From: firstfrost	Date: April 6th, 2010 04:04 pm (UTC)		(Link)

This is somewhat broad for a yes/no question. Do I think we should inject non-smokers with carcinogens so that their chance of cancer is the same as it is for smokers? No. Do I think companies should be encouraged to fire smokers from their jobs? No.

	From: enugent	Date: April 6th, 2010 04:58 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Too broad a question to pick a simple yes or no answer. To the extent that you're planning to use a positive answer as a gotcha for why we shouldn't have a universal health insurance mandate, I pick no. If we're talking about employee wellness programs, I might be willing to sign on to it if they focused on behaviors, but since they almost universally focus on outcomes, again, no. If we're talking about discounts on car insurance for wearing a seat belt, probably yes.

	From: gryphon2k	Date: April 6th, 2010 05:35 pm (UTC)		(Link)

My problem with the question is, who gets to define whether a choice was responsible or not? Not all responsible choices have good outcomes, not do all irresponsible choices have bad outcomes.

I think there are few things that are going to be obviously responsible or irresponsible the time the choice is made (at least for big, non-trivial choices). So penalizing irresponsible choices is a little too arbitrary and hindsighted for me to be comfortable with, personally.

From: tirinian	Date: April 6th, 2010 05:42 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I think very few of your readers are going to disagree with that question as phrased. Perhaps the question you actually want to ask to find the dividing line you may be looking for is more along the lines of "Do you think it is preferable for people who make responsible choices to gain all the benefit from those choices while people who make less responsible choices suffer all the consequences of their choices?" I would answer that phrasing no.

	From: chenoameg	Date: April 6th, 2010 06:05 pm (UTC)		(Link)

This question assumes that not everyone makes responsible choices.

Do you assume that everyone is capable of making responsible choices?

	From: firstfrost	Date: April 6th, 2010 06:56 pm (UTC)		(Link)

The scholarship example is even one where there's a lot of leeway. Do I think there should be scholarships for good students? Sure, yes. Do I think that merit-based scholarships should be the only kind? No.

Personally, I think that life is full of circumstances where making good decisions gets you benefits and bad decisions gets you penalties; also, random chance gets you benefits or gets you penalties. As a society, I think we should make some attempt to ameliorate the worst of the penalties, and I don't think that those attempts at amelioration should *only* be targetted at the random-chance-based bad things. And, to the extent that we're a zero-sum society (which I don't think we wholly are), an attempt at amelioration will tend to take stuff from the advantaged and give it to the disadvantaged; again, some of those advantages being lessened will be due to good choices, and some will be due to luck.

	From: jaedian	Date: April 6th, 2010 10:47 pm (UTC)		(Link)

In general I think yes. But that is such a broad question. And there are plenty of decisions that seem perfectly reasonable at the time but are in fact disastrous in hindsight. (do we need responsibility police to determine if it was a good choice at the time? - then you qualify for help?)

But there are plenty of choices that end up being bad, that were made based on erroneous assumptions, rather than being irresponsible choices. With the mortgage crisis, certainly some of the people were irresponsible. But many just had faulty assumptions, assuming they would keep getting raises or keep their job, assuming that real estate would go up or at least not go down etc. So I don't see how you can sort out the irresponsible from just unfortunate choices. At least not on a society level.

And certainly, there are plenty of irresponsible decisions that pay off in a big positive way. (risk taking can be quite profitable. And responsible decisions that fail miserably.

And I think there should be some attempt to reduce the penalty for first time offenders whether it be bankruptcy or criminal court. Because sometimes people make mistakes and we should always try and learn from our past mistakes as no-one is perfect. But I think there also has to be some penalty for a mistake, or you won't learn from it. And if it is a repeat pattern, then I wouldn't offer help.

But I do think people who are responsible or hard working or even lucky should be allowed to benefit from any successes as well. Otherwise no-one has any incentive to make good choices in the future. As a side point, I do see a lot of parents nowadays stepping in to save their children from their choices and mistakes. I don't see how children can learn from their mistakes if we do that. And it seems like this could have interesting social ramifications in future generations.