jasory @ jasory @programming.dev

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2 yr. ago

"taxation on cigarettes offsets the direct cost caused by smoking".

By about 25 percent. I calculated it a few years back combining the total US taxes on tobacco (state, federal and local) and comparing it to the Medicare expenditures on treating the percentage of lung cancer caused by tobacco smoking. This is actually pretty skewed against my claims since tobacco isn't always smoked so the tax from smoking is smaller than the total tobacco tax revenue, Medicare only pays for a portion of the lung cancer treatments (since not everyone uses Medicare but the private insurance data isn't as available), and this is only one albeit expensive aliment caused by tobacco smoking. So 25 percent is a generous estimate.

Long story short "sin taxes" don't actually pay for anything, it's a complete myth mostly promoted by people who want to use the product.

"the overall societal cost is high"

Just like every other drug. Everyone wants to legalise marijuana, ostensibly for the tax money (but not really), and yet it has far greater social costs than tax will recover. Even the states that legalise it (and consequently becoming tourist destinations) are not actually benefiting from it even though the "Las Vegas effect" means that they should disproportionately benefit from it.

What? Even if you engaged in charity solely to "glorify God", why would welfare prevent you from doing that? Do you think welfare programs steal glory from God? Do you think that religious people think this way? (Outside of the literally mentally ill, no they don't. They view charity as a moral obligation, not the only mechanism by which to "glorify God". Just like any normal effective altruist).

"Just for your community over other communities"- Again, what? Improving the conditions of your community isn't harming other communities. People in other communities also have a responsibility to improve their community, and there is nothing preventing one community from helping another.

"Helping people is just an accident in pursuit of those causes"-If it was just an accident, then surely it would be avoided? Let's not forget that these causes are "glorifying God", and either harming or ignoring other communities.

It's okay to criticise trying to apply individualistic practices on a systemic scale, but you're just fabricating nonsense to try to justify how you already decided to feel.

You abandoned the bodily autonomy argument because you switched to the moral status of the fetus. If the bodily autonomy argument was really sufficient to permit abortion then the moral status of the fetus could not possibly matter, because bodily autonomy will always override it.

You seem to like the idea of bodily autonomy, but apparently don't consider it to be sufficiently morally relevant to actually be considered in anything but morally neutral circumstances. (This is pretty standard among most people, no matter how much they want to say they value bodily autonomy)

"There is no universal moral system, hence there should not be a law based on someone's belief that something is moral or not"

By this standard no morality could be enforced because you are acting contrary to someone else's morality. Not everyone agrees that killing is bad.

"a natural right to live.... does not emerge before someone is born".

They are alive before they are born, so what special property do they gain at birth that gives them a right to life? If it is independence, well children can't survive on their own until at least 4 years of age (closer to 10-12 in reality).

"Marquis definition is too broad... plants and animals"

That's why it's called a future-like-our's. Plants and animals are certainly deprived of futures, but they are not future humans. It's to human conscious experience that is valued, and depriving an existing entity of future human experience explains the wrongness of killing adult humans and by extension all humans with an expectation of human consciousness.

If you're going to try to harass me, you should make sure you aren't botching your comments. You edited your comment so now it looks like you are criticizing your original comment, not anything I said.

"Blondes are people fetuses are not"

First you completely missed the point of that question. You initially speculated why people should care if it is not directly harming them, this is a clear and obvious example of people caring about something that doesn't directly harm them. Showing that your initial objection was unfounded.

Second you immediately abandoned the bodily autonomy argument, just like I pointed out you would.

"Unless my Immoral things is infringing on your rights"

Circle back to the serial killer. They aren't infringing on my rights, how dare I object! What right do I have to enforce my morality on them?

Obviously it is permissible to enforce morality regardless of whether or not the subject likes it. The question is simply how to determine if the morality is correct, i.e consistent and well-founded.

"Moral arguments can form opinions not legislation".

Nope, that's literally all that legislation is. A moral system is something that determines whether or not something is good or bad. If a law declares that some action should be taken or certain actions are to be prohibited it is enforcing a moral system. (That moral system may be wildly inconsistent and contradictory but it is still a moral system).

There seems to be this popular notion ( outside of moral philosophy) that morality is somehow empirically derived. Unfortunately no matter how much you watch someone die, you will never gain any information on whether that circumstance is bad or good. Empirical facts may aid in classifying actions, but they do not create the requirements for the categories themselves. For instance you have a moral system that says that actions with property X are bad, you may use empirical facts to determine that action Y has property X and you can therefore determine that action Y must be bad. Without the initial premise that actions with property X are bad, you could observe Y and any other action and have no ability to determine if they are good or bad.

"In the direction of academic studies"

Not so much studies as arguments, since moral philosophy is not really an empirical field, but rather a rational one. You can find them in many ethics journals. A notable paper is "Why Abortion is Immoral" by Don Marquis, and if you read any papers in favor of abortion or infanticide there is generally a paper rebutting it.

"How does someone not having a child threaten you"

A serial killer that only targets blondes doesn't pose any threat to me at all. I might even personally benefit from their actions. Why do I still want them to be stopped?

"I see no reason whatsoever to accept that"

But you already do. You even give vaccination as an example where it would be permitted.

You are perfectly fine with one bodily autonomy violation to save lives (vaccination), but are against another (weaker form) violation that also saves lives.

The logical resolution to this is to say that prohibiting abortion doesn't save lives (i.e the fetus has no moral value or atleast insufficient moral value to outweigh personal feelings). But this renders the bodily autonomy argument worthless, because it is now the moral status of the fetus that matters not any idea of bodily autonomy. This pretty much establishes why I think the right to bodily autonomy is not actually accepted by anyone.

"Any and all restrictions and instructions should be based on rational arguments"

There is tons of academic papers on the immorality of abortion, of course there are tons that argue in the opposite of direction. I would consider most on both sides to have somewhat rational arguments it just depends on what premises you want to accept as true. I find the premises behind permitting abortion to be bit more far-fetched, things like mind-body dualism or continuity of mind as somehow granting greater moral value to be unsupported or impractical.

On what basis do you determine that my claims are not sourced? You have no information that my claims are less credible than those of the interview subjects. They are both unsupported and anecdotal at the worst; however you can actually find information on prison socialisation in academic papers and they largely support my claims. Swindlers are treated worse than sex offenders because this idea of moral code among criminals doesn't really exist, they only care if you harm them directly.

"Made a major effort to know how much insight you have"

Where? Do you even understand what this sentence you wrote even means? Until this reply, I never claimed having a source of insight or argued for why my statement is correct. I merely made a statement that the common notion of "honor among thieves" doesn't really exist, and personal stories aren't sufficient to prove that it does. I do have personal experience with this, so technically my claims have just as much basis as the random people interviewed. However this is irrelevant because there are better sources than personal stories.

Additionally if you think that anything in this discussion is a "major effort", you have abysmally low standards. Writing one or two paragraphs is highly trivial.

Why are you using Wikipedia to speculate on my information sources? (I author Wikipedia articles so the idea that you think I source my information from them is laughable).

"And I'll leave you to that belief when other ex-presidents have visited Germany".

This is literally your only data point. There are numerous reasons why someone wouldn't visit Germany, Bush largely retired from public life and visits very few countries. The fact that they haven't visited Germany is easily explained by the fact that they are just not that interesting of a country. You have absolutely no basis to claim that there is a secret arrest warrant, this is simply something that you fabricated. (Possibly from Amnesty International's attempt to get an arrest warrant {which failed}. See I can speculate on your information sources too. )

Also the BND literally broke German law to provide the US with intelligence, the idea that Germany is somehow immune to US influence (or just straight political realism) is utterly insane. You are just so hardcore nationalist that you refuse to accept it.

"Also this proves that you have no idea what you are talking about".

Actually I'm quite aware of the incident, and yes it was overblown by the media. It's still a humourous spin on Germany's poor readiness, which you never actually addressed. But at least you seem to have dropped any pretense that the Bundswehr wouldn't immediately surrender, especially considering that the US has 30k troops in Germany already.

"Godwin's law..."

Not exactly sure what problem you have with this reasoning. If Bush doesn't visit Germany, it can only be because he has an arrest warrant that has never been revealed. Likewise if you assert that Germany is so special that it ignores political consequences (and is even capable and willing to fight a war with the US), it can only be because you are a fascist. Why does this reasoning suddenly become unacceptable when it's applied to you? (It was always unacceptable you are just so hung up on "Deutschland Uber Alles" that you are willing to fabricate nonsense to preserve your image of Germany).

If a claim is made that anecdotal evidence is incorrect then presenting anecdotal evidence does not refute that claim. Even worse your sources basically say that it's not really a big deal, because it isn't. Criminals really don't care what you have done so long as you don't hurt them.

Yeah, no this is patently false. German judicial system isn't running around jeopardizing it's foreign relations. Germany explicitly guaranteed that Rumsfeld wouldn't be arrested.

Also why are you hell-bent on promoting a conspiracy theory? You have zero evidence that there is an arrest warrant or that there ever will be. Your apparent basis for this is that George Bush hasn't visited Germany post-presidency, which might be a fair point except that Bush hasn't visited most countries in Europe post-presidency. Germany is simply not that special, UK or France are more important on the world stage.

"Against the whole of NATO, and the EU".

US armed forces dominate NATO. UK and France are the second and 3rd strongest by far. Your submarine fleet isn't even functional, the Bundswehr is a laughing stock, you literally had to use broomsticks in military exercises because you have no rifles. If you think that France would defend you and not just invade your sad little country itself you're delusional.

This is a level of insane German nationalism not seen outside of an Austrian in the 1930s.

”Get your Seppo exceptionalism in check"

Pretty sure I'm not the one who is claiming that my country can unilaterally take an action against a much stronger state that has only ever happened to weaker states and through international coalitions. What makes you think that Germany is so special and heroic that it alone, out of every state in the world, will arrest George Bush?

"You can't even cast tank barrels without our help"- Who needs tanks when you have air power? Also the US can easily manufacture tank barrels, it has an extremely advanced metallurgy industry, it also produces 12 percent of the total microchips in the world.

Don't try to compare Germany to a state 4 times larger than it, you're going to be sad and disappointed.

"Autonomy" not "anatomy", very different things.

"I'm curious to see how you do your taxes if that violates your autonomy"

Easy, as I pretty clearly laid out violating autonomy is a requirement of society. Social norms require forcing people to engage in certain actions or face punishment (either literal imprisonment or social repercussions like faced by rude people.) If this is permissible, then why is merely prohibiting certain actions to be considered an unacceptable violation of bodily autonomy? Prohibiting something is no where near as severe as forcing someone to do something.

Ultimately nobody actually cares about bodily autonomy, it is simply a post hoc attempt at justifying that people ascribe moral value based solely on how they personally feel.

(A good example of this is forced blood donation, everyone apparently thinks it's somehow reprehensible (on principle not by making medical risk arguments) even though it is only temporary harm and arguably less harmful than income tax).

That said, I do my taxes just fine, even though the state violates my bodily autonomy by forcing me to do them.

FYI, when people talk about a right to bodily autonomy they aren't saying you aren't allowed to mind-control people, they are saying you aren't allowed to coerce someone since all norms and laws are enforced by coercion rather than rendering people physically incapable of violating the norms.

Pretty sure there is a good deal of evidence that Germany caves into US pressure. In fact you admit it yourself, ”US would go ballistic” you claim.

If the US going ballistic over a public Interpol red card is sufficient to prevent Germany from issuing one, where would the sudden courage come from to actually arrest Bush?

"The answer will be 'Have a look at our laws...'"

No the answer will be "Whatever you say President Biden”. Germany is an incredibly weak country, UK and France are much more geopolitically powerful than Germany and they are effectively US satellites.

It's simply hilarious how you are trying to puff up Germany as somehow this great power that can afford to alienate the US.

Only if additional evidence emerges. Innocent people are still going to face life imprisonment, and the argument is that it's better to execute people than life imprisonment.

Even then this is extremely subjective, many people who have never been imprisoned or faced imminent death think that they would prefer execution, and somehow generalise this feeling to all people when in reality very few people choose execution when given the option.

Random acts of violence aren't prevented by more random acts of violence. All it does is increasingly normalise it.

This is almost certainly a myth. Prisons are full of rapists and pedophiles, nobody cares. The only actual code of ethics criminal organisations have is no snitching or defrauding because it hurts them, that's all they care about.

If life-imprisonment is a fate worse than death (most prisoners disagree, that's why it's common to plea a death sentence down to a life-sentence), then doesn't this mean that it is preferable to erroneously execute innocent people rather than give them life-imprisonment?

Your second point really severely undermines your first argument.

"They should"- Very serious moral claim there.

Because bodily autonomy is a complete farce? Society can force conscious action and everyone cheers and thinks it's grand (because it is), but saying that you can't take certain actions is abominable merely because it has a slightly different psychological effect.

Controlling people's actions is literally a core function of society. Taxation, or even contracts are all vastly more extreme violations of bodily autonomy than a state simply prohibiting a conscious choice.