Anything Else

Came across "Are We Free To Be Foolish?" By Shruti Rajagopalan (Via Me). Read that first. 

While I am still have not thought and read enough on the issues of prostitution and drugs, I feel I can talk about why suicide, in my opinion, is punishable. First of all, suicide itself is not a crime(dead people don't get sued), its attempted suicide which is, and that should be punishable, because well, state is spending resource on you. Off hand, state has no way of finding out if the fellow suffocating to death was planning to kill himself or is a poor victim who needs protection, if they did, probably the right thing for state to do is to let them die, but state has to rush them to emergency rooms and provide treatment. It costs. Then state has to investigate if its really a suicide attempt or someone tried to kill him. It costs too. And this happens to not be a victim less crime, the family of the attempter are the victims (tho they might pretend to think otherwise due to the presence of an incredibly sensitive son of a b*tch, how might try to kill himself again). 

Probably the ideal punishment for this crime should be capital, why should state spend further by housing the person in a jail, when they themselves thing they are worthless, and wanted to die, after this is ideal win win situation. But out of its immense charitable nature, state decided not to kill, and let him live. State be praised.

Actually I just got a thought about prostitution, and I do not know of its morality, and frankly morality has very little to do with state actions, rightly so, state usually picks practicality and smartness consideration over moral ones when acting. In prostitution, there are various "acts", and they cost different amounts of money. If it were to be legal, in the heat of passion, some business disputes may arise, and feminist liberation army would be on the head of the state if state considered this as a merely business/civil dispute. The only system of prostitution that can be practically be legal is "fixed price, pre-approved and prepaid prostitution". Because this system allows for extreme brutalities(who is there to say where to draw the line?) I guess its okay for state to call it illegal and save itself from human right issues. Other option is to make rape legal too, but that too seems to have some tiny human right issues somewhere that I can't think of at the moment. :-)

In short, in my opinion, in the ideal world, prostitution and suicide should be illegal, thanks to the wisdom of our government for not listing to this whiny... people. And this has nothing to do with morality bullshit that Shruti is claiming. How about drugs? Not thought enough. 

Lets talk about the third set of laws, that she claims are made because state thinks the citizens are stupid. 

Helmet law: State has to bear the cost of treatment, traffic police, ambulance, emergency rooms, then all kinds of CAT scans are heavily subsidized at every level from government hospitals to exemption of service and sales tax on part to levies on import and so on. This and all kind of person safety laws should be removed the day it became okay for the government to let people die on streets. If you expect quick treatment, be prepared to wear the helmet. And don't tell me you can always pay for your treatment later on, as when you are fu*king lying in the pool of your blood, state has to decide to take you in or not, state has to take the risk of taking in even those who can not pay. They have to hedge the bets. It has to be either no one or everyone whom the state will have to invest in, and thus its logical that state demands everyone to wear the helmet. BTW if you are so proud of paying it up, and liberty, no one is asking you to wear the helmet, it just costs Rs 200/- for every ride you take without helmet. State will love you, trust me. 

Street food: State is subsidizing health care at every level, medicine, paying doctors, hospitals, tax exemptions etc. Anything that increase this cost, state has the right to make a law against. Sure the rich can pay for their health, but the only way state can make sure that only rich can shop on street food shops is by putting a constable on each of those shops kicking out poor bastards away. It would have been good to live in that "ideal" world, but we don't, and state is completely right in doing what they are doing here. 

Hand-pulled rickshaw: She claims the reason is dignity, but let me tell you a few facts about economics. Rich pay the taxes. They get to use roads more than the poor. Rickshaws are cheap. They take up space. They do not help the rich. They congest the roads. Throw them out. We did. This was definetely not a moral or paternal decision :-). 

Labor laws vs individual contracts: We have huge backlog of court cases in India. Contract is bullshit unless it is upheld and enforced by a court when in dispute. Labor laws reduce the number of cases, and forms a system in which the average case is kind of ok for the poors. Moral and Paternalistic? Please! Practical? May be.

Dance Bars: Desperate filthy people. Girls out of money, doing things to earn it. Alcohol. Late night. Ripe for prostitution? Hell yes. See, making prostitution illegal is bullshit unless state enforces it. State does not have resources to sit 2 constables in each such bar (even then who is there to watch that they would not get bribed) and make sure that prostitution is not happening. Its not even a question of dance bars, if for example there is a street where late in the night girls come and stand, and its known that few of them get taken home for a charge, its entirely practical thing for state to send police petrol to kick any woman standing on that road late in the night. It has nothing to do with dignity. State has finite resources. Terrorists are not sleeping. We can not observe every single interaction to decide if its prostitution going on or not. You just look for patterns, and remove them all together. Smart utilization of resources it is called. Politicians sell this in the name of "protecting the dignity" but only the naivest of us are supposed to buy such arguments.

Bhopal case:

The victims and citizens of Bhopal were not allowed to sue the company who took away the lives and health of their families and the prosperity of their city because the state felt that “ambulance chasers” would take away most of their compensation in legal fees.

Bullshit. For your kind information the case involved was in 100s of millions of dollars. UC India, if entirely liquidated, would not yield even 10 million dollars. Its pointless to sue them. You had to sue Uniion Carbide in US. And victims and citizens simply can not do that. Where is the question of allowing or not allowing anyone? State did not deny any right, victims could have, and did sue UC India. As part of settlement with Union Carbide (US), India waived all cases against UC-India, and this is obvious double jeopardy understanding (you don't sue twice for the same crime). Did India manage the best settlement? Probably no, probably yes, people like her (lawyers) are supposed to give their opinion about how much settlement would have been right, but the thing is, it was way beyond what the victims would have got on their own (by suing UC-India). State did a favor. Talk about thankless jobs!

In conclusion:

Do we have the right to take risks that only affect us? Do we have the freedom to live our lives as we choose after weighing the risks, even if we are being foolish according to the government? And if part of freedom is the freedom to be a fool, are we free?

We sure do. You can do many adventure sport. You can perform any risky medical procedure. But as long as you say "oh we will take risk as much as we want, but if something goes wrong, please come up and save us", as long as we put an obligation on the state to protect us from the consequences arising from those risks, the state has the right to demand some lack of foolishnes on your part.