Government By Actuary
March 26, 2013 Leave a comment
Over the weekend Nanny Bloomberg declared that “I do think there are certain times we (government) should infringe in your freedom.” The left has long believed in government by expert. They’ve essentially moved to government by actuary. Actuaries tend to work at insurance companies calculating risk, the left now basically wants to use their calculations to figure out risk and tax or ban accordingly. Thus the left determines that fat people “cost” taxpayers money and thus they want to tax their conduct in order to make up the difference. In the alternative they behave like Nanny Bloomberg and simply ban the “offending” conduct.
Rather than be free to choose what we eat, the left wants to control us based on expert findings. There’s a limit to their argument of course. The left doesn’t like to look at fat people so they’re an easy target. They don’t like smokers either. But turn the tables to a group the left likes and they go crazy. Ann Coulter did just that over the weekend arguing that sodomy creates great cost to society, usually in the form of expensive HIV treatments. The left doesn’t want to hear any of this and immediately demands that the bedroom remain off limits. How can it remain off limits though when we’re running government via actuary?
The left only wants to talk about the costs associated with people who they either want to control or don’t particularly care about. Thus fat people and smokers are their target. Homosexuals, drug users and unwed mothers are the left’s core constituency, thus they don’t want to talk about their cost to society. AIDS remains a disease dominated by homosexuals and drug users in the United States, the costs of which are extremely high. Drug use creates all sorts of costs to society beyond locking up users and dealers. Unwed mothers create an astronomical cost to society but the left doesn’t want to talk abstinence, which is the only birth control method that actually works.
In a free society we shouldn’t even be considering the cost to taxpayers. If you’re a hundred pounds overweight, that ought to be your financial risk. Instead, the left has ensured that it is the taxpayers risk. It is hardly surprising that after making all risks those assumed by taxpayers that the left would then want to tax and otherwise control people. Especially when those people aren’t a core constituency for the left and/or aren’t a group they’re afraid to lose to the GOP. The minute any of their core constituency is questioned for their cost, the left will suddenly cry personal freedom. The hypocrisy is amazing.
When it comes to our personal health we all create our own risk. Whether we eat too much or too little, whether we engage in risky illicit activities such as sodomy or drug use or whether we engage in risky recreational activities such as skiing, we all create risk for ourselves. When we accept socialized medicine and other massive government programs that shift our personal risk onto government, we can hardly be surprised when government wants to tax our risky activities or ban them. If we want to retain our freedom, we have to push back against massive government intrusions into healthcare. Government doesn’t know what’s best for us but they certainly have actuaries at their disposal who will tell them which of us will cost government the most. We shouldn’t get to that point in a free society.
