Because prohibition doesn't work.

The US has bans of marijuana, has that disappeared? the little experiment with alcohol prohibition in the 30? Banning a substance means you lose all control over it. You end up with backyard smokes cut with woodshavings to make it cheaper (even more unhealthy than straight tobacco).

OTOH The problem with unrestricted smoking is that a lot of people who dont smoke will be affected by it. This is what Libertarians always ignore, almost everything you do has an effect on someone else.

Ultimately the people who dont smoke will outnumber those who do and smokers are so extremely unreasonable. Here's what happened in Australia.
Non-smokers: Would you mind not smoking in the office please.
Smoker: ITS MY RIGHT. I CAN DO WHATEVER I LIKE AN THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT, MY RIGHT, MY RIGHT, MY RIGHT (followed by stamping their feet)
So smoking was banned indoors.

Non-smokers: Would you mind not smoking near the entrance?
Smoker: ITS MY RIGHT. I CAN DO WHATEVER I LIKE AN THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT, MY RIGHT, MY RIGHT, MY RIGHT (followed by stamping their feet)
So smokers must now smoke 5 metres away from building entrances.

Ultimately, smoking restrictions came about due to the extreme discourtesy of smokers.

The ban on large soft drinks did not come about because we dont have the same problem. If someone is drinking a large coke near you, you're not going to have to smell it on your clothes for the next 4 hours, if you're working in a place where people drink soft drinks, you're not forced to breathe it in. This is the bit Libertarians always ignore, then again reality and Libertarians were always at odds.

In the US, doesn't everyone offer a free refill on soft drinks (I believe you call it Soda)?

Making a ban kind of pointless.

Heres the thing, you were and you dont get a choice nor were you informed.

The revenue from your health insurance premiums goes into the general revenue pool which pays for everyone. If you didn't use them they went to someone else. This system is more socialist than the most socialist public healthcare system but you ignore that because someone is making profit off it. So smokers are in the same general revenue pool as you, in fact they need more money so they take from your smaller pool.

At least in Australia, the more you smoke the more tax you pay on it which goes to covering the costs of medical problems. Smoking is a choice, you can choose to quit as I did when they raised the tax 10 years ago or you can choose to keep paying.

It continually surprised me how stupid some smokers are though. Here they're trying to compare sugary drinks to smoking hoping that smoking will become less carcinogenic and become more accepted but in reality all their doing is making sugary drinks more dangerous than they really are (as sugary drinks can be enjoyed in moderation with no negative effects on health, quite unlike smoking). In Australia, smoking is heavily taxed and discouraged whilst sugary drinks dont get a mention in parliament, let alone a bill or motion, there's a reason for that..

Is there a per jump tax on skydiving or how do you'll handle that?

How many hospitalisations per 100,000 pop are there from skydiving?

Is there a per mile tax on mountain biking or how do you'll handle that.

How many hospitalisations per 100,000 pop are there from mountain biking?

Is there a tax on watching TV

How many hospitalisations per 100,000 pop are there from watching TV?

How, exactly, does all this work?

Well first of all I shoot down your hyperbole. Then I explain how horribly wrong you are

None of the things you listed are inherently unhealthy. Every cigarette does damage, there is no healthy way to smoke and it does cost a lot of money. Significant portions of your health insurance goes to keeping smokers alive, in places like Canada and Australia where tobacco is heavily taxed this is recouped directly from the smokers and not from me (a non-smoker). In places like the US, this comes from general revenue collected from everyone.

It's being proposed by George Brandis, the same guy who said it's OK to be a biggot and let Tony Abbott's chief of staff walk from a drink driving conviction.

It'll never pass (hostile senate and possible revolt from moderate back benchers).

But you're right. It's being pushed by the media conglomerates to get ISP's to spy on their own customers and then turn that data over to them so they can sue. Brandis is pretty much in the pockets of big media anyway (well I hope he is, if he's ruining his reputation for free he's a bigger idiot that I thought).

I dont think Brandis will survive as AG for Australia for very much longer. Tony Abbott is a sock puppet for the Liberal powerbrokers, but they've got to realise that Brandis is doing a lot of harm.

To explain the situation to our non Australian friends,

This is being proposed by the Atourney General of the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) George Brandis who is pretty much a complete and utter moron and in the pocket of the PM, Tony Abbott (who's went pretty far to the right and kept going).

Brandis first rose to fame in the 2013 election where he pardoned Tony Abbott's cheif of staff for a drink driving charge (for our American compatriots, this is a serious offence in Australia). Peta Credlin blew 0.075 (0.05 is the limit) which carries an automatic loss of license in the ACT. Claiming Credlin's "exemplary" character permitted her to walk scott free.

After the election, Brandis has been trying to change the Racial Discrimination Act to allow people to be biggots, this is primarily to help right wing shock jock Andrew Bolt to be a racist arsehole on television and not get sued for it.

He has also been on an anti-piracy campaign ever since Tony Abbott was elected.

tl;dr
George Brandis is a complete joke.

The Abbott government faces a hostile senate and is already extremely unpopular with voters (not even Murdoch can spin how unpopular they are). I highly doubt anything Brandis proposes will get through as the extreme right leadership of the Liberal party (yep, in Australia our conservatives are called the "Liberals") is facing a revolt from the moderates, with the narrowest of margins in the house of representatives and no majority in the senate, things like this wont happen.

My SUV is 4WD, the roof is also reinforced and would withstand quite a rollover.

SUV's arent 4WD's.

The two are mutually exclusive. you either have an SUV which is an oversized road car, or a 4WD which is a terrible road car, but has a low range gearbox, locking differentials and underside protections amongst other off road components they dont put on SUV's.

Seeing as you neglected to name it, its fair to assume you have a soft roader.

Secondly, your SUV may survive due to its re-enforced roll cage but you wont. SUV's produce the most fatalities per vehicle because when they crash, they tend to roll and as I said (and you ignored) this caused more head and neck injuries. even hitting an already inflated air bag is enough to cause serious head trauma when rolling. side airbags are designed primarily to restrict lateral head movement in a head on crash, that side airbag becomes another thing to hit.

But the point was, an SUV isn't safer than a small hatchback, in fact, it's less safe than a hatch with the same safety features.

This.

When they say "larger cars are safer" they're talking about large sedan/saloon cars. SUV's and 4WD's with high centres of gravity are prone to rolling which increases the risk of head and neck injuries far beyond that of a smaller hatchback with less safety features. The thing about rolling is that by introducing additional degrees of freedom your head and neck will now move in more directions, potentially striking parts of the car (window, pillar, even airbags aren't much help). Also, when they say "larger cars are safer" they always forget to say "by a negotiable amount". If you want to save lives on the road (not the least of which, your own life) put some effort into being a better driver.

Yes, Honda continued to support my Integra well past it's production life (production ceased in 2007, a recall notice to get the brake booster inspected came in 2013)... But no-one bought an Integra in beta. By the time the first one rolled out of the factory they were production cars. You also dont pay $40,000 to Google for a beta service.

Even Honda wont go far out of it's way to support a EK/EJ Civic or DC5 Integra as they've been out of production for years... and you'll be expected to pay Honda for their time/parts.

I'm sure if you paid Google, you could get the support for terminated products.

Car companies do the same thing though, in that they develop and unveil fairly awesome concept cars but only integrate little bits and pieces into their product lines.

After years of watching Top Gear, this.

This is the latest prototype from Volkswagen/General Motors/Toyota, a fantastic car that is light, runs on 2 pounds of petrol a week, has the performance of a Ferrari... and they're not going to make it.

Much like these prototype cars, with prototype software and electronics, I'll believe it when it delivers.

I think it's good that Google tries new things rather than selling the same crap year in, year out like other big players in IT (Ahem, Microsoft, Apple) but it's also good when Google recognises that it's not that good of an idea and kills it unlike other big IT players (looking at you Microsoft).

Not really,

You launder electronic money in the same way you launder physical money. Through a semi-legit shell company. You dont need to take it out of the electronic system, you just need to take it out of the banks direct control. You cant actually do a chargeback when you dont know where the money went after step 2 because the shell company shut down and the "directors" are nowhere to be seen.

When you do a chargeback after being defrauded, banks eat the cost because they want to keep you addicted to the credit which earns them a very large mint in merchant service and interchange fees. The loss of you going back to cash or debit is worth thousands per year.

You're not a bank, and apparently terrible at security. So you're not trustworthy.

Why do you think banks are trustworthy.. or good at security?

And this is why I steadfastly remain a PC gamer.

Bypassing the $ sign for DLC is a quick and painless process.

That sounds like its a good idea until someone opens the bag to make sure Frank was really dead.

Well yes.

100 drones are 100 potential accidents. 1 truck is 1 potential accident.