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Comment by mpfundstein | Hacker News Reader

When can people finally stop to interfere in other peoples lives? If Bloomberg doesn’t want to vape flavors: fine, but give me the liberty to do so... Seriously, if I look back at my youth, I wonder how we all survived -.-

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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

>if I look back at my youth, I wonder how we all survived

Many people didn't, which is why so many regulations exist now.

What? There hasn't been significant child mortality in developed countries since the second world war (when there was a spike due to the depression and war). In the 19th century, child mortality wasn't because of lack of regulation, it's because modern medical science was in its infancy.

https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality

Your own source contradicts what you're saying... looking at US child mortality rates on your own link shows 4% child mortality rate in 1949 down to 0.7% by 2016. That's a pretty damn significant reduction.

But beyond child mortality, here's another example that regulation does impact: traffic deaths [1]. Government regulations surrounding car safety, seatbelt use, airbags, etc have had a massive impact. Looking at the data from 1970 (a time when older HNers would say "when I was young") to today, there were 4.74 deaths per 100 million miles traveled, compared to 1.16 today. And even as the US has added 120 million new Americans to the population since then and vehicle miles traveled has basically tripled, not only have we reduced deaths per mile traveled, we've reduced deaths period, without worrying about normalizing the data to population or VMT.

I hear quite a bit "when I was young we didn't have seatbelts or airbags and we rode on the back dashboard and didn't have child seats and we survived just fine" except a lot of people didn't. A lot of people died, and that's why regulations were created and that's why fewer people are dying now.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

If you simply ban anything that’s even remotely risky, then yes, it will save some lives. Is it worth it? Do you want to live in a world where we are all walking around inside padded plastic bubbles?

Some time between my childhood and today, society collectively lost its mind and decided that the only acceptable way to manage risk is to relentlessly drive it towards zero through the force of law. We are going to end up with a boring, sterile and ultra-safe world.

The slope is never as slippery as people imagine it to be. Why does every safety regulation always have to end in "kids in plastic bubbles" in the minds of alarmists? And why was the best time to grow up always exactly the time when the "back in my day" people were growing up? No matter when I grew up everything was always perfect when I was a kid, right?

It should go without saying that children dying from preventable causes is not a very good thing to have happen.

Bloomberg just loves to use his money to try to enforce his beliefs on other people.

There isn't even a coherent belief here. This is a $160M emotional reaction.

I am waiting for Cambridge Analytica 2.0 that purely targets and triggers billionaires.

The mere fact that Bloomberg is wealthy proves that he knows best and we should bend to his will. After all, someday when you sell your startup to SoftBank, don’t you want to use your money to improve society and get your way?

This is satire, right?

It's a pattern with him and others like him. Bloomberg has been spending obscene amounts of money trying to restrict civil rights such as the right to keep and bear arms for a long, long time.

Somehow I bet he still has armed guards, though.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/us/politics/nra-gun-contr...

"Let's Take Away Everything Fun!" - Michael Bloomberg 2020

People who smoke cigarettes and otherwise have an unhealthy lifestyle overburden the health system and take away government spending that can be spent elsewhere. Why should I pay more because you drinks coke, diabetic and smoke yourself towards lung cancer?

Anecdotal counter evidence: All of my grand parents and their siblings smoked and drank alcohol and not one of them died of young age or a smoking releated disease.

But I get your point. I pay a heavy tax on cigs though. I just hope the government puts that into a fund for cigarette relate health care issues instead of financing some wars in the middle east. Ah no, they don’t. They just exploit the addiction.

I believe a bulk of that tax on the federal level goes to funding health insurance for children: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_taxes_in_the_United_...

State level taxes of course depend on the state.

> Why should I pay more because you drinks coke, diabetic and smoke yourself towards lung cancer?

Why should I pay taxes for schools and roads and services I don't use?

We all pay taxes for schools so there will be engineers to build the airplanes, cars, dishwashers, etc., that we do use. Likewise, we pay for roads so that trucks carrying our dinners can get to the store.

Guess I should've added a </rhetorical>

I have heard statement very close to that made by people who were entirely serious. Glad to hear you were not.

> People who smoke cigarettes and otherwise have an unhealthy lifestyle overburden the health system and take away government spending that can be spent elsewhere. Why should I pay more because you drinks coke, diabetic and smoke yourself towards lung cancer?

Do you have a source? I know it sounds intuitively correct, but I remember reading the opposite. Basically it goes like this: end of life/senior care is a very large percentage of medical spending. Unhealthy people don't live as long and die faster once their health deteriorates. So they actually cost less to the healthcare system than healthy people.

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5316444/

Smokers pay a fair bit in tax as well.

Depends on what jurisdiction you're talking about and what you consider a fair bit. Many countries aren't in compliance with the FCTC rules on 70% specific tax for tobacco

I don't have a good source for you on the counterargument you posited but I've been researching tobacco taxation for the last 3 months and I can tell you almost all literature I've read that's referenced that says that the burden of disease from smoking is more expensive.

Because you would need to change the rate for those who don't exercise, drive or ride in cars, drink coffee, play impact sports, eat junk food, have unprotected sex, is in the army, plays video games,, lives on the coast, works in a mine, etc

I 100% agree with you as long as we ban all advertising in TV news and online news.

A million forces tell you what to do, very very few of them are telling you to do good things.

Yeah exactly - stop blowing flavoured vapour in my face!

Like it or not your decisions have an impact on other people’s lives and vice versa. Public health is important, we know the general public will not look out for their best interests on aggregate (see smoking or the opioid epidemic). As individuals we’re not equipped to defend against profit seeking products that are bad for our health, hence we need action from our elected representatives.

> As individuals we’re not equipped to defend against profit seeking products that are bad for our health, hence we need action from our elected representatives.

Just say no?

And how did the DARE program work out?

And how did banning marijuana work out?

Ah yes, "Big Brother" DARE.

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/02/22/us/fingerprinting-of-chil...

> And how did the DARE program work out?

As I recall, the research found it was highly effective at improving subjects (vs. non-subjects) images of law enforcement, but had no discernable effect on subjects (compared to non-subjects) when looking at drug use, drug abuse, or drug-related crime.

Man, where is this attitude when opiates are in the news!

We could ask ol' Nancy, unfortunately I hear Sid killed her.

You don’t have as much free will as you think you do on these matters.

> You don’t have as much free will as you think you do on these matters.

So your answer is having Nanny Government ban it?

Can't worry about free will if you don't have it, I suppose.

Let's see how well banning red meat and cars would go over.

Vapes are an easy target right now. Heart disease and auto accidents are some of the greatest threats to the average American, but you'll never hear a politician going after those.

Cars are an integral part of our culture and economy and are regulated in every conceivable way.

E-cigs are a relatively new vice. Hardly comparable.

Not to mention the things we take for granted in cars today that are there due to regulations - bumpers, seatbelts, airbags, minimum safety standards, etc.

Those are requirements, not bans.

Right because regulations created all these things, not manufacturers like Mercedes and Volvo trying to offer better cars to their customers.

Cars and red meat aren’t really comparable as they have a long history in society. But Cars are probably the most regulated thing you interact with day to day. You need a license, insurance and have to follow precise rules to operate them safely. Red meat also has restrictions from government bodies.

In the free market those rules wouldn’t exist and people would be upset about taking their rights away when you regulate them.

Nicotine doesn't have a long history here? Cigarettes, cigars, pipes, dip, snuff, chew, hookah, all different methods, some with histories hundreds of years old. Vaping is just the modern equivalent.

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