sure they do, if you are ok with the government making decisions about you and your life FOR you.
There do have to be rules and conventions, or there would be chaos. Since such power is dangerous, the exercise of it should be kept to a minimum. Then the question arises as to what that minimum is.
But pure sin taxes like soda/gambling/recreational drug taxes, where an individual is only affecting themselves, are effectively the government and busybody supporters of the policy playing god of morality. I've actually heard people suggest that drinking soda or using pot is an indirect externality as a result of the potential to 'change' users, and that its indirect effect on society via people's free association with such things is a justifiable externality. That implies that society is entitled to aspects of a person actions and characteristics outside of their lawfulness. It's a very socialist and anti-individualist argument, which I disagree with on a fundamental level.
Now for cigarettes, on the other hand, there are two potential externalities to tax. 1. The smoke that affects anyone near the user. 2. The addictive factor (nicotines), which is an externality against its users created by (and the tax should be applied to) the manufacturer.
Not to mention all the environmental externalities that should be applied at each stage of the supply and manufacturing chain due to fuel/processing/chemical effects on the environment/energy used/etc. However, these are common to all externalities, and if I had my way I would tax externalities in a direct and systematic way like this across the board, such that the tax is sufficient for the government to "undo" the externality. If there is no feasible way to undo it, it should be illegal.
This depends on political context. In much of the western world outside the US (and partially in the US) healthcare is a publicly funded service. If you pay for your neighbors healthcare, then your neighbors obesity is an externality.
> or cigarettes, on the other hand, there are two potential externalities to tax.
And again here: my neighbors lung cancer is on my taxes, so effectively the only fair cost of cigarettes includes all treatment from all smoking and of course all lost tax revenues from the sick smokers who couldn't work etc. That's a lot more money needed than to cover just second hand smoke as an externality.
And even if you don't factor in public healthcare, an unhealthy population is an externality although not as immediately obvious.
This is getting off topic, and say what you will about America's atrocious healthcare system, but the fact that it is not fully socialized is NOT the problem. Real problems: artificial non-market based demand created by partial socialization (medicare and medicaid buying programs) raising prices for the non-socialized group, oppressive FDA (costs 1 billion usd on average to push a drug through), oppressive occupational licensing (very high barrier to entry to becoming a doctor), imbalanced IP system (especially for chemical/drug patents), and plenty more. Eliminating these problems would go a long way to making America the world's best healthcare system (it already is in some regards -- do some research on where all the prime ministers of social medicine countries go for their important surgeries since their systems haven't incorporated the American medical tech yet).
There are still issues to consider with emergency care (where there is typically not market-based selection of your healthcare) but I think government incentives aiding a market based system (similar to the incentives created by Singapore, arguably the best current system) would create a system so superior to any other country's medical system, that it wouldn't be such a central political issue.
Universal healthcare itself is a huge discussion but seems off topic here.
That's always a risky argument to engage in. Everything has externalities, whether it's "sinful" or not. For example, there are a lot of externalities that the public pays for in order to allow everyone to drive a car. Probably round 30% of the driving public should not be driving a car. In western countries, drivers licence programs are much more about babying idiots through the basics of car driving than they are separating the incapable and denying them access. I don't know anyone who has wanted a drivers licence and been refused one. I do know multiple people in multiple countries who have taken the test more than 3 times to get it.
For the moment, we still value granting people freedom of movement. A society where there are two classes, those who can move themselves and those who cannot, would be deeply undesirable to most of us.
I for one value the right of people to make their own life decisions. The notion that my tax money might be used to treat lung cancer or buy sturdier surgery tables for obese patients doesn't bother me. What the hell is the point of a health care system if not to isolate ourselves from the harsh realities of life that prevent us from enjoying ourselves?
I don't want to live in a society where there are two classes, those who can pay for private health cover and therefore drink as much as they want, and those who cannot and thus may not party too hard. That might sound a bit weird, but would you want to live in a society where if you can't afford private health care you're not allowed to cycle on public roads?
I'm always in favor of letting people making their own decisions and then supporting them no matter the consequences. When that cost is spread across an entire society, it's a pretty light burden. Could be lighter if we stop letting companies dodge taxes tho.
Your post consists of a paragraph about externalities, some lovely-sounding "I believe that..." positions, and a couple example axes on which a society might bifurcate. I don't see a logical connection between them, and I think a leap like that warrants articulation.
So, one more time for the folks who don't share your implicit premises: how do sin taxes result in a structurally bifurcated society?
EDIT: phrasing
I do see a connection, and moreover that connection is obvious to me. I genuinely see your statement as a low quality argumentative technique to ask me to repeat a very clear statement in different phrasing in the hope that you will find some triviality that is easier to attack than my core premise.
If you'd really like an answer, please articulate the nature of the logical disconnect you see.
That "core premise" is the very thing I want to see articulated here. What you've offered is your conclusion: that sin taxes somehow entail a structurally divided society.
> If you'd really like an answer, please articulate the nature of the logical disconnect you see.
That's literally not how argument works. The burden of proof lies with the party making the positive assertion — in this case, something about societal bifurcation and sin taxes and their causal relationship. I suppose you could say that means I somehow need to "prove" that I don't follow you, or amn't merely trolling you into tripping up as you assert, but that's a reductio and then some.
If the connection is "obvious" to you, but you are unwilling or unable to articulate it, it isn't implausible for me to surmise that we're talking around unexamined axioms (or, as I often call them, "articles of faith") of yours. Which is fine; I have my own such.
But what you're doing here isn't argument, and I have now spent more time explaining that than I think hearing whatever argument you might have to articulate is likely to be worth, in terms of the amount of my life spent.
EDIT: Not trying to be mean. Just, with this dialogue as my sample, I'm not inclined to anticipate an argument that will enlighten me, or change (or even challenge) my perspective. I'd be delighted to have been mistaken, though.
Aha, a tangible argument. You don't see the possibility of social bifurcation from 30% of the population not being allowed to drive?
Most tradie jobs require a car. It's very hard to be an electrician, plumber, chippie etc. that services homes as if you don't have a car. It might be possible to do commercial work in those fields without a car but every apprentice I've ever known has needed one to carry around the huge pile of tools they're expected to bring on site themselves.
There are also a lot of entry level unskilled jobs that require a drivers licence (assuming you consider a drivers licence "unskilled", which it sort of is but wouldn't be of 30% of current drivers had their licence revoked overnight), like delivering pizza or doing private courier work.
So yeah, changing driving laws to make it a requirement that drivers be consistently safe, courteous and predictable and refusing to give licences to people who can't meet that criteria would definitely be a social bifurcation because it would all but eliminate whole categories of otherwise relatively accessible industrial for the people that cannot get the licence, and in so doing widen the already increasingly wide (lower/middle)/high income divides that most western nations are seeing.
However, that was not my point. My point was that the argument "we shouldn't let people do this because it has costs to society" doesn't really go anywhere as an argument. That's true for pretty much everything we do in society, it's a nothing argument.
Then how do people do those jobs in countries that do meaningfully select for good drivers, instead of dispensing licenses to all comers? Last I checked, continental Europe hasn't entirely descended into disrepair, because not everyone can drive.
If your position is that overnight switching to a tough drivers licensure regime would be disruptive, I can only say, "Of course it would". Literally no-one is advocating that, either in this thread, or in The Fine Article, however, so I'm vague on its relevance.
> My point was that the argument "we shouldn't let people do this because it has costs to society" doesn't really go anywhere as an argument.
Which would be an interesting discussion if that was the argument being made. Sin taxes aren't "We shouldn't let people do this", and it's a fundamental mischaracterization of them to say they are. They discourage it, sure. They can also be used to mitigate the cost of the "sin" in question.
But it is fundamentally incompatible with most of the goals of a sin tax, to be used to outright prevent the thing being taxed.
First, how is this 30% cut going to be enforced? At the licensing test? Is it that if you get a single ticket or report for unsafe driving, your license is revoked? You are going to look at existing drivers license holders and determine their fitness to be operating a vehicle, how exactly? Is it a lifetime ban from driving? How many times can I take the test of it just didn't come naturally to me?
Second, there's already a portion of the population that for whatever reason (DWI is a common one) aren't allowed to drive, and I don't see them rising up in the streets.
I don't think anyone is arguing that people shouldn't be allowed to do things that have costs to society, they are discussing whether or not taxation of the behaviors is effective.
Sure, it doesn't impact us much if one person drinks themselves to liver failure. But if we're talking about 0.1% or 1% or 10% of people drinking themselves to liver failure by 50, we eventually have to start making hard tradeoffs.
It might seem ideal from a maximal-freedom perspective to let anyone who wants to drink themselves to liver failure do so, but it's worth thinking ahead to whether those tradeoffs increase or reduce the maximal-freedom-per-capita.
What about people doing extreme sports? People that are promiscuous? People that like to hike in middle of nowhere and need search and rescue?
If you want the govt to control every aspect of your life, it’s a great path to start on.
In theory.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice.
But in practice...? It's the same with the theory of "the government is the people" and how that works out in practice.
See also; citizen's united
A relatively small group of people, governing a huge group of people. The granularity gap is crazy. It's very hard for me to get exact numbers, but it seems[1] that the US federal government employs around 2 million people, and the US population is ~328 million. That's 164 people to be governed per employee, and most of those employees are not involved in establishing sets of rules.
It is quite beyond the governments capacity to adjust it's rules to handle an individuals personal circumstances or the changing nature of society, which is why there are so many unjust judicial rulings and so many outdated laws still on the books.
Governments should stick to making only the rules which _cannot_ be handled at any scale below the millions. Power lines need to be a matched voltage nation-wide. Railway gauges must be the same nation-wide. Petrol from any petrol station should work in any car, and burning it should not be poisonous at any density of cars found anywhere in the nation. These are the things a government is for. Tie-breaking multiple valid solution arguments on an epic scale. It doesn't matter that much what voltage we pick, just that we pick _a_ voltage, singular.
Governments are quite incapable of managing smaller-scale decisions. For example, it turns out the cannabis oil is pretty amazing at suppressing fits in people with epilepsy, and MDMA might turn out to be the solution tens of thousands of PTSD sufferers have needed for decades. We've at least suspected both of these things for around half a century. Unfortunately, both substances are regulated by a government so large it is literally not capable of making criminal possession exceptions for universities so that these effects can be studied. Lives have been lost due to this scaling problem.
Governments are a great tool for certain problems. For other problems, they are like trying to scrub food off a porcelain bowl with a jackhammer.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_civil_se...
That is a dubious statement that needs support and should not be asserted blithely.
Edit: clarification