Let me rephrase that. It could be used as a justification of such a law, yes. My point is that it doesn't have to be, and we're better off not doing that because that would have undesirable legal side effects down the line.

"General well-being of the people" is a very vague notion that can be used as a justification for too many things, most of which you probably wouldn't like at all. Of specific note is that it doesn't require any outside actor - they could just as well limit your own activities that are potentially harmful to yourself, even statistically speaking (i.e. not harmful to you personally, but universally banning them would prevent enough people from exercising them in a harmful way that it would improve "general well-being"

It's far better to go with some more concrete justifications, such as specific measurable harm that is inflicted by the actor to other parties. It's not exactly hard to do with pollutants, either, because the emissions are measurable, and so are their effects. It's still collective harm, since it's pretty hard to quantify the individual damage you get from e.g. AGW (though still possible in some cases, and I'd love to see the polluters pay compensation and damages specifically to people they hurt whenever we can trace it), but then at least it's about harm, not some nebulous "it could be better that way".

I see the difference. The point is that it's not about "general well-being of the populace" at all.

False. Science paradigms, for better or worse, remain in place for as long as it takes (Plato to Copernicus/Kepler, anyone?) for a paradigm shift to come along and pull the rug out from under the previous paradigm. This is how its always been. BTW, "modern physics" is always wrong... because its only a model, and NOT REALITY, and merely the best model we have to explain observations as close as we can. What science observes is reality, but the description and explaination is a model, a fictionional likeness of reality, but not reality itself. You're probably thinking of mathematics.

If you never use any computer you're even safer. I suggest you throw out the one you typed this on.

What extent of "encouraging" do you find acceptable? For example, should we tax people higher if they don't exercise enough, and then use that money to give everyone else free gym passes?

Well, why are we punishing people who earn money through hard work? Why is sweat-of-the-brow taxed higher than rent?

As long as you have one rate set higher than the other, you can make that argument either way. Why not set a single flat rate on all kinds of income? Isn't it only fair?

Did the submitter get this off of Spurious Correlations?

The trouble here is that the rest of the monitor is pedestrian as all hell(gosh Samsung, 1920x1080 on a 27 inch screen! I can practically taste the future...) and the presence of the charging widget in the stand suggests that you aren't going to be VESA mounting this one. If you really care about 'de-cluttering', you are much better off having your monitor float conveniently above your desk, not being stuck with the lousy stock stand.

At least the color scheme is atrocious.

He's not an editor.

I'm fine with that, so long as said flat tax also extends to capital gains. We could even just take the present budget, measure the current taxation income, and work out a flat tax rate for personal+corporate+capital, and see what it'd need to be to maintain the same level of it. I'm pretty certain that the end result would end up way better for the 99%. Which is exactly why such a thing would never pass in DC.

You might want to be careful with that line of thinking. For example, forcing you to exercise would also measurably lengthen your life; do you want the government to be able to mandate such a thing?

No respect for the American judicial system, you mean? That's quite different from society as a whole. I think if you ask random people whether they believe that the judicial system in question genuinely represents them, you might find that distinction to be quite visible.

Which is, frankly, ridiculous, because it circumvents the entire notion of constitutionally protected rights. You don't need to get rid of the First Amendment, for example - you just need to enact laws that make most people felons, and then you can selectively strip them of their rights as needed. And this all can be done with a simple legislative majority.