So?

I don't really think it is the government's role to police private behavior choices.

It would also cause the personally responsible poor to have more money because sales taxes are regressive. God forbid a blue collar worker wants to have a couple of beers after work.

You don't have to believe it's the government's role to police private choices to support sin taxes; another coherent way to look at them is that they internalize market externalities.

Sales taxes are in some sense fungible, in that vendors could eat the cost to consumers by reducing their prices, in the same sense as a direct tax on those vendors would also be fungible, in that vendors would raise their prices to account for the taxes. Arguably, consumer-facing sin taxes are cheaper and simpler to administrate, and are the superior solution.

But do they?

Is any government calculating the net cost between tax dollars spent because of cigarette smoking and tax dollars gathered from tobacco products and setting the tax in that manner?

Has any government put a lower or higher tax rate on any tobacco product based on risk or cost profile?

It is not that the arguments you are making aren't viable, I'm just not so sure that anyone is actually doing those things.

We're going to start seeing that with taxes on EVs to make up for lost fuel tax revenue.

But that's not a complete engagement with the argument, right? Fuel taxes pay for more than just the carbon and pollution externalities of driving, but also of the cost of maintaining safe roads.

You can obviously disagree with the argument, but it's not incoherent and is in keeping with the underlying notion of a Pigovian tax.

Aren't sin taxes one of the textbook examples of internalizing (Pigovian) taxes?

But most of us do feel like the government should police behavior that negatively impacts us all. I want to dissuade people from smoking or excess drinking because it makes health insurance for me and my family more expensive while tying up hospital resources treating people for preventable diseases.

Not only that, but cigarette companies target youths with an addictive substance that people eventually want to stop using but have a very difficult time doing so.

> I want to dissuade people from smoking or excess drinking because it makes health insurance for me and my family more expensive while tying up hospital resources treating people for preventable diseases.

If smoking reduced total health expenditure (because those who die early from smoking-related illnesses avoid the costliest years of their lives), would you advocate for the government to encourage smoking?

No.

I considered multiple facets when making this decision: 1) people are harmed by it, 2) even though people willfully start doing it, they can't always willfully stop doing it, 3) it negatively impacts them and their family's health/finances, 4) it negatively impacts society in a variety of ways.

I believe that impacts to society is what gives society (read: government) the right or obligation to intervene. Taxes are an effective mechanism of softly encouraging good behavior and they have much less risk of unintended consequences than total bans do.

Then the solution should be decoupling other people's behavior from your health care costs.

vouched this because it is a legitimate, if inelegant, contribution to the discussion.

This works so long as you don't think it's unethical for hospitals to turn away people that can't pay. Otherwise other people's negative health choices cost me money.

Are you somehow supporting the hospitals separately from the taxes that everyone else pays? All of our stupid pointless wars cost me money, as well as being deeply evil, but that argument hasn't stopped them yet... in the meantime keep your hands off my consumption of beverages.

> Are you somehow supporting the hospitals separately from the taxes that everyone else pays?

Yes. The cost of my health insurance is based off of the cost to hospitals; hospitals need to charge paying customers more if they have to write off their non-paying customers.

> All of our stupid pointless wars cost me money, as well as being deeply evil, but that argument hasn't stopped them yet...

Our stupid pointless wars are indeed one of the biggest breakdowns in democracy. Bush promised to stay out of foreign entanglements and Obama promised to leave Iraq and Afghanistan. As CiC, the president does not need any help from congress to withdraw (or refrain from sending) troops, so these are much easier promises to follow through on those that require congressional approval.

> in the meantime keep your hands off my consumption of beverages.

If you're going to wait for politicians to act with high standards of ethics before they pass any regulations, you are, for all practical purposes, arguing for anarcho-libertarianism.

Yet other people also pay for health insurance... I don't see how your situation is unique.

The thing that the system does, continuously, for decades, is not a "big breakdown". It is obviously the purpose of the system, intended by those who control the system. The system is not waiting for a good person to come along. That candidates lie about everything all the time has been a commonplace assumption throughout my lifetime. Yet still they are elected...

Since I am an anarchist, I often argue against arbitrary authority and its capricious and unjust actions. I contrast my position with those of people like yourself who believe that their own economic decisions entitle them to subvert the autonomy of others.

How is it subverting the autonomy of others to require them to fund the externalities of their actions?

As with most things, it's a little of both, not binary. Your decisions effects others, others decisions effect you. You can spend your entire life not making a dent into how complicated that particular equation is..or...you can just not be a dick and either try to help other folks or at least not go out of your way to make their lives worse.

Many of other people's choices cost you money. In fact it is quite difficult to decouple any choice from affecting the rest of the population.

How do you decide the role of government intervening?

Is the role of government to maximize each individual's contribution/cost ratio by force of law, how do you balance that against personal freedom?

We have this technology called representative democracy which allows us to make that determination. Other societies have other technology. It all boils down to might makes right in the end though.

That is how laws get made, it is not how a person decides their ideas about the roles of government. I am asking the latter.

Probably the same answer to "how do people form beliefs?"

Off the top of my head, I'd say a combination of genetics (studies show political leaning has a genetic component) and input (from social circles and reading).

It's easy for me to decide on government intervention.

I believe voluntary association is the only moral form of governance.

As long as I don't get assaulted by a drunk dude or get cancer from second hand smoke I agree - but a lot of these sin taxes are on items that effect others through their usage.

Oh man, you came to the wrong town, my friend.