Comment by dmantis
6 hours ago
There are many hobbies with which people can kill themselves if they don't understand what they are doing. I don't see how brewing is different. A grown-up person has rights and bears the consequences of negligence and that's totally normal, that's what freedom is.
As long as the product is not sold outside but for personal consumption, it must be legal to make without any certifications.
I forget the exact wording, but the seat belt law are a good example of it. Laws are passed to protect the populace from self harm so that society doesn't suffer from it. It probably doesn't apply here because home distillation is very niche. However, if a bunch of people show up in emergency rooms and it drives up health care costs then expect a quick reversal in policy.
There's a whole ball of wax here that boils down to whether a society would rather be individualistic or collectivist.
Its a chicken and egg problem as well, the way we regulate and manage health care and health insurance (at least in the US) allows for costs to pretty easily bleed out to the rest of society. That implies that we must then be collectivist in other policies, though that is counter to many of the original goals of our country and the question is whether we changed those goals or inadvertantly built a system that requires changing gials after the fact.
We have a similar problem with immigration laws. Our immigration laws today are completely counter to what they once were, and counter to what is still written on the Statue of Liberty. We have immigration laws now that are necessary because of the welfare programs we implemented, even if we wanted to live up to the older ideals we couldn't without abandoning those welfare programs entirely.
> whether a society would rather be individualistic or collectivist
Like many of these sorts of choices, its false to think of it as binary because its about choosing a place on the continuum between them.
On the methanal risk issue, one possible compromise would to have places which can run free checks on booze for methanal. Not too different from the practice in France where you can bring in mushrooms you've collected to the pharmacist who can tell you which ones are delicious and which are death incarnate. But of course this would have to be a publicly funded service which america seems to loathe ("I'd rather go blind than have a single tax dollar go to free booze testing!")
The statue of liberty poem was never a legally binding immigration policy. Not to detract from your point, which I agree with.
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> a society would rather be individualistic
This is a bit oxymoronic. People are a bit too happy to pick and choose what they like and otherwise pretend they're an island to themselves, but it doesn't take a communist to see the contradiction.
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Right, and I, as someone living in France and paying a hefty part of my income to fund public healthcare, understand that the state would want to limit people doing stupid shit costing the society a fortune in fixing them (though, of course, this just creates a debate on where to draw the line).
But isn't the point of non-socialized healthcare, like in the US, that you pay for care out of pocket? Or maybe via your insurance, which will probably increase your premium if you repeatedly engage in stupid actions that need expensive fixing?
Society still has paid at least for your education, depends on your working power to at least fund your dependents, and at least on some degree of reasonableness from you not to raise everyone's insurance premiums.
There's a line to draw somewhere, but even the most ra-ra-individualist heavily depends on society, and has/should have obligations in turn.
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Dumb people doing dumb stuff incur a cost for all of us, whether it's through taxpayer-funded healthcare or higher premiums for private insurance.
Individual heath insurance premiums aren’t linked to your behavior or health or activities (apart from smoking). Most of that was made illegal by the insurance reforms in the “ObamaCare” bill.
If many people started doing stupid things though then yes it would raise premiums for all.
> Or maybe via your insurance, which will probably increase your premium if you repeatedly engage in stupid actions that need expensive fixing?
US insurers can only discriminate by age and smoking status.
Let's be honest here: there is no benefit to alcohol (for example wine) and is only detrimental. As a true French person who does want the government paying for "stupid shit" you need to call for the end of wine making and its consumption.
But I guess that might be the debate line of which you spoke.
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Seat belt laws are an interesting example though because they only apply when driving on public roads. You can drive your car with no seat belt on a private track all day if you want to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternalism
Agree completely, though sadly we are a very long way from this. In a lot of places it is literally illegal and prison-time just for growing certain naturally-occurring plants for purely personal use. I don't see how this ruling helps with that at all though
Maybe we are set to see that change at the federal level?
Killing yourself is one thing. Killing or crippling potentially many people is negligence terrorism. And you can forget that these guys will keep it for themselves. Purpose of alcohol is to create bonds by sharing it with others. It can go as far as bringing your homemade moonshine on local festivities and poisoning half of the locals without them realizing what has happened until it is too late.
>There are many hobbies with which people can kill themselves...A grown-up person has rights and bears the consequences of negligence
Fyi, the reference to Asia is not about people killing themselves, it's about passing off inadvertantly lethal moonshine as mass-produced drinkable alcohol resulting in the deaths of other people, not yourself.