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Comment by scottlilly | Hacker News Reader

They don't see the similarity because they are, in fact, different.

If my house catches on fire, and someone doesn't put it out, there is a reasonable chance it will spread to other houses. So it's a societal issue - at least at the local scale. As a societal issue, it makes sense for each member to be forced to pay for it.

If I break my leg, there is no increased chance that my neighbor will break his leg. So it's a personal issue. My neighbor receives no benefit from my leg being repaired, and is not harmed if isn't repaired. So why should he be forced to pay for it?

If you want to say that public health care should exist to provide vaccinations, in order to prevent the spread of disease to others in society, that would be a reasonable argument.

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> If I break my leg, there is no increased chance that my neighbor will break his leg. So it's a personal issue.

But is not a just personal issue. If you break your leg and don't have insurance, you could lose your house over medical bills. The bank will reposes and will write down losses over your mortgage. If your lot starts to look like crap the value of his house will be affected as well. If you have a wife and kids, your kids might end up having to go to school in a crappy part of town. So it might affect their education.

Just by breaking your leg could affect a lot more people than you first suspect. Of course if you had government provided insurance you would not have the risk of spreading this as much.

This idea that we are so independent and individualistic works perhaps in some kind of a romanticized world where you live in a compound in the woods that is self sufficient and you don't have to to worry or care about the outside world either bothering your or owing them anything.

This argues equally well for completely supporting the family indefinitely for any reason. The only difference between paying medical bills and paying for the whole lifestyle is a matter of cost, and medical bills can be really expensive.

Doesn't it bother you that an even-handed application of this principle leads to absurdity?

I see it as a continuum.

But actually it maybe be true that in some cases it is more beneficial overall to the society to just support the family for a while if say the breadwinner breaks a leg. That is better than a bankruptcy, loss of house, loss of job.

> Doesn't it bother you that an even-handed application of this principle leads to absurdity?

It doesn't because this has to be applied to a certain degree. Absolutely no safety net is not good, but it is not possible of feasible to just hand out money either.

You forgot second order effects. Leg gets fixed - you get back to work - goods and services are rendered, taxed, consumed and saved.

Your neighbor benefits by having an individual in whom society has invested millions in to train and care for back at work instead of being dead. That's a waste of money.

Humans are worth saving simply because we invest so much in them.

But then you can easily, heck trivially, argue that people should be forced to exercise or to eat a particular diet that makes them more productive. Look, more goods and services are rendered! It's a public situation!

People should be forced to live within 5 miles of work, because they're not being productive during their commute. Also, HackerNews and reddit should be forcibly taken down because of their contribution to idleness at work.

You forget about second order effects once again - HN/reddit facilitate low latency, high scale, high signal communication between millions of people everyday - that's a net positive.

In terms of diet, we tax cigarettes, alcohol and drugs (indirectly) - food that is net negative on society should have their negative externality priced via taxes.

It's pointless banning them (e.g. enforced diets) - see prohibition - leave it legal and tax to cover costs.

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