Here come the UK SWAF teams!

[MrJonno]

Society interferes with the rights of individuals in many areas

No it doesn't, society defines the rights of individuals. If it says you don't have a right not wear a seatbelt there is no interference at all

[klr]

Hey, maybe there should be no rules of the road, no vehicle road-worthiness standards and mandatory tests, no such thing as a driving licence ...

In fact, maybe there should be no roads at all.

[piscator]

Hey, maybe there should be no rules of the road, no vehicle road-worthiness standards and mandatory tests, no such thing as a driving licence ...

In fact, maybe there should be no roads at all.

That would certainly make New Zealand safer for all. But it seems the Crown not only tolerates such manifestly unsafe behavior as driving, She actually facilitates the carnage. Why?

[klr]

Let's go further. Who needs safety standards for air travel, electricity production and distribution, medical practice, etc.?

[Blind groper]

When I was a child, here in NZ, the death toll on the roads was about 800 per year. Today, with four times as many cars, it is about 300. we must be doing something right!

To Seth,
About history.

As we look back into the past, further and further, we see human life span shrinking. This is well documented. 150 years ago, western nations had an average lifespan of perhaps 30. Go back 1000 years and it is roughly 20.

Part of the gains made in more modern times is due to better medicine, vaccines, hygiene, water chlorination etc. But a big part is simply looking after people better. If you go back just a couple hundred years, you will see extreme callousness, with ordinary people left to die, and only aristocrats well looked after.

And no. The USA does not have the best health care in the world, unless you are quite wealthy. As an average across the whole population, it is much, much worse than more socialist countries like the UK, NZ, Australia, Scandinavia etc.

A recent international survey rated Britain's NHS system the best out of 11 leading nations, while the USA trailed well back. The USA does well in some areas, but overall is inferior.

[JimC]

Blind groper wrote:

A recent international survey rated Britain's NHS system the best out of 11 leading nations, while the USA trailed well back. The USA does well in some areas, but overall is inferior.

Remember, BG, all these international surveys are conducted by Marxists...

[Seth]

Blind groper wrote:

A recent international survey rated Britain's NHS system the best out of 11 leading nations, while the USA trailed well back. The USA does well in some areas, but overall is inferior.

Remember, BG, all these international surveys are conducted by Marxists...

Yes, they are. Every one of them places much greater value on the existence of socialized medicine than they do on the quality of care. Just read an article about surgeries being cancelled by the hundreds in the UK because of the costs....

[Seth]

When I was a child, here in NZ, the death toll on the roads was about 800 per year. Today, with four times as many cars, it is about 300. we must be doing something right!

Mussolini made the trains run on time. I prefer liberty to safety. "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Benjamin Franklin, 1755.

To Seth,
About history.

As we look back into the past, further and further, we see human life span shrinking. This is well documented. 150 years ago, western nations had an average lifespan of perhaps 30. Go back 1000 years and it is roughly 20.

No dispute there.

Part of the gains made in more modern times is due to better medicine, vaccines, hygiene, water chlorination etc. But a big part is simply looking after people better.

No, it's people looking after themselves better because they have things like medicine, vaccines, hygiene and water chlorination available to them.

If you go back just a couple hundred years, you will see extreme callousness, with ordinary people left to die, and only aristocrats well looked after.

Wayback machine fallacy.

And no. The USA does not have the best health care in the world, unless you are quite wealthy. As an average across the whole population, it is much, much worse than more socialist countries like the UK, NZ, Australia, Scandinavia etc.

See, I told you the surveys were done by Marxists.

A recent international survey rated Britain's NHS system the best out of 11 leading nations, while the USA trailed well back. The USA does well in some areas, but overall is inferior.

No it's not. If it were, the President of France, among others, would not be flocking to the US to get the finest, most advanced health care on the planet.

[Seth]

Society interferes with the rights of individuals in many areas

No it doesn't, society defines the rights of individuals. If it says you don't have a right not wear a seatbelt there is no interference at all

Sez you.

[pErvinalia]

Seth ignores the inconvenient replies like those from klr and I.

[Seth]

Hey, maybe there should be no rules of the road, no vehicle road-worthiness standards and mandatory tests, no such thing as a driving licence ...

In fact, maybe there should be no roads at all.

Try to distinguish between regulations intended to prevent you from harming other people and regulations intended to prevent you from harming yourself. Neither seat belts nor helmets protect others against your mistakes or malfeasance. Therefore there is no need to impose those requirements on individuals who have the right to choose to take those risks themselves.

[pErvinalia]

Seatbelts do, as I've explained to you before.

[Seth]

Seatbelts do, as I've explained to you before.

Really? I disagree. The reason that you say this is because seat belts reduce the costs that society chooses to incur when someone is injured in an auto accident. But that's circular reasoning. If society chooses to extend those benefits to the victims of car crashes, how does that impose an obligation to mitigate the injury by wearing seat belts on the individual?

Society chooses to extend those benefits whether or not the individual requests them, which means it's a one-sided "contract" which is no contract at all, it's you deciding to impose costs on me that I didn't agree to which you expect me to pay back.

More importantly perhaps is that when you give the government the power to interfere with your personal liberty because your lifestyle or activities may impose a burden on the public health care system, you give the government the power to dictate literally every aspect of your life, and that's not liberty.

You say society is better off for these rules, and I say it's not because of the unintended consequences of state nannyism to individual liberty that makes life intolerable. The costs of not imposing such rules is miniscule compared to the cost to personal liberty of imposing them.

[pErvinalia]

Just more proof you are wilfully ignorant. As I've explained before an unsecure human is a missile in a car crash. Is it too much to ask that you could actually read what people write and ascent to learn something?

[Seth]

Just more proof you are wilfully ignorant. As I've explained before an unsecure human is a missile in a car crash. Is it too much to ask that you could actually read what people write and ascent to learn something?

Must have missed that post. So, anyway, as long as the body stays in the vehicle, who cares? And if it doesn't, well, please let me know how many people in other cars are killed or injured by "unsecure human missiles" flying into their cars.

I expect you're gonna have some difficulty coming up with reliable numbers for that risk, which is likely to be sub-microscopic.

Let me know when the research has been done, the report written, and the peer review completed.

Until then, your attempt at pettifoggery is rejected.