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four steps to tyranny (repeat as needed)

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OBESITY is a public health issue. Americans and Europeans grow fatter by the day, imposing negative externalities and perhaps heralding the decline of Western civilisation.

The art of socializing everything under the sun, in four steps:

  1. For no reason at all, have the taxpayers deal with situation X.
  2. Declare that people who create situation X are imposing a negative externality on others.
  3. Tax and spend even more on cleaning up mess X, and make it illegal to create situation X, or put high taxes on X.
  4. Create winners and losers. Winners (those collecting tax dollars to clean up mess X) donate to politicians to keep the gravy flowing. Losers (those paying taxes and getting penalized) donate to politicians to lighten the yoke.

Old school:

  1. Some people smoke, then get cancer. No problem.

New school:

  1. Decide that taxpayers will pay for all cancer medication.
  2. Declare that people who smoke are enemies of the state.
  3. Tax smokers, pay doctors.
  4. Collect the campaign donations.

Old school:

  1. Some people overeat and get fat. Some of these people have heart attacks. No problem.

New school:

  1. Decide that taxpayers will pay for socialized health care.
  2. Declare that people who overeat are enemies of the state.
  3. Tax affordable, healthy-in-moderation food that does not appeal to NPR listeners.
  4. Collect the campaign donations.

Old school:

  1. Some people ride motorcycles with out helmets and die.

New school:

  1. Decide that taxpayers will pay for socialized health care.
  2. Declare that people who ride with out helmets are enemies of the state.
  3. …
  4. Collect the campaign donations.

Old school:

  1. Some people hang glide.

or

  1. Some people rock climb.

or

  1. Some people have kids out of wedlock.

One can come up with any number of examples.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 22nd, 2009 at 9:06 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “four steps to tyranny (repeat as needed)”

  1. miriam Says:
    May 23rd, 2009 at 6:52 pm

    It’s that pesky “obligation to treat” law…
    Used to be, you’d have charity hospitals. So that if your vices were not in line with your ability to pay for their consequences, you’d go to the charity hospital — more crowded, dirty, maybe not the best care. A bit of a disincentive, and also people got to make the choice of whether to enable someone’s maladaptive behaviors or not (you want to swallow a pencil? go ahead, sweetie.)
    Now, it gets to be everyone’s problem, since I’ll pay to resuscitate and rehabilitate the guy not wearing the helmet, like it or not. It just encourages the nanny-state, since I do have to pay for someone else’s mistakes, I’m all for mandatory helmets and what-not.