There, fixed it for you: Question 2: Do you believe it's fair that you should keep ALL the money you earn? Question 10: Do you believe you should have the right to do what you like as long as you cause no harm to others, do not breach the peace, or put others at risk of harm?
I believe you've added nothing of substance but have repeated yourself, so i think Kris' orginal version is fine.
Is Kris ever going to write an article on how and why people should vote informal, or is he just going to keep whingeing about having to take half an hour out of his day every couple of years?
I couldnt answer yes to question 2, as I dont have an issue with paying tax per se, its more the high level of taxation in this country (plus the stamp duties that were never abolished here in SA) and the continual wasting of tax payers money by the government that gets my goat
No, I don't think everyone has the right to do as they like as long as it doesn't cause "harm to others". For example it's not OK to drink drive, provided there's no accident. There's plenty of other examples where there's no actual harm done, but risk to others is unacceptable.
By drink drive, you mean zero alcohol or some arbitrary amount? What about if you have taken some medicine which happens to have alcohol in it? What if you drank the night before and it's still lingering in your system? And how is different from people who get on the road when they are tired? Or get on the road with some drug in them that can't be detected by breathalyser? I don't think it's a good idea for people to get on the road in many situations, but you take pre-crime to it's logical conclusion and you end up wrapping society up in cotton wool (not far from what we have now). I think if the roads were private though the operators would likely want to prove that their roads were safe to drive on though so it could well be that there would be ways of dealing with this. Like, for example, you are banned from their road if you are caught driving recklessly or something like that.
+1. There's no logical difference between not having the right to put others at risk of harm and a pre-emptive strike or a pre-emptive jailing etc to limit a future possible harm. But the future possible harm is only a possibility not a certainty, so really it leads to a pre-emptive attack on someone else's liberties in the expectation that their future action will cause damage to someone else. Social/peer pressure arguing strongly against your actions because of the "unacceptable risk" of damage and/or different penalties in the event that harm happens is the only sensible course of action.
There are people on this forum who have lost relatives to drink drivers and who are likely to disagree with the "Oh, don't do that, it's probably not a good idea" way of handling the issue of alcohol consumption and the operation of heavy machinery. I'm not one of them but it's a sensitive subject and people would do well to consider that before going off on philosophical tangents.
Yes I am aware and I have lost close family members due to stupid seemingly preventable things in the past. However, as I said things like drink driving are simply breach of contract and as Hawkeye insinuated, the simple act of driving is dangerous. Most issues w.r.t. pre-empting and controlling stupid actions are currently done through contracts (eg "Don't stand up on the rollercoaster", "Keep your arms within the vehicle", "Random mandatory drug tests on mine sites", etc). What I was saying is that we don't want any laws that penalise someone pre-emptively on the presumption that an act will have a possibility of ending up with a horrible life changing event. In terms of the "philosophical tangents" it is much more important to understand that knee-jerk reactions to horrible events that result in curtailment of freedoms inevitably leads to the story line depicted in "Minority Report" w/- Tom Cruise. It does not belittle the horrible event in any way by saying that we shouldn't enact strict new laws because of a horrible event.
Oh God it's only 3 hours of your time in any given 3 1/2 -4 year period to vote in all 3 levels of government. Get over it. I'm all for rights and freedom but there are also certain responsibilities. One of the few responsibilites that is mandatory is turning up for those 3 hours in any given 3 1/2 year to be handed a voting form and be directed to a booth. You can make paper aeroplanes with it all you like after that.
