What happens if you dont pay the fine though?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8ukak8P2vY

This pretty much sums up this thread at this point.

"Lethologica, what happens if the person doesnt pay the fine? Then doesnt comply with the police when they knock on your door? The logical conclusion is that the state by force will remove you from the general society. Hence the usage of the gun."

There's that missing escalation. Thanks for adding it back in when pressed. Yes, I am comfortable with the possibility that someone will turn his failure to wear a seat belt into the figurehead of his crusade against government authority and end up in jail. I'm sure someone will take this as advocacy of tyranny, because the First World Problems model of liberty is unfortunately widespread.

Well lethologica i am giving you the chance to fill in the steps. If you cant do that i am happy to respond to your sequence of events. Though if you make a move on the governments part and i reject it then you need to recalculate and justify a consequence for it. Through logical progression you get to the state and its gun.
You also didnt address the point raised and then moved to ridicule the justification while at the same time shutting down the debate with that same ridicule.
You have not yet provided an argument in favour for government interference hence i stick to the principle. If you want to dish out ridicule against me i have no problem doing the same in return though i suspect the mods would jump in and if not, it defeats the purpose of the discussion in the first place.

If you want state interference, come to Aus. Specifically New South Wales. A $319 fine ( that's about 230 of your US dollars) for not wearing your helmet while riding a push bike. Talk about The Nanny State. Oh... And a $129 fine for not having a bell on your bike.

@aha195:
I have provided extensive argument. Just because I haven't recapitulated it since you started commenting doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

The thing about your 'logical progression' is, the progression itself necessarily entails a whole pile of offenses on top of whatever the initial offense was, so you're no longer having a discussion about the initial offense. Omitting that part is bad-faith discussion, intended to eliminate considerations of proportionality that are critical to practical governance--no, every offense must be judged as a capital crime, regardless of its actual effects. Which is, of course, what the libertarian wants: get away from the real world, into the libertarian's theoretical framework, and the libertarian wins every time by definition. I have no patience for it.

And it's not like the libertarian doesn't have a better argument. You don't *have* to retreat from every situation to the same tired old canards--taxation is theft, all laws are threats of execution, everything is either a natural right or forbidden by NAP. You could, for example, talk about the aggregate hardship of numerous small regulations being aggressively levied against poor populations by states with budget deficits and for-profit prisons, often resulting in swelling jail populations despite federal rulings against breaking the backs of the poor. That's one way that minor individual penalties become serious infringements on liberty in practice. Then we could talk about where those regulations come from, whether eliminating a particularly onerous subset of those regulations would fix the problem, how to eliminate the profit motive, and so on.

But instead it's "Seat belt regulations are exactly as bad as shooting me if I don't buckle up." So yeah, have some mockery. It's the level of discussion you apparently want.

Your car exhaust is invading my sovereign state.

Do I have to wait for Brainbomb to actually contribute to his own demise before I nominate him for a Darwin Award?

@"I'm not sure there is such a thing as "natural rights" at all, since rights only exist in relation to other people and are respected or not by social convention and agreement only."

There is a concept of natural justice in some legal jurisdictions (perhaps in most, but in some the have more weight). You can argue your actions were justice based on nature, whereas the law didn't specify whether they were allowed. (Perhaps you can break the law, but then claim by natural justice that your actuons were right and the law was wrong)

I think this is related to your natural rights.

To those still pointlessly arguing, there is a reason these laws exist. It is a historical issue, seatbelts were first invented and proven beneficial, but people had no havit of using them and placed no demands on manufacturers to add them as standard.

First the state mandated them as standard, then when use didn't increase they mandated everyone break their habits and get ised to wearing seatbelts.

It becomes less important now, the culture has changed, i doubt anybody would buy a car without a seat belt; though some may still choose to not wear one (or forget, we're not perfect, though i'm sure some manufacturers now add a reminder feature which helps force the decision)

This is an example of regulation, which successfully saved lives where the market was selling a dangerous product. And it is the role of the state to take these kinds of actions. (My story is entirely made up, but i've no doubt you can find out the history, and the arguements that went with it, if you bother to look them up)

Likewise the state should act to reduce smoking rates (and has, many times over, from banning advertising, to taxation, to anti-smoking campaign ads) this is a different more subtle form of control. But it is the same, an attrmpt to change our habits for the better.

The same will be done for unhealthy food and diabetes medication, though the food industry may be a little harder to fight... They will not simply ban the purchase of unhealthy food; that would be incredibly unpopular - so no slippery-ness on this slope, as far as i can see.

The more laws like this you allow oppressive dictatorships to levy against the people the more liberties you will see disappear. For instance next there will be laws limiting free music and movie downloads. After that there will be laws where you have to have liscences to open your own bee farm in your backyard. Pretty soon you'll have laws against selling lemonde for your kids soccer team without FDA inspection of what ingredients you used.
The more government intrudes into the lives on basic people, the harder it is to become your own self made bee-keeper.

@ Brainbomb: What right do you have to to intrude on the sovereignty of the bees?

i'm king bb

I used to work on the fire department, at one accident a unseated person in driving seat crashed in approx 30km/h, his body ended, somehow, most likly cause no belt on the road where a truck tried to avoid driving it over, ending upp drifting in to a mother with 2 children wating on the buss, they died. No one can be sure if it was due to no belt that this happend but it dident help.

^And that is one reason government coercion in this matter is popular.

@"The more laws like this you allow oppressive dictatorships to levy against the people the more liberties you will see disappear."

What you seem to be ignoring is, the will of the people. And the will allow their state do thigs which are popular; even if that turns out to be fascistic as Trump seems hell bent upon.

It's not like you can even buy a bike without a bell.
As for the helmet, it's retarded. I gave up on cycling after I lost my helmet.

Of course you can buy a bike without a bell. I bought, and ride, a bike without a bell. In California!

Anyway, cycling safety has more to do with infrastructure + # of cyclists on the road than anything else. Helmet laws are a patch on the problem.

How is it retarded to decide, as an educated adult, that I'm no going to wear my helmet?
I think there is room for legislation to enforce helmets and seat belts for minors, but I'm an adult - I vote, I pay taxes. Sod off and let me make my own decisions!

@BrownPaperTiger, have you looked at the evidence for helmets protecting cyclists?

No? Thats probably because tests are done on pedestrians, walking on a side-walk is safer with a bike helmet; so why aren't they advertised for walkers?

Look it up, there is a pretty comprehensive theory thst car manufacturers want to scare people out of cycling, and are supporting laws to promote bike helmet usage.

So if you subscribe to this theory, and don't think a helmet makes a signifigant difference; then that would be reason to not wear one.

@Orathaic- nope. Haven't looked. I wear a helmet when biking. So do my kids. I wear a helmet climbing, because I have kids.

I'm not debating the sense or otherwise of helmet wearing. What I take issue with is the state enforcing the wearing of helmets.
On the same logic, people should be forced to wear earmuffs when using food processors in their own kitchens.

And re reading my previous post, I think auto-correct worked its magic (wrought its havoc)

"people should be forced to wear earmuffs when using food processors in their own kitchens."

Do food processors cause cold related ear trauma the way bike accidents cause head trauma?

The inanity of analogies keeps increasing.

I'm fairly confident BPT was talking about ear damage from noise...

I feel like Putin does this a lot - takes an analogy and makes it ridiculous by saying it means something totally different.

Do good processors cause ear trauma the way bike accidents cause head trauma? How many serious ear injuries have occurred due to food processor use?

Given that they punch out more than 82dBA at a metre, then they could be expected to cause long term damage. What's inane about the analogy? Or are you too slow to appreciate it?

Actually, I feel like a food processor is much more likely to cause damage, as it definitely makes noise every time, whereas you are not likely to crash every time you get on a bike.

Wearing a bike helmet is sort of like insurance. Hopefully something bad won't happen, but if it does you are reducing risk. Ear protection, on the other hand, you know will be helping because you know there will be noise whenever you use it.

Putin just sub in a worker with a jackhammer than food processor and the logic that brownpapertiger is still valid, plus you get an analogy that you get.

Kingcyrus yep thats how they are going to role because they can not argue a point against what is said against them so they twist the arguement to suit their agenda. You can only hope that the other users reading it can see past it and look at the main point of the arguement.

Also someone raised the point that it wasnt popular to wear a seatbelt hence get government to interfere. When healthcare companies wanted the public to buy their toothpaste products, they didnt mandate that you brush your teeth. They provide good advertisement and marketing that said here are the benefits for brushing your teeth and here is a method to deduce damage. (Yes at one point it was unpopular and some might argue it still is) The same thing could have been done with car manufacturers and government organizations. It would have also let the free market to design more comfortable seatbelts more quickly.
As brownpapertiger said, he wears a helmet and forces his kids to wear one in the off chance that they fall. I am sure that he does the same thing with seatbelts regardless of what the law says because it increases the survival possibility of himself and more importantly his kids if he gets into a crash.

"By that logic these things should also be illegal:
Smoking
Using alcohol
Not taking prescribed diabetes medications
Not taking prescribed hypertension medications
Not taking prescribed psychiatric medications
Rock climbing
Unprotected sex
Getting pregnant
Camping
Hiking
Driving
Swimming"

Imo, smoking, alcohol, not taking prescribed medication, and practicing unsafe sex should be illegal. Getting pregnant supposedly has an overall beneficial impact on humanity by prolonging the existence of our species as a whole. Hiking and swimming's health benefits override their potential danger. Driving's beneficial impact on the economy overrides the danger, which is further reduced by wearing seatbelts. The difference between seatbelts and rockclimbing is that outlawing rockclimbing takes away a major civil liberty, while wearing seatbelts is a minor nuisance.

"D. Joe drives back to work, gets a ticket for no seatbelt and then is removed from his car (property) and beaten by a crooked cop. Joe gets jailtime, cop gets raise."

You don't get jailed, beaten, or your car taken away from you for not wearing a seatbelt.

"practicing unsafe sex should be illegal"

a) How in all hell would you enforce this?
b) The United States holds sanctity of the privacy of the bedroom, so this would go all the way to the Supreme Court if you tried it and your proposal would be found unconstitutional 9-0.

You can tax tobacco and alcohol to try and kill those off the market for most Americans, but you can't pose such high restrictions that would violate household privacies.