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They're not amateur alligator wrestlers, they actually minimize their burden on society. They're more like the old men that used to go out "to hunt" in the dead of winter, knowing they will never come back.
Yes, but that doesn't mean anything. Saying "everyone is an extreme outlier, to an extent" is just saying "everyone is". "To an extent" nullifies the "extreme outlier" descriptor, which was the defining feature of the group I was pointing to.
Right, but everyone wants to minimise their own risk factors. Which is why the deal is we won't deny medical treatment to anyone. No-one can be trusted to objectively measure their own risks (I only overeat a bit!) against those of the people they dislike (they jump out of planes like lunatics!).
We are well aware that groups cannot be trusted to tell extreme outliers apart from non-outliers when social distaste is involved (as it pretty much always is) so our institutions have evolved to minimise that issue. Trying to go back to "this group doesn't deserve x because they do y" is opening the can of worms we just escaped from. We do it this way for a reason.
And smoking may kill people but it still puts a lot people in hospital for long painful treatment and decline. Smokers are not doing it so they die early in 30 years time after smoking 2 packs a day as some kind of honorable suicide. Plus the study that showed it was cheaper for smokers is contested. It was funded by Phillip Morris after all.
"This critique analyzes the methodology used in a study of the economic burden imposed on public finances in the Czech Republic by the consumption of cigarettes. The study was prepared by a consulting firm on behalf of the Phillip Morris Company. This critique, by using economic theory and a cost-benefit methodology, refutes the conclusion of the Phillip Morris study that smoking represents an economic benefit to Czech state finances. In fact, the correction of only one among numerous errors in assumptions and calculations in the Phillip Morris study leads to the opposite conclusion: Instead of savings of $150 million per year, smoking drains at least $373 million from the state budget annually, nearly.8% of the Czech gross domestic product. The net loss to the society is even greater if all pertinent costs and benefits are calculated properly. The critique demonstrates how to craft a rigorous economic response to common industry attempts to influence public opinion in which the industry employs specious or erroneous assumptions and data."
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14982702/
Consensus building. No I am not aware of that, and would appreciate it if you would argue for that explicitly. Even if it was true, I don't need to rely on my ability to discern extreme outliers, because the gay community readily admits they are one, so unless you want to argue they have a distaste for themselves, your argent seems baseless.
I appreciate the correction, though I reserve the right to skepticism until I look into it further.
Either way you'll notice that, if this is true, it is precisely why tobacco is covered by heavy vice taxes.
Can I just point to history to show that we are very good as a species in judging our own behaviour objectively against others? The existence of the Russell conjugation proves it really, as it is describing a very common behaviour, for which the term would not need to be created if the action did not exist. I absolutely concede that there are some people who are rational enough not to do it. I think history shows the majority of humanity does though. Arguably that's part of the whole reason rationalism exists as an ethos/sub-culture.
As for smoking, "sin" taxes are indeed one way to square the circle, because they also disincentivize buying the product. But for gay people sex is the "product" and while we could raise taxes on rent boys, I don't think that really will be helpful volume wise. Adding a sin tax to Prep disincentivizes people buying it which makes the treatment happen less frequently. That's the opposite of what a sin tax is meant to achieve.
That's why you can't treat all "sins" the same. For some making the sin more expensive may help (where you have to buy a product or service) because it might make people indulge less frequently and you can put that money towards offsetting costs (see tobacco, alcohol, sugar et al). But in many other cases the sin is free. So making the preventives cheaper fills the same niche. Despite time periods that had heavy shame towards gay men, we have found no way to prevent them having pretty large amounts of sex with each other. Even in places where being gay can get you executed, it still happens, just more hidden. That's why you raise costs on smoking but make condoms free for example.
Sure, that is absolutely understandable. I think it's likely in some places with some combinations of taxes and healthcare/social care costs smoking may be cheaper. In others it might not be. The breakpoint is likely to change across time as well.
I don't think that's anywhere near sufficient, when I could probably match any instance of a Russel Conjugation you can name off the top off your head with a case of Stereotype Accuracy that I can name off the top of mine. If you want to argue that his particular subject is a case of a Russel Conjugation, you have to do so specifically, particularly when the gay community proudly endorses the observation about itself that you are implicitly disputing.
Well, after establishing that there's nothing inappropriate about the government stepping in to discourage actions that impose a cost on society, it feels like this is just haggling over the price, especially that in the case of smoking the government does not limit itself to taxes. It also issues large amounts of anti-smoking propaganda, bans pro-smoking propaganda, and passes regulations to make the act of smoking as inconvenient as possible. We might be able to meet in the middle where PrEP is still subsidized, but all the government, corporate, and NGO pride messaging is replaced with loud and unrepentant homophobia.
Except we did the homophobia thing remember? And the fat shaming thing. And still here we are. There are some things apparently you cannot propaganda your way out of.
So? Is it written somewhere that we can't return to an old solution? I'm also not sure I buy that it had no effect at all. And if the solutions seems too cruel, we can always just do the original idea of not subsidizing PrEP. Take your pick, but I don't see why you should get everything you want, and I nothing.
Well thats part of the problem. I'm not gay, but i did work in public health. It's not that I want this. If we could make gay men more cautious that would be great! I'd do it in a heartbeat. Just like making obese people eat less. It would be amazing!
But we must tackle the issue with the gays we have not the gays we wish we had. And keeping the gays in the closet and shaming them just meant they wouldn't come forward for treatment and then put wives of closeted men at risk and so on and so forth. We have been down this road. It failed and led us here.
Its not what I want vs what you want, its what seems to work best with the constraints we have.
Whats going to be easier getting cheap Prep or realigning society to put gay people back in the closet? Even allowing that shaming them would work?
You can go ahead and try to organize that. But in the meantime if you want to minimise breaking out into the rest of the populace making Prep cheap and easily available is the best lever we have.
It certainly is not perfect by any means.
Since when? The Covid response had very little to do with what works. Transgender medicine has very little to do with what works. "Racism is a public health crisis" had very little to do with what works. Why should I believe that another politically charged topic has something to do with what works?
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