Doing it for profit is hardly a better excuse than following orders. Should we not hold it against Trump that he ran casinos which preyed on the intellectually and financially disadvantaged?

> Doing it for profit is hardly a better excuse than following orders.

Profit motive has nothing to do with it. You could just as easily be blaming a shelter for "harboring" an adulterer. It isn't their job to be the morality police.

And you don't want them to be, because they have no accountability and little incentive to get it right. Better that corporations provide service to everyone than that they be the ones deciding who gets denied service.

> Should we not hold it against Trump that he ran casinos which preyed on the intellectually and financially disadvantaged?

Trump didn't force them to bet their money in the casino. They chose to do that, and we chose not to pass a law against it.

If we hold Trump responsible for that, then don't we hold cigarette companies responsible for lung cancer? Weapons companies for murders? BitTorrent for piracy? Soda and fast food companies for obesity and diabetes? Where does it end?

Sadly, humans in general seem to need that kind of policing as they just cannot help themselves.

> they just cannot help themselves

Said every despot in the history of the world. Once you start trying to save people from their baser instincts by restricting what you can and cannot do by force, you are infantilizing them.

Seatbelts, motorcycle helmets, ensuring food is free of contaminants (rather than relying on people to read the label and decide), ensuring that pharmaceuticals and other procedures are safe (rather than relying on people to shop around and decide for themselves), building codes to prevent homes and buildings from catching fire due to cheaper, shoddy wiring. People's baser instincts will often not drive them to make decisions in their own best interest—even if you were to ask them themselves—in the short term.

"Once you start" implies drawing a line that any kind of regulation is infantilizing them. There are some people who think that this is wrong. However, many more understand that there are some forms of regulation that help not only society as a whole but individuals themselves. Yes, there are questions as to the degree and kind of regulation. And reasonable people can discuss this. And these people are not asking for despots.

> "Once you start" implies drawing a line that any kind of regulation is infantilizing them.

I never said infantilizing was a bad thing. Most people aren't really able to make the optimum decision in their lives about most areas.

For instance, some of the most proficient programmers I know who make otherwise good decisions neglect their diet and exercise.

Should we enforce mandatory vegetable and exercise regimens for them? On a more prosaic level, should we limit the size and shape of knives that private citizens should be allowed to own because of violence concerns?

Realizing that there is nothing qualitatively different about these measures from the measures being described is a first step on evaluating all measures of this sort.

You are right and that is a difficult problem. When I was younger (15-20 years ago) I was against any government control; now that I met many people and read many books and lived a few decades more, I think the government should govern far more than it does; basically I became very sceptical about the ability of many people to run their lives in almost every way. I have no clue (as I am that programmer who does not exercise enough; diet is good though) how to have free people mixed with a despot(meaning the absolute ruler, not abusive ruler)-like control without it running into abuse fast. But yes, I would not be opposed forced exercise regimes for people like me. I do not believe that kind of freedom is good for me or anyone else. Besides the basic concept of freedom which great thing, but then you get into what you say; what do you and what don't you enforce.

Rather than ban these things, we should just tax them to pay for social services to offset the harm that they do.

I know it's not PC in SV to say so, but I REALLy hate sin taxes. Smokers die younger, have fewer of the oh-so expensive end-of-life years, cost less as a result and yet still are social pariahs who have the privilege of paying extra taxes and extra for health insurance. Fair how?

Smokers may die younger, but the way they die is more expensive than living longer (years of respiratory illness). Also, smokers cause collateral damage through secondary smoke inhalation.

You can call it a sin tax, but another term is "disincentive tax".

Actually NE Journal of Medicine says that mass smoking cessation would increase total health care costs in long run. So not sure the logic for the disincentives, other than paternalism run amok.

"If people stopped smoking, there would be a savings in health care costs, but only in the short term. Eventually, smoking cessation would lead to increased health care costs."

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199710093371506

Are you cherry-picking studies to support your beliefs? Because you should click through to the letters to the editor in response to the article: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199802123380713

The responses raise legitimate concerns about the article's analysis, and they also support my assertion (which continues to be the mainstream view of the costs of smoking-related health-care). For example, the analysis you cited ignores secondhand smoke health costs entirely and ignores a number of conditions associated with smoking. In the author's reply to the criticism, they paper over these concerns in an inadequate way.

..Yes? It ends when people aren't being harmed or the negative externalities of their actions are offset by some kind of sin tax used to pay for the aftermath?