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comment by YetAnotherAccount
YetAnotherAccount  ·  3557 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski, what's your political persuasion?

First principles: The longer a set of laws is the more open to abuse it is - the more loopholes there are. In particular, convoluted and vague laws lead to selective enforcement, at which point they are no longer just. I.e. in general trying to write convoluted laws that cover all edge cases will cause more issues than they solve. As short a set of laws as possible.

This colors my entire political beliefs. So.

I do not believe there should be laws restricting what a person does to themselves, as long as it doesn't materially harm anyone else and they are of the age of majority.

I believe that there should be one age of majority, and one age only. (It makes no sense that a person can die for their country and control several tons of metal at high velocity, but cannot smoke, for example.)

I believe that abortion should be illegal. For various reasons. For one thing: straight economic reasons. The net value of a standard human life in economic terms is non-negative. For another: it causes issues with the definition of murder. We can save babies born more prematurely than many abortions - is kicking a pregnant women, causing her to miscarry, murder?

I am firmly in favor of freedom of speech. In the sense of "no person may censor another", that is. I personally believe it's fine for person B to refuse to allow person A to talk to them, but not for person C to refuse to allow person A to talk to person B.

I am mildly in favor of a subsidized health care system but only with a set of restrictions: anything that is a personal choice (as opposed to intrinsic) requires a license that costs the maximum of a small service fee and the difference between the average citizen's costs to health care and the average cost of someone with the license. (Amusingly enough, some things, like smoking for example, would not actually cost.)

I am in favor of a flat income tax. Again, can cause issues, but less issues than the number of issues caused by tax loopholes.