alt.energy.homepower

"no spam" wrote in message
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>>>>>>>>> My point still is where does the government get the right to tell me
>>>>>>>>> what risk I can and can not take and where does it stop?

Your freedom stops where it rubs against my freedom.

Allow me to play the devil's advocate: Many of our actions have externalities
that can impact others, or at least impact society as a whole. When a person
does something stupid and dangerous such as driving a motorcycle without a
helmet and then ends up as a long-term zombie taking a bed in a medical
facility, it is our society (not the idiot) who ends up paying the bill. Even
in the unlikely event the zombie has sufficient insurance, he has succeeded in
raising premiums for the rest of us.

Let me give you a personal example of the power of the state: When I was a
child, "they" came to the door of our home, took my mother away by force, and
locked her up in a state institution for the rest of her life. She was not
charged with any crime, she had not done anything to anybody, but they took her
away and locked her up. From that day, I only saw her from a distance, and
finally in a casket. Terrible huh?

It *was* terrible at the time, but looking back with the distance and the
acquired wisdom of a few decades I can finally see things a bit differently. As
it turns out, "they" were absolutely right to remove my mother from my family
and from our church and friends. She had TB, there was then no cure for TB, and
her and my father were in denial. By "their" action, "they" protected others
from getting that same incurable disease.

If we had done the same for the first few AIDS patients, thousands of folks
would still be alive today and society would have saved billions in treatment
costs. However, as a society we are now willing to pay the price of having
people spread dread diseases in the name of freedom and privacy. Are we doing
the right thing?

Vaughn