[bairrd]

What would you define as the third party in cigarettes? Smokers and cigarette manufacturers seem to not have some negative third party by your definition, yet I find it pretty hard to accept that the current legislation against cigarette companies hasn't done a world of good for humanity.

[lightsighter]

> Smokers and cigarette manufacturers seem to not have some negative third party by your definition

Sure they do. If rates of lung cancer go up because more people smoke, insurance rates for the populace at large will also go up, thereby driving down expendable income for many consumers and depressing economic growth. All of society is the third party when it comes to people making poor decisions about their health.

As an aside, I realize this reasoning can certainly be abused as a justification to make any number of questionable but possibly legitimate behaviors illegal, but it doesn't make it less true in specific cases.

[ralusek]

I don't think that the role of the government is to do good for humanity. The role of the government, at least in a liberal democracy like the US, is to preserve liberty. In a state where the primary mandate is to pursue actions on behalf of the "good," the obvious problem is to do with how we define "good." There are plenty of cases to be made for the prohibition of alcohol and cigarettes altogether, and there have been periods where this has been democratically felt to be for the good of the nation. Many people advocate for the banning of pornography. Prostitution. Drugs. Fast food. Violent video games. There are all kinds of things that people regulate for people's purported best interest. The problem is that, as stated, people's interests vary. People's capabilities to control themselves vary. People's senses of morality vary.

But the illusory nature of "good" isn't even the primary problem. The real problem is tyranny. Government is force, no matter what, and even democracy is tyranny of a thin majority. Unless the powers of the state are limited in terms of its objective capabilities, then what is subjectively being enforced by its authoritative capacity is necessarily tyrannical to the minority.

[TeMPOraL]

> There are plenty of cases to be made for the prohibition of alcohol and cigarettes altogether,

Prohibition of alcohol wasn't a problem because mitigating social issues caused by its abuse is a bad idea. Prohibition was a problem because it was a bad tool for the job; it didn't solve the issues it was meant to, and caused many more of its own.

Drugs, pornography, prostitution and violent video games aren't the problem (except for people who don't think much). Drug abuse-related crime and health issues are the problem. Sexual abuse and crimes are the problem. Human trafficking and forcing people into sex work are the problem. Violence is the problem. I agree that bans are a wrong idea, but I also disagree about the role of the government. It's absolutely a responsibility of governments to deal with these issues - because really, no one else can.

> Government is force, no matter what, and even democracy is tyranny of a thin majority.

If democracy is a tyranny, then so is the "free" market. A tyranny of those who have more, who rule over those who have less. The tyranny of the economy that forces most people to make bad choice after bad choice, because the alternative is starvation. Truth is, there is no absolute freedom to find anywhere. Not in a world with so many people, not when the "minimum viable reproductive unit" of human species is a village. It's a game of finding the balance that ensures most freedom and most happiness.

[ralusek]

Human trafficking violates consent. Violence violates consent. Sexual abuse violates consent. The government has a role in preserving consent in transactions. The third-party negative externalities I mentioned fall within the purview of government responsibilities precisely because they have an impact on those who have not consented.

Gambling does not violate consent. Drug usage does not violate consent. Prostitution does not violate consent, or in the cases that do, those independent instances are where enforcement needs to occur.

[UnFleshedOne]

Would you change your position if at some point there exist a technology that modifies consent with a certain success rate so a bad actor in a free market can reliably make a significant number of people act against their interests but out of their own "free will".

Is this a matter of competence or a matter of principle?

If I can talk to some people and without threats or deceit convince a good number of them to hand me over all their savings (using a zeroday in wetware for example), does the government has a right / responsibility to stop me?

I expect ad-tech and other persuasion techniques will only become more effective. At what point do we declare regular people unable to consent similar to the way we say children and few other groups can't legally consent?

[kingdomcome50]

While I agree with your views here, it is incredibly important to understand that "consent" is not as black and white as you are painting it above. In many ways it suffers from the same problems as attempting to define what is "good" -- in that what qualifies an individual to be able to give consent or what consent even looks like can be arbitrary and subjective.

[tomp]

The role of the government is to solve problems that the market cannot. There's tons of market failures described in the literature (e.g. information asymmetries, principal–agent problems, or negative externalities), and others that the government can simply solve more efficiently (e.g. nationalized infrastructure prevents each private player from building their own, ultimately redundant, infrastructure, and lowers cost to entry for new players).

In my opinion, governments overreach is when governments starts to control the population's choices (e.g. prohibition or ban of illegal & experimental drugs). Government influencing the population's choices (guiding them towards "good" choices, e.g. by limiting gambling, taxing alcohol, enforcing true labels on food) can be a very good thing, [edit:] especially in situations when humans tend to behave irrationally (i.e. because our psychology / evolutionary mechanisms are hijacked).

[ApolloFortyNine]

If what you want is a "Warning, this game may be addictive" every time you load the game, then fine.

But I do not think the government should be passing hate taxes on things they don't want you to do. People mostly agreed when it came to cigarettes, now they're coming for sugar, and they're very likely to be going for animal based products at some point.

I don't think it's the government's job to control the populace. They can force companies to make risks clear, but if the consumer accepts the risk, that should be that.

[TeMPOraL]

> They can force companies to make risks clear, but if the consumer accepts the risk, that should be that.

It doesn't solve anything when the problem is with externalities and prisoner's dilemmas.

Taxes on sugar and smoking can be argued on the grounds of increased load on national heathcare, at least in countries with publicly-funded healthcare. Taxes (or rather, pulling back on subsidies) on meat can be pretty strongly argued as effective means of reducing emissions and slowing down/mitigating climate change. Almost all situations where externalities are the problem share the exact same pattern: "it would be better if nobody did X, but since everyone does X, why should I stop and deprive myself of the value X gives me?".

Personally, I came to believe that the job - perhaps the main job - of the government should in fact be to act as a central coordinator, to prevent citizens from falling into emergent prisonner's dilemma-like traps.

As for regulating gambling and smoking and many other things you can see as "limiting freedom" - it's not like an individual decision leading to self-harm is always, or usually, an unique situation. Gambling isn't a random event, it's an exploitation scheme perpetrated fully intentionally by other people, who have literal textbooks describing the best way to fuck their fellow men and women over. It would be a pretty inhumane government that didn't take an interest in curtailing this.

[ApolloFortyNine]

You giving justifications for banning food really just proves my point. Tyranny of the majority, if that faction should ever become the majority.

With gambling there exists the chance you can bet your last $20 and make enough to pay off your debt. I don't think anyone is planning on getting rich off Idle Heroes.

[PhasmaFelis]

> People mostly agreed when it came to cigarettes, now they're coming for sugar

Where is sugar being regulated as tightly as tobacco?

[ApolloFortyNine]

I'm talking about the hate tax. It's not nationwide yet, but you see more and more people pushing for one every year.

[PhasmaFelis]

A tax is hardly comparable to heavily restricting sales and making it completely illegal to buy or consume for under-18s.

("Sin tax" is the popular dysphemism, BTW.)

[ApolloFortyNine]

In my post I agreed with basic regulation, but against hate taxes.

>But I do not think the government should be passing hate taxes on things they don't want you to do. People mostly agreed when it came to cigarettes, now they're coming for sugar, and they're very likely to be going for animal based products at some point.

I'm just confused what you're arguing (and why it led to this post being downvoted). I didn't compare tax to consumption under 18.