Comment by A1kmm
8 months ago
> An example of something that for sure saves lives and lowers public costs is mandating adults wear helms on bicycles.
That's potentially a bad example. The largest cause of mortality (or lost quality-adjusted life years - QALY) is from cardiovascular events, and those events are inversely correlated to physical activity levels. Cycling is physical activity, and helmet laws, where passed, have typically coincided with a marked decrease in cycling.
Under some reasonable assumptions, helmet laws cause less cycling, which causes less physical activity in the population, which causes more cardiovascular events, and the overall negative QALY impact outweighs the relatively small positive impact from fewer head injuries (especially compared to government pro-helmet safety messaging that has been optimised to minimise cycling deterrence while increasing helmet uptake as an alternative policy).
Cardiovascular disease imposes costs society, both direct costs through the medical system, and opportunity cost in lost taxes when workers die.
If we apply the logic above, those costs provide justification for mandating and criminalizing diet and exercise.
If you can't see the difference in the practicality between a massive effort to police everyone's diet and exercise regime and telling commercial saw manufacturers that they can't continue to sell a specific highly dangerous product, I cannot help you.
If the criteria and principle used for justification is social cost, the case is far stronger for criminalizing diet.
If you don't think the logic holds true, that means you think there are other relevant factors besides cost. What are they and why don't they apply to saws?
I think the huristic most people use for most laws is if it impacts them or not. People object to diet police because impacts them. They are fine with saw police, because it impacts someone else. Saw users already have a choice, and can freely buy safety saws if the want.
In short, people like telling others what to do, but not being told what to do.