give you a practical example of a Regulatory issue: Smoking
Alright, I hope in the 21st century it is absolutely clear that Smoking is very unhealthy and it has no benefits whatsoever. Like there were propaganda campaigns in the past that tried portraying Smoking cigarettes or cigars as alleviating stress and things like that. But we know now for sure and this is not even debatable that Smoking causes cancer, lung cancer, throat cancer, you name it. In fact it has absolutely no benefit whatsoever, tobacco is literally a poison. I have just read a very underrated article about the health issues related to Smoking, you might want to check it out:
So if Smoking is bad, it has absolutely no benefits whatsoever, and it costs people a ton a lot of money in healthcare costs and does untold damage to society, healthwise and otherwise. Especially if healthcare costs are socialized, your taxes would drop massively if Smoking would not exist, but even on an individual healthcare system it's better for the economy if people are healthy.
So the final logical conclusion would be to just ban it. Like ban it completely, nobody should smoke. I mean you can get pleasure from tons of other places and it has no benefit whatsover but it does great harm to society, then the logical conclusion would be to just ban it.
The problem with "bans"
Ok so it would be nice if tobacco would be banned. However there is a massive problem here that people are overlooking.
There is no such thing as a "ban" on something. Like if there would be a button that you can push that would erase from existence all the tobacco products past/present/future, then obviously why not push it? If tobacco could be erased from existence then it should be, after all why would we want negative things?
But that is not what a "ban" is. A "ban" means that thugs in blue uniform will kick down your door, kidnap you, and put you in a cage if you dare to smoke a cigarette.
There is no "ban" because Government is not a God that can simply just create/destroy things. All they can and will do is just order people around, and force people to do certain things under the threat of violence.
So a "ban" on tobacco means that taxes would actually increase and not decrease (as predicted earlier due to healthcare cost savings), since you need to setup a bureaucracy, an investigatory power, a law enforcement agency that will hunt down everyone daring to use tobacco.
Plus mafias start appearing providing a black market for tobacco, after all the demand doesn't go away, only the supply gets illegalized.
So the violence will increase as well, you won't just have mafias operating massive rackets, but you will also have massive police brutality, surveillance and a police-state to destroy a peaceful society.
Benefits <> Drawbacks
So as you can see, as bad as Smoking is, and as much harm it causes healthwise to society, banning it would create almost like a Nazi level Tyranny.
In fact the Drug War in the USA and other parts of the world is doing exactly just that. Everyone hates drugs and drug related gangs and violence, therefore a massive police state is growing in those regions. This includes 3rd world countries as well.
I mean legalizing marijuana would be very important, but it's not a solution, it's just a solution to the police state, but not necessarily to the healthcare system.
Like I don't know what are the health benefits/risks of marijuana, I have never used it, it's illegal here, but I am pretty sure that having a Nazi Police State has absolutely no benefits at all.
So dismantling the Nazi Tyranny would be a bigger priority in my opinion now, than the healthcare side. And then we can deal with the healthcare problems.
Like I don't know, it could range from education, to public service announcements to just raising awareness. Like have the fucking schools teach something useful for once, to be a responsible adult, that would be nice.
So if the drugs get legalized, the Police State would go away, and the other issues that lead to drug use would be solved by alternative/peaceful methods.
You know it's better to talk to people than to beat them up with police batons. That would be the first step towards a better society.
Sources:
https://pixabay.com
They can't even keep drugs out of maximum security prisons... To believe they can keep them from Crossing Borders is absolute fantasy.
Excellent points on this write up, this is a topic which could compose many series of posts
Smoking doesn't kill taxpayers though, it kills retirees.
You die from it just as you're moving from the asset column to the liability column, so its impact on the taxpayer is a little more nuanced.
Like they say, "You gotta die of something".
One of my favourite things is watching somebody here in Australia, walking along a footpath outside a pub/tavern/bar, coughing through the cloud of smoke from all the smokers, who've been forced outside by regulations preventing smoking indoors.
I know that a lot of the people who pushed for this rule are also now choking on smoke which would have been contained inside if they'd just minded their own damn business.
Very good point. The gov't can regulate things all they want but, try as they might, they can't eliminate anything. People have things that they enjoy, or in some cases need (medical marijuana) and they will find a way to attain them. It's very frustrating to watch the cycle of gov't interfering, making things worse, then taxing the citizens in order to start or expand an agency in order to combat the problem they created in the first place.
The state is a problem masquerading as it's own solution.
Followed.
Our borders don't provide much resistance either; at least not here in the States. We have a pattern of arming foreign groups, then going to war with the same group we armed just a few years later.
Followed, as well
It's the "coldest of all cold monsters" as Nietzsche said.
Ok I get it but the drawbacks in case of smoking outweight the benefits. Like sure people have the freedom to smoke if they want, but that also implies an individualistic society.
I mean you either have a socialist system, based on hedonism and irresponsibility where the state forces people into behaving.
Or you have an anarchist society where everyone is responsible, educated, and well informed.
Until you get this, some kind of methods have to be used to save people from their own stupidity, especially if their bad choices will end up us consting more taxes....
Don't get me wrong I'd love to see a free society, but until we get there some kind of measures should be taken to address that issue.
I will follow you so that we may continue these discussions in the future. I only have a few blog posts so far, but feel free to examine them. They are over similar issues to what we speak of here, and I really enjoy the interaction with commenters. That's what steemit is all about for me.
Not it actually makes them suffer in agony in the medical system that could like extend their lives by 5-10 years, but then of course massive healthcare costs will occus from the treatments.
But also nobody investigated like the permanent genetical damage that could be passed along from generation to generation.
Then you have kids being exposed to smoker parents.
So the issue is quite clear, smoking is bad, it's undebatable.
The problem is how do you fix it:
There are many things that can be considered "bad" for us; this is a very slippery slope. It is a game the govt plays to influence behavior to their benefit while expanding their control and influence over our lives. Smoking increases testosterone in men so in that aspect it's good. I don't think govt should have the final say on matters of health or morality.
Prohibition has never worked for anything, anywhere, so we can strike that one off the list.
You know I get that the libertarian position is favorable if we live in an individualist society. But actually we live in a pretty socialist society.
So you could say for example that logically speaking everyone owns himself and should be responsible for their own choices in their lives.
However most people won't go along with that, because we live in a hedonistic non-responsible society.
So if you would say like smoker X is smoking and got a lung cancer because of it, he should just die from it because it's none of other people's business to "bail him out".
But in reality society would be outraged by such statements, simply because nobody is responsible.
So we have to put things in perspective and think in this hedonistic world. We could promote personal responsibility, that would be nice to teach kids, and also educate people about the risks/benefits of certain things. Make informed people.
But in the meantime some issues need to be dealt with more immediately. So for example banning public smoking would be one of that.
I am not saying it's good to introduce "bans", what I am saying is that in this context there are no options, until people change their mindsets to be more responsible.
Yeah you know the truth often lies somewhere in the middle between two ideologies...
With carefully selected arguments, everything you said can be debunked and the same goes for the guy you are arguing with.
If the talk of all the nonsense is true it is very disturbing for the people who are always right to say.
The biggest problem is people mentality, you can ban smoking completely but people won't let it go.
Mentality changes over time, the same as it was with different things. For example racism (well this days we have huge acts of racism anyway but i think it's not as big as it was) there were different types of immigrations and every time the waves change for example from marocco to syria the racism towards nations change.