Another modest proposal
Citizenship can be granted or retracted.
…so why not deal with legal adulthood the same way?
I propose bifurcating current legal adulthood into two designations: “lesser adult” and “full adult”.
Lesser adults would get mortgage bailouts, credit card bailouts, could bail on all sorts of contracts if they find them distasteful, and, in general, would be treated somewhat as wards of the state.
Full adults would be able to sign contracts that the state actually enforces.
A lesser adult could opt, at any time, to become a full adult.
A full adult could opt, at any time, to become a lesser adult, but could not escape contracts that they’ve already signed.
What’s the point of this?
Why, credit card companies, car dealers, mortgage brokers, and venture capitalists could check your adulthood status before entering into business with you.
…and choose not to, if they so chose.
May 20th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Do you foresee extending the voting franchise to “lesser adults”?
May 20th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
I’ve been advocating for years something similar which I call “a big boy card” whereby once you foreswear the protection offered by all laws / regulations intended for “your own good,” you would be issued a card that you could show that allowed you to ride without a seatbelt, get drugs without waiting on FDA or a doctor’s approval, import Roquefort from France and also enter into any contract that you (and the other big-boy party) agreed to.
I had wanted it to be a complete one-way street (to limit gaming of the system), but a one-way street for just the contracts you have already signed may be better as it would limit the damage to those who erroneously thought they were big boys (or adults).
May 20th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
[quote comment="200692"]I’ve been advocating for years something similar which I call “a big boy card” whereby once you foreswear the protection offered by all laws / regulations intended for “your own good,” …[/quote]
That’s a great idea but there’s nowhere in it for the government agencies to assert their “authoritah”. It’ll never be allowed to exist.
May 20th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
[quote comment="200692"]I’ve been advocating for years something similar which I call “a big boy card” whereby once you foreswear the protection offered by all laws / regulations intended for “your own good,” you would be issued a card that you could show that allowed you to ride without a seatbelt, get drugs without waiting on FDA or a doctor’s approval, import Roquefort from France and also enter into any contract that you (and the other big-boy party) agreed to.
I had wanted it to be a complete one-way street (to limit gaming of the system), but a one-way street for just the contracts you have already signed may be better as it would limit the damage to those who erroneously thought they were big boys (or adults).[/quote]
My concern is there’s still some externalized costs associated with those actions.
There’s the example of unseatbelted people becoming projectiles and hitting others (I don’t know it there’s a substantial risk to people outside the vehicle).
But for drugs, even with extensive regulations it’s still hard to make sure that drugs that companies release are actually helpful and not harmful and to stop them from misleading the public. And that’s not even considering the fact of woo like homeopathy where they’d just love to put that they cure cancer on a bottle.
I’m generally in favour of freer markets and less regulation. But I think a flaw is that people tend to think that people are perfectly rational entities with access to all the information. I can’t afford the time to educate myself in every area to make sure it isn’t a scam, and even if I could the actions of the gullible will distort the marketplace sufficiently that the real science would have trouble competing. I just don’t see a practical way to keep the snake oil away from healthcare without hard regulations.
May 21st, 2009 at 12:50 am
That’s the beauty of the big boy card with the Travis-contract-by contract extension. If you can’t afford to put in the time to make an informed decision, then you shouldn’t invoke your big-boy / adult status to enter into a non-govt blessed contract.
However, the implicit argument that I’m making and I believe Travis is making is given that some people have the time / interest and some don’t, then the system should not have to be monolithically designed for the lowest common denominator.
Instead, those that have the time / interest / capacity can make a call on a contract-by-contract basis if they would prefer to go the route of the nannied solution or invoke their “big-boy” rights to explore other options.
From where I sit, it’s a no-brainer Pareto improvement (and those don’t come along very often). Everyone who wants to be nannied by the govt gets nannied by the govt and everyone who doesn’t want to be nannied doesn’t get nannied.
Or currently: all who want X still get X as do those who prefer Y to X.
In the new system: all who want X get X; those who prefer Y get Y.