James2097
Now can I have some sleep?
Nope
Here's the deal. You've either got a slippery slope due to your reasoning, or you're inconsistent. One or the other, it sounded to me like you were fine with being inconsistent, now it does not.
If you want to be consistent, then your line of reasoning applies to other scenarios (which we have pointed out), which illustrates the slope quite nicely. If you want to avoid the slippery slope you end up being inconsistent.
"Car safety belts save lives, so they're a good idea."
"French fries and cigarettes should be legal even though they kill."
That's inconsistent. If you want to appeal to the concept of "minimizing impact to lifestyle" then you're applying an arbitrary line to your reasoning - that arbitrary line is "lifestyle" as it exists currently. I prefer for my reasoning to come from logic and reasoning rather than something as subjective and likely incorrect as "lifestyle".
If you NEED a slippery slope to respect my point of view, I'll show you where one exists if I must. The exact 'cut off' point would potentially be a slippery slope if one wasn't clear where it was exactly.
You mean the one that I pointed out to you earlier? Yea, I'm aware of that problem with your argument, thanks.
Of course everyone's 'cut off' point would be a little (or a lot) different depending on how much one values life over the 'inconvenience' level. Yours is obviously far different than wherever mine is. Thats ok.
I don't have to draw a line because I'm arguing from a principled position. It leaves me with no slope to deal with. That's one of my main problems with your line of reasoning - you have to draw an arbitrary line.
I say it's simply because driving is a privilige and so it can be treated as such. I really don't like a law surrounding it. But at the same time, I don't feel it's an infraction of my rights since I don't have a "right" to drive.
Driving on public roads may be a privilage, but what you do in your car is not. You breathe in your car right? Is that a privilage? That the government doesn't shoot you in your car, is that a privilage? Is listening to the radio a privilage in your car? Carrying passengers? What you haul in your pickup truck? Is what color your car is a privilage?
What if the government were to pass a law saying that all cars must be sprayed with fart gas? Would that be a good law? Is it a privilage to drive and so one must simply deal with the fart smell? Laws have to make sense, they have to come from a concept of right and wrong. They aren't for convenience (though in some cases that's actually necessary). You may say "well the fart gass thing is just random, it doesn't solve any problem so it makes no sense". I would reply "the fart smell will keep people out of their cars and reduce traffic = save lives". Perhaps I can even do a study and find that fart smells in cars will save tens of thousands of lives every year.
My point here is that law governs how people interact with each other - and should stem from right and wrong. It is wrong to break other people's property or harm them with your car. That's why you lose money when you hit someone. It is wrong to drive recklessly because it makes the (publicly funded) streets essentially worthless to anyone else. Rules about what you do with your car make sense. They allow roads to function at all and establish who is at fault when an accident occurs. Rules about
how you comply with the rules of the road are about protecting your from yourself - which robs us of liberty and presumes to calculate the cost/benefits for us.
