My Two Common Cents...

Further to the comments of the last post, how do you get people to smarten up and not give away freedom in the process? Should people be allowed to be freely stupid at a cost to others, and if that is curbed, is that an encroachment on freedom? From what I’ve seen, people don’t change their ways unless is costs them big time. And even then it sometimes doesn’t take. Still, can you legislate common sense? Is that what no smoking laws are? Seat belt laws? Drunk driving laws? Is that the government stepping in saying “you’re not smart enough not to hurt yourselves, so we have to do something about it.”? If people want to do something stupid and the only cost would be to themselves, I say have at it. It’s when their actions cost me that I get perturbed. Take the smoking bans for instance. I’m all for banning it. Just because someone can stand beside me and smoke and pump out noxious fumes that screw my lungs up doesn’t mean they should. I don’t like the fact that my health is taking a hit just so someone else can have the ‘freedom’ to smoke. Where’s my ‘freedom’ to be healthy? But how do you make people start to think unless the cost is large. Take the drunk driving laws. From Wikipedia, here’s Canada’s laws if you blow over 80: For the first offence: $600 fine, 1-year driving prohibition; or jail time For the second offence: 14 days jail, 2-year driving prohibition; and time in jail For the third or subsequent offence: 90 days jail, 3-year driving prohibition. That’s way too lax. And here’s the max sentence ever handed out: On Dec 15, 2005, Charly Hart of Watford, Ontario, a man with a 35-year history of impaired driving which included thirty-nine convictions, was on the occasion of his latest such conviction sentenced to six years in prison, the most severe penalty ever handed down in Canada when the offence did not involve a fatality, and the maximum sentence permitted under the law. That’s insane! 35 years and 39 convictions of drunk driving and he finally gets a 6 year sentence. The justice system should be embarrassed. If you really want to cut out drunk driving here’s what you do – first conviction = lifetime license revoked and 10 years in jail. THAT’s how you get people’s attention. If someone wants to drive their car around on their own property stone drunk, I say have at it. But you go on the roads and put my life at risk, I say throw the book at them. Now, how is that different from smoking? Banning drinking and driving is taking away freedom and legislating common sense and so is banning smoking. Both actions risk the health of others, but one is commonly accepted as being justly against the law and the other is fought tooth and nail as losing a ‘freedom’. If my tax dollars have to go into a health care system that is just holding together by a thread as it is, would it be a bad idea to put in a law that says self inflicted, preventable injuries have to be paid for by the individual so the free health care can go to those that need it? The mega problem with that, however, is who decides where that line is. Politicians? Insurance companies (shudder)? Doctors? There’s obviously no good way to do it, so the freedom to be stupid and have someone else pay the price remains intact. But if I have to work my ass off so half my paycheque can go to taxes to cover the costs of people being stupid, is that really freedom to begin with?