How much right does authority have to prevent self-harming idiocy?

How much right do your parents and family, your school's administration, the government of your town city, county, parish, state, province, region, nation, or country, your religious or other cultural leaders, your superiors in the workplace or other social organization, or others with authority have, to prevent you from screwing yourself over with your own idiocy?

Discuss.

Are you talking about accidental deaths?

I think it's more about hard drugs and seatbelts and stuff.

Does this include cases where the fallout from self-harming idiocy affects others, such as the subject's children?

They have a responsibility to educate and warn... beyond that, if a man decides to piss on an electric fence... so be it.

Well, I believe in the right to suicide.

Including unintentional suicide?

There is no such thing as unintentional suicide.

I'm in favour of government interventions to promote safety if they're evidence based with proper assessment of cost to benefit ratios. If they're just done due to "We should do something about this!" or "Think of the X!" then I'm dead against them.

For instance, seatbelt laws are a good thing with loads of evidence to show these rather cheap safety devices cut down on injuries significantly.

Helmet laws are a different matter entirely. While I do always wear a helmet, quite a few studies have shown that helmets on bicyles and motorcycles have mixed success at best in reducing serious injury. Partly because the safety gear is inadequate for the nature of the accidents (what's the point of saving your brain if you're going to break your neck?) and partly because they embolden users due to a false sense of protection.

Very little, if any at all.

There's a few laws regarding that around here. (helmet laws for motorbikes, seatbelt laws, the usual) Most of them have scant enforcement if not caught alongside something else. (In fact, most of those laws are secondary offenses, you cannot pull someone over for not wearing a seatbelt in Colorado if they aren't speeding or breaking any primary traffic laws. Not that it stops cops however.)

Of course, one of the big fundamental problems with hardline "The government has no right interfering in people's freedom to harm themselves being stupid" stances is there's very few cases where a person can cause harm to themselves without affecting those around them.

Almost everybody has family and friends and they are going to suffer along as well.

This said, every government intervention has costs, both directly and through opportunity costs. I still think that government interventions in the name of safety need to have strong evidence backing up their effectiveness, that takes into account the opportunity costs as well.

One of the things that really rubs me the wrong way about a lot of safety oriented government interventions is that they are typically carried out with a "Shut up, we're doing this for your own good, you ungrateful little peon" attitude with absolutely no concern for criticism from those directly affected, no consultation with those who will be directly affected by the law and no interest in reviewing it later on to see if it's actually had the intended effect.

Does your self-harming idiocy endanger or inconvienent others? After you're injured, do you suck up hospital/emergency service/medical resources paid for by the state?

Indeed, at the risk of causing a healthcare derail, one of the effects of having government funded healthcare is that your health is now legitimately the government's business.

EDIT: Indeed that is often one of the inherent problems with government provided welfare - the more stuff in your life the government pays for, the more stuff you do in your life has an effect on their bottom line and becomes their business.

edited 17th Oct '10 6:11:47 PM by SelfReferential

^ Yeah, I'm not sure how you can get around that. Emergency health care is something that should be freely accessible. Asking for money before sending over an ambulance or before letting your child into the emergency room is something that belongs to the bad old days.

Hong Kong dramas set in the 50s/60s are full of sappy storylines about poor parents borrowing money from loan sharks to take their sick kid to the doctor. Obviously not something we want to repeat in our society.

edited 17th Oct '10 7:03:50 PM by nightwyrm_zero

In my opinion, it depends on the maturity and emotional state of the individual.

I do believe in the right to suicide, but only if it's the result of a reasoned decision, as opposed to, say, hanging yourself because your boyfriend broke up with you (or treatable depression).

The obvious solution to that is to leave them to die in the street and send the family the Darwin Award. As somebody said before, warn them if they're of age. After that it's their business if they piss on a fence.

Well in general I'm in favour of two-tier systems as one of the better compromises.

In Australia, there is mediocre but better than nothing government funded healthcare, while those who want better quality or to not deal with the government's bullshit can pay to have things taken care of in the private healthcare system.

Still, I get the shivers whenever there's talk of setting a certain arbitrary weight limit as being "obese" and just denying all sorts of publicly funded health care to such people. With my height and Stout Strength, about the only way I can keep below such weights is to starve myself AND refrain from almost all physical activity.

Generally, the point of the government is reduce harm that may come to you because you don't have the time or energy to educate yourself about certain safety procedures. At the same time, it is the government's job to give you more options to do things safely.

For instance, food guides are a big thing. Government agents don't bust into your house and shove fruits into your throat. That sounded like a porn movie but anyway, they give you guides that make it easy for you to know what you should be eating. They have food packaging laws, they do food inspection for typical diseases and such (things that no individual could possibly do on their own), nutrition facts etc. They do things like ban trans fat.

It's useful for the government to put in more safety for you and generally I suppose the guiding principle is "Would a person reasonably know about the dangers of a certain thing or should the government assist him/her?" I mean, let's say there's a giant electric fence of doom... but there's no labelling anywhere. That would be crazy. But if instead, the governmetn stepped in and said, no you have to label this clearly so everyone can steer clear. If you still walk up and ram your face into it... well maybe it's better off you don't reproduce.

Parents, Family as long as not breaking the law, they have absolute right to prevent until child 18 old

after 18, i don't think they have right anymore

giving britney spears father guardian right is too much adult should be responsible for themselves

Well, that was incomprehensible.

I think the following:

a) proper effort should be made to ensure that people understand the danger they are putting themselves in, and the subset of people (children, cognitively disabled people, etc) who can't understand said danger should not be allowed to choose whether or not to expose themselves to it

b) if putting yourself in danger also endangers others (eg choosing to drive drunk) then we should crack down on it

c) if putting yourself in danger only affects you, then you should be free to do so, and it shouldn't restrict your access to health care (getting seriously wounded is enough of a deterrent, even if you get the best medical care possible)

d) psychologists should do a lot of well-funded studies into how to encourage people to keep themselves safe, and the results from those studies should influence policy

About c), I'm not against taxing them fairly heavily, because if they take more from the system becasue of their drug habit or whatever, I think they should be giving more to it.

There is no such thing as unintentional suicide.

Falling into a very large hole that you didn't see?

re, topic: I've always been divided on the issue, personally. I think that things should try to be prevented, but on the other hand, I also don't think that they should be so hardline as to interfere with deaths caused by-say-pissing on an electric fence.

That's not suicide.