this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
18 points (95.0% liked)
Ontario
2187 readers
3 users here now
A place to discuss all the news and events taking place in the province of Ontario, Canada.
Rules
- No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
- Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
- No porn.
- No Ads / Spamming.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The less revenue the state takes from the disease and misfortune of its citizens, the better.
Maybe but Ford has been consistently cutting revenue while consistently raising spending
It’s not sustainable
Kind of like how he was planning to crash our power grid in 2026 but once he started feeling like there was a chance of him winning again, he’s started rolling back those changes. (Including extending the life of the Pickering plant)
Exploiting addiction is not sustainable for those who are exploited.
So you are in favour of making it available in more places
But are trying some weird anti-alcohol high road
I'm not in favour of making it available in more places. I just think that government involvement in things like alcohol, pot, gambling and other common human addictions should be revenue neutral, so there are not perverse incentives for the state to exploit the minority of humans that have extreme addiction problems.
There is nothing weird about opposing human suffering.
I can't tell if you're being disingenuous.
One of the arguments for the taxes on drugs like alcohol is to offset the healthcare costs incurred by people partaking in them.
The government could make the decision to restrict the sale and lower their "income", but balance it out with there being less costs in terms of healthcare.
If we move the sale to the private sector, there is no motivation other than profit. Which usually means to sell as much as possible.
Unless the private sector brings in as much (or more) tax revenue as the public sector, then the only difference is that it (likely) becomes harder to regulate. And if there is less tax dollars coming in, we'll have poorer outcomes, healthwise.
Basically, the government can say "If you want this, you need to pay in advance for your healthcare". Whereas the private sector doesn't care one bit as long as the money is coming in.
I don't understand making the argument that the government shouldn't sell alcohol, but the private sector should be allowed to. It just sounds contradictory to any good faith argument that I can imagine.