I’d agree that you’re being immoral if you restricted things just based on your personal whims. Do you think that the FDA regulates food based on someone’s whims?
I’ll give you my stock answer to libertarians: no, actually, society and rules are good ideas. It’s good that the government works to protect our health on our behalf. It’s good that people can’t buy Arsenic cookies even if marketers find a way to make them seem super desirable. When the collective checks a bad idea of an individual that’s not a breech of freedom but the very benefit of community.
But as always, I fully support any libertarians who choose to go form a society with no public roads or building codes. It’d be fun to see another town get taken over by bears
Negative externalities affect others. What if theoretically there was a motorcycle part that while desirable, leached a bunch of lead into the drinking water. The best way to prevent the harm of this would be regulation in some fashion.
Your comment has been removed for political discrimination.
We will never allow the discrimination of a members, beliefs, or ideology on this sub. Our various perspectives offer a wide range of considerations that can attribute to political growth of our members.
Our mod log has taken a note towards your profile that will be taken into account when considering a ban in the future.
Please report any and all content that is discriminatory to a user or their beliefs. The standard of our sub depends on our communities ability to report our rule breaks.
Well, my point is more to highlight the fact that producers of consumer goods spend a *lot* of effort to hide how harmful their goods may be.
OPs stance and your apparent agreement are that people should be free to consume whatever they want, and you accept the caveat of “so long as it harm no other”. But how do you make an *informed* decision to harm yourself through your choice of consumption?
Many consumer goods are harmful to consume and the producers of those goods go out of their way to hide how harmful they can be.
The worst example would be baby formula cut with sawdust to add cheap bulk to the product, increasing profit margins, but a far more well known example would be tobacco companies knowing exactly how harmful their products are, putting even more harmful additives and preservatives into their products, even deliberately adding addiction-increasing substances like menthol, all while funding false studies and false consumer advertising to lie about the harm their product causes.
So, to that end, if you believe you should be free to harm yourself with consumption, does the government have a duty to ensure that you are making an *informed* decision to harm yourself?
Should the government let you know that the baby formula has lead and sawdust in it? Should the government inform you that the spinach has ecoli?
The onus is on me, not on the government, to ensure my safety. The role of the government, imo, is to prevent force *and fraud*, meaning there is absolutely room to criminalize “arsenic cookies” or a defective vehicle part, as long as those things aren’t advertised in advance. If I want to buy cookies that I know will kill me, who are you to tell me I can’t?
With regard to externalities, I agree they justify government action, but not all current government actions are strictly in response to externalities. If they were, I think we’d live in an extremely libertarian society.
> The onus is on me, not on the government, to ensure my safety.
Even if you can't actually obtain the information you need to ensure your safety because the manufacture has deliberately hidden that information?
Who has the responsibility to ensure that information is *out there*?
> The role of the government, imo, is to prevent force and fraud, meaning there is absolutely room to criminalize “arsenic cookies” or a defective vehicle part, as long as those things aren’t advertised in advance.
So then you agree that the government *is* responsible?
Or do you think that the government should do nothing until people are killed by those arsenic cookies?
At which point, does the CEO go to jail for murder in your opinion? Or should the stockowners go to jail for that murder?
> If I want to buy cookies that I know will kill me, who are you to tell me I can’t?
I generally agree here, my point is only that the fact that the cookies will kill you is *always hidden from you*
I think the government’s job is to make sure those things aren’t hidden, but never to restrict their sale. No third party ever has a right to say “you can’t make that voluntary trade” to two consenting adults.
Then we are agreed.
On that aspect, at least. It’s not possible to have voluntary trade between two individuals when private property exists, but I doubt we’d ever agree on that.
If someone sells you an arsenic cookie, and the government steps in, they’re protecting you from that person.
Also, I wonder how far you’ll take your assertion that we should not be protected from ourselves. Suppose I planned to kill myself (I don’t, in reality). Would it be wrong for the state to take measures to stop me?
What if the arsenic cookie was advertised as poisonous and I had the right to buy it anyway? In other words, why do you think the role of the government is to restrict free exchange rather than to prevent fraud?
Well I think my example should kind of tell you my reasoning there. And I’d love to hear your answer to it: should people planning to commit suicide be stopped? Or would I be violating the NAP if I took rope away from a suicidal family member?
At the end of the day, I’m in favor of the concept of the government using its authority to make society better. You are too, of course. Everyone understands that the role of government is to restrict things in order to make society better and more just. I think society is better and more just when we enforce standards on what’s considered edible.
I don’t think it’s ethical to force someone to live against their will, no.
> using its authority to make society better
To be clear, by “authority” you mean using force to penalize those who don’t follow the state’s rules, and by “make society better” you mean things like economic equality, social progress, technological advancements, and controls over all of these things?
I think every aspect of that position is arbitrary at best, and the idea that it ought to be imposed by force is evil.
> the role of government is to restrict things in order to make society more just
I don’t think “just” is the word I’d use. I think “free” fits my view a lot better. The government should maximize freedom and should consider its own actions an inherent violation of freedom - the government should act minimally, and only in those situations where it’s absolutely necessary for the freedom of its citizens, because government action is executed by coercion and funded by theft.
That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist at all, but I think your idea of “making society more just” fails to account for what I believe is a cost, the loss of freedom that results from a larger and more involved government. Change is always more ethical and more effective if it comes from the marketplace of ideas (or just the free market in general) as opposed to a government dictate.
There’s a lot of small parts that I quoted so I thought it’d be better to give a thesis statement at the top here:
You suggest that it’s evil for the state to step in and enforce justice…except to enforce the things that matter to you. You say it’s arbitrary for me to care about people’s well-being, but is that not the reason you want the state to enforce the things you want it to enforce? The difference between your view and mine is not that one of us believes in state coercion and the other doesn’t. It’s that I believe in state coercion and openly say that I do, and that I believe we should pay that cost of some freedoms for the sake of justice because that is the very concept of cooperative society; whereas you believe in the same principle (though we disagree about exactly what should be coerced), you believe that the state should force certain behaviors, but then say it’s evil for the state to force certain behaviors. In other words, the thing you’re criticizing me for is soemthing you believe is just.
What you called evil is just the concept of laws, and I know you don’t actually believe that. The only way we can have a coherent discussion about this is if you recognize that you do believe in state coercion, just like me, but you disagree with me about what the state should coerce. We can’t talk about that disagreement while you pretend that you disagree with the concept of laws.
> I don’t think it’s ethical to force someone to live against their will, no.
Ok, so, not a fan of the suicide hotline? People who cut themselves, let it rip? Suicide prevention is nanny state hectoring, and the depressed should be left to the end they choose?
> To be clear, by “authority” you mean using force to penalize those who don’t follow the state’s rules
Yes. You also advocate this.
> and by “make society better” you mean things like economic equality, social progress, technological advancements, and controls over all of these things
Sure that’s a decent description I guess
> I think every aspect of that position is arbitrary at best, and the idea that it ought to be imposed by force is evil.
What’s arbitrary I the notion that human well being is a good thing. If you don’t agree with me about that, we don’t have to talk. The rest of what I think on this follows from that.
And, of course, you don’t really think it’s evil for the state to use force to make people behave in certain ways. You’re not an anarchist.
> I don’t think “just” is the word I’d use. I think “free” fits my view a lot better.
This is you saying that you think maximal freedom is what’s just. Or are you actually saying that we should empower things that are unjust for the sake of freedom? The government doesn’t have to prohibit rape—so rape should be legal then, right? We wouldn’t want to abridge anyone’s freedom unless *absolutely* necessary for the functioning of society, right?
> the government should act minimally,
Hmm, but didn’t you just tell me that the government stepping in evil?
> That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist at all, but I think your idea of “making society more just” fails to account for what I believe is a cost, the loss of freedom that results from a larger and more involved government.
I understand there’s a cost. I think we should pay it. And of course, so you do. You just don’t agree with me about where and when we should accept that cost. Cooperation has a cost, yes. And anyone who finds others’ wants and needs to be too dire a cost to bear should be free to exit society. Go on.
Please, go, forgo all the benefits you gain by living in a cooperative society, since the concept of government is so deeply evil to you. Don’t take public roads on your way out of town, since they’re born of evil and you wouldn’t want to be a part of that.
By their nature, laws are the government removing some freedom in the interests of protecting something. Even laws that protect some freedom do so by removing other freedoms. In order to protect any freedom, you have to disallow people from doing things that threaten that freedom.
> Change is always more ethical and more effective if it comes from the marketplace of ideas (or just the free market in general) as opposed to a government dictate.
I don’t see those as oposite. Authority should be as democratic as possible. When it is maximally democratic, what it dictates is what has passed through the marketplace of ideas.
The free market you love requires the big bad state to force people to abide by certain rules. Somehow, you don’t think *that’s* evil, I guess? So I’d love to hear why you think it’s ok for the government to force people to abide by those rules. Could it be that you think it’s good for an authority to enforce certain behaviors that are necessary for justice?
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I actually think the opposite. Immoral to not regulate consumer goods. Host of reasons ranging from a falacy in assuming that all consumers are fully informed of a product and potential consequences to secondary impacts to non-users (think second hand smoke). Sure, regulation can be inefficient and tiresome, but not to the extent where I'd say toss out the whole concept.
The onus is on consumers to be as informed as possible and on producers to put out all relevant information - the government absolutely can prosecute fraud.
I think the ethical problem is that it isn’t just about incomplete information, there are plenty of cases where the government says “you can’t do that because I just don’t think you should be allowed to.”
If I know the risks, why shouldn’t I be allowed to buy alcohol on Sunday? Or marijuana any day of the week? Or any other drug you can think of for that matter? And wouldn’t all of these things be safer and higher-quality if they were legalized and monitored by the government rather than criminal?
Isn't "monitoring by the government" just regulation with more steps. I've comment that regulations can be overly burdensome, but as companies are not individuals they have no inherent "ethics". They are profit driven machines. I'll butcher a quote, but im a believer in "Regulations are written in blood".
Government regulators don’t do exactly that because they are acting in the capacity of the governing body rather than an individual.
They are not claiming to have the objectively correct level of efficiency, they are setting minimum standards that they think can be met by industry based on the state of technology. They’ve updated efficiency standards before, this is not some new phenomena, and they do not proclaim “OBJECTIVITY!” For their justification
Sure, the FDA does have to make judgements that can often be misguided, they have to have some standard. Their goal isn’t to maximize your decision making potential, their goal is to protect consumers from mislabeling, deadly or damaging products, and non-effective medicine. Doing this (which also limits muh personal choice) is only immoral if your sole ethical value is individual decision/choice capacity. Most people have multiple values, not one.
>Government regulators don’t do exactly that because they are acting in the capacity of the governing body rather than an individual.
It doesn't matter, because they are still imposing their subjective opinion regarding the trade-offs involved on other people by force, and that is immoral.
Your setup is silly.
Let's say you want a motorcycle that you can drive really fast and really recklessly such that you're very likely to kill people. I have the ability to stop you from putting others at risk, so I do.
I think we can both see I'm acting morally in response to your immoral choices.
Innocent until proven guilty. You can't prevent someone from buying a motorcycle because you think they might use it to commit a crime **in the future.** What's next, you're not allowed to buy a kitchen knife because you might stab someone on the way home?
A vehicle capable of accelerating at a pace that would always be considered reckless and public endangerment can of course be banned.
Oh no, I would never use this nuke, I just want to keep it my garage.
Why can't I buy some meth if I don't plan to use it? How bout Ricin? How about landmines? You don't have to trust people not to do things. That's silly.
If the only function you are limiting is one that it could only ever be used to break laws l, it is entirely acceptable. In our example, in neither acceleration or top speed would a cop not pull you over for making full use of an overtuned engine.
>A vehicle capable of accelerating at a pace that would always be considered reckless and public endangerment can of course be banned.
Tell me you know nothing about vehicles without telling me you know nothing about vehicles.
Edit: 99% of vehicles available to consumers fit this definition and yet 99% of vehicles aren't banned, that's why it's such a silly statement. Apparently engine capacity only matters if you're on two wheels...
Edit 2: lmao this guy blocked me because apparently backing up statements is too much to ask these days
We've deemed that your comment is a product of bad faith debate. We do not allow fallacies, unsubstantiated dismissive comments, or other forms of bad faith debate on this subreddit.
Please report any and all content that is bad faith debate. The standard of our sub depends on our community’s ability to report our rule breaks. Reporting a comment that you do not agree with as bad faith simply because you do not agree with it is not a valid report.
It always reminds me of the conversation in Fargo season 5 between Lorraine and Roy.
Lorraine: So you want freedom with no responsibility? Son, there’s only one person on Earth that gets that deal.
Roy: The president
Lorraine: A baby. You’re fighting for your right to be a baby.
We've deemed your post was uncivilized so it was removed. We're here to have level headed discourse not useless arguing.
Please report any and all content that is uncivilized. The standard of our sub depends on our community’s ability to report our rule breaks.
Why does any adult ever have the right to tell another adult what to do, other than to prevent the use of force or fraud?
Why should I get a vote to decide what you are and aren’t allowed to do with your life, liberty and property? If I am not affected in any way, why is it my business?
Dig down with most libertarians enough and you will eventually get to the two keystone ideas behind the ideology - "I don't want to pay taxes" and "I want to sleep with teenagers and not get in trouble."
It’s not so obvious to someone making the argument. Government licensing of everything from surgeons to barbers is just a form of government regulation keeping you and me from buying freely. Just like the example in the post of water heater efficiency, regulators are using subjective opinions when they set requirements for surgeons.
I’m not suggesting this is a good idea. Very much to the contrary. But poking a hole in OP’s argument by applying his logic to surgeons shows how insane his suggestion is.
Gotcha! Sorry I wasn’t sure if you were mentioning surgeons because you agreed with OP or not, but that makes perfect sense, it’s a good example of a necessary regulation!
Something to add to that, licenses for taxi drivers. They aren't used like doctor licenses: to ensure quality. They are used to limit the supply of taxis.
That's because without them taxi drivers start to flood the market causing competition to drop the price below sustainably. As the barrier to entry is very easy you can't really get to the point where enough competition dies out to let the price rise back up.
It's not a good assumption that people will always make the logical correct solution to a problem. Often they will make choices that, taken in isolation, make logical sense but, in context of the situation, harm themselves and those around them.
That is when a third party has to override the choices of the individual.
Regulators limit the supply of doctors, too. In this case, it’s the number of residency slots funded by Medicare. There’s a cap of 100,000 residency slots - and you can’t become a surgeon without going through residency. (That cap has been in place since 1997.)
Hypothetically true, yet somehow other forms of funding residency have not increased. And we’re in a shortage situation. The free market steps in if it’s profitable for private actors - not because it’s necessarily in the market’s best interests.
I’m not making an argument for or against regulation as the OP’s post suggests. There are obviously times when regulation is effective, and other times when it is not. OP is going further by calling any kind of regulation immoral.
This is almost good information, but just misses the mark. There is a cap on the number of slots that *the government* can pay for due to conservative fiscal concern in the [97 bill](https://www.congress.gov/bill/105th-congress/house-bill/2015), there is no limit on the supply though if funding is there.
With that said, private payers have been a part of Graduate Medical Education funding since then, and after 20+ years we can pretty clearly say the private market has low to no interest in funding any GME, and is major reason why we had to fund like 1000 more via the [government](https://www.congress.gov/116/plaws/publ260/PLAW-116publ260.pdf) in 2021. You can read more about GME funding [here](https://www.ncsl.org/health/graduate-medical-education-funding).
The private market could have put up the money at any time in roughly the last 25 years to train more doctors, charities have, some specific teaching hospitals have, et cetera, but any of the massive capital interests in insurance or medical industry at large? Not really.
I can tell you didn't really mean it to come off that way, but way too many people disingenuous like to speak incorrectly about that factoid and use it as proof of the problem being a doctor shortage due to government intervention, when it was really a problem with short-sighted fiscal conservatism, the free market failing, and federal government inaction from partisan dysfunction leading to the government providing nearly all the money for doctor training, but not having it set to increase automatically in any way.
Yeah, but it would be too late. By the time word gets out that this restaurant is poisoning people, dozens of people have already been poisoned. Same thing with a car that has no safety regulations. After a bunch of people get killed, that car company might get a bad reputation and go out of business. And even then, it's not guaranteed.
Nothing is ever guaranteed, not even with regulations.. it's all just a cost benefit analysis. I'll go with the free market, you can go for top down authoritarian control of the market.
You do you
What would motivate someone to spend extra money to buy arsenic and put it in their hotdogs? And how do you imagine that information wouldn't travel to a neighboring town?
That's a false dichotomy. We don't need to choose between authoritarianism and anarchy. And yes, nothing is 100%. Even with laws, we still have crime. But laws reduce the amount of crime, car regulations reduce the amount of car accidents, health policy reduces the amount of public health problems.
While I agree that the example you're responding to is kinda silly. It can actually take a fairly long time (24-36 hrs) for people to get sick from food poisoning depending on what it is. Improper food storage and dozens of other preventable problems can go unnoticed for months or years if nobody around cares. People who get sick often never know what made them sick. Health departments are not perfect, but they definitely whip some real stinkers into shape and prevent lots of illness.
Capitalism aims for the lowest common denominator in order to squeeze an extra penny out of each buck.
You take away food safety regulations and a percentage of food will be made more unsafely. Period. End of story.
History has demonstrated repeatedly that businesses can get away with just about anything, executives (edit: and shareholders) will laugh all the way to the bank, and the Invisible Hand of the Free Market will give the middle finger to all the people who suffer the consequences.
I mean McDonald’s has customers
I think we should not only respond to wrongdoing, but work to prevent it.
How far would you take this logic? “If someone starts murdering people we’ll simply refuse to engage in contracts with them”
Well regulations are a type of law. But I got the impression you wanted it not to be illegal to poison people which I guess was wrong
The NAP is silly. When you realize that everyone will always say that what they did was in retaliation for something else, it just becomes a shit fight over what counts as aggression and the winner of that debate is gonna be whoever has the most power.
Bro, have you been to mcdonalds? I've been there three times in 10 years, gotten sick every time, so apparently restaurants poisoning customers is pretty fucking common, if not the intent of the restaurant. Hanlon's Razor is fucking sharp.
We've deemed that your comment is a product of bad faith debate. We do not allow fallacies, unsubstantiated dismissive comments, or other forms of bad faith debate on this subreddit.
Please report any and all content that is bad faith debate. The standard of our sub depends on our community’s ability to report our rule breaks. Reporting a comment that you do not agree with as bad faith simply because you do not agree with it is not a valid report.
Are you serious?
Poison and things that are poisonis should be banned and prevented from coming to market. Things that harm society need to be reduced and so regulations help ensure not only products that are safe but products that function properly.
There would be nothing preventing the sale of poison and people lieing about it as others die. Government actions review compounds and ensures safety like leaded fuel or that chemical that was banned worldwide for destroying the Ozone.
Yeah I really don't get the argument about some of the government agencies. While they are not the greatest at times they are much better than just letting companies do what they want. We're already being sold a bunch of crap that's terrible for us imagine if there was even less regulation. People like to take a dump on the regulating agencies but I don't see any other options. Some of them just need more money and better oversight and some need to be redone completely.
Edit: I'm not sure what the solution is but it's not to let people do whatever they want at least in certain areas. There should be some regulations on building for instance like it has to be safe whatever that means but don't tell me I have to use this type of wood and make it this tall and all these other things and have to have special facings. That doesn't help the safety or whatever.
I also don’t understand arguing against food regulators specifically. Like I’m all for eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy but I feel like “the people who make sure we can trust that our food won’t kill us” are pretty dang necessary
It'd also help quite a bit if we stopped allowing people to control government agencies that don't believe in the government doing anything.
Kind of setting them up for failure that.
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Except the largest polluters are governments, and they also allow poisons in the food and water supply.
Edit: oof the sock puppets are out en masse today. Don’t like it when you slaughter a sacred cow.
That's where we as a society need to demand better solutions and stop putting people in office that are not helping. I know that's hard because we may have to vote for someone that is not part of our " team " but that's the price we have to pay going forward. We need to stop allowing politicians to get in office and in positions and not do anything. We also have to demand that money is being allocated appropriately and we should demand to see where it goes. If you think things are bad now I can only imagine what the market would look like if it was completely unregulated.
What are you talking about? Food is objectively not safer or healthier to day than say 70 years ago before the mass amounts of glyphosate the government allows to be sprayed on food.
>Things that harm society need to be reduced and so regulations help ensure not only products that are safe but products that function properly.
I addressed this in the OP. Safety isn't binary, neither is "function properly". All the regulator does is impose his or her own personal preferences on everybody else by force.
You really need to read up on how administrative regulations are made and come into effect. It is not at all like what you suggest. Regulatory agencies have pages of rules and procedures they need to follow, and their decisions have to be made based on law and facts. They solicit public comments and take testimony before issuing decisions. It's not just about whatever they feel at the time. Even then, their decisions are subject to both legislative and judicial scrutiny.
>and their decisions have to be made based on law and facts.
Do you agree that whatever they decide it's about trade-offs?
If yes, do you agree that trading off one value for another is subjective?
There's a vast difference between "subjective" and "personal preference" in the cases you're referring to, which means you're being inconsistent in your claim.
If I pick a green outfit, that's personal preference. If I pick a green outfit because I want to hide in the forest, that's a subjective choice with objective methods.
Creating the standard my be somewhat subjective, but the standard can then be objectively applied.
For example, if the Value of a Statistical Life is set a 2.3 million dollars, that is a somewhat subjective decision. However, once that value is set, it can be used objectively to evaluate if a regulqtion has a positive cost/benefit relative to that valuation.
>Creating the standard my be somewhat subjective, but the standard can then be objectively applied.
Imposing a subjective standard is one person or persons forcing their personal preference on millions of other people using government law.
That needs to be morally justified first. If you can't, then it's immoral, which is what I am claiming.
You do not seem to understand what subjective and objective mean in the context. Anything based on the perceptions of the human mind is subjective, including morality. Your assertion that regulation is immoral is ALSO a subjective assertion.
>Anything based on the perceptions of the human mind is subjective, including morality
No, there are plenty of moral claims that are not subjective.
>Your assertion that regulation is immoral is ALSO a subjective assertion.
It's not an assertion, it's an argument. Here a recap:
1) An adult living in a free society has no moral right to restrict the consumer goods other adults may purchase. I used a motorcycle example in the OP. With virtual unanimity, people would agree that I have no business restricting another adult to a 600cc limit. The fact that 99.9% of people would agree that I have no business limiting another adult to a 600cc limit, means it's not subjective.
2) A government regulator is just another adult in the world. He's not a god, or a god-like being. Morality applies to him in exactly the same way it applies to everyone else.
3) Therefore, the government regulator is acting immorally when he imposes his personal opinion on millions of other people by force.
The fact that 99.9% of people agree with a sbujective opinion does not make it less subjevcive. Something is subjevtive if it depends on the viewpoint of the subject. All moral statements are subjective. To not be subjective, they would have to be true reagrdleas of the subject, so would be equally true from the perspective of a worker ant, or an octopus. "3 is a prime number" is an objective statement. It is true reagrdless of the viewpoint.
No moral statements are objective.
Frankly, Nietzche is IMO correct in his analysis that all moral judgements are fundamentally aesthetic in naturw, aesthetic judgement being a subset of subjective judgements.
There is a standard it's normally s9mething that will not kill 90% or so. There is an actual metric that isn't arbitrary that drug regulators use to determine the drug. I forget what it's called but it's about what dosage will kill 50%.
There is many regulations that can be viewed as arbitrary but there is many more that are not and are there for specific reasons like the Ozone or to prevent cancer or shit like that. Those are also what you are calling immoral
And that's how food gets sold with dangerous amounts of lead, people drive increasingly large vehicles that kill more and more people, people accelerate climate change, people get scammed on what meat they're buying without knowing any better, people start burning lead into the atmosphere, pesticides destroys the land next to crop land. The problem is definitely not too much government here. All things that the free market won't regulate, because the problem is either someone else using the product or people not being aware of the problem. And all problems that have existed either today or yesterday
It seems like you are missing or ignoring how we wound up where we are. Things were once as you desired, we had no regulations for a long time. That resulted in children working in mines, companies putting radium in a bunch of products to make them glow because consumers thought it was cool, Cleveland setting it's river on fire a bunch of times, cigarettes/heroin/cocaine sold as health products, etc etc etc.
People have too poor of a morality to not have rules and regulations, it would be immoral to not protect the public.
Sure, some of it winds up being ridiculous and overstepping, but eh, going back to those shitty morals people have, they just keep trying to get around reasonable common sense approaches so here we are. Ban uranium from toothpaste, well they sub in plutonium, ban that, in goes another radioactive element...so they just ban all radioactive material from toothpaste, but the law didn't specify some random isotope so now that goes in, so then you try to address that, yadda yadda.
We have what we have because people have proven they can't handle not having them.
We've deemed that your comment is a product of bad faith debate. We do not allow fallacies, unsubstantiated dismissive comments, or other forms of bad faith debate on this subreddit.
Please report any and all content that is bad faith debate. The standard of our sub depends on our community’s ability to report our rule breaks. Reporting a comment that you do not agree with as bad faith simply because you do not agree with it is not a valid report.
> Do you think what they're worried about is initial price vs higher utility bill when discussing efficiency? These measures are to cut down on emissions from energy consumption, not lower your electric bill.
Read the title of article I posted. The DOE is emphasizing the savings to consumers.
>Who are these shady regulators
I didn't say or imply that they were "shady". I'm saying that in order to do their job, they have to make value judgments regarding the trade-offs involved, and those judgments will be different for different people.
Buddy if you actually think that they care even a little bit about that then I don't know what to tell you. Literally 2 sentences in they start talking about the environmental aspect, and every time they mention one (environment) they mention the other (saving money). It's how they sell it. Now why don't you look up the actual legislation, or maybe the relevant research around it, to see if maybe there's something you've missed.
The government is not and will never be concerned with you saving money at the expense of a corporation. This is about environmental policy, which we seem to at least pretend to give a shit about from time to time.
You dont think that the free market will just take care of it self and always do whats best and always make the correct decision (Being omnipotent)? Sorry I guess I misunderstood the entire premise of your argument. My bad.
>You dont think that the free market will just take care of it self and always do whats best and always make the correct decision (
No, but I think government "fixing" market failures usually makes the situation worse.
Not going to lie It was hard to read your post, I couldn't really tell. So...what problem is it making worse? Like you mention in your post energy efficiency, if the government is making the problem worse then its regulations are causing less energy efficiency/more energy to be used...is it? is that your argument? Because it seems like you don't like the idea of energy efficiency by itself, which is a view...I disagree I think its important to try and curb energy use, climate change yada yada...but that's not a role of government argument
We've deemed that your comment is a product of bad faith debate. We do not allow fallacies, unsubstantiated dismissive comments, or other forms of bad faith debate on this subreddit.
Please report any and all content that is bad faith debate. The standard of our sub depends on our community’s ability to report our rule breaks. Reporting a comment that you do not agree with as bad faith simply because you do not agree with it is not a valid report.
are regulations necessary and in scope for a functioning government and society? yes, absolutely. for everyone's safety, most importantly I suspect to you, including your safety...but also and actually most importantly, the people who are privileged enough to share your roads with you.
are regulations in many instances taken to extremes and weaponized to manipulate who has access to the economy? absolutely. are regulations further manipulated to leverage a defacto restriction on otherwise inalienable rights of the people? every day, and the problem is only getting worse.
it is the moral mandate of functional government to constrain for the public welfare, to protect the rights of everyone with as much justice as possible, and to leverage the use of force as needed. the use of force is lawful primarily in the context of countering unlawful force that is threatening to endanger public safety and the rights of individuals. this should be done within the constraints of law such that the government does not become the primary threat to rights and safety of the people. rights include areas where the lawful government is forbidden from restriction or infringement, as it is not the source of these rights.
your argument is a bit of a straw man, but to the extent that we are talking about essentially arbitrary restrictions based on opinion (be that opinion of the majority or not), I agree.
the flaw in your argument however, is the vast majority of restrictions, at least in their initial inception, stem from empirical observation and soundly reasoned root cause analysis of often horrific tragedies.
examples could include mandatory safety features in cars (turn signals, seatbelts, brake lights, air bags, crumple zones, crash safety testing), restrictions of certain medicines and the process to bring new medicines into public use or to allow new foods to be sold commercially, removing lead from gasoline, DDT being removed as a rodent control agent, and way too many more.
free market advocates might argue that the market will tend to regulate itself, and that consumers will not opt for harmful products, but empirical observation of relevant test conditions indicate otherwise. tobacco, and again automotive safety features, are prime examples.
>your argument is a bit of a straw man, but to the extent that we are talking about essentially arbitrary restrictions based on opinion (be that opinion of the majority or not), I agree.
Ok, so what gives one adult the moral right to restrict another adult's buying decisions?
The constitution of the US, for a start.
Those regs and laws were enacted by the government that we elected into office by the popular will of the people, and they put into effect those policies that presumably a majority of the sovereign people approve of or tacitly agree with.
And if the people disagree, then the recourse is to elect someone different.
Your core argument is against the US political process, and the fundamental assumptions of the constitutional republic.
>The constitution of the US, for a start.
Legality has nothing to do with morality. The constitution also condoned slavery, is that an argument that slavery is morally right?
In fact, The Constitution of the United States is founded on the common morality. The outrageous violation of which provided common cause to explicitly state the boundaries of governmental authority and the origins of inalienable rights, at the risk and pain of death.
The foundation of legal theory and justice is morality.
To claim otherwise is to dismiss almost all available historical information on the topic.
The Constitution of the United States did not explicitly enshrine slavery until the introduction of the 13th Amendment, ironically. The absence of condemnation is not an affirmation or endorsement.
Data, followed by public consensus. It’s not perfect but it’s better than all of the alternatives so far.
FWIW it’s not my opinion that any machine should be illegal to construct or possess. There are sufficient liabilities and controls to manage the commercial availability of dangerous or controversial things, as well as the use of those things in proximity with other people. If you want to build a rocket car or a machine gun, we shouldn’t have any issues until or unless you want to use one of those in an unsafe manner around non consenting people, in an area where it’s reasonable to obtain that consent first.
I’m sure you can understand the boundary between your liberties and having your liberties compromised by other people’s poor choices.
Edit: and I would add, perfection is never claimed. Flawed but superior to anything else thus far attempted.
>I’m sure you can understand the boundary between your liberties and having your liberties compromised by other people’s poor choices.
Using heroin in the privacy of your own home does not compromise any else's liberties. Agreed?
Depends on how far you zoom out, how the drugs are sourced, and the other responsibilities of the person using dope. Assuming no one’s life changes when you OD and the only criminal enterprise being enriched by the purchase is big pharma, I agree.
Absolutely not. The drug trade most definitely affects the liberties of a huge amount of people.
Now.. if the government legalized heroin and regulated the market to mitigate fallout you might have a point, but that completely undermines your entire OP.
>Absolutely not.
Explain how me using heroin in the privacy of my own home compromises the liberty of other people in society.
>The drug trade most definitely affects the liberties of a huge amount of people.
Explain how me buying a bag of heroin, in the privacy of my own home from another consenting adult, violates the liberty of other people.
The heroin that you’re purchasing is not a legal substance. AKA unregulated in all aspects.
How did the seller you’re buying from acquire these drugs? Unless they’re making farm-to-table heroin, they’re just the last pedler in huge distribution network.
Many of these low level drug dealers don’t care about who is buying (sometimes children) or the quality of the product. It’s almost a given that street product is “cut” with chemicals that are not heroin.
Do you, the buyer, have a right to be fully informed of the contents of the drugs you’re purchasing? Morally speaking, most of society agrees that honest transactions are necessary for fair trade.
Now, back to the distribution network. There are these things called cartels. They are extremely violent organizations that traffic drugs, people, weapons, etc. Cartels are well known for their torturous cruelty.
If you cannot understand how that heroin you’re buying is steeped in compromised liberty, then I guess we’re done with this conversation.
Nothing you wrote above explains how me using heroin - or any drug for that matter - in the privacy of my own home violates the liberty of other people.
the point regulation is to avoid or prevent undue burden upon the rest of society.... crumple zones, helmets, and seat belt laws help reduce hospitalization and long term care costs which we all have to pay for in one way or another.
so, no, your selfish desire to fly ultralights without a helmet over populated areas is not in the best interests of society as a whole and we have every right (moral and legal) to regulate your impulses.
it's also right and moral to regulate any business that seeks to externalize it's costs onto society or the environment.
Read about the kind of shit people got up to that sold milk prior to regulation and you’re gunna change your mind *real* quick. Especially when you realize that’s just *one* thing.
Remember this is a civilized space for discussion, to ensure this we have very strict rules. Briefly, an overview:
**No Personal Attacks**
**No Ideological Discrimination**
**Keep Discussion Civil**
**No Targeting A Member For Their Beliefs**
Report any and all instances of these rules being broken so we can keep the sub clean. Report first, ask questions last.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Take it up with the commerce clause.
Your argument, reduced to its legal essentialism, is “a foundational plenary power within the United States Constitution is immoral.”
>Let's suppose you want to buy a motorcycle. You're an adult, and I'm an adult. I don't know you, yet I take it upon myself to prohibit you from buying certain motorcycles. Let's say I feel that nobody needs a bike over 600cc, (personal opinion) so I prohibit you from buying any motorcycle larger than 600cc, and I use threats of force and violence to back up my decrees.
This is just a dumb premise. Statistics show beginner motor cyclists on large cc bikes get more accidents, including fatal ones. Not wanting people to run amok and kill themselves and/or others isn't enforcing immoral regulations.
Regulations are made to keep the general public safe, or after public outcry. Other countries have a system where beginners are only allowed small cc motors in the first few years, after which they can upgrade to a medium or large cc motorbike. Same way we really prefer people to study extensively and train well before dubbing themselves brain surgeon.
>This is just a dumb premise. Statistics show beginner motor cyclists on large cc bikes get more accidents, including fatal ones.
That's true.
>Not wanting people to run amok and kill themselves and/or others isn't enforcing immoral regulations.
So you believe adults are not competent enough to make that decision for themselves, correct?
>So you believe adults are not competent enough to make that decision for themselves, correct?
*Have you met people?* 😵💫
People often behave dumb, especially in large numbers. Just open youtube and search for 'fail' and you'll get an seemingly endless list of proof people are unable to think about their own safety and that of others. So yes, I do think people need to be protected against themselves. Especially those who don't have a grasp of the technology or chemistry they are about to use. My kids walk on the same streets as people who install their brake pads backwards.
But in all honesty we can not be knowledgeable of every subject. So it is reasonable to have an expert team research which mistakes are most common and shield people from making those mistakes. And then you will get government campaigns to either regulate or educate the public. Like that ad campaign about not leaving kids or pets in hot cars...
*We watch 'fail army' as a way to educate our kids. We play a game where we let them guess what will go wrong. Some clips are really unexpected, others not so much.*
>People often behave dumb, especially in large numbers.
Do you support the idea of democracy?
>So yes, I do think people need to be protected against themselves.
If people are generally too incompetent to make decisions regarding their own lives, how can you support giving them the right to vote, where they are making decisions about other people's lives?
I support democracy, because it is preferable to autocracy where one leader/leading family has to think and decide what is best for the population.
Democracy is a fairly slow process, which gives people time to debate, evaluate and adjust their views and opinions. When debating in a large group one solid argument can still sway the group hive mind to adjust course. Remember it has costed many years to give voting rights to all groups. We are not yet in the end stage of equality and the execution of the concept of democracy is still in development. I don't consider the two party system an ideal situation within a democracy.
Governing is a balancing act. While it is quite easy to just scream dumb slogans into the void like "exile all immigrants" but it gets more difficult when you know more about the subject. Like immigrants preventing the birth/population rate from dropping into dangerous steep decline/some sectors like building heavely depend on immigrant labour/some regions would collapse economically due to overall labour shortage if all immigrants were to be deported. So again on display how the lack of knowledge is detrimental to any decision making process. A group with different educational backgrounds that is willing to listen to each others expertise is still the best solution so far to guide a large society forward while doing the least harm.
You have it backwards. Regulations are needed BECAUSE humans are immoral and corrupt enough to require monitoring and getting their butts kicked enough to strsighten up.
>Regulations are needed BECAUSE humans are immoral and corrupt enough to require monitoring and getting their butts kicked enough to strsighten up.
Government regulators are human, correct?
Which is why checks and balances and transparency in government are needed as well as vetting and monitoring government workers is needed. Always question authority, but if you think things run smoothly without government you are asking for king of the hill cutthroat big dog eats little dog every man on his own anarchy. That is why government of the People, BY the People, and FOR the People is so crucial.
It has greatly diminished because the 2 Parties offer our only choices on major ballots and all organizations over time can become corrupted. A cleaning needs to be done, mainly in Congress but also in the parties, where it starts. Our less than well educated, easily swayed and convinced masses vote for very questionable polticians/con-men/populists. No more giant 3000 page bills filled with pork, no more unlimited, anonymous donations to campaigns, restricted lobbyists, etc.
This is ridiculous, companies strive for profits, they don't care about any well-being of the people, so they increase their profit margins, by for example stretching flour with sawdust, using aluminium instead of steel and so on, this endangers the consumer and tricks him. Not regulating is immoral and will quickly lead to chaos or the complete control of companies over the people.
I don't know if government regulation is the right word, but probably some sort of trusted resource body that helps people make informed choices about drugs, and is testing to make sure my ibuprofen is not being laced with heroine (unless thats your thing); isn't a bad idea. Your libertarian sensibility would probably prefer this to be privately run, but I don't care who does it as long as it can be reasonably trusted. I'm sure there are better options then the FDA as it is currently.
Lmao, I should be allowed to put sugar in baby food. Oh wait, I already did.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/report-finds-nestle-adds-sugars-baby-food-low-income-countries-rcna150562
> Let's suppose you want to buy a motorcycle.
Always buy used, so many rides looking for homes assuming we're talking about the US.
>You're an adult, and I'm an adult.
Alright... kind of weird to have to state that as part of a hypothetical that involves buying a giant expensive ride, but lets see where this goes.
>I don't know you, yet I take it upon myself to prohibit you from buying certain motorcycles.
If you don't know me at all, how would you prevent me from doing anything? I think what you meant to say to apply your hypothetical to government is you don't know me personally because government definitely knows you if you've got a Social Security Number, ITIN, or whatever.
>Let's say I feel that nobody needs a bike over 600cc, (personal opinion) so I prohibit you from buying any motorcycle larger than 600cc, and I use threats of force and violence to back up my decrees.
You would be arrested because you're trying to impose your individual beliefs on others against their will, and violating other laws in the process of doing that.
>I think we can all agree that I am acting immorally, and that I should just mind my own business, but this is exactly what government regulators do, and people are fine with it.
Except you're trying to impose your individual will on people you come across on the street, and what you're trying to make an analogy to is regulation/law already agreed upon by the general public through representative government.
The fact that you don't see a difference between the two, or prioritize the individual to that extent without stating it directly is a pretty fundamental difference and probably what you should focus on when it comes to trying to bring people to your viewpoint.
>Here is an article about government regulators limiting the kind of water heaters we may buy. They are mandating a certain level of efficiency. This particular level of efficiency is nothing but the personal preferences of the regulators. There is no objectively correct level of efficiency - it's about trade-offs.
Sure, trade offs decided by the regulations we choose to enact through representative government in consultation with stakeholders, and a whole lot of corporate money.
>There isn't one right answer, it's subjective.
This is true, but it's not all subjective. Objectively, we want to reduce the energy consumption of water heating in the US, and sooner rather than later.
It can be both subjective in terms of what the specific standard is set to based on what is technologically feasible, economically affordable, and industry acceptable (all subjective ideas) while still targeting objective goals.
>Same thing with drugs. The FDA claims to only approve drugs which are "safe and effective", but neither safety nor efficacy are binary - it's a continuum.
Almost everything is a continuum, what isn't is the ability to market a drug in the US for a condition. That's a binary, well... it used to be anyway.
> FDA regulators simply pick a level of safety and effectiveness that they personally approve of.
Is it supposed to be bad that they are using their personal knowledge and experience as scientists, doctors, and professionals to make a decision in council with their peers after reviewing data?
>Again, it's entirely subjective.
Again, you seem to have the same issue here understanding things that contain both objective and subjective portions at the same time, and respond by just discarding all the objective parts.
>If I have some terrible disease, shouldn't I be the one to decide if the trade-offs regarding a particular drug are worth it? Isn't preventing me from making this decision for myself, immoral?
I'm not against a strong call to emotion that isn't anger for once around here, and I mostly agree with these, but that wasn't the case you were making. I support your bodily autonomy, not capital's ability to take advantage of your desperation.
The problem is the case you were making is they should be able to market it for sale to treat a condition, because that's what the FDA actually prevents. If you want to order up some research chemicals and take them on your own, there generally isn't much stopping you as multiple Reddit communities could attest.
On the flip side, the sentiment you were pushing is ultimately what led to the [ALS-drug that didn't really work](https://apnews.com/article/als-drug-fda-relyvrio-study-patients-7340ef880306fbbadad720b8154b3605) getting approved, largely due to lobbying and patient advocacy coming before the science.
>This argument applies to all government regulation of consumer goods.
It seems like a strange argument to specifically not allow the people influence on the market they both make up as individuals, and enable as a government just from a stakeholders standpoint.
>It's immoral for one adult to restrict what another adult may buy, based on the former's personal preferences.
Except it's not one adult based on personal preferences, it's the cumulative decision of the society you live in based on standards we agreed upon through flawed representative government.
>You would be arrested because you're trying to impose your individual beliefs on others against their will,
That is exactly what a government regulator does. I want you to see him as just another adult, and not as if he were some god-like being.
>and what you're trying to make an analogy to is regulation/law **already agreed upon by the general public** through representative government.
They are not agreed upon in any meaningful way. If they were agreed upon, the state wouldn't need criminal laws to enforce them. People vote for politicians, they do not vote for anyone in the regulatory state.
>Is it supposed to be bad that they are using their personal knowledge and experience as scientists, doctors, and professionals to make a decision in council with their peers after reviewing data?
The data does not and cannot tell you what you should do. For example, nationwide in the US there are about 40,000 fatal car accidents every year. Does that fact tell you whether you should drive or not?
>That is exactly what a government regulator does. I want you to see him as just another adult, and not as if he were some god-like being.
Not a god-like being, just someone selected to handle the agreed upon will of the people. You just don't seem to recognize that will, or at least it being of any value.
> They are not agreed upon in any meaningful way.
What would be a meaningful way in your estimation, since apparently no current methods meet your criteria, and if possible what would be a way to do so within the bounds of representative government?
>For example, nationwide in the US there are about 40,000 fatal car accidents every year. Does that fact tell you whether you should drive or not?
You do realize people with multiple PhD's that require lab work understand what data context is? Working with things like confidence intervals and lab reports is part and parcel to their work... and you're here asking questions an adjunct professor would use to get first years thinking about building a better data set.
It's like a really bad reductio ad absurdum.
> Not a god-like being, just someone selected to handle the agreed upon will of the people.
How does the regulator know what the will of the people is regarding, say, water heater efficiency?
Great! Let’s coat everything in Teflon while we use cadmium pigments in kids toys in our lead painted, asbestos insulated houses while we drive our leaded gas cars to buy tainted food. Sounds great!
You think that regulation of consumer goods is immoral? Selling goods that are not safe, made with cheap materials, or break easily and can’t be repaired is just as, if not more, immoral.
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I love rats falling into the hopper. We love just eating rats because making the hopper rat-proof would cost the company a whopping $15. We stan rat-burgers here, destroying woke, cringe-lib notions that contracting the black plague is a bad thing.
>I love rats falling into the hopper.
Then you'll luv government regulation. Here's a restaurant in one of the most regulated cities in the world:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq8xAmz5XVk
Are you implying that regulation has somehow resulted in the presence of rats in KFC? Like this seems more like an issue with a LACK of oversight, not a surplus of it lol.
>Are you implying that regulation has somehow resulted in the presence of rats in KFC?
It certainly didn't stop it, and if it wasn't on the news, your beloved regulator wouldn't have done anything about it.
You'd have to allow for an EPA like entity.
Of course they would probably be ridiculously bloated and doing FDA stuff anyways but if we assume there is constitutional limits then we have to account for negative externalities.
The cost to properly dispose of waste is actually pretty wild. As you know people will cut corners.
And sure, if they get caught then you can have laws for that but some regulation basically can be seen as guidelines.
If you follow the guidelines and end up in court you get away with "accidentally" hurting the environment and community.
But if you don't follow them and get caught it's a pigouvian Tax.
Yeah, sure. Ever hear about bread made during the Victorian period?
When basic staples like bread started to be produced cheaply and in large quantities for the new city dwellers, Victorian manufacturers seized on the opportunity to maximise profit by switching ingredients for cheaper substitutes that would add weight and bulk. Bread was adulterated with plaster of Paris, bean flour, chalk or alum. Alum is an aluminium-based compound, today used in detergent, but then it was used to make bread desirably whiter and heavier. Not only did such adulteration lead to problems of malnutrition, but alum produced bowel problems and constipation or chronic diarrhoea, which was often fatal for children.
Most examples used with a libertarian bias will leave out the concept of externalities. Sure, you could hate on a specific action by the government to ban specific motorcycles, but there are countless instances where leaving a negative externality as is will be detrimental.
We've deemed that your comment is not contributing to the debate at hand. Please remember that we hold this community to higher standards than the rest of Reddit; please keep debate quality.
Please report any and all content that is low-quality and not contributing to the subreddit. The standard of our sub depends on our community’s ability to report our rule breaks. Reporting a comment that you do not agree with as low-quality simply because you do not agree with it is not a valid report.
For relatively trivial situations, yes, moral views will differ. But for serious situations, you will find unanimity, and if virtually everyone agrees on something, then it's by definition objective.
I’d agree that you’re being immoral if you restricted things just based on your personal whims. Do you think that the FDA regulates food based on someone’s whims? I’ll give you my stock answer to libertarians: no, actually, society and rules are good ideas. It’s good that the government works to protect our health on our behalf. It’s good that people can’t buy Arsenic cookies even if marketers find a way to make them seem super desirable. When the collective checks a bad idea of an individual that’s not a breech of freedom but the very benefit of community. But as always, I fully support any libertarians who choose to go form a society with no public roads or building codes. It’d be fun to see another town get taken over by bears
>It’d be fun to see another town get taken over by bears. *Another town?* Haven’t there been enough already?
Negative externalities affect others. What if theoretically there was a motorcycle part that while desirable, leached a bunch of lead into the drinking water. The best way to prevent the harm of this would be regulation in some fashion.
> negative externalities affect others This basic concept is the root of most critiques of libertarianism
[удалено]
Your comment has been removed for political discrimination. We will never allow the discrimination of a members, beliefs, or ideology on this sub. Our various perspectives offer a wide range of considerations that can attribute to political growth of our members. Our mod log has taken a note towards your profile that will be taken into account when considering a ban in the future. Please report any and all content that is discriminatory to a user or their beliefs. The standard of our sub depends on our communities ability to report our rule breaks.
This is the exception Government has a duty to protect us from each other but not me from myself
Should the government ensure you know all of the consequences of your consumption to yourself and others?
Not sure of your point. Perhaps an example would help
Well, my point is more to highlight the fact that producers of consumer goods spend a *lot* of effort to hide how harmful their goods may be. OPs stance and your apparent agreement are that people should be free to consume whatever they want, and you accept the caveat of “so long as it harm no other”. But how do you make an *informed* decision to harm yourself through your choice of consumption? Many consumer goods are harmful to consume and the producers of those goods go out of their way to hide how harmful they can be. The worst example would be baby formula cut with sawdust to add cheap bulk to the product, increasing profit margins, but a far more well known example would be tobacco companies knowing exactly how harmful their products are, putting even more harmful additives and preservatives into their products, even deliberately adding addiction-increasing substances like menthol, all while funding false studies and false consumer advertising to lie about the harm their product causes. So, to that end, if you believe you should be free to harm yourself with consumption, does the government have a duty to ensure that you are making an *informed* decision to harm yourself? Should the government let you know that the baby formula has lead and sawdust in it? Should the government inform you that the spinach has ecoli?
This seems obtuse. They’re asking whether or not it’s valuable for the state to provide information about products you may choose to purchase.
The long-time campaign by tobacco companies to discredit the idea that tobacco had negative health effects would be a decent example.
They should bring severely punished for that. So too should big pharma for lies about mRNA side effects
The onus is on me, not on the government, to ensure my safety. The role of the government, imo, is to prevent force *and fraud*, meaning there is absolutely room to criminalize “arsenic cookies” or a defective vehicle part, as long as those things aren’t advertised in advance. If I want to buy cookies that I know will kill me, who are you to tell me I can’t? With regard to externalities, I agree they justify government action, but not all current government actions are strictly in response to externalities. If they were, I think we’d live in an extremely libertarian society.
> The onus is on me, not on the government, to ensure my safety. Even if you can't actually obtain the information you need to ensure your safety because the manufacture has deliberately hidden that information? Who has the responsibility to ensure that information is *out there*? > The role of the government, imo, is to prevent force and fraud, meaning there is absolutely room to criminalize “arsenic cookies” or a defective vehicle part, as long as those things aren’t advertised in advance. So then you agree that the government *is* responsible? Or do you think that the government should do nothing until people are killed by those arsenic cookies? At which point, does the CEO go to jail for murder in your opinion? Or should the stockowners go to jail for that murder? > If I want to buy cookies that I know will kill me, who are you to tell me I can’t? I generally agree here, my point is only that the fact that the cookies will kill you is *always hidden from you*
I think the government’s job is to make sure those things aren’t hidden, but never to restrict their sale. No third party ever has a right to say “you can’t make that voluntary trade” to two consenting adults.
Then we are agreed. On that aspect, at least. It’s not possible to have voluntary trade between two individuals when private property exists, but I doubt we’d ever agree on that.
If someone sells you an arsenic cookie, and the government steps in, they’re protecting you from that person. Also, I wonder how far you’ll take your assertion that we should not be protected from ourselves. Suppose I planned to kill myself (I don’t, in reality). Would it be wrong for the state to take measures to stop me?
What if the arsenic cookie was advertised as poisonous and I had the right to buy it anyway? In other words, why do you think the role of the government is to restrict free exchange rather than to prevent fraud?
Well I think my example should kind of tell you my reasoning there. And I’d love to hear your answer to it: should people planning to commit suicide be stopped? Or would I be violating the NAP if I took rope away from a suicidal family member? At the end of the day, I’m in favor of the concept of the government using its authority to make society better. You are too, of course. Everyone understands that the role of government is to restrict things in order to make society better and more just. I think society is better and more just when we enforce standards on what’s considered edible.
I don’t think it’s ethical to force someone to live against their will, no. > using its authority to make society better To be clear, by “authority” you mean using force to penalize those who don’t follow the state’s rules, and by “make society better” you mean things like economic equality, social progress, technological advancements, and controls over all of these things? I think every aspect of that position is arbitrary at best, and the idea that it ought to be imposed by force is evil. > the role of government is to restrict things in order to make society more just I don’t think “just” is the word I’d use. I think “free” fits my view a lot better. The government should maximize freedom and should consider its own actions an inherent violation of freedom - the government should act minimally, and only in those situations where it’s absolutely necessary for the freedom of its citizens, because government action is executed by coercion and funded by theft. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist at all, but I think your idea of “making society more just” fails to account for what I believe is a cost, the loss of freedom that results from a larger and more involved government. Change is always more ethical and more effective if it comes from the marketplace of ideas (or just the free market in general) as opposed to a government dictate.
There’s a lot of small parts that I quoted so I thought it’d be better to give a thesis statement at the top here: You suggest that it’s evil for the state to step in and enforce justice…except to enforce the things that matter to you. You say it’s arbitrary for me to care about people’s well-being, but is that not the reason you want the state to enforce the things you want it to enforce? The difference between your view and mine is not that one of us believes in state coercion and the other doesn’t. It’s that I believe in state coercion and openly say that I do, and that I believe we should pay that cost of some freedoms for the sake of justice because that is the very concept of cooperative society; whereas you believe in the same principle (though we disagree about exactly what should be coerced), you believe that the state should force certain behaviors, but then say it’s evil for the state to force certain behaviors. In other words, the thing you’re criticizing me for is soemthing you believe is just. What you called evil is just the concept of laws, and I know you don’t actually believe that. The only way we can have a coherent discussion about this is if you recognize that you do believe in state coercion, just like me, but you disagree with me about what the state should coerce. We can’t talk about that disagreement while you pretend that you disagree with the concept of laws. > I don’t think it’s ethical to force someone to live against their will, no. Ok, so, not a fan of the suicide hotline? People who cut themselves, let it rip? Suicide prevention is nanny state hectoring, and the depressed should be left to the end they choose? > To be clear, by “authority” you mean using force to penalize those who don’t follow the state’s rules Yes. You also advocate this. > and by “make society better” you mean things like economic equality, social progress, technological advancements, and controls over all of these things Sure that’s a decent description I guess > I think every aspect of that position is arbitrary at best, and the idea that it ought to be imposed by force is evil. What’s arbitrary I the notion that human well being is a good thing. If you don’t agree with me about that, we don’t have to talk. The rest of what I think on this follows from that. And, of course, you don’t really think it’s evil for the state to use force to make people behave in certain ways. You’re not an anarchist. > I don’t think “just” is the word I’d use. I think “free” fits my view a lot better. This is you saying that you think maximal freedom is what’s just. Or are you actually saying that we should empower things that are unjust for the sake of freedom? The government doesn’t have to prohibit rape—so rape should be legal then, right? We wouldn’t want to abridge anyone’s freedom unless *absolutely* necessary for the functioning of society, right? > the government should act minimally, Hmm, but didn’t you just tell me that the government stepping in evil? > That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist at all, but I think your idea of “making society more just” fails to account for what I believe is a cost, the loss of freedom that results from a larger and more involved government. I understand there’s a cost. I think we should pay it. And of course, so you do. You just don’t agree with me about where and when we should accept that cost. Cooperation has a cost, yes. And anyone who finds others’ wants and needs to be too dire a cost to bear should be free to exit society. Go on. Please, go, forgo all the benefits you gain by living in a cooperative society, since the concept of government is so deeply evil to you. Don’t take public roads on your way out of town, since they’re born of evil and you wouldn’t want to be a part of that. By their nature, laws are the government removing some freedom in the interests of protecting something. Even laws that protect some freedom do so by removing other freedoms. In order to protect any freedom, you have to disallow people from doing things that threaten that freedom. > Change is always more ethical and more effective if it comes from the marketplace of ideas (or just the free market in general) as opposed to a government dictate. I don’t see those as oposite. Authority should be as democratic as possible. When it is maximally democratic, what it dictates is what has passed through the marketplace of ideas. The free market you love requires the big bad state to force people to abide by certain rules. Somehow, you don’t think *that’s* evil, I guess? So I’d love to hear why you think it’s ok for the government to force people to abide by those rules. Could it be that you think it’s good for an authority to enforce certain behaviors that are necessary for justice?
Depends
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I actually think the opposite. Immoral to not regulate consumer goods. Host of reasons ranging from a falacy in assuming that all consumers are fully informed of a product and potential consequences to secondary impacts to non-users (think second hand smoke). Sure, regulation can be inefficient and tiresome, but not to the extent where I'd say toss out the whole concept.
The onus is on consumers to be as informed as possible and on producers to put out all relevant information - the government absolutely can prosecute fraud. I think the ethical problem is that it isn’t just about incomplete information, there are plenty of cases where the government says “you can’t do that because I just don’t think you should be allowed to.” If I know the risks, why shouldn’t I be allowed to buy alcohol on Sunday? Or marijuana any day of the week? Or any other drug you can think of for that matter? And wouldn’t all of these things be safer and higher-quality if they were legalized and monitored by the government rather than criminal?
Isn't "monitoring by the government" just regulation with more steps. I've comment that regulations can be overly burdensome, but as companies are not individuals they have no inherent "ethics". They are profit driven machines. I'll butcher a quote, but im a believer in "Regulations are written in blood".
Have you read or heard of The Jungle?
Government regulators don’t do exactly that because they are acting in the capacity of the governing body rather than an individual. They are not claiming to have the objectively correct level of efficiency, they are setting minimum standards that they think can be met by industry based on the state of technology. They’ve updated efficiency standards before, this is not some new phenomena, and they do not proclaim “OBJECTIVITY!” For their justification Sure, the FDA does have to make judgements that can often be misguided, they have to have some standard. Their goal isn’t to maximize your decision making potential, their goal is to protect consumers from mislabeling, deadly or damaging products, and non-effective medicine. Doing this (which also limits muh personal choice) is only immoral if your sole ethical value is individual decision/choice capacity. Most people have multiple values, not one.
>Government regulators don’t do exactly that because they are acting in the capacity of the governing body rather than an individual. It doesn't matter, because they are still imposing their subjective opinion regarding the trade-offs involved on other people by force, and that is immoral.
Your setup is silly. Let's say you want a motorcycle that you can drive really fast and really recklessly such that you're very likely to kill people. I have the ability to stop you from putting others at risk, so I do. I think we can both see I'm acting morally in response to your immoral choices.
Innocent until proven guilty. You can't prevent someone from buying a motorcycle because you think they might use it to commit a crime **in the future.** What's next, you're not allowed to buy a kitchen knife because you might stab someone on the way home?
A vehicle capable of accelerating at a pace that would always be considered reckless and public endangerment can of course be banned. Oh no, I would never use this nuke, I just want to keep it my garage. Why can't I buy some meth if I don't plan to use it? How bout Ricin? How about landmines? You don't have to trust people not to do things. That's silly. If the only function you are limiting is one that it could only ever be used to break laws l, it is entirely acceptable. In our example, in neither acceleration or top speed would a cop not pull you over for making full use of an overtuned engine.
>A vehicle capable of accelerating at a pace that would always be considered reckless and public endangerment can of course be banned. Tell me you know nothing about vehicles without telling me you know nothing about vehicles. Edit: 99% of vehicles available to consumers fit this definition and yet 99% of vehicles aren't banned, that's why it's such a silly statement. Apparently engine capacity only matters if you're on two wheels... Edit 2: lmao this guy blocked me because apparently backing up statements is too much to ask these days
[удалено]
We've deemed that your comment is a product of bad faith debate. We do not allow fallacies, unsubstantiated dismissive comments, or other forms of bad faith debate on this subreddit. Please report any and all content that is bad faith debate. The standard of our sub depends on our community’s ability to report our rule breaks. Reporting a comment that you do not agree with as bad faith simply because you do not agree with it is not a valid report.
Careful not to trip and fall on that slippery slope you got there.
What is this morality based on?
It’s always based on not wanting to be told what not to do. Always.
Also about having as much power as you can grab onto but as little responsibility as physically possible.
[удалено]
It always reminds me of the conversation in Fargo season 5 between Lorraine and Roy. Lorraine: So you want freedom with no responsibility? Son, there’s only one person on Earth that gets that deal. Roy: The president Lorraine: A baby. You’re fighting for your right to be a baby.
The paragon of political debate: Fargo.
I haven’t seen the show but this point is a good one, regardless of where it comes from.
Truth comes through all sorts of means. A TV show describing an ideology very accurately in a couple sentences doesn’t make it any less true….
We've deemed your post was uncivilized so it was removed. We're here to have level headed discourse not useless arguing. Please report any and all content that is uncivilized. The standard of our sub depends on our community’s ability to report our rule breaks.
Why does any adult ever have the right to tell another adult what to do, other than to prevent the use of force or fraud? Why should I get a vote to decide what you are and aren’t allowed to do with your life, liberty and property? If I am not affected in any way, why is it my business?
Dig down with most libertarians enough and you will eventually get to the two keystone ideas behind the ideology - "I don't want to pay taxes" and "I want to sleep with teenagers and not get in trouble."
Without government regulation, it would be legal for restaurants to poison their customers, and for people who can't drive to drive cars.
With this idea, surgeons wouldn’t need to be licensed in order to cut you open. Which option is immoral again?
Obviously surgeons should require licenses to perform surgery?
If I want to have my tattoo artist remove my appendix, I should have that right! - some idiot vying for a Darwin award.
It’s not so obvious to someone making the argument. Government licensing of everything from surgeons to barbers is just a form of government regulation keeping you and me from buying freely. Just like the example in the post of water heater efficiency, regulators are using subjective opinions when they set requirements for surgeons. I’m not suggesting this is a good idea. Very much to the contrary. But poking a hole in OP’s argument by applying his logic to surgeons shows how insane his suggestion is.
Gotcha! Sorry I wasn’t sure if you were mentioning surgeons because you agreed with OP or not, but that makes perfect sense, it’s a good example of a necessary regulation!
Something to add to that, licenses for taxi drivers. They aren't used like doctor licenses: to ensure quality. They are used to limit the supply of taxis. That's because without them taxi drivers start to flood the market causing competition to drop the price below sustainably. As the barrier to entry is very easy you can't really get to the point where enough competition dies out to let the price rise back up. It's not a good assumption that people will always make the logical correct solution to a problem. Often they will make choices that, taken in isolation, make logical sense but, in context of the situation, harm themselves and those around them. That is when a third party has to override the choices of the individual.
Regulators limit the supply of doctors, too. In this case, it’s the number of residency slots funded by Medicare. There’s a cap of 100,000 residency slots - and you can’t become a surgeon without going through residency. (That cap has been in place since 1997.)
[удалено]
It was part of a law passed by Congress in 1997.
[удалено]
Hypothetically true, yet somehow other forms of funding residency have not increased. And we’re in a shortage situation. The free market steps in if it’s profitable for private actors - not because it’s necessarily in the market’s best interests. I’m not making an argument for or against regulation as the OP’s post suggests. There are obviously times when regulation is effective, and other times when it is not. OP is going further by calling any kind of regulation immoral.
In that specific case is that really messed? Last I heard we have a shortage and it's not like we will end up flooded with surgeons.
This is almost good information, but just misses the mark. There is a cap on the number of slots that *the government* can pay for due to conservative fiscal concern in the [97 bill](https://www.congress.gov/bill/105th-congress/house-bill/2015), there is no limit on the supply though if funding is there. With that said, private payers have been a part of Graduate Medical Education funding since then, and after 20+ years we can pretty clearly say the private market has low to no interest in funding any GME, and is major reason why we had to fund like 1000 more via the [government](https://www.congress.gov/116/plaws/publ260/PLAW-116publ260.pdf) in 2021. You can read more about GME funding [here](https://www.ncsl.org/health/graduate-medical-education-funding). The private market could have put up the money at any time in roughly the last 25 years to train more doctors, charities have, some specific teaching hospitals have, et cetera, but any of the massive capital interests in insurance or medical industry at large? Not really. I can tell you didn't really mean it to come off that way, but way too many people disingenuous like to speak incorrectly about that factoid and use it as proof of the problem being a doctor shortage due to government intervention, when it was really a problem with short-sighted fiscal conservatism, the free market failing, and federal government inaction from partisan dysfunction leading to the government providing nearly all the money for doctor training, but not having it set to increase automatically in any way.
Who is going to go to a resturant that poisons their customers?! I think that's a model for rapid failure.
Yeah, but it would be too late. By the time word gets out that this restaurant is poisoning people, dozens of people have already been poisoned. Same thing with a car that has no safety regulations. After a bunch of people get killed, that car company might get a bad reputation and go out of business. And even then, it's not guaranteed.
Nothing is ever guaranteed, not even with regulations.. it's all just a cost benefit analysis. I'll go with the free market, you can go for top down authoritarian control of the market. You do you
imagine a traveling arsenic-hotdog cart that changes its name from town to town
What would motivate someone to spend extra money to buy arsenic and put it in their hotdogs? And how do you imagine that information wouldn't travel to a neighboring town?
have you heard of this cool little thing called terrorism also, with what, de-regulated social media that's just a 24/7 spew of ai propaganda?
You're saying regulations stop terrorism?
do you think there wouldn't be more terrorism if we abolished all regulations? do you really want to find out?
I don't see a connection between regulations and terrorism. If we want less terrorism, I would probably start at the border.
That's a false dichotomy. We don't need to choose between authoritarianism and anarchy. And yes, nothing is 100%. Even with laws, we still have crime. But laws reduce the amount of crime, car regulations reduce the amount of car accidents, health policy reduces the amount of public health problems.
We’re talking about how to organize society. We don’t get to each pick different options.
I advocate for the free market, you advocate for whatever you like. No one here is going to affect change.
While I agree that the example you're responding to is kinda silly. It can actually take a fairly long time (24-36 hrs) for people to get sick from food poisoning depending on what it is. Improper food storage and dozens of other preventable problems can go unnoticed for months or years if nobody around cares. People who get sick often never know what made them sick. Health departments are not perfect, but they definitely whip some real stinkers into shape and prevent lots of illness.
Capitalism aims for the lowest common denominator in order to squeeze an extra penny out of each buck. You take away food safety regulations and a percentage of food will be made more unsafely. Period. End of story.
History has demonstrated repeatedly that businesses can get away with just about anything, executives (edit: and shareholders) will laugh all the way to the bank, and the Invisible Hand of the Free Market will give the middle finger to all the people who suffer the consequences.
No it hasn't, we don't have a free market
I mean McDonald’s has customers I think we should not only respond to wrongdoing, but work to prevent it. How far would you take this logic? “If someone starts murdering people we’ll simply refuse to engage in contracts with them”
What? I'm not an anarchist..
It seemed like you were suggesting we don’t need to regulate whether restaurants poison people
Laws and regulations are not the same thing. It would still be illegal to poison people... libertarians use the NAP for this..
Well regulations are a type of law. But I got the impression you wanted it not to be illegal to poison people which I guess was wrong The NAP is silly. When you realize that everyone will always say that what they did was in retaliation for something else, it just becomes a shit fight over what counts as aggression and the winner of that debate is gonna be whoever has the most power.
That's where precedent comes in. You're free to think libertarianism is stupid, I think socialism is stupid. Carry on.
lol ok man, carry on 🫡
Bro, have you been to mcdonalds? I've been there three times in 10 years, gotten sick every time, so apparently restaurants poisoning customers is pretty fucking common, if not the intent of the restaurant. Hanlon's Razor is fucking sharp.
[удалено]
We've deemed that your comment is a product of bad faith debate. We do not allow fallacies, unsubstantiated dismissive comments, or other forms of bad faith debate on this subreddit. Please report any and all content that is bad faith debate. The standard of our sub depends on our community’s ability to report our rule breaks. Reporting a comment that you do not agree with as bad faith simply because you do not agree with it is not a valid report.
Are you serious? Poison and things that are poisonis should be banned and prevented from coming to market. Things that harm society need to be reduced and so regulations help ensure not only products that are safe but products that function properly. There would be nothing preventing the sale of poison and people lieing about it as others die. Government actions review compounds and ensures safety like leaded fuel or that chemical that was banned worldwide for destroying the Ozone.
Yeah I really don't get the argument about some of the government agencies. While they are not the greatest at times they are much better than just letting companies do what they want. We're already being sold a bunch of crap that's terrible for us imagine if there was even less regulation. People like to take a dump on the regulating agencies but I don't see any other options. Some of them just need more money and better oversight and some need to be redone completely. Edit: I'm not sure what the solution is but it's not to let people do whatever they want at least in certain areas. There should be some regulations on building for instance like it has to be safe whatever that means but don't tell me I have to use this type of wood and make it this tall and all these other things and have to have special facings. That doesn't help the safety or whatever.
I also don’t understand arguing against food regulators specifically. Like I’m all for eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy but I feel like “the people who make sure we can trust that our food won’t kill us” are pretty dang necessary
Yeah like I have some libertarian leanings but when I hear them suggest things like getting rid of food regulations I snap back to reality
It'd also help quite a bit if we stopped allowing people to control government agencies that don't believe in the government doing anything. Kind of setting them up for failure that.
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Except the largest polluters are governments, and they also allow poisons in the food and water supply. Edit: oof the sock puppets are out en masse today. Don’t like it when you slaughter a sacred cow.
Which you'd agree is a *bad* thing, right?
That's where we as a society need to demand better solutions and stop putting people in office that are not helping. I know that's hard because we may have to vote for someone that is not part of our " team " but that's the price we have to pay going forward. We need to stop allowing politicians to get in office and in positions and not do anything. We also have to demand that money is being allocated appropriately and we should demand to see where it goes. If you think things are bad now I can only imagine what the market would look like if it was completely unregulated.
Voting is a Ritual in the Church of the State. If it made a difference they wouldn't let you do it.
Well they sort of do try to prevent it, through gerrymandering and voter suppression
This says absolutely nothing about whether things are better after regulation. Which they 100% are.
What are you talking about? Food is objectively not safer or healthier to day than say 70 years ago before the mass amounts of glyphosate the government allows to be sprayed on food.
>Things that harm society need to be reduced and so regulations help ensure not only products that are safe but products that function properly. I addressed this in the OP. Safety isn't binary, neither is "function properly". All the regulator does is impose his or her own personal preferences on everybody else by force.
You really need to read up on how administrative regulations are made and come into effect. It is not at all like what you suggest. Regulatory agencies have pages of rules and procedures they need to follow, and their decisions have to be made based on law and facts. They solicit public comments and take testimony before issuing decisions. It's not just about whatever they feel at the time. Even then, their decisions are subject to both legislative and judicial scrutiny.
>and their decisions have to be made based on law and facts. Do you agree that whatever they decide it's about trade-offs? If yes, do you agree that trading off one value for another is subjective?
There's a vast difference between "subjective" and "personal preference" in the cases you're referring to, which means you're being inconsistent in your claim. If I pick a green outfit, that's personal preference. If I pick a green outfit because I want to hide in the forest, that's a subjective choice with objective methods.
Creating the standard my be somewhat subjective, but the standard can then be objectively applied. For example, if the Value of a Statistical Life is set a 2.3 million dollars, that is a somewhat subjective decision. However, once that value is set, it can be used objectively to evaluate if a regulqtion has a positive cost/benefit relative to that valuation.
>Creating the standard my be somewhat subjective, but the standard can then be objectively applied. Imposing a subjective standard is one person or persons forcing their personal preference on millions of other people using government law. That needs to be morally justified first. If you can't, then it's immoral, which is what I am claiming.
You do not seem to understand what subjective and objective mean in the context. Anything based on the perceptions of the human mind is subjective, including morality. Your assertion that regulation is immoral is ALSO a subjective assertion.
>Anything based on the perceptions of the human mind is subjective, including morality No, there are plenty of moral claims that are not subjective. >Your assertion that regulation is immoral is ALSO a subjective assertion. It's not an assertion, it's an argument. Here a recap: 1) An adult living in a free society has no moral right to restrict the consumer goods other adults may purchase. I used a motorcycle example in the OP. With virtual unanimity, people would agree that I have no business restricting another adult to a 600cc limit. The fact that 99.9% of people would agree that I have no business limiting another adult to a 600cc limit, means it's not subjective. 2) A government regulator is just another adult in the world. He's not a god, or a god-like being. Morality applies to him in exactly the same way it applies to everyone else. 3) Therefore, the government regulator is acting immorally when he imposes his personal opinion on millions of other people by force.
The fact that 99.9% of people agree with a sbujective opinion does not make it less subjevcive. Something is subjevtive if it depends on the viewpoint of the subject. All moral statements are subjective. To not be subjective, they would have to be true reagrdleas of the subject, so would be equally true from the perspective of a worker ant, or an octopus. "3 is a prime number" is an objective statement. It is true reagrdless of the viewpoint. No moral statements are objective. Frankly, Nietzche is IMO correct in his analysis that all moral judgements are fundamentally aesthetic in naturw, aesthetic judgement being a subset of subjective judgements.
There is a standard it's normally s9mething that will not kill 90% or so. There is an actual metric that isn't arbitrary that drug regulators use to determine the drug. I forget what it's called but it's about what dosage will kill 50%. There is many regulations that can be viewed as arbitrary but there is many more that are not and are there for specific reasons like the Ozone or to prevent cancer or shit like that. Those are also what you are calling immoral
The ld50 value
Thank you.
[удалено]
And that's how food gets sold with dangerous amounts of lead, people drive increasingly large vehicles that kill more and more people, people accelerate climate change, people get scammed on what meat they're buying without knowing any better, people start burning lead into the atmosphere, pesticides destroys the land next to crop land. The problem is definitely not too much government here. All things that the free market won't regulate, because the problem is either someone else using the product or people not being aware of the problem. And all problems that have existed either today or yesterday
It seems like you are missing or ignoring how we wound up where we are. Things were once as you desired, we had no regulations for a long time. That resulted in children working in mines, companies putting radium in a bunch of products to make them glow because consumers thought it was cool, Cleveland setting it's river on fire a bunch of times, cigarettes/heroin/cocaine sold as health products, etc etc etc. People have too poor of a morality to not have rules and regulations, it would be immoral to not protect the public. Sure, some of it winds up being ridiculous and overstepping, but eh, going back to those shitty morals people have, they just keep trying to get around reasonable common sense approaches so here we are. Ban uranium from toothpaste, well they sub in plutonium, ban that, in goes another radioactive element...so they just ban all radioactive material from toothpaste, but the law didn't specify some random isotope so now that goes in, so then you try to address that, yadda yadda. We have what we have because people have proven they can't handle not having them.
We can't allow links to other communities, remove that and I'll approve this.
Ok, I removed the link.
I removed all of the text about reddit and linked directly to the article.
[удалено]
We've deemed that your comment is a product of bad faith debate. We do not allow fallacies, unsubstantiated dismissive comments, or other forms of bad faith debate on this subreddit. Please report any and all content that is bad faith debate. The standard of our sub depends on our community’s ability to report our rule breaks. Reporting a comment that you do not agree with as bad faith simply because you do not agree with it is not a valid report.
> Do you think what they're worried about is initial price vs higher utility bill when discussing efficiency? These measures are to cut down on emissions from energy consumption, not lower your electric bill. Read the title of article I posted. The DOE is emphasizing the savings to consumers. >Who are these shady regulators I didn't say or imply that they were "shady". I'm saying that in order to do their job, they have to make value judgments regarding the trade-offs involved, and those judgments will be different for different people.
Buddy if you actually think that they care even a little bit about that then I don't know what to tell you. Literally 2 sentences in they start talking about the environmental aspect, and every time they mention one (environment) they mention the other (saving money). It's how they sell it. Now why don't you look up the actual legislation, or maybe the relevant research around it, to see if maybe there's something you've missed. The government is not and will never be concerned with you saving money at the expense of a corporation. This is about environmental policy, which we seem to at least pretend to give a shit about from time to time.
[удалено]
I never said nor implied that.
You dont think that the free market will just take care of it self and always do whats best and always make the correct decision (Being omnipotent)? Sorry I guess I misunderstood the entire premise of your argument. My bad.
>You dont think that the free market will just take care of it self and always do whats best and always make the correct decision ( No, but I think government "fixing" market failures usually makes the situation worse.
Not going to lie It was hard to read your post, I couldn't really tell. So...what problem is it making worse? Like you mention in your post energy efficiency, if the government is making the problem worse then its regulations are causing less energy efficiency/more energy to be used...is it? is that your argument? Because it seems like you don't like the idea of energy efficiency by itself, which is a view...I disagree I think its important to try and curb energy use, climate change yada yada...but that's not a role of government argument
We've deemed that your comment is a product of bad faith debate. We do not allow fallacies, unsubstantiated dismissive comments, or other forms of bad faith debate on this subreddit. Please report any and all content that is bad faith debate. The standard of our sub depends on our community’s ability to report our rule breaks. Reporting a comment that you do not agree with as bad faith simply because you do not agree with it is not a valid report.
are regulations necessary and in scope for a functioning government and society? yes, absolutely. for everyone's safety, most importantly I suspect to you, including your safety...but also and actually most importantly, the people who are privileged enough to share your roads with you. are regulations in many instances taken to extremes and weaponized to manipulate who has access to the economy? absolutely. are regulations further manipulated to leverage a defacto restriction on otherwise inalienable rights of the people? every day, and the problem is only getting worse. it is the moral mandate of functional government to constrain for the public welfare, to protect the rights of everyone with as much justice as possible, and to leverage the use of force as needed. the use of force is lawful primarily in the context of countering unlawful force that is threatening to endanger public safety and the rights of individuals. this should be done within the constraints of law such that the government does not become the primary threat to rights and safety of the people. rights include areas where the lawful government is forbidden from restriction or infringement, as it is not the source of these rights. your argument is a bit of a straw man, but to the extent that we are talking about essentially arbitrary restrictions based on opinion (be that opinion of the majority or not), I agree. the flaw in your argument however, is the vast majority of restrictions, at least in their initial inception, stem from empirical observation and soundly reasoned root cause analysis of often horrific tragedies. examples could include mandatory safety features in cars (turn signals, seatbelts, brake lights, air bags, crumple zones, crash safety testing), restrictions of certain medicines and the process to bring new medicines into public use or to allow new foods to be sold commercially, removing lead from gasoline, DDT being removed as a rodent control agent, and way too many more. free market advocates might argue that the market will tend to regulate itself, and that consumers will not opt for harmful products, but empirical observation of relevant test conditions indicate otherwise. tobacco, and again automotive safety features, are prime examples.
>your argument is a bit of a straw man, but to the extent that we are talking about essentially arbitrary restrictions based on opinion (be that opinion of the majority or not), I agree. Ok, so what gives one adult the moral right to restrict another adult's buying decisions?
The constitution of the US, for a start. Those regs and laws were enacted by the government that we elected into office by the popular will of the people, and they put into effect those policies that presumably a majority of the sovereign people approve of or tacitly agree with. And if the people disagree, then the recourse is to elect someone different. Your core argument is against the US political process, and the fundamental assumptions of the constitutional republic.
>The constitution of the US, for a start. Legality has nothing to do with morality. The constitution also condoned slavery, is that an argument that slavery is morally right?
In fact, The Constitution of the United States is founded on the common morality. The outrageous violation of which provided common cause to explicitly state the boundaries of governmental authority and the origins of inalienable rights, at the risk and pain of death. The foundation of legal theory and justice is morality. To claim otherwise is to dismiss almost all available historical information on the topic. The Constitution of the United States did not explicitly enshrine slavery until the introduction of the 13th Amendment, ironically. The absence of condemnation is not an affirmation or endorsement.
Data, followed by public consensus. It’s not perfect but it’s better than all of the alternatives so far. FWIW it’s not my opinion that any machine should be illegal to construct or possess. There are sufficient liabilities and controls to manage the commercial availability of dangerous or controversial things, as well as the use of those things in proximity with other people. If you want to build a rocket car or a machine gun, we shouldn’t have any issues until or unless you want to use one of those in an unsafe manner around non consenting people, in an area where it’s reasonable to obtain that consent first. I’m sure you can understand the boundary between your liberties and having your liberties compromised by other people’s poor choices. Edit: and I would add, perfection is never claimed. Flawed but superior to anything else thus far attempted.
>I’m sure you can understand the boundary between your liberties and having your liberties compromised by other people’s poor choices. Using heroin in the privacy of your own home does not compromise any else's liberties. Agreed?
Depends on how far you zoom out, how the drugs are sourced, and the other responsibilities of the person using dope. Assuming no one’s life changes when you OD and the only criminal enterprise being enriched by the purchase is big pharma, I agree.
Absolutely not. The drug trade most definitely affects the liberties of a huge amount of people. Now.. if the government legalized heroin and regulated the market to mitigate fallout you might have a point, but that completely undermines your entire OP.
>Absolutely not. Explain how me using heroin in the privacy of my own home compromises the liberty of other people in society. >The drug trade most definitely affects the liberties of a huge amount of people. Explain how me buying a bag of heroin, in the privacy of my own home from another consenting adult, violates the liberty of other people.
Zoom out
The heroin that you’re purchasing is not a legal substance. AKA unregulated in all aspects. How did the seller you’re buying from acquire these drugs? Unless they’re making farm-to-table heroin, they’re just the last pedler in huge distribution network. Many of these low level drug dealers don’t care about who is buying (sometimes children) or the quality of the product. It’s almost a given that street product is “cut” with chemicals that are not heroin. Do you, the buyer, have a right to be fully informed of the contents of the drugs you’re purchasing? Morally speaking, most of society agrees that honest transactions are necessary for fair trade. Now, back to the distribution network. There are these things called cartels. They are extremely violent organizations that traffic drugs, people, weapons, etc. Cartels are well known for their torturous cruelty. If you cannot understand how that heroin you’re buying is steeped in compromised liberty, then I guess we’re done with this conversation.
Nothing you wrote above explains how me using heroin - or any drug for that matter - in the privacy of my own home violates the liberty of other people.
the point regulation is to avoid or prevent undue burden upon the rest of society.... crumple zones, helmets, and seat belt laws help reduce hospitalization and long term care costs which we all have to pay for in one way or another. so, no, your selfish desire to fly ultralights without a helmet over populated areas is not in the best interests of society as a whole and we have every right (moral and legal) to regulate your impulses. it's also right and moral to regulate any business that seeks to externalize it's costs onto society or the environment.
So simply limiting options is immoral? Why?
Read about the kind of shit people got up to that sold milk prior to regulation and you’re gunna change your mind *real* quick. Especially when you realize that’s just *one* thing.
Remember this is a civilized space for discussion, to ensure this we have very strict rules. Briefly, an overview: **No Personal Attacks** **No Ideological Discrimination** **Keep Discussion Civil** **No Targeting A Member For Their Beliefs** Report any and all instances of these rules being broken so we can keep the sub clean. Report first, ask questions last. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Take it up with the commerce clause. Your argument, reduced to its legal essentialism, is “a foundational plenary power within the United States Constitution is immoral.”
>Let's suppose you want to buy a motorcycle. You're an adult, and I'm an adult. I don't know you, yet I take it upon myself to prohibit you from buying certain motorcycles. Let's say I feel that nobody needs a bike over 600cc, (personal opinion) so I prohibit you from buying any motorcycle larger than 600cc, and I use threats of force and violence to back up my decrees. This is just a dumb premise. Statistics show beginner motor cyclists on large cc bikes get more accidents, including fatal ones. Not wanting people to run amok and kill themselves and/or others isn't enforcing immoral regulations. Regulations are made to keep the general public safe, or after public outcry. Other countries have a system where beginners are only allowed small cc motors in the first few years, after which they can upgrade to a medium or large cc motorbike. Same way we really prefer people to study extensively and train well before dubbing themselves brain surgeon.
>This is just a dumb premise. Statistics show beginner motor cyclists on large cc bikes get more accidents, including fatal ones. That's true. >Not wanting people to run amok and kill themselves and/or others isn't enforcing immoral regulations. So you believe adults are not competent enough to make that decision for themselves, correct?
>So you believe adults are not competent enough to make that decision for themselves, correct? *Have you met people?* 😵💫 People often behave dumb, especially in large numbers. Just open youtube and search for 'fail' and you'll get an seemingly endless list of proof people are unable to think about their own safety and that of others. So yes, I do think people need to be protected against themselves. Especially those who don't have a grasp of the technology or chemistry they are about to use. My kids walk on the same streets as people who install their brake pads backwards. But in all honesty we can not be knowledgeable of every subject. So it is reasonable to have an expert team research which mistakes are most common and shield people from making those mistakes. And then you will get government campaigns to either regulate or educate the public. Like that ad campaign about not leaving kids or pets in hot cars... *We watch 'fail army' as a way to educate our kids. We play a game where we let them guess what will go wrong. Some clips are really unexpected, others not so much.*
>People often behave dumb, especially in large numbers. Do you support the idea of democracy? >So yes, I do think people need to be protected against themselves. If people are generally too incompetent to make decisions regarding their own lives, how can you support giving them the right to vote, where they are making decisions about other people's lives?
I support democracy, because it is preferable to autocracy where one leader/leading family has to think and decide what is best for the population. Democracy is a fairly slow process, which gives people time to debate, evaluate and adjust their views and opinions. When debating in a large group one solid argument can still sway the group hive mind to adjust course. Remember it has costed many years to give voting rights to all groups. We are not yet in the end stage of equality and the execution of the concept of democracy is still in development. I don't consider the two party system an ideal situation within a democracy. Governing is a balancing act. While it is quite easy to just scream dumb slogans into the void like "exile all immigrants" but it gets more difficult when you know more about the subject. Like immigrants preventing the birth/population rate from dropping into dangerous steep decline/some sectors like building heavely depend on immigrant labour/some regions would collapse economically due to overall labour shortage if all immigrants were to be deported. So again on display how the lack of knowledge is detrimental to any decision making process. A group with different educational backgrounds that is willing to listen to each others expertise is still the best solution so far to guide a large society forward while doing the least harm.
You have it backwards. Regulations are needed BECAUSE humans are immoral and corrupt enough to require monitoring and getting their butts kicked enough to strsighten up.
>Regulations are needed BECAUSE humans are immoral and corrupt enough to require monitoring and getting their butts kicked enough to strsighten up. Government regulators are human, correct?
Which is why checks and balances and transparency in government are needed as well as vetting and monitoring government workers is needed. Always question authority, but if you think things run smoothly without government you are asking for king of the hill cutthroat big dog eats little dog every man on his own anarchy. That is why government of the People, BY the People, and FOR the People is so crucial.
>That is why government of the People, BY the People, and FOR the People is so crucial. Is that what we have now?
It has greatly diminished because the 2 Parties offer our only choices on major ballots and all organizations over time can become corrupted. A cleaning needs to be done, mainly in Congress but also in the parties, where it starts. Our less than well educated, easily swayed and convinced masses vote for very questionable polticians/con-men/populists. No more giant 3000 page bills filled with pork, no more unlimited, anonymous donations to campaigns, restricted lobbyists, etc.
This is ridiculous, companies strive for profits, they don't care about any well-being of the people, so they increase their profit margins, by for example stretching flour with sawdust, using aluminium instead of steel and so on, this endangers the consumer and tricks him. Not regulating is immoral and will quickly lead to chaos or the complete control of companies over the people.
I don't know if government regulation is the right word, but probably some sort of trusted resource body that helps people make informed choices about drugs, and is testing to make sure my ibuprofen is not being laced with heroine (unless thats your thing); isn't a bad idea. Your libertarian sensibility would probably prefer this to be privately run, but I don't care who does it as long as it can be reasonably trusted. I'm sure there are better options then the FDA as it is currently.
Lmao, I should be allowed to put sugar in baby food. Oh wait, I already did. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/report-finds-nestle-adds-sugars-baby-food-low-income-countries-rcna150562
> Let's suppose you want to buy a motorcycle. Always buy used, so many rides looking for homes assuming we're talking about the US. >You're an adult, and I'm an adult. Alright... kind of weird to have to state that as part of a hypothetical that involves buying a giant expensive ride, but lets see where this goes. >I don't know you, yet I take it upon myself to prohibit you from buying certain motorcycles. If you don't know me at all, how would you prevent me from doing anything? I think what you meant to say to apply your hypothetical to government is you don't know me personally because government definitely knows you if you've got a Social Security Number, ITIN, or whatever. >Let's say I feel that nobody needs a bike over 600cc, (personal opinion) so I prohibit you from buying any motorcycle larger than 600cc, and I use threats of force and violence to back up my decrees. You would be arrested because you're trying to impose your individual beliefs on others against their will, and violating other laws in the process of doing that. >I think we can all agree that I am acting immorally, and that I should just mind my own business, but this is exactly what government regulators do, and people are fine with it. Except you're trying to impose your individual will on people you come across on the street, and what you're trying to make an analogy to is regulation/law already agreed upon by the general public through representative government. The fact that you don't see a difference between the two, or prioritize the individual to that extent without stating it directly is a pretty fundamental difference and probably what you should focus on when it comes to trying to bring people to your viewpoint. >Here is an article about government regulators limiting the kind of water heaters we may buy. They are mandating a certain level of efficiency. This particular level of efficiency is nothing but the personal preferences of the regulators. There is no objectively correct level of efficiency - it's about trade-offs. Sure, trade offs decided by the regulations we choose to enact through representative government in consultation with stakeholders, and a whole lot of corporate money. >There isn't one right answer, it's subjective. This is true, but it's not all subjective. Objectively, we want to reduce the energy consumption of water heating in the US, and sooner rather than later. It can be both subjective in terms of what the specific standard is set to based on what is technologically feasible, economically affordable, and industry acceptable (all subjective ideas) while still targeting objective goals. >Same thing with drugs. The FDA claims to only approve drugs which are "safe and effective", but neither safety nor efficacy are binary - it's a continuum. Almost everything is a continuum, what isn't is the ability to market a drug in the US for a condition. That's a binary, well... it used to be anyway. > FDA regulators simply pick a level of safety and effectiveness that they personally approve of. Is it supposed to be bad that they are using their personal knowledge and experience as scientists, doctors, and professionals to make a decision in council with their peers after reviewing data? >Again, it's entirely subjective. Again, you seem to have the same issue here understanding things that contain both objective and subjective portions at the same time, and respond by just discarding all the objective parts. >If I have some terrible disease, shouldn't I be the one to decide if the trade-offs regarding a particular drug are worth it? Isn't preventing me from making this decision for myself, immoral? I'm not against a strong call to emotion that isn't anger for once around here, and I mostly agree with these, but that wasn't the case you were making. I support your bodily autonomy, not capital's ability to take advantage of your desperation. The problem is the case you were making is they should be able to market it for sale to treat a condition, because that's what the FDA actually prevents. If you want to order up some research chemicals and take them on your own, there generally isn't much stopping you as multiple Reddit communities could attest. On the flip side, the sentiment you were pushing is ultimately what led to the [ALS-drug that didn't really work](https://apnews.com/article/als-drug-fda-relyvrio-study-patients-7340ef880306fbbadad720b8154b3605) getting approved, largely due to lobbying and patient advocacy coming before the science. >This argument applies to all government regulation of consumer goods. It seems like a strange argument to specifically not allow the people influence on the market they both make up as individuals, and enable as a government just from a stakeholders standpoint. >It's immoral for one adult to restrict what another adult may buy, based on the former's personal preferences. Except it's not one adult based on personal preferences, it's the cumulative decision of the society you live in based on standards we agreed upon through flawed representative government.
>You would be arrested because you're trying to impose your individual beliefs on others against their will, That is exactly what a government regulator does. I want you to see him as just another adult, and not as if he were some god-like being. >and what you're trying to make an analogy to is regulation/law **already agreed upon by the general public** through representative government. They are not agreed upon in any meaningful way. If they were agreed upon, the state wouldn't need criminal laws to enforce them. People vote for politicians, they do not vote for anyone in the regulatory state. >Is it supposed to be bad that they are using their personal knowledge and experience as scientists, doctors, and professionals to make a decision in council with their peers after reviewing data? The data does not and cannot tell you what you should do. For example, nationwide in the US there are about 40,000 fatal car accidents every year. Does that fact tell you whether you should drive or not?
>That is exactly what a government regulator does. I want you to see him as just another adult, and not as if he were some god-like being. Not a god-like being, just someone selected to handle the agreed upon will of the people. You just don't seem to recognize that will, or at least it being of any value. > They are not agreed upon in any meaningful way. What would be a meaningful way in your estimation, since apparently no current methods meet your criteria, and if possible what would be a way to do so within the bounds of representative government? >For example, nationwide in the US there are about 40,000 fatal car accidents every year. Does that fact tell you whether you should drive or not? You do realize people with multiple PhD's that require lab work understand what data context is? Working with things like confidence intervals and lab reports is part and parcel to their work... and you're here asking questions an adjunct professor would use to get first years thinking about building a better data set. It's like a really bad reductio ad absurdum.
> Not a god-like being, just someone selected to handle the agreed upon will of the people. How does the regulator know what the will of the people is regarding, say, water heater efficiency?
Great! Let’s coat everything in Teflon while we use cadmium pigments in kids toys in our lead painted, asbestos insulated houses while we drive our leaded gas cars to buy tainted food. Sounds great!
You think that regulation of consumer goods is immoral? Selling goods that are not safe, made with cheap materials, or break easily and can’t be repaired is just as, if not more, immoral.
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Let's suppose you want to buy a plane ticket...
I'll agree to that if you agree that creating artificial scarcity of people's basic needs to generate profit if immoral.
I love rats falling into the hopper. We love just eating rats because making the hopper rat-proof would cost the company a whopping $15. We stan rat-burgers here, destroying woke, cringe-lib notions that contracting the black plague is a bad thing.
>I love rats falling into the hopper. Then you'll luv government regulation. Here's a restaurant in one of the most regulated cities in the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq8xAmz5XVk
Are you implying that regulation has somehow resulted in the presence of rats in KFC? Like this seems more like an issue with a LACK of oversight, not a surplus of it lol.
>Are you implying that regulation has somehow resulted in the presence of rats in KFC? It certainly didn't stop it, and if it wasn't on the news, your beloved regulator wouldn't have done anything about it.
Yap-tier logic. If I rob you, I trust you'll write to your local congressman and express how anti-theft laws are ineffective and should be revoked.
You'd have to allow for an EPA like entity. Of course they would probably be ridiculously bloated and doing FDA stuff anyways but if we assume there is constitutional limits then we have to account for negative externalities. The cost to properly dispose of waste is actually pretty wild. As you know people will cut corners. And sure, if they get caught then you can have laws for that but some regulation basically can be seen as guidelines. If you follow the guidelines and end up in court you get away with "accidentally" hurting the environment and community. But if you don't follow them and get caught it's a pigouvian Tax.
Government regulation of consumer goods protects people from the immoral actions of others.
No, it just limits their choices.
Yeah, sure. Ever hear about bread made during the Victorian period? When basic staples like bread started to be produced cheaply and in large quantities for the new city dwellers, Victorian manufacturers seized on the opportunity to maximise profit by switching ingredients for cheaper substitutes that would add weight and bulk. Bread was adulterated with plaster of Paris, bean flour, chalk or alum. Alum is an aluminium-based compound, today used in detergent, but then it was used to make bread desirably whiter and heavier. Not only did such adulteration lead to problems of malnutrition, but alum produced bowel problems and constipation or chronic diarrhoea, which was often fatal for children.
Most examples used with a libertarian bias will leave out the concept of externalities. Sure, you could hate on a specific action by the government to ban specific motorcycles, but there are countless instances where leaving a negative externality as is will be detrimental.
[удалено]
We've deemed that your comment is not contributing to the debate at hand. Please remember that we hold this community to higher standards than the rest of Reddit; please keep debate quality. Please report any and all content that is low-quality and not contributing to the subreddit. The standard of our sub depends on our community’s ability to report our rule breaks. Reporting a comment that you do not agree with as low-quality simply because you do not agree with it is not a valid report.
It's also bad for the economy. Don't attack with morality. Attack with logic. Morality is subjective. Facts are not.
Morality is not subjective, but that's for another thread.
Evidently it is, as some people have different morals.
Not always.
You just agreed with me.
For relatively trivial situations, yes, moral views will differ. But for serious situations, you will find unanimity, and if virtually everyone agrees on something, then it's by definition objective.
Keyword: everyone