Governments tellin' you to do stuff

[Fifthfiend]

I wanted to respond to POS in the guns thread but he was right that the thing I was responding to was pretty well away from the original topic so I said okay, I'll make another topic.

Originally Posted by POS

Which, as much of a tangent as this is, I feel is a criminal misuse of legislation as well. The government has no right to force you to pay a private company for a service that you may very possibly never need. I feel the same way about this "let's just make it a law that everyone has to have health insurance" idea a lot of the current presidential candidates are trying to push. If the problem is that people don't have the money to afford a service, why is making them obligated by law to pay for it a solution?

I guess I don't really have an issue on principle with car insurance / health insurance / mandated gun ownership because I'm pretty much okay with the government saying from time to time people are required to do stuff for the sake of the public good. On some level it just goes to the ability of the government to, well, govern, cause if they can't tell people to do stuff then they really aren't going to be doing a whole lot of effective governing.

I mean none of the above are really any different from, say, taxation; the government could always just up your taxes by whatever's the cost of a basic gun and then mail you a gun with a note saying "Okay citizen, here's your gun."

As far as stuff you'll never need, I don't really have too hard of a problem with that just because a lot of stuff government does isn't stuff I'll necessarily ever need. Again, they already require me to give them tax money to spend on highways I won't necessarily drive on or student loans for people other than me or to pay for an army that might never actually be needed to defend me from foreign invaders and lots of other things.

It's just that if I ever do need any of that stuff it's there, and even if I personally don't use it, I still indirectly benefit from all of that stuff being available to other people who do need it. Same as how I generally benifit from living in a world where people can cross streets with some assurance that if someone hits them with a car, then that person will be held accountable for their medical bills and things.

I do have a lot of problems with how these things are done in practice. Among other things health insurance mandates still leave our health in the hands of health insurance companies, which have proven themselves to be extremely disinterested in providing any particular person paying them money with any kind of actual medical coverage. And it continually upsets me that there isn't a law requiring car insurance companies to refund, say, 80% of whatever money they're paid that isn't paid out to people in actual claims. But I have a lot of particular disagreements with where people are spending my tax money too.