Lilani said:
So, if the seatbelt laws make it so that even just one child gets buckled up a little more often, wouldn't you say it's worth it?
No. Because you can use "if it just saves a SINGLE life, it's worth this small loss of personal freedom argument" to bring back alcohol prohibition (less children will be abused by drunken parents), reducing the speed limit to 30 MPH (50 KPH for you civilized folks who actually use the metric system), and host of other laws that infringe on personal freedoms or are flat-out ridiculous (the insanely low speed limit isn't really a infringement on personal freedom as much as it is just a really stupid idea).
The argument "this helps to prevent children from picking up stupid habits from their parents" can also be used to justify all SORTS of infringements of individual rights. California recently decided that it was necessary to protect children from parents who were too stupid to keep track of what video games their kids were playing, for example. The Supreme Court of the United States disagreed. Well, seven of them did, anyway.
Lilani said:
And if it's not, just think about all the revenue police departments pull in with those tickets. We could always use a little more money these days. Just don't be stupid, and those tickets will never cost you a dime. And you have the satisfaction of knowing that all over the country, there are actually people who are having to reach into their own wallets to pay for their stupidity! How often do you get to see that happen?
Using laws to generate revenues distorts incentives for the law enforcement. It's generally a HORRIBLE idea, because the police than have an incentive to focus on violations of the law that generate the most money rather than the ones that pose the greatest threat to the general public. We run into this all the time with red-light cameras. When the cameras don't produce the revenue that the companies promise, townships often reduce the amount of time that the light is yellow, even though this leads to MORE accidents. Police should be incentivized, as much as possible, to arrest people who violate the rights of others (muggers, rapists, murderers, etc). Asset forfeiture are another example: police focused more on dope growers, and had less manpower to utilize on dealing with violent offenses.
