this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2024
405 points (97.9% liked)
Technology
59331 readers
5245 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I heard cigarette taxes are the preferred form of sin tax because typically smokers pay more in taxes than they use in healthcare etc on the way out. Nicotine addicts die fast and are tax efficient, unlike alcohol or gambling addicts.
A good example of a policy that can kind of make a form of "objective" economic sense for the government to do, but is actually totally immoral, cruel, and inefficient. A good example of why governments shouldn't be run like companies, basically.
Banning vices has rarely (if ever?) gone well. Far better to tax and regulate them to at least reduce the harms by making it less affordable/dangerous and mitigate them with revenues that can be used to repair the damage.
You know I would kind of off the cuff think that probably the optimal solution would be something that prevents general accessibility for the population at large, but encourages, and makes it more easily accessible for those who already have problems with it, and then kind of, chase solutions from there. Of course, I think probably that solution would lend itself more towards a country or state that cares whether or not you're going homeless or sleeping in your car or what have you, because it's generally easier to keep track of less marginalized populations.
This isn't really to advocate for a ban, but there's definitely a kind of fine middle ground between full bans and completely free easy access. I think the thing that strikes me the most as a kind of, huge dick move, is mostly that it's kind of a purely short term financial calculation of, oh, smokers are going to pay a lot more in taxes than in healthcare, and they die quick, so that's economically good. But of course, you wouldn't want a country made up entirely of smokers, and I don't think that would be good, or pay out the best in long term societal, or even purely economic, benefits. I'm skeptical of blanket calls for total drug legalization just as I am skeptical for blanket calls for bans. Usually, there's more nuance to the situation than that, which unfortunately tends to be the thing most leveraged to enforce the status quo or pass bad austerity legislation.