Government in debt – fines go up! Any correlation?
I was driving back from Tescos last night when my partner told me that the Government was going to raise the fine for not wearing a seat belt from £30 to £60. Clearly I missed this news item amongst the many other news items I’d heard or read in the last couple of days about one thing or another being banned, regulated or funded by the taxpayer.
Of course, the justification for increasing the fine is to encourage ‘safety’ for drivers and their passengers. But let’s be clear here, this is not about safety. This is about raising money.
Let’s have a look at some figures. According to one of my God-awful local papers here in Staffordshire – The Sentinel – 2,863 were issued with £30 fixed penalty notices between April 2008 and March this year. By my reckoning that is a total of £85,890 that year.
Double that, and assuming the level of deviancy remains the same, Staffordshire fines will total £171, 780.
In neighbouring Cheshire, 4,288 people were caught not wearing a seat belt last year (for they are very bad people across the border) – a total in fines of £128,640. Again, double this and the fines total £257,280.
Interestingly, and despite the fines existing in 2007, pretty much the same number of people in Cheshire were fined for driving their vehicle without wearing a seat belt. That year 4,248 fines were issued, a total of £127,440.
Of course, this money is going to the victims of these horrendous crimes, right? Nope, for the truth is there are no victims when someone makes the choice not to wear one’s seat belt. The truth is there is a beneficiary of these crimes against humanity and the fines that are imposed, and that is the Government and its agencies. It profits from us doing these so-called bad, bad things.
It may not be the wisest of choices to not wear one’s seat belt, but in not doing so you don’t harm anyone else. There are of course many reactionaries who argue there are victims involved.
If I were to crash my car tomorrow and, because I did not wear my seat belt, I flew through the windscreen and ended up a bloody mess on the highway I would of course be leaving my partner and child behind. That would be unfortunate but that doesn’t make them victims. They have not been harmed by my actions.
Yes, it is true they don’t receive my income or my companionship (for what its worth) any more, but that still doesn’t make them victims. They have experienced a loss, but that doesn’t make them victims.
My conduct as an individual would be well known by my partner and possibly my child. If I were a ‘prolific’ offender and didn’t wear my seat belt frequently, my partner has the opportunities to make choices in the matter too.
Maybe as a result of her concerns we’d have life insurance. Maybe she’d decide that our relationship couldn’t continue unless I changed my bad ways and started wearing the seat belt every time I got into the car. Maybe she would refuse to get in a car that I’m driving. She has free will. She can make choices in life.
Of course, the one thing that really seems to exercise advocates of the seat belt laws is the cost to the NHS. Heaven forbid I should live and yet break every bone in my body. That would be costly to the taxpayer.
I’m afraid to say that should not be the concern of a free person. You and I are parted from a sizable chunk of our income every year to pay for the NHS, and it is not as if you or I have any choice in the matter. If we refuse to pay, we are punished with bailiffs, our property being stolen or ultimately being sent to prison.
It is not my duty to concern myself with how my actions are going to impact the NHS, an institution that is funded by theft and threats of violence. I should be able to live my life as a free person and if I lose a limb as a result of my life choices, I should be able to access the NHS to which I’ve financially contributed.
And let us remember the NHS already funds peoples’ life choices – being injured as a result of rock climbing for example. Should this activity be stopped or regulated for fear that it might cost money?
If anyone has concerns about the cost of the NHS, my message to them is don’t stop me from exercising my free will. Instead, look at the NHS itself – how it is funded and how it is administered. Leave me, my friends, family and neighbours alone to live our lives as we see fit.
The fact is this – Government really isn’t concerned about our safety. It is concerned about how much money it can raise from us for its own ends. We are nothing but wage slaves.
If it were genuinely interested in our safety on the roads – and I personally don’t advocate this – it would impose points on non-seat belt wearing drivers’ licenses or ban the deviants from driving altogether. After all, if these people are unsafe should they really be driving at all?
July 3rd, 2009 at 8:29 am
[...] Candidate on 3 July, 2009 – 7:29 am – I’ve just published an article over at Liberal Vision on the recent announcement by Government to increase the fines from £30 to £60 for not wearing a [...]
July 3rd, 2009 at 8:53 am
“there are no victims when someone makes the choice not to wear one’s seat belt”
There are certainly victims when someone not wearing a seat belt is killed in an accident where they would have survived had they been wearing the belt – their loved ones at the very least. As an example – the late David Penhaligon.
July 3rd, 2009 at 9:07 am
@Nonconformistradical If we assume that loved ones are victims, then they will be compensated by life insurance if such an insurance was taken out. If you or I get pulled over by the police and fined for not wearing our seat belts, who precisely is the victim? No-one was harmed so why are we having money taken from us?
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:35 am
It seems to me that Gavin is correct to question government motives in fining people for not wearing a seat belt, the same thing applies to fines for speeding. As he says, deducting points from the license would be more appropriate and the government is probably grubbing about for excuses to extract more money from citizens. However, he appears to believe that it would be better if government did nothing.
The no victims claims when there is a fatal accident: I think this is right for a reason Gavin does not give, early deaths are money saving because dead people don’t need medical care or state benefits. This is why smoking is a net benefit financially to tax payers.
There are different issues for non-fatal accidents though. What Gavin emphasises is that the NHS is funded by taxes, so the cost of caring for someone who wasn’t wearing a seat belt is covered by all tax payers. This is known as moral hazard. But moral hazard does not just exist for tax funded services. If the NHS was abolished, health care would be funded by a mixture of insurance, charity and up front payments by those able to find the necessary amount of money. Other people who pay insurance are victims of moral hazard when insurance funds cover someone who did something careless. People who donate to charity or who depend on charity also suffer a version of moral hazard in this case. Even people who pay cash up front might suffer moral hazard because in a completely private health sector, health providers will sometimes be unable to collect debts from careless people who were taken to an emergency facility, pushing up the cost of health services for everyone.
What Gavin objects to is moral hazard but moral hazard does not just exist in relation to tax funded services. Of course private companies can try to cut out people who create moral hazard, and everyone who pushes up the prices of services and insurance. However, this rather undermines the idea that health care can effectively be provided on a private basis with no public involvement at all. Excluding bad risks from insurance, or bumping up their premiums, will inevitably raise premiums for half the population and make some people effectively uninsurable, often for reasons beyond their control.
Gavin appears to be against all taxes, with the possibility of taxes which pay for basic laws and order. His language about wage slaves and the final sanction of state violence in collecting taxes certainly suggests this. That’s clearly a view within the libertarian range of views and should be expressed sometimes on Liberal Vision. However, I don’t see it as part of Classical Liberalism. The Classical Liberals from Locke to Mill, including Adam Smith, Kant, Tocqueville tc, all lived in societies where taxes were collected for reasons other than basic law and order. Apart from Bastiat and Humboldt, they mostly thought that such taxes are justifiable if they are based on consent, expressed collectively through an elected legislative body, and presuming that citizens can still keep most of their income and property.
It’s Marxists who first referred to wage slaves, it always worries me when Libertarians use Marxist language. Marxism contains a utopian impulse in which we can live with no state and all property/income will be distributed according to principles of absolute justice with no coercion returning to the workers who create value. Anarcho-capitalists/hard libertarians have a parallel impulse, we can live with no state or a very minimal state in which property and income will be distributed according to pure justice, returning to the creators of value.
I’m an ex-Marxist myself, and I’m not looking to exchange one utopia for another. Like most Classical Liberals, I think we should start with society as it is, expanding individual responsibility and freedom, but accepting that an element of state enforced collective solutions has been part of any known civilised society, and that means any society with functioning markets, and that will continue to be the case.
July 3rd, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Isn’t it ‘Tesco’ and not ‘Tescos’?
July 4th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
You’re starting to sound like Guido…