Aversion to Risk

[techaholic]

It's all a function of aversion to risk. All animals have a built in aversion to risk that over time gets honed and refined by their environment. If you learn that you can run a read light 99 times out of a hundred and not get caught, you will run them more often

Comments

[techaholic]

Domestic Violence is almost always a bare handed crime. suicide is a result of depression, not guns. there are hundreds of ways to off oneself with household items. anyone with access to a car or a kitchen knife or a belt could take themselves out of the gene pool without wasting a bullet.

Accidental shootings are another question. they would almost certainly rise. without doing any actual research I just look at it from a probability perspective. double the guns, double the accidental shootings.

Some of that can be overcome through gun safety training. cars are far more dangerous then guns are, but we teach people how to use them properly and as a result many people still die. wait. that wasn't suppose to happen. okay hold on a minute... we teach teens how to use condoms to reduce teen pregnancy. that worked. didn't it? hmmm. okay, People are just stoopid. let's chart the option.

Give everybody a gun and let it sort itself out - more accidental shootings, reduced crime (theoretically)

Give the poor people guns so that only poor people will be shot accidentally. nobody cares about them anyway.

Require gun dealers to ensure the incompetency of the purchaser - sue the gun shop when there is an accidental shooting

only the wealthy should have guns, after all they are the only ones who have things worth protecting.

damn, this is tough. There has to be a solution.

Poverty breeds crime, so let's just execute all the people who live in poverty. And while we're at it. the Statue of liberty could be updated. we don't really need any more tired, poor or huddled masses. that was the French's idea anyway. we all know how the French are. Cheese eating surrender monkeys!

then again, poverty can only really be defined by contrasting it against other socio-economic ranks. so even if we did kill off the poorest 10%, that would just create a new poorest 10%.

damn. this is really hard.

alright... someone else's turn to talk.

[nausved]

Domestic violence does occasionally involve guns and I would imagine that in households where guns are more accessible, domestic violence via guns would increase. Abusive relationships might also become more severe, as abused family members may be more afraid to seek help.

Suicide is generally most successful when it is done with a bullet. (It's also a lot messier!) You can kill yourself with sleeping pills, but you're more likely to survive it and/or be found before you die. I personally think this is a rather minor point, though, as I think people should be allowed to end their own lives--though I'd prefer if they went to a doctor for the procedure.

Training seems like the best option for preventing accidents--particularly if training must be renewed regularly. (I think that people should have to take their driver's tests over again every couple years, too.) What about households with children, though? Or with hormonal teenagers? Hm....

I really don't know. I guess the best solution would be to magically whisk away all lethal weapons, so we're left throwing insults at each other. I can almost imagine being mugged by insult....

[techaholic]

I understand your point about training, and I encourage such voluntary behavior, but I don't believe that people should need a license to drive a car either. and I think that driving lessons should start (voluntarily mind you) at about age ten, in the form of go-carts. the physics lessons you learn on a go cart track do transfer to the road. The earlier you learn these skills, the more ingrained in your overall thought process they become.

[nausved]

I am in favor of licenses being required for behavior that creates a high risk for the safety of others (shooting, driving, etc.) or for the wellbeing of society (clearcutting, building construction, etc.), since people and businesses are generally unable to regulate themselves without putting themselves at a disadvantage to those who do not regulate themselves. The tragedy of the commons and all of that.

That being said, your go-cart idea is awesome! Also, video games--where you rack up points for following traffic laws, maintaining control of your vehicle during bad weather, and driving defensively when amongst people who don't follow the traffic laws. I think people would have a much, much easier time learning traffic laws interactively than by passively reading a boring book.

Also, courses on basic car maintenance, recognition of symptoms, and tips on buying cars/buying insurance/etc. would be helpful.

[techaholic]

TREEHUGGER!!!11!!1!!!!one!!!!

I like trees too, but I like my rights to clear cut my land more. If I own it, why should someone else be allowed to tell me when, where, and what I can do to it?

[nausved]

I don't mean people like you; if you were to cut down all the trees in your yard, that would hardly count as "clearcutting".

I'm mostly talking about developers, who wipe out acres and acres of trees. This causes huge problems for everyone else. Woods protect the soil, cleanse the air of pollutants, are important carbon dioxide sinks, and house wild animals. When you remove large numbers of trees, you fill streams with topsoil (which is the #1 killer of endangered fish species in the U.S.), cause problem animals like snakes and opossums to evacuate into people's yards, etc., etc. It's just a big mess.

[techaholic]

It might be a big mess, but that developer is still the owner of that land and should still have the right to cut down all the trees on it. I'm sorry if it hurts the fish and the snakes, I am an animal lover, but I personally do not think that is more important than human property ownership rights. Changing the environment of the river might make it less habitable by the current residents, but other creatures may prefer it top-soily. Nature has always found a way to adapt.

[nausved]

It's not that it's merely bad for the animals. It's bad for us! We depend on the environment; we are just as much a part of it as any bird or reptile. Those fish provide food for us and food for other animals that provide food for us. They keep down the populations of animals we don't like, such as mosquitos. In some cases, like the salmon in Alaska, the decline of the number of fish coming in to spawn is actually killing forests, since those forests have depended on masses of dead fish for their nutrition for thousands of years; we need these forests, not only for wood, but to control climate change and loss of topsoil. The ecosystem is a very, very complex thing; anything you change here will affect countless other things, whether positively or negatively as far as humans are concerned.

Besides which, if I have a stream running through my property, you are denying me my own property rights if you kill animals in my stream that I don't want killed. You are just as much denying me my rights in this case as you would be if you cut down a tree such that it fell on my house or fence, or if you sprayed chemicals on your lawn that seeped into my yard and killed the plants in my garden.

I am all for people's personal liberty and property rights--up to the point where you deny others their rights or wellbeing. If you can cut down all the trees on your property without affecting anyone else, then be my guest; if you can show me the license that says your project will have minimal impact on your neighbors, I am fine with it.

[techaholic]

WE do not depend on the river for our fish, most of our fish either come from the ocean (from large fishing nets) or from farms. and why should I need a license (presumably from the government) to say that my project has the stamp of approval. That's not how it's supposed to be. If I can haphazardly and those actions result in your plants dieing, then the burden of proof should fall on you to show causation. not me to show ahead of time that it won't. what if I were to get that certification and your plants still die? obviously it isn't my fault, I got rubber stamped by the best cronies money can buy.

If my actions result in damages to you or your property, you have recourse. the only role the government needs to play is the very tail end. The government supplies the forum for dispute resolution (if wwe can't agree on a private provider of binding arbitration) to determine if my actions resulted in damage, and if so, how much. and Loser pays for all the court costs. the government has one more role. if I am found liable, and I am ordered to pay damages and I fail to meet that obligation, the government should again become involved to the extent of determining if my lack of payment is criminal (refusal) or civil (insolvent).

My point is that I shouldn't have to get a license from the government to do anything that is legal to do. Rights not addressed in the constitution (happy birthday constitution, 220 years young today) is reserved to the people.

[nausved]

Although I agree with you in theory, I'm trying to look at things from a practical standpoint. In the ideal world, everyone should be allowed to drive drunk, and only those who cause wrecks should be punished.

But that's not a very realistic way to approach it. If you are killed by a drunk driver, you're dead. That's it. It's over. Whether or not the culprit is caught and punished, you're still dead.

It's in our best interests to curb high-risk behavior before the damage is done. I know it doesn't sound as pleasant, but that's the way the world works. In theory, there are a lot of things we should be doing differently. But, in practice, it doesn't always work; there are too many variables we are not accounting for.

The 10th Amendment states this:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people.

That does not mean that rights not addressed in the Constitution are necessarily reserved to the people; it means that the federal government only has the powers given to it in the Constitution, and the states have all other governmental power; and in areas where legislation has not been passed, people are free to act as they choose without legal repercussions. This means that states have every Constitutional right to require you to get a license to cut down trees, if the legislators so desire.