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Comment by greedo | Hacker News Reader

Because your death becomes an externality that others have to pay for.

Should we treat all behaviors that are associated with a significantly increased mortality rate the same way, or should we pick and choose depending on the political and social context at the time, like we do with seatbelts?

Few other behaviors associated with increase mortality can also turn you into a missile.

https://youtu.be/bdW_3oQFO0c?t=42

Be that as it may, that wasn't the point I was replying to.

Is not missiling into another person a form of externality?

Perhaps, but that's not what the comment was addressing. If it were, your point would not address living after having become a missile.

I would say we generally do exactly that, when the threshold is significant enough and it's a behavior that has no beneficial/ safe level (we tax and restrict cigarettes heavily, but not so much overconsumption of food etc. Arguably we should/could have penalties for failing to get enough exercise, though there are almost certainly better ways to reduce dangerously sedentary lifestyles).

>Arguably we should/could have penalties for failing to get enough exercise, though there are almost certainly better ways to reduce dangerously sedentary lifestyles

This is my point: we pick and choose, and we're subject to the whims of society, when it comes to what we deem unacceptable. Citing a collective norm that potentially could have been influenced by societal ebbs and flows is not an objective argument, ever.

Absolutely - regulation is hard. I wonder if there are successful instances of government using big-data/ML to determine where, when and in what manner it makes sense to apply it. And would people vote for governments that relied solely on that for what legislation to enact...

Generally yes. That’s why sugar taxes are needed and popular with economists.

What would you say should be the threshold for increased mortality that would subject a given behavior to heavy taxation and regulation?

Everybody is entitled to one free death.

Cyclists take note.

Riding a bicycle is incredibly safe. It’s cars that are dangerous, around bicyclists and pedestrians alike (and even other car drivers).

Bicycle deaths per mi is like 6x of cars. Maybe bicycling around cars is a big reason for that, but we're measuring against the reality there is not the world we want to move towards.

I'd say bicycling should be outlawed before driving without a seatbelt is (although I'd prefer both be legal).

https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/safety-studies/Documents/SS1901....

I think that alternatively, considering how approximately every death of a bicyclist or pedestrian, or car driver, is all caused by someone driving an enormous 5,000lb machine irresponsibly, we should redesign our cities in such a way that most people don’t need to drive those cars in the first place for most trips. And if you do need to drive a car, you have much less congested and smaller streets for those trips.

That also allows us to repurpose some of that road space that’s not needed anymore, for separate bike and bus infrastructure that will also be more convenient and safer for everyone.

I don’t want to live in a world where you have to own a giant dangerous $20k machine just to move around, when there are cheaper, safer, healthier, and better-for-the-environment ways to accomplish the same thing.

And I drive too, a lot! I just don’t want to be forced to anymore, but we’ve kinda built society so that you only have one option, and it creates all sorts of problems.

That sounds pretty nice to me. There's a bit of a tragedy of the commons situation here IMO. We should privatize all the roads and let the free market dictate what people like, and I think a lot of people would fall back to bicycles and walking more if they actually had to pay private tolls wherever they drove.

I like your thoughts… I don’t agree about privatization (since the private companies would be a guaranteed monopoly and we see how well that works with internet…), but maybe something similar could also be accomplished by making car registration fees proportional to number of miles driven and size of vehicle, to pay for road damage. Charge 2¢ per mile per ton of vehicle weight or something. Exempt mass transit (busses).

Average 2 ton car pays 4¢ per mile, or $400/year at 10k miles.

Drive a big unnecessary truck, might be 10¢ per mile in road maintenance.

Since road damage is exponential relative to vehicle weight, bikes and pedestrians are basically negligible and we could just round that to $0. Motorcycles under 300 lbs could be small flat rate.

What are you insinuating precisely?

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