Comment by cm2187

7 months ago

But again, it's your life, your body, your choice.

You can make an argument against seatbelts on that basis, but it's not the one I'm making here.

I think seatbelts should be mandatory, but don't think it's sensible to mandate complex and expensive technical solutions for table saws, when safe work practices can also mitigate them entirely.

Not if you’re sat in the back and in a crash fly forward and kill the person in front of you.

  • In a private car, do I really need a law to cover that case? On public transport (a place where such mandates generally do not exist), I could see the argument because it’s standardizing behavior amongst strangers.

    But in my own car, I have no problem telling people to buckle up or GTFO (or not, by my own choice). If I allow them to ride unbuckled, I’m voluntarily taking the risk one will try to go through the windshield via my noggin.

    • A good proportion of people will take the chance rather than get into a long debate with a libertarian bore.

  • Libertarians often have this problem where their ideas that work just fine in a perfectly friction-less plane with zero deviance have issues when encountering reality. The instances are too numerous to name.

    • Libertarianism, like any other such utopic ideology, has this problem. The ideology requires disregarding reality and assuming the frictionless plane, because otherwise it just wouldn't work properly.

      When ideals and reality go against each other, reality has a nasty habit of winning. And honestly, if seatbelts and table saws that don't cut your fingers off are such an authoritarian affront to one's freedom and personal responsibility, then so be it.

      Civil disobedience is always an option to those who absolutely hate this idea, but then they should take their "personal responsibility" and "bodily autonomy" and not be shocked if they have to face the consequences.