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scarp · 5076 days ago · link · · parent · post: Health Insurance and the Broccoli Test - NYTimes.com
From the article:
> Even if there are a few hardy folks who grow or make everything they need, their activity can still be regulated because it affects commerce. The Supreme Court held in Wickard v. Filburn, in 1942, that growing and consuming your own wheat can be regulated under the commerce clause because it reduces demand for wheat and thus affects commerce. I know that this is only tangentially related to the linked article, but this caught my attention. It seems like an unfair "gotcha" tactic to regulate a person's inactivity in commerce. I can't imagine that there are a lot of people like this out there, so their impact on demand would be infinitesimally small. Can't we just leave these people alone?
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Which is a dubious argument to make. That it was done before says nothing of its merit or ethicality. This is not to say that such arguments are completely invalid, though. Looking at what has worked in the past can be useful for determining policies moving forward, but it hardly stands as an argument on its own.