ControlsFreak
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User ID: 1422
ControlsFreak
1d ago
I don't see how you can make that conclusion. People currently take a variety of things that don't hurt them; therefore, they will take huge and insane amounts of stuff that hurts them if we let them?
Imagine that we did ban personal auto repair. You have to draw the line somewhere, so there's some unregulated space where people could go ahead and buy, like, bumper stickers, stuff that hangs down from their rear view mirror, or even vortex generators. And someone observed that folks do a bunch of stuff with their car that is stupid and doesn't provably help the car go faster, run longer, or get better fuel economy. They then conclude that it would be a disaster if we stopped banning personal auto repair, because that obviously implies that masses and masses of people would severely hurt themselves. Why couldn't we end up with the world we have now, where most people still just take their car to a professional, but some do it themselves? Yes, some people hurt themselves doing it themselves, but I don't see why we should have concluded that it would be a huge, mammoth disaster.
I would note that I think there's probably a significant difference between a label that says, "These claims about being vaguely good for your hair health or whatever are not evaluated by the FDA," while still being cognizant that the product has been evaluated for safety... and a label that says, "This product will seriously harm or kill you if taken improperly; please consult a medical professional."
ControlsFreak
1d ago
the doctor
Makes it sound like there's only one. People often have many different doctors for many different things. It's more likely that they only have one pharmacist, or, rather, one pharmacy that may employ multiple pharmacists, but at least they're usually on the same computer system. That's the more natural bottleneck to have a pair of expert eyes on the medications you're taking.
In all sincerity, I want to check, for myself, to make sure that I am not completely off base in my interpretation of your phrase.
What are some scholarly ways that a person can investigate the reasoning behind an existing state of affairs, where the existing state of affairs in question is a law or policy?
Investigating the reasoning behind an existing law or policy can be approached from several scholarly perspectives, each employing a range of methods and analytical tools. Below are some approaches that can help uncover the rationale behind a law or policy:
1. Legal Analysis (Doctrine-based Inquiry)
- Statutory Interpretation: Scholars may start by analyzing the text of the law or policy, identifying its purpose, and exploring its language. This involves looking at the legal provisions and examining legislative intent, which can often be found in debates, committee reports, or legislative history.
- Case Law: Reviewing judicial opinions on the law or policy provides insight into how courts interpret and apply the law. A close reading of key decisions may reveal the underlying legal principles, norms, or objectives that shaped the law.
- Legal Doctrines and Principles: Analyzing whether the law or policy aligns with established legal doctrines (e.g., human rights, justice, equity, fairness) can shed light on its underlying reasoning.
2. Historical Analysis
- Historical Context: Investigating the historical development of the law or policy can provide valuable insights. This involves looking at the political, economic, social, and cultural context in which the law or policy was enacted. The scholar could examine the timing of its introduction, significant historical events that might have influenced it, and the role of key individuals or groups.
- Comparative Historical Approaches: Comparing similar laws or policies from different times or places can highlight the factors influencing their formulation and the lessons learned from prior implementations.
3. Political Science Approaches
- Public Policy Analysis: This involves analyzing the policy-making process, identifying the actors involved (e.g., legislators, interest groups, bureaucrats), their objectives, and the political dynamics at play. This approach may involve:
- Agenda-setting theory: Investigating how issues gain attention and become policy topics.
- Policy process models: Examining how the policy is formulated, implemented, and evaluated.
- Political Economy: Scholars may look at the economic interests that shape policy decisions, such as the role of lobbyists, political donations, and the influence of businesses or advocacy groups.
- Institutional Analysis: Understanding how the structure of political institutions (e.g., executive, legislative, judiciary) and their interrelations contribute to the law or policy’s formulation.
4. Sociological Approaches
- Social Theories of Law and Policy: Scholars from a sociological perspective often analyze how laws or policies reflect or enforce social norms, values, and power dynamics. This includes:
- Critical Legal Studies: Investigating how the law is shaped by social power relations and how it might perpetuate inequality or social control.
- Law and Society: Analyzing the broader societal context of law-making, considering how societal forces (e.g., public opinion, cultural attitudes) influence policy decisions.
- Social Movements and Advocacy: Investigating the role of activism or advocacy groups in shaping the law or policy. This includes understanding the strategies used by interest groups to influence legislation.
5. Economic Analysis
- Cost-Benefit Analysis: Economic scholars often investigate the efficiency of laws or policies by assessing their economic costs and benefits. This includes evaluating the outcomes of a policy in terms of economic indicators (e.g., growth, unemployment, income distribution) and assessing whether the law achieves its stated goals.
- Behavioral Economics: Examining how laws and policies affect individual and collective behavior, such as through nudges or incentives, can reveal the underlying rationale for a policy.
- Public Choice Theory: Analyzing how political actors (e.g., lawmakers, bureaucrats) make decisions based on their own interests and incentives, rather than public welfare.
6. Ethical and Philosophical Analysis
- Normative Theories of Justice: Examining the law or policy through the lens of ethical theories, such as utilitarianism, deontology, or Rawlsian justice. This can help clarify the moral rationale behind the law, including whether it seeks to promote fairness, equality, or liberty.
- Human Rights Perspectives: Analyzing whether the law or policy aligns with international human rights standards or principles such as dignity, autonomy, and equality. This is particularly useful when the law or policy in question affects vulnerable populations.
- Public Morality: Investigating whether the law reflects certain moral values or societal goals, such as social cohesion, moral order, or public health.
7. Empirical Research and Data Analysis
- Quantitative Analysis: Using statistical tools to analyze the effects of a policy. For example, if a law was intended to reduce crime rates, scholars may analyze crime data before and after its implementation to assess its effectiveness and the reasoning behind the policy's goals.
- Qualitative Research: Conducting interviews, surveys, or focus groups with stakeholders (e.g., policymakers, affected groups, experts) to gather insights into the reasoning behind the law. This can also involve ethnographic methods to understand the law's impact on everyday life.
8. Critical and Interdisciplinary Approaches
- Feminist Legal Theory: Examining laws or policies from the perspective of gender and power dynamics, considering how policies might reinforce or challenge gender inequality.
- Critical Race Theory: Analyzing how race and racial dynamics influence the creation, interpretation, and implementation of laws or policies.
- Intersectionality: Exploring how multiple social identities (race, gender, class, etc.) interact to shape both the policy’s creation and its effects on different groups in society.
9. International and Comparative Analysis
- Comparative Law: Analyzing how similar laws or policies in different jurisdictions (e.g., countries or states) reflect differing priorities or reasoning. This may reveal the influences of international legal trends, global standards, or local conditions.
- International Relations: Understanding how global agreements, treaties, or transnational issues (e.g., climate change, trade, human rights) shape domestic laws and policies.
By combining these various methods, scholars can develop a multi-dimensional understanding of the reasoning behind laws and policies, exploring their origins, implications, and effectiveness. This interdisciplinary approach helps reveal not only the practical considerations that led to the policy’s creation but also the broader social, economic, and political forces that shaped its development.
So, I don't think you're saying that the only thing we can do is start with Item 1 on that list (in fact, so far, I don't think this has been a significant point of discussion yet). I'm sure we can work through many of these methods, but I put in a bit of effort to make sure that we got Item 2 down, yet I can't tell what you think. Do you think we've gotten that one mostly figured out, or do you think that I'm still missing some information on that one?
EDIT: Just to triple-check that I'm not completely off base and got some aberrant first result, I asked:
If someone begins their scholarly approach by doing the second item on that list, historical analysis, would that be sophistic or shamanic?
Beginning a scholarly approach to investigating the reasoning behind a law or policy by engaging in historical analysis would neither be "sophistic" nor "shamanic" in a scholarly context. Rather, historical analysis is a legitimate and well-respected method in academic research, particularly in the fields of law, political science, sociology, and history itself.
Why it is not sophistic:
"Sophistry" refers to the use of fallacious reasoning or deceptive arguments, often with the intention of misleading others. Sophists in ancient Greece were known for manipulating language and logic to appear knowledgeable or persuasive without necessarily adhering to sound reasoning.
Historical analysis is grounded in evidence, documentation, and critical inquiry. When scholars use historical analysis to investigate the origins and development of a law or policy, they are engaging with primary sources, such as legislative records, political speeches, or societal events, to reconstruct the context and motivations behind the policy. This approach adheres to scholarly rigor and is not aimed at deceiving or distorting facts. It’s about understanding how a law came into being and the historical forces that shaped it, rather than manipulating or obscuring truth for rhetorical effect.
Why it is not shamanic:
"Shamanic" refers to practices associated with indigenous spiritual or religious rituals, often involving trance states, supernatural beliefs, or communication with spirits. In contrast, historical analysis in the scholarly sense involves using empirical evidence, documents, and critical thinking to understand past events and trends.
While some might see historical analysis as uncovering "hidden" meanings or interpreting events through a particular lens, it remains firmly grounded in empirical evidence and logical reasoning. It doesn't involve mystical or supernatural interpretation but rather seeks to understand the causes and effects of historical events through a scholarly, evidence-based process.
In summary:
Using historical analysis as a starting point for understanding the reasoning behind a law or policy is a valid scholarly approach. It is neither sophistic (which involves deceptive argumentation) nor shamanic (which involves mystical or spiritual practices), but rather a rigorous, evidence-based method that helps scholars understand the social, political, and economic factors that shaped a given law or policy.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
So, what I think you're saying is that you want to talk about the current operation of the farm, given the existence of the fence. That may be an interesting conversation, when we can get to it, but the current operation of the farm is designed around the fact that there is a fence there. That a current farmhand says, "I've kinda figured out at least something nice I can get out of this fence here," is not our first question. Our first question is why. What for. What problem was it designed to solve? I have tried to endeavor to understand why it was put into place. What for. What problem it was designed to solve. What information am I lacking on that question? If I am not lacking in information on that question, I would appreciate some acknowledgement on that point, and then we can move toward other issues. As of now, my sense is that you're saying that I'm just so completely lacking in any information that I still don't even have any idea why it was built, what it was for, what problem it was designed to solve.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
That is later then when the fence was erected. What information am I lacking concerning the how/why of the fence being erected?
ControlsFreak
2d ago
Please just explain anything to do with Chesterton's fence. I don't understand, and I want to understand. Perhaps you can bring more information that I am missing about the period of time when this fence was erected, if it is information I am lacking.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
After a nice sleep last night, I tried really interpreting my interlocutor's most-recent-at-the-time argument about Chesterton's fence, with as much charity as I could. I went on to produce what I thought was almost a quality contribution.
So let me ask you for some advice. I would like to be able to have a productive conversation with this person. I have tried to bring us back to productive conversations and put in effort on my side. What I've gotten in response is accusations of sophistry, that I don't know anything about anything relevant, and claims that if I even consider the questions asked, it will magically become clear to me. I suppose I will trust your read that those comments are actually me becoming more antagonistic, and I will have to review it in time to understand, but can you provide any advice for how I can bring such a conversation back into the realm of being productive? Or do I really just need to give up when this is the type of engagement I'm getting?
ControlsFreak
2d ago
You're not even trying.
Sorry that I'm sooooo stupid that after I have considered the answers to the question you've asked, I still find your position on my explanation of Chesterton's Fence unclear. You're gonna have to stoop down real low and actually explain what you're thinking in a way that is comprehensible to us normal 'little' people.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
I don't agree with your characterization of the fence, previous message describes why.
No, it does not. You lurched erratically off on a different direction. Please explain why you don't agree with my characterization of how/why the fence was put into place.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
Let's go a bit slowly here, as you've shown yourself very prone to erratically jumping between different arguments, without much logical connection to what has been said. We were discussing a specific aspect of medicine, and after you struggled mightily in using your vast domain-specific knowledge to make a coherent argument, you invoked Chesterton's Fence, again sort of erratically and not weaved into a coherent argument. Chesterton said:
There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
This was your pithy attempt to just tell me to shut up and go away. However, Chesterton explicitly said that one is to come back after they can explain what the use of it was, where usually, this is interpreted to mean that one has understood that reasonably intelligent humans went through the effort to erect the fence, and so this must have happened for some use for someone. In our case, the fence is the requirement that basically every drug requires a prescription.
I'm going to start needing some clear affirmations of the progress we've made if I'm going to believe that you're arguing in good faith and are willing to have an honest back-and-forth rather than just erratically lurching in every which way, mostly trying to wave your degree around and telling me to shut up. Do you clearly affirm that I have, in fact, described how humans found value in setting up this fence and why it came to be?
If you do not agree, then we need to return to that question. If you do agree, then we can come back to where we were. Let's talk testosterone. Let's hear your argument (only after you explicitly agree that we have satisfied the last demand you made, but before we lurch off onto another hundred erratic demands you'd like to make).
Sophistry (and gish gallops) is not a substitute for a coherent argument.
This is a nice moment to take stock of the situation. Up to this point, you have lost and abandoned every single object-level argument you have made, over and over again. In this comment, you have implicitly acknowledged that you have again abandoned another argument that you've lost.
You know nothing about
This is also a nice moment to reflect on the fact that while, "You're stupid," is a great and effective argument on the third grade playground, it's not very becoming in a place like The Motte... especially when you've just lost and abandoned every single argument you've made so far.
Now, to get to Chesterton's Fence, which is in a sense moving up to the meta level, mostly abandoning any actual argument that would benefit from real in-depth domain expertise at the level of the practice of medicine, but instead moving up to the question of the history/intent of the government action.
One thing that is always a bit tricky about Chesterton's Fence is its conceptualization of "intent". One doesn't have to go full Scalia to know that, when it comes to law, 'legislative intent' can be a tricky beast. Things are sometimes done for a variety of motives affecting multiple agents. Sometimes, it is just a banal compromise (something that no one really intends, but merely accepts). Sometimes, it's a confluence of surprisingly different intents; see also the famous Bootleggers and Baptists theory. So, with that in mind, let's go through a little of the history, and see what all we can say about it.
One could have a more expansive history, but I only have so much time in a day, so I think an acceptable place to start is 1937. Prior to this point, USP was a private organization that published their own compilations of drug information. (As Mitch Hedberg would say, they still do, but they used to, too.) Alongside this, the government did have a legitimate reason to ensure that consumers at least had some understanding of what products they were buying, so the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act adopted the USP and said that a drug was "adulterated" if it failed to meet the USP's standards. Then, a company brought an "elixir" to market that used diethylene glycol, causing lots of harm and about a hundred deaths. There was a clear gap in the law and standard, because if the product had been called a "solution" instead of an "elixir", there would have been no legal violation. (Note that liability damages are a separate question and plausible pathway to accomplishing some fence-like goals and may be a useful tool in the toolbox.)
Enter the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act of 1938. This was "intended", in the Chestertonian Fence sense, to be a more robust labeling law, in an extremely pre-information-age era. This fence was not intended to restrict a person's ability to self-medicate. With the above caveats about divining intent for fences from legislative history, FDA chief Walter G. Campbell said:
There is no issue, as I have told you previously, from the standpoint of the enforcement of the Food and Drugs Act about self-medication. This bill does not contemplate its prevention at all. . . . But what is desired . . . is to make self-medication safe. [The bill provides] information that will permit the intelligent and safe use of drugs for self-medication. . . . All of the provisions dealing with drugs, aside from those recognized in the official compendia, are directed towards safeguarding the consumer who is attempting to administer to himself. If this measure passes, self-medication will become infinitely more safe than it has ever been in the past.
Sen. Royal S. Copeland (D-NY) said:
There is no more common or mistaken criticism of this bill than that it denies the right to self-medication. . . . Nothing could be further from the truth. The proposed law simply contributes to the safety of self-medication by preventing medicines from being sold as “cures” unless they really are cures. It requires that drugs which have only palliative effect say as much on the label.
The House committee reported:
The bill is not intended to restrict in any way the availability of drugs for self-medication. On the contrary, it is intended to make self-medication safer and more effective.
It wouldn't have made sense for the elixir tragedy to be the impetus for a law requiring prescriptions, because almost all of the deaths that came from the elixir were under the direction of a government-licensed physician. (Prior to any mandates, I'll note, some manufacturers voluntarily made their products "prescription-only", and one would have to have a separate exploration as to whether the intent there was commercial or something else. That said, I don't believe that they had required this drug to be prescription-only, but I'm not sure.) Having a prescription requirement would have saved almost none of the precious lives in question. Since then, we have not had any splashy self-medication string of deaths that would justify a prescription requirement, either. One other additional note at this point is that, even in the absence of such government requirements, the vast majority of people who took this drug did so under the direction of a doctor; many many people leveraged the expertise of medical professionals, because they found it valuable. It was not banned to leverage a doctor's expertise. (It just happened to get them killed when they followed the doctor's advice in this case.)
So what happened? Who intended it? Who built the fence and why? Turns out, the problem was mostly that the FDA was part incompetent, part just unfortunately operating in a pre-information-age era. They set out extremely vague, but strongly-worded labeling requirements. Manufacturers were scared off by how vague the requirements were, not even being sure how much stuff they really needed to put on the label to remain compliant, and in a world where all that information pretty much had to be printed directly on the little bottle, at great expense, many manufacturers were unhappy. Of course, in every regulatory scheme where half the job is keeping consumers happy and half of the job is keeping producers happy (and rich), and especially when the latter group is likely the buddy-buddy industry counterpart to the regulators with a revolving door, sometimes, you gotta do something to make the industry happy. So the FDA, on their own, without Congressional intent or authorization, just exempted medications that the manufacturer designated as prescription-only from their labeling requirements. How much of this is due to the fact that they were just not competent to come up with a more acceptable and precise labeling requirement and how much of it is just due to pre-information-era constraints? Not sure.
In any event, since manufacturers found the FDA's hamfisted labeling requirements so vague/onerous, they generally preferred to just take the exception, presumably with the Chestertonian intent to make more money and reduce their regulatory risk. I'm not even sure that the physicians were part of the bootleggers or baptists; they might not have even lobbied for this exception, only realizing later how lucrative the arrangement would be for them as well as the manufacturers. The result was that many drugs which were actually totally safe to self-administer suddenly became prescription-only, primarily because the FDA went out on its own in making new rules, did a kind of bad job at it, and manufacturers would now make more money this way.
In the next decade or so, there was clearly some confusion. The rules didn't make sense. There was no consistency or logic in whether a drug was prescription-only or not. It was entirely up to the manufacturer, who would presumably decide based on money and risk (mostly regulatory risk rather than safety risk). So, two professional pharmacists in Congress (unsurprisingly named Durham and Humphrey) created the Durham-Humphrey Amendment of 1951, which codified the prescription-only/OTC divide and put the decision under the purview of the FDA. Of course, don't forget, those drugs would be dispensed by professional pharmacists, folks near and dear to those two congressmen.
So, that's the story. What is the "intent" of the fence? Well, sure, consumer protection is in there somewhere. But it's pretty confused with tales of differing motives, incompetence, and plain difficulty of living in the past. Is it a messy story of how we got to where we are today? Absolutely. Does that mean that there aren't possible good features of the system we have today? Of course not. Does anything in there imply that this is the only plausible way of doing things and we'll have megadeaths if we do anything differently? I doubt it. But since we've now gone through the exercise of going through how the fence got there and why, perhaps we can turn back to the real questions: today, right now, what are the real, serious, justifications for such mandates/bannings?
ControlsFreak
2d ago
Having someone who's more intelligent than you, knows a lot more about medicine than you, and has had a lot of practice managing patients instructing you on what to do helps a lot.
No one is talking about banning doctors. There are options other than "mandatory" and "banned". You can still have literally every word of that.
The doctor has a list of all the medications you are taking
ROFL. Only if you tell him. Or he works for the same conglomerate as your other doctors with the same records system. And again, no one is preventing you from doing these things. And again again, they're generally just a second set of eyes, and a pharmacist does this. There are so many ways that you can have some eyes on what you're taking and look for interactions without blanket bans on prescription meds. But if the point is to make sure you don't take specific different medications at the same time, they're gonna need to be in your house 24/7.
Would it? Most of the time, when industry advocates are here arguing this sort of point, they're implicitly assuming that the use of medical professionals will drop to zero (or be banned). Thus, they're imagining the least knowledgeable person deciding on their own medical treatment. But when we look at the car maintenance world, we see the vast vast majority of low-knowledge folks still using automotive professionals. The rate of self-injury is, indeed, low, but someone needs a bit more than arguments from bad imagination if they're going to rest on a claim that the rate of self-injury would surely be "quite a bit" higher.
You hear this same shit from the realtor cartel, and frankly, any cartel that wants to maintain its market power. "Oh real estate transactions are so complicated; can you imagine how the sky would fall if we didn't get our 3% cut of every transaction?! PEOPLE WOULD BE HARMED!" You know what really would happen if you lost some of the sketchier tools to maintain your market control? First, you'd probably have to clean up your act, but second, lots and lots of people would still use you, but for your actual expertise, rather than because they think they're basically forced into it. Sure, will there be some harm that didn't occur before? Probably. But there's some harm now that wouldn't occur then, too. You need an actual argument about magnitudes rather than just imagination.
EDIT: Remember when it was every state, rather than just two states, who banned you from pumping your own gas into your car? Surely there were folks saying how risky and dangerous it would be (gasoline is flammable, don'cha'kno?) to let ignoramus individuals do it. How's that argument looking for those two states that have held on to it?
ControlsFreak
2d ago
If you can't answer the analog of those questions for an item of auto repair, does that mean we have reason to ban people from doing it?
My read is that all of those things are directly in the vein of "they can hurt themselves" and "there is still possible value in expertise", not externalities. It's telling that you started with the one example of a clear externality, and as soon as we took that off the table, you completely abandoned the externality argument. Or should I pull a you and say, "If you want to continue this conversation please explain what testosterone stewardship and why it's important, or argue why it isn't." Because if that's not a thing, you're jumping to an entirely different class of argument and not even bothering to acknowledge it.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
Testosterone/Estrogen
Ok, great. Let's start here. What I'm missing in your comment is an argument concerning anything having to do with it. You just named the substance. What's the argument?
ControlsFreak
2d ago
You are advocating for people to do what they want and have others pay for their failure.
I cannot believe this is a good faith reading of what I wrote. You think that I am advocating for people to do what they want with their cars and have others pay for their failure?! h-What?!
antibiotic
Ah, yes, the one example people always go to when they want to defend the status quo. It may be the case that antibiotics have a significant externality. Perhaps some drugs are, as you put it, "complicated". We might have to figure out what to do about that one. It might be the current regime; it might be something different. But for now, let's do a little exercise. Let's put antibiotics to the side. They're "complicated", maybe even a special category. Now make an argument for the entire rest of the world of prescription drugs.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
This is basically the long form of my somewhat pithy/sarcastic comment. Sorry, but we just live in a world where messaging apps have already proliferated. They will all have their defenders that prefer this thing or that thing (see the other responses to my comment). Probably the only thing that grinds my gears more than the people who are just defending this feature or that aspect of whatever messaging service is when they do like the comment I responded to and say that it's mostly about everyone else being there. If that's the criteria, we already have that; it's called SMS. Everybody has that. But of course, it's not really about everyone being there; it's about this feature or that feature. Names, numbers, privacy, temporary names, group functionality, extra gizmos, etc. Once you realize that it AlwaysHasBeenMeme about a cluster of features, only one of which is "lots of people have it", then there just isn't any natural "default" that everyone "should" just use.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
If you are okay with putting a bullet in the head of anyone who uses medical care without expert opinion in any way that causes a societal cost then sure.
This is a wildly disproportionate and frankly bizarre thing to say. We could just not do that. Or are we currently required to be okay with putting a bullet in the head of anyone who works on their car without expert opinion in any way that causes a societal cost?
But let's be clear what you're doing here. You've become unable to defend your previous position that would imply that we must ban individuals from performing auto repair, so you're playing a two-part threat. Claiming that we must restrict supply because we've subsidized demand. It's a lucrative hustle in crony capitalism if you can control the government in this way. But we can easily dismantle the threat, cut the Gordian knot, and just not do any of that stuff. Just stop. Stop putting bullets in people's heads. Stop making everything either banned or mandatory.
Paternalism is good to some extent it's why we have building codes and financial regulations and you know....laws.
This is completely absurd. If we have any law, we must have one particular set of laws that benefit your industry. Just utterly disconnected from reality. This sort of reasoning can justify literally any regulation, no matter how insanely stupid, no matter how insanely destructive, no matter how insanely corrupt. "What? You want no laws whatsoever?" Come on. Be serious.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
Facebook messenger? That sounds like some niche service that you want me to get to contact you. Don't you have, like, SMS on your phone?
ControlsFreak
3d ago
We require people to get car insurance because we know they will make the wrong decision (not getting insurance) if left to their own devices.
What type of car insurance do we require people buy? Hint: it's not the type that compensates them if they screw up their own car. It's for a different purpose. What do you think that is?
Most of the rest of your comment appears to be just additional restatements of the things I've already responded to. Yes, car owners lack knowledge, and they'll make mistakes sometimes when they don't use the services of a professional. I don't see where you've made any further advancement on the argument.
When it comes to the more subjective stuff it does get a bit fuzzier but the fundamental problem remains, no layman has the knowledge and experience to make these judgements, just googling a pubmed article is not enough, smart and educated people think they can figure it out but this requires training and experience. The average person has no chance and society needs to be organized around protecting average and below average people.
I do think that this part is a slight refinement. At least one that I only obliquely addressed, not directly. When it comes to the subjective parts of auto repair, it gets fuzzier, but the fundamental problem remains. Laymen aren't going to have the knowledge and expertise to make those judgments, and the Chilton guide isn't enough, either. They need training and experience. Average person has no chance... of that last few percent that is still probably within the realm of the basic guidance where there might not even be a consensus, anyway.
The regulatory state has its problems but we require building codes because people will elect to live in a poorly built slum if given the choice because it's cheap. We have to protect people from themselves.
This is just tripling down on paternalism, and it's one that is soundly rejected in most rationalist spaces. YIMBY is currently reigning supreme, haven't you heard?
People don't like being told what they can/can't put in their cars, but nothing is more important than thousands of pounds of steel hurling down the road at high speed, where lives are at stake. We can't possibly let people work on their own cars. ...or at least, that's the conclusion of your logic.
You see a lack of consensus and a range of suggestions and think that this means that you must have an individual artisan. I see that and think, "Seems like there's kind of a range where most of the time, people will probably be okay-ish, so long as they're doing something plausibly in that range." At least until we have a more clear consensus. They can still go get advice, and if so, they'll get whatever doctor they trust, who thinks they should be in whatever part of that range. That's not killing them (at least not enough to form a clear consensus yet).
The rest of this is pretty much just paternalism. Like, I get it, many car owners are not equipped to handle the various minute considerations and the art of motorcycle car maintenance. We know car owners will injure themselves or get killed with poor decisions if left to their own devices (the number of bozos who get underneath a car that's just on a hydraulic floor jack, SMH; or maybe they'll screw up a brake bleed procedure and have a massive braking failure on the highway, etc.). But we don't ban it. Millions and millions of people still go to car repair experts, because they know they have zero knowledge. We don't ban auto repair experts, either! Sure, some people spend too much money on silly aftermarket turbos or whatever, and some of them even screw it up and blow up an engine, possibly causing death. But imagine if we took that and decided to ban people from buying their own car parts; do you think that "unnecessary car repair costs" (including the new cost of being required to go to a professional for literally every little thing) would decrease?!? I honestly do not have any idea what possible model of economics you could be using to get to this result.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
I'm sure all of that is very helpful to many people, but we're not talking about banning doctors. Remember, we are not stuck with just two possibilities of "banned" and "mandatory". For many, could you not just have massive warning labels that say, "This product is meant to treat specific conditions in specific ways; please consult a medical expert before use," in case someone has difficulty identifying the correct medication? They could still be sold by pharmacists, who can inform you of what you need to know about it (as they already do). If you show any uncertainty, they can say, "If you don't know, you should contact a doctor." The checking in sounds mostly paternalistic, basically just a verbal reminder; what's the real point here if you're not physically making sure they're doing as instructed?
Because remember, you're not actually making sure that they're not taking the medication incautiously. You're not actually going into their home and dispensing a precise dose at a precise time. You're an occasional verbal reminder that they need to comply with the instructions on the package of the TB drugs, another set of eyes to check if there are other medications that might interact. You're not actually stopping them from doing something dangerous.
Some medications have side effects that will very rapidly kill you that are rare enough patients wouldn't think of them
What do you actually do about that?
EDIT: The warning label can even say, "This product is dangerous if not used correctly," or even, "This product is dangerous even if used correctly," with another recommendation to consult a medical professional.
Now what part of that changes by forcing a doctor into the process? Does the doctor come to your house and give you your pill, so you don't take the wrong dose? Does he monitor you 24/7 so that you don't take specific different medications at the same time? That might seem wild, but does he at least come twice a day to make sure you are taking it correctly so that it will treat your underlying disease?
EDIT: Wasn't looking for it, but Zvi's most recent had this and this. Interesting, to say the least.
ControlsFreak
4d ago
That makes sense. I'd imagine that a lot of eyes would be on trying to estimate the electoral dynamics, and there's obviously a lot of probability there. All parties will care a lot about assessing the following lines-on-maps: what might it look like if they take a Trumpist think tank peace plan essentially on day one; what might it look like if Ukraine burns Trump enough that he withdraws support and they have to proceed with the war with just other European support; what might it look like if they successfully delay the Trumpist stick from being final until after the German election (and the resulting German policy becomes more clear).
I doubt that either Russia/Ukraine can afford to basically totally avoid talking to Trump until the German election; they both have a bit too much to lose. But they both probably have to work through the various probability assessments to determine whether they want to approach Trump with a, "You're so great, Donald! You can make peace happen; let's do it right now!" or a, "You're so great, Donald! You can make peace happen; let's begin a deliberative process to start working through our negotiating issues over the next few months. There are a lot of intricate details, but we know that you're an incredible negotiator who will have no trouble working through all of them once we can (eventually) get everything on the table for you." We'd probably need to draw some decision trees and estimate some probabilities/costs have any sense for which parameter regions lead to which results.
I would suspect that there are a number of possible regimes, too. If the Trumpist think tank plan really does have strong enough sticks, there might be enough of a bargaining range already and enough risk in waiting that it best serves both sides to agree quickly. (Notwithstanding any concerns about whether US Intel is capable of making such an assessment either way... or whether Trump would believe their assessment and go in with a correct estimate of the other parties' interests.) I would also suspect, with lack of any other looming possible game changers in the near future, the most likely outcomes are either 1) Negotiated peace almost immediately (in diplomatic timescales) after Trump takes office, 2) Negotiated peace soon after the German election, or 3) Something significant enough happens in the German election that lead to a parameter regime such that war continues for some time, with or without US support. Or, of course, 4) Someone screws up trying to string Trump along, he loses it, they get the stick, then scramble to get back to the negotiating table and salvage anything they can salvage. Of course of course, Trump could also lose interest, not pursue this think tank plan, do something wild and completely different, or whatever. It's kind of an annoyingly big game tree... :/
Not exactly that, but Zvi's recent post had this and this. Of course, I'd say that this is one of those areas where we probably care about some measure other than average, but it gets complicated.
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