This is a disturbing way to think about people. The state should not be in the business of saving people from themselves, least of all with a deeply regressive tax.
What should the state be in the business of exactly? It's in the business of defending people from other people. You could frame it as "saving people from themselves" or you could justifiably frame it as "saving people from companies seeking to poison them".
Also, the state has account for these people in the form of emergency care and treatment when they kill themselves (and often times others on their way out). These people are unfairly burdening the tax base when they decide to kill themselves in a spectacular flaming car crash, so why doesn't it make sense for the state to protect the interests of the group as a whole?
Alcohol related deaths are the 3rd highest preventable form of death in the US. It's great that you can responsibly enjoy an IPA with your friends. Pretending it's only fun and good times on the larger scale is naive at best.
It is not your right to choose what others do with their life. When it's abortion, some people are all "her body, her choice!", and when it's alcohol or cigarettes, it's "her body, our choice!".
Why do you think the sanctity of somebody's own life is yours to weigh against the risks of alcoholism or a tobacco habit, or a taste for soda?
Apply the same argument to healthcare. The main difference is that you think that you have the right to tell people what's good for them.
> This hypothetical tax is meant to represent my desire not to have to deal with the consequences of your choices.
If a man and his son crack a couple beers by the fire in Wyoming, why should their private activities be any of your business? Why impose your will more on the poor than on the middle class or the rich? Your desires are not relevant to the right of ordinary Americans to buy and sell alcohol to and from the willing, just as they are irrelevant to the right of a single mother to raise her own son, or for teenagers to get pregnant; it's just none of your business what people do once you've said your piece, no matter what you think of the risk that they might tend to be more likely to behave in a way you dislike.
Then who should ?
You can blame everything on individuals: "they're lazy", "they're dumb", "they didn't work as hard as I did", "they could save themselves", that's very easy to do, and reassuring in a way. But that's also a very bleak view on our social organization.
Or you can admit that we're all infinitely small parts of a gigantic machinery, that we're all mutually responsible for the system we live in, and that some of the issues raised here are direct consequences of "the state" and its policies.
Just like some people are born in good conditions, probably a majority of hn readers are, a lot of people are not. You don't have to care, you don't have to help them, but at least don't criticize people trying to better society.
Even if you don't care about people and just think in numbers, getting these people out of misery/addiction is a net positive for society on purely a monetary perspective.
I think the lazy people are those who think they should attempt to fix social ills by levying regressive taxes, rather than doing the actual work of convincing and helping people to do better.
> Or you can admit that we're all infinitely small parts of a gigantic machinery, that we're all mutually responsible for the system we live in, and that some of the issues raised here are direct consequences of "the state" and its policies.
But you are not responsible for, nor entitled to, deciding what people do to themselves in private. When a lone free man hurts himself, no injustice is carried out in the act.
> Just like some people are born in good conditions, probably a majority of hn readers are, a lot of people are not. You don't have to care, you don't have to help them, but at least don't criticize people trying to better society.
You can try to better society all you want, but do it without worsening the part of society where people drink responsibly but live on a budget. Minimum pricing punishes all people who buy alcohol for the perceived benefit of those who are presumed to be prone to abusing it, that is why it is unjust. If you just want to better society, work with your local chapter of alcoholics anonymous. If you're just going to sign off on the minimum pricing laws and feel morally righteous about it (because you have no skin in the game), then surely you are the one who is failing morally; the compulsion to "do something, anything!" about each perceived societal ill does not make you a good person.
> Even if you don't care about people and just think in numbers, getting these people out of misery/addiction is a net positive for society on purely a monetary perspective.
I think the whole thing is an exercise in not caring about people and just thinking in numbers. It is not your right to go around imposing your vision of the moral duties one owes to oneself.
The moral wrong of imposing a regressive tax on your personal pet peeves is long lasting, and indicates a lack of commitment to principle. Society does not benefit, on the whole, from standing in favour of an endless stream of petty tyrannies.
Your compulsion to control other people's alcohol consumption by fiat is purely selfish, no matter what you tell yourself, and no matter what word games you choose to impugn the character of those who don't agree.
Minimum unit pricing is a good way to do this, especially if the money raised is hypothecated for alcohol treatment programmes.
What about forcible vaccination? Forcible quarantine? This issue hits close to home, but I still don't see how it is better to prohibit lawful access to alcohol to the poor than it is to support CPS in their overlapping duties.
> Minimum unit pricing is a good way to do this, especially if the money raised is hypothecated for alcohol treatment programmes.
Why do middle class alcoholics get to risk abusing their families more readily than poor alcoholics?
Added:
We have (33.5%, per capita [similar difference in median]) lower household disposable incomes in Canada, and very high minimum unit prices. In 2015, the rate of death due to conditions entirely caused by alcohol was around 8.6 per 100,000; about 150% the rate of death in motor vehicle accidents. It's hard to compare the stats between the two countries since the U.S. tends to track "alcohol-related deaths", whereas Canada tends to track "hospitalization due to conditions entirely caused by alcohol" and "death due to conditions entirely caused by alcohol". The National Hospital Discharge Survey indicated in 2010 that approximately 390,000 hospital discharge episodes for persons ages 15 and older had an alcohol-related principal diagnosis, so assuming the worst, one person per discharge, an annual rate of ~126 per 100,000 2010 census persons; in 2015 there were ~77,000 hospitalizations entirely caused by alcohol (a stricter subset, I think), assuming again one person per hospitalization, an annual rate of ~214 per 100,000 estimated Canadians.
I do not think it is settled that particularly high unit prices will reduce rates of death and hospitalization; and as far as I'm aware, we don't have the comparable numbers between the U.S. and Canada (let alone the U.S. and the world at large relative to minimum unit prices), let alone finer grained jurisdictional comparisons, to draw any conclusions like that.
And all of this notwithstanding, I think it is unamerican (as a dual citizen of Canada and the U.S.) to tell free adult people what personal risks they are not entitled to, especially in the form of a regressive price fixing scheme, and I think this is not a proper or appropriate solution to alcohol-related domestic violence.
What's wrong with trying to stop people dying?
(The regressive aspect I get, but you seem to be against non-regressive measures too.)