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Originally posted by tecoyah
After further contemplation,....pros and cons tip the scale in your direction. Pay attention people.....he changed my mind.
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Quote:
Originally posted by MrSelfDestruct
Private decision
Everything else, including the right to choose what to do with one's body (drugs, abortion, prostitution,) the right to own anything that others may want to regulate, including controversial media (definition of obscenity,) weapons (within reason, I'm not advocating private nuke ownership.)
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I would argue that there is a certain utility in government-backed safety regulations on things.
What kind of things? Many kinds.
The idea is, you don't want to have to worry about the safety of your telephone, toilet, life jacket, boat, toaster, or chewing gum.
You could argue that the market can take care of it, but the "market" is just a means of distributing the workload: individual people are responsible for checking the safety of products, which causes market forces to generate the "ideal" amount of safety.
I don't want to have to research if a particular brand of chewing gum is toxic. It isn't something I'm interested in becoming an expert in. Others possibly are.
By pushing that regulation up to the government level, competition can occur in areas outside of "does it kill you" or other safety factors. Does it taste good? Is it cheap? Do I like the packaging? Can I get it convieniently?
I don't want to have to rely on brands to determine if something is safe, or do reasearch on every single purchase I make.
The same arguement, in a less personal way, can be applied to things like prostitution. Regulating it for the purposes of safety (of both the workers and the clients) has some appeal.
I would argue that the current ineffective ban on it is more harmful than it being regulated and legal.