This is similar to comment spam but avoids some of the safeguards designed to stop the latter practice. The term is used colloquially

I have friends who are not afraid to admit that when they begin a new relationship they readily bury their heads in books relating

Er, not precisely. This is a very “rugged individualist” stance, but in practice it can often work out that this isn’t the case.

Let’s say I don’t wear a seatbelt, and as a result I’m thrown from the car into some precarious position. Some first responder attempts to extricate me from this position, and is seriously injured as a result.

To I bear some culpability for this? (Curious as to your stance, you’re welcome to say “no”).

> Similarly smoking marijuana is a crime which has no victim.

I somewhat agree with this, at least to the extent that smoking marijuana has as little ancillary effect as alcohol consumption. However, both can indeed have negative consequences for persons other than the user. Families, for one.

Again, it’s definitely possible for someone to state that in their opinion, no one person has a right to have a say about these sorts of crimes, including those who are impacted negatively (the wife that loses a husband to a car crash, the children that aren’t raised properly because their parents are stoned all the time, etc.), or that there are already laws in place that govern at least some of those cases (child endangerment laws in the second case), and that in the remaining cases, the proper response of the government is to butt out anyway.

As another sidenote, I *like* immigration. Illegal, legal, it makes no difference to me. I think that nationality is an outdated idea (and it is weird when you think about it. How can you belong to a country? The entire concept is screwy.). What bothers me is people who use services and don’t pay taxes (assuming they make enough money to pay taxes in the first place of course). That’s just wrong.

Any law which punishes an individual for a victimless crime is an infringement of civil liberties. Not wearing a seatbelt or a helmet doesn’t cause an accident. It just ensures that you personally won’t make it out of a serious accident alive.”

As Tyler points out, this brings up the larger question of when it is ethical or just to limit liberties. For instance, I certainly think we should curtail my neighbor’s right to build a nuclear bomb in his garage, because the restriction of that liberty must be weighed against the infringement on others’ liberties. Such is always a balancing act with justifiable shades of grey.

However, in your example of seat belts no others’ liberties are being infringed by a person not wearing one, therefore it is not within the purview of the government to restrict such an action. So yes, seat belt laws are wasting taxpayer dollars in an unethical crusade. An individual has the right to take any risks they wish, so long as they do not put others in danger. I assume you were asking if such laws were justified, as they are by definition an infringement on liberty.

I’m not advocating driving without a seatbelt of course. I never ever drive anywhere without wearing one, but I would never ever force another person to wear one under threat of violence. If one did want to try to make a difference in this arena, the tax money would be more efficiently, and more ethically, spent on public service messages in popular media to influence citizens’ decisions while still respecting their free will. I may not understand why someone would want to ride without a seatbelt, but that doesn’t mean they do not have a valid reason. After all, there are many things I do (or would like to do) that others may not understand. So long as those actions do not cause harm to others, there is no justifiable reason to restrict them.

“I don’t agree with your logic or your mathematical formula for calculating priorities. Ideally, if my countries security services are working perfectly, the number of deaths dues to terrorism will be zero. I don’t think that suddenly makes the threat zero. Unfortunately, the number of deaths due to terrorism really spiked on 9/11 and the government has been rightly trying to close the holes that allowed things to happen. And it is not unexpected to have debate as this is done.”

I can only justify prioritizations and decisions based on objectively verifiable data. Hence why I compared statistical probabilities of myself, or someone I care about, being harmed in a given way. Everything is statistics. I could easily be gored by a wild gorilla that escaped from the zoo on my way out of work today, but the statistical probability of that is so negligible that it hardly seems worth worrying about. Should the government spend money and restrict liberties to prevent my goring by said hypothetical gorilla? Would it be more justified for them to do so if lots of people were worried about said gorilla in spite of the overwhelming unlikelihood of the occurrence? The answer to both is no; the government should not be guided by irrationality.

In a perfect world there would be no deaths by anything other than old age…or maybe not even that; just choice. But we don’t live in a perfect world, and there are always tradeoffs to be made. Where does the money come from to support these anti-terror programs? Whose family is going hungry tonight from higher taxes? What scientific mission was cancelled from budget cuts for it? Beyond that, what collateral damage are your new programs causing? I would much prefer to live with an increased probability of early death of 1% rather than a substantial decrease in my quality of life. Again, it comes down to the math: If average life spans are increased by 1%, but average quality of life decreased by 10%, then there is no rational justification for such a program.

Believe it or not we have large numbers of Americans sneaking across the Canadian border trying to get free health care here WITHOUT PAYING TAXES. Mooches.

Duuuuuude, it’s not even five orders of magnitude *near* what’s going on in the southwestern US. The most impartial studies indicate it costs California alone about $10 billion per year.

I’ve read that is actually one of the big reasons why our healthcare system is clogged up; too many Americans stealing from us like the thieves they are.

Huh. When I say the same thing about the folks coming in from the south, I get called a racist. Ain’t double standards and political correctness fun, kids? Yay!