You'll Pay for Your Sins II

David Harsanyi has more on sin taxes:

We already have set a precedent with cigarettes. The argument most often employed by sin tax proponents revolves around economic externalities — or the idea that everyone shouldn’t have to pay for the destructive habits of the few. (Though there is evidence that the societal cost of obesity is largely inflated, as it were.) I have sympathy for this argument. So perhaps all citizens can begin taking fiscal and moral responsible for their own behavior . . .

. . . I’m just kidding. That’s crazy talk.

But once we start rationing health care, externalities will only become more of an issue. If we collectively pay for health insurance, then what is to stop the majority of us from dictating to the minority what it can eat or drink?

Or as John Galt famously declared, “Get the hell out of my way — I’m going to Burger King!”