Libertarians

[Kirkhill]

If the state is going to support the greater good (reducing the broad, general risk of disease) by demanding the individual assume a personal risk (being one of those for whom the medication has an unplanned, adverse reaction) should the state have to sign an insurance offering to hold safe the individual, their heirs and successors, from any harm resulting from taking this state imposed medication?

Just asking.

Knives cut two ways.

 

[Edward Campbell]

If the state is going to support the greater good (reducing the broad, general risk of disease) by demanding the individual assume a personal risk (being one of those for whom the medication has an unplanned, adverse reaction) should the state have to sign an insurance offering to hold safe the individual, their heirs and successors, from any harm resulting from taking this state imposed medication?

Just asking.

Knives cut two ways.

That would, I think, be the proper utilitarian response.

Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832), founder of modern utilitarianism.


The "greatest good for the greatest number" may require a few to take risks to safeguard the many, but that few should be indemnified by the many.

 

[The_Falcon]

If the state is going to support the greater good (reducing the broad, general risk of disease) by demanding the individual assume a personal risk (being one of those for whom the medication has an unplanned, adverse reaction) should the state have to sign an insurance offering to hold safe the individual, their heirs and successors, from any harm resulting from taking this state imposed medication?

Just asking.

Knives cut two ways.

No.  The risk present to the poplulation as whole is larger and more threatening for people who don't vaccinate.  It's also an incentive for people to actually to think critically about a choice that may end up effecting plenty of other people, and not just buy into the last viral "science" going around on facebook, without doing some research of their own.

 

[Griffon]

Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832), founder of modern utilitarianism.

He was a genius...and a little crazy...

 

[Kirkhill]

He was a genius...and a little crazy...

Being crazy doesn't stop you being right.

Facebook aside .... the state does cause harm even as it wishes to do good.  Just as doctors and mechanics do.  I don't see this as an issue of appealing to one's better angels.  Keep in mind that the particular question here is often one of parents and the state acting in loco parentis trying to decide whether or not the parents' child is going to bear the risk of protecting the population at large.  The child may be one of the many that probability dictates will benefit from the medication.  On the other hand the child may be one of the others that probability equally dictates will be adversely affected.

The ratio of risk benefit ranges polio and small pox to thalidomide.

 

[The_Falcon]

The ratio of risk benefit ranges polio and small pox to thalidomide.

If you are going to invoke the dangers of vaccines, you should probably use an actual vaccine.  Thalidomide was never a vaccine, and no one was forced to use it.

 

[Nemo888]

Part 3
http://reason.com/archives/2014/03/25/should-vaccines-be-mandatory/print

The first two articles are bearable but the third by Sandy Schneider is bullshit. She states pertussis fatalities had already started dropping but fails to mention it was because of antibiotics. She fails to mention that the average measles hospital admission costs over 10,000$. Or that whooping cough is extremely deadly to infants too young to be vaccinated(1 in 200 dead). Fatalities were dropping but not infection rates. Two decades in an iron lung is technically not a polio fatality.

These are the death rates prior to vaccines for the listed diseases and have not been adjusted for other advances in medical care;
Measles, 1 in 500
Whooping cough in infants, 1 in 200
Polio, 3 in 100 for children, 1 in 5 for adults
Meningitis 1 in 10

Serious side effects from vaccines were 7.2 per 1,000,000 in 2012 in Ontario. Deaths are steady at zero.
The 46 page annual report on vaccine safety is here.
http://www.publichealthontario.ca/en/eRepository/Annual_Report_Vaccine_Safety_Ontario_2012.pdf

Vaccines are a social contract. Every healthy person should vaccinate. But angry moms with no science background being anti vaccine has been a problem for longer than most of us think,...

When Chinese Emperor Fu-lin died of smallpox, his third son became Emperor K’ang. Having already survived a case of smallpox before he became Emperor, he eventually supported inoculation and wrote about it in a letter to his descendants:

    “The method of inoculation having been brought to light during my reign, I had it used upon you, my sons and daughters, and my descendants, and you all passed through the smallpox in the happiest possible manner…. In the beginning, when I had it tested on one or two people, some old women taxed me with extravagance, and spoke very strongly against inoculation. The courage which I summoned up to insist on its practice has saved the lives and health of millions of men. This is an extremely important thing, of which I am very proud.”

That was in 1661, 224 years before Pastuer "invented" vaccination. It was the first public vaccination order that I can find. Chinese  doctors used dried smallpox exudate and blew it up the noses of subjects with a bamboo or silver tube since roughly 1000AD. This idea was taken from the Indian worshipers of the Goddess of Smallpox Shitala Devi by Chinese traders. For millennia ritual priests of Shitala would dry the exudate for a year and then put the exudate under the skin of devotees with long needles. Vaccination may be well over 2000 years old.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>If difficulty of enforcement is the primary criterion for the viability of a law, then we might as well forget about enforcing laws on murder or robbery. 

I'd guess roughly 75% of the population in dorms were occasionally using marijuana during my student days.  Do you think it feasible or desirable to treat 75% of the population - or some similar fraction, depending on how usage varies between socioeconomic strata - as criminals?  Or are you satisfied with just sticking it to the least well off - after all, they have less to lose and are filthy and unsightly to boot.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>should the state have to sign an insurance offering to hold safe the individual, their heirs and successors, from any harm resulting from taking this state imposed medication?
...
>>No.  The risk present to the poplulation as whole is larger and more threatening for people who don't vaccinate.

Right.  So we'll put up the cost of treating some rare diseases at $500K per annum per person and fund cosmetic surgery for gender-confused people, but if we vaccinate someone against his will and he dies, tough sh!t.

Occasionally I find it very difficult to not despise statists.

 

[Nemo888]

We don't vaccinate anyone against their will, unless you are in the Army >
I can't remember a single death from vaccination. The occasional rare case of encephalopathy, but most of the time they were already immunocompromised and probably should have taken an exemption. Healthy people are fine, but hell I've seen anaphalxis from Benadryl. There is no always in medicine.

Quebec does have vaccine injury compensation BTW.

 

[The_Falcon]

>should the state have to sign an insurance offering to hold safe the individual, their heirs and successors, from any harm resulting from taking this state imposed medication?
...
>>No.  The risk present to the poplulation as whole is larger and more threatening for people who don't vaccinate.

Right.  So we'll put up the cost of treating some rare diseases at $500K per annum per person and fund cosmetic surgery for gender-confused people, but if we vaccinate someone against his will and he dies, tough sh!t.

Occasionally I find it very difficult to not despise statists.

What the hell are you talking about?  Occasionally I find it very difficult to not despise people who insert random and irrelevant stuff into an argument, because they can't think of a decent and on point retort. 

 

[Nemo888]

Vaccines are not mandatory. Seatbelts are mandatory and  they injure and kill  people every year in Ontario. 25% of deaths of children ages 1-9 are from unintentional injuries PRIMARILY MVA's.(ZERO fatalities from vaccination) Those kids were all wearing SEATBELTS! Why is the province not tracking seatbelt deaths in our children OMG CONSPIRACY! I prefer my kids to develop natural immunity to MVA's.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>What the hell are you talking about?  Occasionally I find it very difficult to not despise people who insert random and irrelevant stuff into an argument, because they can't think of a decent and on point retort.

So your answer to the question you quoted ("should the state have to sign an insurance offering to hold safe the individual, their heirs and successors, from any harm resulting from taking this state imposed medication?") is not, in fact, "No"?

 

[The_Falcon]

>What the hell are you talking about?  Occasionally I find it very difficult to not despise people who insert random and irrelevant stuff into an argument, because they can't think of a decent and on point retort.

So your answer to the question you quoted ("should the state have to sign an insurance offering to hold safe the individual, their heirs and successors, from any harm resulting from taking this state imposed medication?") is not, in fact, "No"?

You know precisely what I was referring to, $500k treatments and gender reassignment surgery, since that has nothing to do with this conversation.

 

[Kirkhill]

I believe the reference was with regards to how money in the health budget should be allocated.

Brad apparently believes that the cost of holding safe the individual from the actions of the state is more important than some of the other ways in which the health budget could be spent.

In broad, I agree with him.

The principle is no different than the state appropriating (expropriating) lands for a new hospital and paying the landowners "fair market value" for their lands.  Certainly the state can secure the lands without compensation or consideration  but it should not.  Equally the state can compel the individual with without compensation or consideration but it should not.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

........and the other side of the coin...............

When she says, toward the end, "someone has to be held accountable, someone has to pay" it says it all about today's WELFARE generation.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/RBqjZ0KZCa0?showinfo=0&rel=0&hd=0

This is the reason we need the government to get out of our pockets, so they stop taking money for people, and programs, like this.

And yes we have this type in Canada also, as well as the social programs that got them there. My hard work should not be supporting this.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>since that has nothing to do with this conversation.

When I look at policies, I evaluate them as thresholds.  Basically: if we do X, then we should also do Y.  I disapprove of a scattered or inconsistent approach in which public benefits are scattered around according to whatever is fashionable or PC.  My point is that it is repugnant to impose a health-related liability (risk) on someone - albeit very small - while granting health-related entitlements to others for - in some cases - trivial needs.  (A life-saving treatment is not a trivial need, but I believe the cost establishes a new upper bound on the minimum amount any person should be able to claim for life-extending treatments.  There should be no question of "Disease A?  You're covered.  Disease B?  Sorry, you're SOL.")

 

[Edward Campbell]

>since that has nothing to do with this conversation.

When I look at policies, I evaluate them as thresholds.  Basically: if we do X, then we should also do Y.  I disapprove of a scattered or inconsistent approach in which public benefits are scattered around according to whatever is fashionable or PC.  My point is that it is repugnant to impose a health-related liability (risk) on someone - albeit very small - while granting health-related entitlements to others for - in some cases - trivial needs.  (A life-saving treatment is not a trivial need, but I believe the cost establishes a new upper bound on the minimum amount any person should be able to claim for life-extending treatments.  There should be no question of "Disease A?  You're covered.  Disease B?  Sorry, you're SOL.")

While I agree, broadly, with you, Brad, (See my comment: "The "greatest good for the greatest number" may require a few to take risks to safeguard the many, but that few should be indemnified by the many.") it seems to me that the only economically sane way to run a public, sole payer, health care system, like the ones we have in Canada, is to draw lines somewhere so that Diseases/Conditions A to xxx are covered but Diseases/Conditions xxy and beyond are not. Some things should be covered because they are a normal part of living, some should be covered, despite being quite rare (abnormal), because we should try to meet Tommy Douglas' aim of not burdening people with catastrophic health care costs. But some things ought not be covered because they are a matter of choice, not circumstance. I am conscious of the fact that cosmetic surgery for A is matter of choice while cosmetic surgery for B is a necessity but both are "cosmetic" ~ lines can be hard to draw.

 

                                                              A                                            B
                                                                                                        Both are "cosmetic" surgery

 

[Brad Sallows]

By identifying a distinction between necessity and convenience, I think you have established how easy it is to draw a line.  I concede they are ends of a spectrum, but as with most public policy issues we have to rely on the ability of people to be reasonable, subject to the constraints of revenues.

 

[OldSolduer]

A fellow Correctional officer is seeking nomination for the Conservative Party of Manitoba for the next election.

He and I spoke at some length of what government should be taking care of, in very broad terms:

Public Safety - police, fire, ambulance and military
Health Care
Infrastructure
Education

While I realize this is very general I think it is a good start point.