You don't mean this. If you did, you would support mandatory exercise regimens and diet monitoring, and aggressive eugenics programs that include mandatory sterilization of folks at very high risk for nonviable offspring.
> [Pinto anecdote]
The facts seem to disagree with you. Read page eight (listed as page 1020 in the text) of this PDF: http://www.pointoflaw.com/articles/The_Myth_of_the_Ford_Pint...
You can't compare dying in a terrorist attack to the personal choice of not exercising or eating unhealthy.
On page 1037 of the Schwartz Paper you linked to it stated that the California Supreme Court's opinion was that it actually encouraged auto manufacturers to consider the safety trade-offs in the sake of cost. I fundamentally disagree with this.
I personally think that consumer responsibility to research every safety aspect of every product they purchase is bullshit. There should be no corners cut when it comes to safety and if there are then it should be made known to the customer before purchasing the product.
The majority of people and decision makers disagree with me, but that's the great thing about this country and the internet, freedom to disagree and participate in open discussion.
Indeed - after all, the risk from a terrorist attack is so many orders of magnitude less likely we can often ignore it completely. It's noise, and deserves little special preparation.
On the other hand, heart disease and other diet related problems are one of the largest risks faced.
I should have the choice to decide whether or not I am unhealthy, it doesn't affect anyone but myself (and my family if they are dependent on me).
The government should not have the choice on whether or not to protect citizens, that's their job, citizens are depending on them to perform that action.
While I know people would be healthier and "better off" by eating healthy, I have no right to force people to eat a certain way.
If I want to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, or smoke marijuana, that should be my choice, not yours to make for me, as long as it doesn't affect you.
If I want to ask the government or a company to delete all information they have about me, I should have the right to do that, just my opinion of course.
> The government should not have the choice on whether or not to protect citizens, that's their job, citizens are depending on them to perform that action.
And this:
> If I want to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, or smoke marijuana, that should be my choice, not yours to make for me, as long as it doesn't affect you.
Makes perfect sense to me, do you still think that they are mutually exclusive statements?
What's that - you still want the freedom to drive? Even though it involves a fairly significant (0.01%) risk of dying because of things not under your control? Well, some people want the freedom to not be monitored all the time, even though it involves a much smaller than 0.01% risk of dying because of a terrorist attack. And all people should, and would, if terrorism didn't capture the imagination so vividly.
Maybe you're right, maybe we're both partially correct, it's a complicated issue and I do appreciate the discussion.
You also have no right to go through their private communications unless you have a direct probable cause. (IANAL, the exact terms are probably different, but you get the idea)
Except that the chances of each occurring are wildly different.
Chance of dying from terrorist attack in the US from 2007 to 2011: 1 in 20 million [1].
Chance of dying from choking from inhalation and ingestion of food: 1 in 3,649 [2].
20,000,000 / 3,649 => 5,480.
You are five thousand eight hundred forty times more likely to die from choking on your breakfast/lunch/dinner than to die from a terrorist attack. The difference is so extreme that you'd be better off ignoring the terrorist attack threat and instead installing a feeding tube so you no longer need to chew and swallow your food. You'd statistically live longer that way than worrying about protecting yourself from terrorist threats.
[1]http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/06/chances-of-dying-in-a-t...
[2] http://www.nsc.org/news_resources/injury_and_death_statistic... linked from here: http://www.nsc.org/news_resources/injury_and_death_statistic...
Just look at the Ford Pinto. It was calculated that it would be cheaper to pay the families of victims than it was to fix the exploding gas tank.