Out of curiosity, what do you find disturbing exactly? That people who drive a vehicle which is capable of speeds that can easily cause death to passengers and other vehicles around them need to have a device mounted which visibly gives them an indication of how fast they are actually travelling?
Or do you find it disturbing that kids who don't know better yet are meant to be told that if they start smoking cigarettes, which are very addictive, can cause them to die 20 years earlier rather than telling them that it is "cool" which is what the ad industry did before?
Maybe from a complete selfish point of view I can see how it's annoying that I cannot buy alcohol just at any time of the day wherever I want, but the government is not being elected to act selfishly. They have a responsibility towards their electorate, and if something is causing people to get depressed, harm themselves and become unhappy, unproductive and a burden on the state, then it is the governments duty to implement regulation which can help prevent from falling into those damaging habits.
How about the law saying it's illegal to put candy bars in the checkout aisle? When does it stop? You can't just keep doing this forever it's literally insane. How big does the books of donts have to be before we are all criminals? Saying it's the government's job to regulate our lives to give us less bad habits is also an opinion, not some objective fact like you state either. Be careful about projecting your feelings and wants onto others, because once you rope the government into it the people that don't share your view are being trampled on with no recourse.
> How about the law saying it's illegal to put candy bars in the checkout aisle?
That would be a very good thing. Also, limiting the size of sodas. Etc. Don't the US have some kind of a weight problem maybe? Shouldn't it be the job of the government to help fix it?
The problem is not one of "freedom". It's a war waged by corporations against individuals. The role of the government is, at the very least, to protect individuals in that war.
It's not projecting my personal feelings. The government has the responsibility to keep society productive. If something is having a wide spread effect on a society's productiveness, then it's their responsibility to take action. If you disagree with this, then you basically oppose the idea of having elected leaders who are responsible for looking after the greater good of society. What is the alternative though? Non elected leaders, anarchy?
Again, you are spouting opinions as facts. "The government has the responsibility to keep society productive" find me the floating rock that shows that is an objective truth. And even if I DID give you that as an objective truth, it still is very far from your previous assertion that it's the government's job to keep people from falling into bad habits.
>The government has the responsibility to keep society productive
That is very much your opinion.
I'm of the opinion that government should be doing whatever the end result of every member of government acting as the people who elected them want them to act (not necessarily what is best for those people). So what if the people want stupid things, the people should get what they want. It's not government's job to act like a parent.
if you limit the extent to which people are considered a "burden on the state", then the state doesn't have to exert such control over their lives. people are going to feel differently about how to make this trade-off.
speedometers seem pretty important to have (although I doubt cars would be designed without them in 2019 even if it were legal), as do headlights at night and in the rain. I don't think these are unreasonable laws, as they have a very obvious and direct impact on road safety.
I can't really agree with the arbitrary restrictions on alcohol purchases though. where I live, it is illegal for liquor stores to be open on Sundays. how is society helped by preventing me, a responsible and productive citizen, from buying some alcohol on one of my two days off from work?
> how is society helped by preventing me, a responsible and productive citizen, from buying some alcohol on one of my two days off from work?
It's a cost benefit calculation. Laws are primarily not drafted for the responsible and self disciplined people. They are there to prevent the irresponsible or vulnerable people from getting so wasted on a Sunday evening that they don't show up to work on a Monday, then lose their job, then become homeless, then start petty crimes to survive on the streets, then fall into drug addiction, then rob you, a responsible and productive person on a Tuesday when you are at work, potentially even harming your kids which might be already at home just to steal something stupid as someone's phone.
Does the alcohol restriction prevent responsible and productive people from having a beer on Sunday? Not really, if they are responsible then they probably did a bigger shopping the day before and have some extra beers stocked in their fridge on Sunday.
Just to be clear, I am not defending a particular law here, just highlighting that there is nothing inherently wrong with a government wanting to draft legislation in a cost/benefit effective way.
In micro and macro economics the one law that all our economic models are based on is that everyone works for their own benefit, so at least from that perspective it's in the governments benefit to look after the people who elected them, so they will get elected again.
> Just to be clear, I am not defending a particular law here, just highlighting that there is nothing inherently wrong with a government wanting to draft legislation in a cost/benefit effective way.
it's important to note that this is an opinion, not a fact. clearly there are a few people here who don't share that opinion.
personally I think to harm or even inconvenience people who haven't done anything wrong yet is one of the worst things a government can do. it's just my opinion though, clearly there are many people who are happy to grant even more power to the state so it can craft crude laws to protect them.
> Laws are primarily not drafted for the responsible and self disciplined people.
And yet, they still apply to us. Your benevolent intentions do not invalidate our stake in the restrictions that are imposed upon us.
Many people find constant paternalistic intrusions on the part of the state to be a legitimately worse cost than a marginal increase in behavior by bad actors. Exercising authority over petty matters may be a free action in your utility calculus, but it adds up to a significant irritation and a material quality-of-life burden to those of us who value the freedom to simply buy a beer when we want to.
Please consider this point of view. Society is not a sterile engineering problem to be optimized in terms of concrete inputs and outputs.
Check your source. I believe the constitutional power is to regulate interstate commerce. There is a conceptual difference (or there used to be). Traditionally, this power isn't supposed to apply to all aspects of the market -- just those aspects conceptually bounded by trade that is between states.
Yes, but you're selling your attention to Facebook across state boundaries (in 49/50 states).
But my more serious answer would be that everybody is harmed by inconsistent trade rules between states. It just makes doing business harder. The commerce clause was thought up when considering a much less centralized nation composed of many isolated markets. Today even the much less tightly bound EU has a pretty strong level of trade uniformity, enforced centrally. So I think that everyone benefits from a relaxed view of the commerce clause, and that this isn't a real infringement on our rights.
While others find it as a reasonable middle ground between banning things outright(which never works anyway) and letting everyone do whatever they want even if it harms others.
