Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Bring on the Nanny State

You can't make this stuff up:

ONONDAGA, N.Y. (AP) — Police say a motorcyclist participating in a protest ride against helmet laws in upstate New York died after he flipped over the bike's handlebars and hit his head on the pavement. . . . State troopers tell The Post-Standard of Syracuse that 55-year-old Philip A. Contos of Parish, N.Y., was driving a 1983 Harley Davidson with a group of bikers who were protesting helmet laws by not wearing helmets. . . . Troopers say Contos would have likely survived if he had been wearing a helmet.

While I'm sure Contos's co-religionists will just say, well, that was his choice to make, but ...

What if Mr. Contos had responsibilities, such as children to support or an elderly parent to care for? Will the state have to assume those responsibilities now?

What if he had suffered a severe brain injury, but lived, and ended up costing the people of New York millions of dollars in Medicaid expenses over the next 20 years or so? Is it really in the interest of liberty for him to have the unrestricted license to put those burdens on others?

Libertarianism is utterly inane.

4 comments:

Cloves said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Cervantes said...

Alas, I had to delete a comment. No commercial spam allowed here, especially for quack doctors.

Rachel said...

Hi there. Hawaii has no Helmet laws. And while we do have baby car-seat laws, they are not enforced, and people constantly break the laws. We have a new law on Maui outlawing hand-held use of cell phones, but everyone ignores it and enforcement is minimal. Lastly and worst of these: it is LEGAL to drive with unrestrained passengers in the back of your pick-up truck, as long as they are 15 years old.

Cervantes said...

Hey Rachel, good to hear from you. I hadn't thought of Hawaii as a libertarian paradise but it's interesting to hear about.