Why Has Government, and Politicians in General, No Concept of Human Autonomy?

I am a human being. I have a right to 100% personal autonomy. I can do what I like with my own body. It is mine, and no one else’s.

MjM drew my attention to this report:

http://nordic.businessinsider.com/finland-has-committed-to-eradicating-smokers–killing-yourself-with-cigarettes-is-now-insanely-inconvenient-and-expensive-2017-1

Do you see the immediate insanity in that headline alone? It is not insane to kill yourself. Many a ship’s Captain ‘went down with his ship’. If he did not ‘go down’, he was the last off. It is called ‘self-sacrifice’ aka ‘letting yourself be killed’ aka ‘suicide’. You have 100% control over your own body, and you cannot ethically be denied that right by anyone or anything, especially disembodied Government.

There is a motorway around half a mile from my house, if that. If I was in a state of utter despair, I might walk to the bridge and throw myself over the parapet. If the fall did not kill me, the traffic most certainly would. There would be mayhem – cop cars, ambulances, crashes, etc. The cost would be massive. So should pedestrians be barred from crossing the bridge to save those putative costs? For that is what the Finland Gov is doing in effect. It intends to charge tobacco retailers a fee, with the intention of shutting them down, thus denying smokers access to tobacco products, and thus, putatively, denying them their rights over their own bodies.

This attitude in Gov is now so widespread that it is not surprising that Finland has ‘jumped the shark’. It is endemic in the EU. ‘Remainers’ do not understand. For their own short-term self-interests NOW, they would sacrifice their autonomous rights as individuals in the future.

Putting yourself into a dangerous situation is not at all uncommon. Heavens! It is NORMAL!!! When you are sitting in an aircraft at takeoff, you have put yourself in a situation where you could cause massive costs if the aircraft crashed before leaving the ground, or even more so later.

You have the 100% right to take risks with your own body, regardless of the possible costs to taxpayers.

I think that the Finland Gov must be extremely stupid since there is a much better way for putative taxpayer costs to be recouped, which would be some sort of insurance which would be levied on tobacco products. Why has TobCON not gone along that path? Giggle – because it would not be funded by such a scheme – hospitals would, and that cannot be permitted. States in the USA have already stolen the Master Settlement monies to buttress their budgets.

What we are seeing, throughout the world, is a denial of ‘autonomous human rights’. You might like to read this about ‘harm reduction’:

What is Tobacco Harm Reduction?

You have an ‘autonomous human right’ to inject heroin if you wish to. ‘Harm Reduction’ would say, “Take care. Use a clean needle. Recognise that you are putting yourself in great danger. Do not be ashamed. Visit your doctor and ask for advice”. And stuff like that.

The antithesis of ‘Harm Reduction’ is a ‘War on Drugs’. It is massively expensive and achieves nothing. Humans have been hooked on drugs since the first human being tasted an orange and said, “Yum. Yum”. Indeed, is it not true that the Zealots are referring to sugar as ‘a drug’? Round and round we go.

But Politicians are blind to these things. They are notorious for thinking HERE AND NOW. Was it Harold Wilson who said ‘a week is a long time in politics’?

Why did Cameron agree to PP? Will we ever know? He was pictured enjoying a fag and is reported to have said that he has started smoking again (if he ever stopped). Why has it not been mandated that every cig packet should contain an insert, just like packets of pills have, describing the type of tobacco, its nicotine content and tar content, and its addictiveness and likely carcinogenic properties?

How is it that the Zealot have been empowered to remove all the information that matters and replace it with medical porn?

The Finland proposal is a consequence of sloppy thinking. Sloppy thinking is how wars start. Sloppy thinking was what caused Hitler et al to think that they were invincible and could conquer the world. Sloppy thinking has caused the EU to think that its ‘gravy train’ is important. As Hayek said, the idea that Gov can control billions of small interactions between individuals is nonsense. It cannot be done.

I used to enjoy going to the pub nine times per week. That may seem excessive, until you realise that I went there because it amused me. That is all. Not for a second did I see it as anything else. When the smoking ban came in, the amusement diminished very rapidly. Now, I go only three times per week, and I drink far fewer pints than I used to. Not because of the cost, but because  the pub is not as amusing as it used to be. I now prefer drinking red wine at home. Essentially, I have removed myself from ‘polite, non-smoking society’, except that there is no such society, and there never has been.

Brexit is the forerunner of a vast revolution. BRITAIN LEADS THE WAY! We do not need vast bureaucracies. What is critical is that we do not pay billions of pounds to support that bureaucracy. It must die from starvation.

Boris Johnson has just said that we must not pay the EU billions for us to trade with those countries, unless they pay billions to trade with the UK. Quid pro quo. We would be better off spending that money on the NHS. Only the EU bureaucracy stands in the way of ‘free trade’.

According to Junker, France, Germany and Italy want to become ‘one nation’. I suppose that the opinions of the rest of the 27 do not count. But what Junker says that those Nations want is far from the reality. It is ‘EU’ think.

The more that Government is centralised, the more that ‘Human Autonomy’ ceases to exist, and become ‘communal’. That is, YOU MUST OBEY.