@pillclinton said:
@truthtellah said:
@brodehouse said:
You and I and everyone else do not exist for the purposes, interests or pleasure of our governments, the governments exist for our purposes, interests and pleasure. I've noticed more and more as the years go on, people refer to the government as having its own interests that run contradictory to the interests of the people. At that point, why not just call them the nobility and forget about this whole representative republican thing?
Like all irrational, overbearing, grasping government decrees, this will either be completely ignored by the populace, who will continue to act in now illegal ways to the point where the rare times when people actually get arrested will seem completely arbitrary. Or, people will get angry and simply go elsewhere. All they've managed to do is turn a simple tattoo down at a parlor to a plane ticket. Hope they like all that American money being spent abroad to escape their odious regulations and taxes. Never could have imagined it would go down this way.
I'm referring to a manner of design, not just arbitrary desires of those who happen to be in the government. I'm saying, as far as having a government goes, it makes sense for that government to regulate procedures done on people. That isn't strange; that's just the reality of having a government. I want the government to be interested in regulating procedures, whether done in a hospital or in a parlor. Making sure people are licensed to perform procedures is good, and making sure people can't just do whatever they want to someone else is good, as well.
I don't think this particular vague bill is a good idea, but I'm responding to the suggestion that this is only a personal decision when it is a decision involving someone else doing something to you. The government(as in, as designed and supported by the people) should regulate procedures done on people. We can disagree with what regulations and restrictions they may choose to enact, but it's in our interests to have the government attempt to regulate procedures done on people.
What you're proposing here is precisely what malpractice suits are for. If the care a doctor provides a patient falls below the standards agreed upon in a voluntary contract, then the patient has every right to file a malpractice suit. But instituting regulations on these "what ifs," before malpractice even occurs, is just making things more difficult and expensive for both contract-abiding doctors, and patients who want some specific procedure (but may now have to buy a plane ticket, book hotel reservations, etc. to have it). It's a bunch of unnecessary, further-government-empowering nonsense (because you can't just pass a new regulation without hiring people to enforce it, meaning more money spent by gov't, and more taxation) for contractual standards that already exist.
I'm not proposing anything. I'm explaining why regulation as a concept is a good thing. The government should attempt to protect people from dangerous foods, dangerous products, and potentially dangerous procedures. There are a lot of bad regulations, and it's important to strike and maintain a good balance with regulations.
It's nothing new that some medical procedures can't be performed by a licensed physician, or that tattoo artists can't just do anything they want to someone. This isn't a proposal; this is the reality of how things are. And even with serious issues in government regulations, it's good that some things are allowed and some are not.
In this case, I think it seems like a bad bill, and I hope it is either greatly changed or never passed.
In theory, I completely agree, but the reality of how things are is that, in practice, these regulations so rarely do just what they were designed to do in an efficient manner without imposing further difficulties on all parties involved (I mean really, just look at nearly anything the gov't gets its hands on). Also, as an aside, I simply can't shake the idea that putting a bunch of people with little to no experience in anything outside of law in charge of overseeing specialized fields isn't going to yield the best results. And I keep coming back to two things: personal responsibility (the ability, and expectation, of a customer to research, read and understand what they're getting into, etc.) and insurance (either literal, or what malpractice suits effectively act as).
The government "declaring war," as it were, on these amorphous possibilities, though, does almost nothing to actually stop them from occurring, and instead drives things into the black market, where things really are unsafe.
And as far as this Arkansas bill goes, c'mon, just look at where it's being proposed and who it's targeting. I think we all know this likely has little to do "safety" and a lot to do with "those dirty, tattooed hippie folk."
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