[deelowe]

How about we just let addicts be addicts while we figure the rest out. That's certainly better than today's situation where we make extra sure we ruin their lives to, ya know, protect them from themselves.

[scurvy]

The problem is they create a wake of destruction in their path of addiction.

[toomuchtodo]

The cost of a free society.

Keep that ASBO trash on the other side of the pond.

[scurvy]

How about charging them for their public costs? If you get rescued by helicopter because you went skiing out of bounds at a resort and got lost, don't they send you a bill? How about that for people with money who abuse the system while abusing other things?

[toomuchtodo]

Like how the Japanese will send a bill to the family of someone who commits suicide on a train line?

I prefer my government to absorb the cost of human despair rather than bill for it. Don't write policy based on outliers.

[friedman23]

> absorb

You are very good at using language. The reality is that government doesn't 'absorb' anything. Other people, some of whom can't afford to, pay for it.

[toomuchtodo]

All economics are redistribution, it's simply the details that change with the methods. It is unrealistic to want a world where each person pays exactly for what they consume or are liable for.

[jasonkostempski]

Sending the bill to the family is dumb but there's sense in sending the person responsible for damages bills. I think we already mostly do that though, they just don't always pay the bill.

[friedman23]

Because that has worked historically.