Sure, but you still paid for it. And, modulo that you want to buy a car, yes, you are being forced to buy one with a seat belt. The kind of car you are allowed to buy is being limited. I already acknowledged its a much weaker impingement on personal freedom but there is a thing someone might want to buy (a car without seatbelts), and you aren't allowed to buy it. I think it's pretty clear, even if one doesn't think it's a big deal.
You can’t have this both ways - if personal freedom is violated by seatbelt laws then buying a car or not is also your personal freedom regardless if it comes with things you want or not.
You don’t get to treat force as a transitive property when it suits you and isolated when it doesn’t - its one or the other.
Absent government action, there is a thing I would be free to do: buy a car without seatbelts, with government action, this is a thing I can no longer do. I honestly do not understand the confusion here, or what "transitive force" you are talking about. You are free to think that this is minor, or doesn't matter, or is justified, or anything else, but to completely deny that it is _any_ level of impingement on personal freedom is just.....baffling.
> Absent government action, there is a thing I would be free to do: buy a car without seatbelts
You are entirely free to buy cars without seatbelts.
It's the manufacturers who are prevented from selling cars without seatbelts, nor headlights below a certain height, nor unsafe chinesium non-DOT-legal tires. Hell, aren't backup cameras required on new cars sold in the US now?
And I'm pretty sure if a manufacturer sold you a car without seat belts, you could buy it, and it would be the manufacturers problem you could force them to correct at no cost.
But you'd be breaking the law driving it around without wearing seat belts, which is the part of all this I take issue with.
You are getting into the weeds a little bit to the point that it's not really the question (or, rather, it would have been a more relevant comment higher up thread, this has sort of diverted to a more generic philosophical discussion largely disconnected to the orginal question).
In point of fact I think you are correct. I believe that any manufacturer _can_ make a car without seat belts, and any person can buy it. You just can't register it with the DMV because it won't be street legal, which is indeed a much more nuanced regulation with, at the very least, an even weaker personal freedom argument than previous.
So the actual regulation as it exists is not exactly what was originally stated in the first comment. I was replying to that comment as stated.
No one is stopping you from buying a car without seatbelts. Companies are being restricted from selling a car without seatbelts. Companies aren't people.
If you believe this is a restriction of your personal freedom, then ANY regulation on ANY company that you might interact with, for anything at all is a restriction of your personal freedom as well - because those actions ultimately could result in the company not providing a good or service that you desire.
And if that is your definition of personal freedom, then you should clarify your position as an anarchist.
>then ANY regulation on ANY company that you might interact with, for anything at all is a restriction of your personal freedom as well - because those actions ultimately could result in the company not providing a good or service that you desire.
Very nearly this YES. I don't think it's quite that absolute, but pretty close! Many, many restrictions on personal freedom are entirely justified, and are in fact extremely good, to the point that almost no one disagrees they are warranted, but they are most definitely still restrictions on personal freedom. I am not an anarchist who thinks that the government shouldn't exist or that personal freedom is literally the only value that matters, but that doesn't mean we should lie to ourselves about the fact that, in order to live in a functioning society, countless of our personal freedoms have to be given up. Many of them are so small and inconsequential that most people never even notice, but that doesn't change the fact that we have given them up.
If your definition of personal freedom also includes restrictions on entities that are not you, then your personal freedom is fundamentally at odds with literally any other person having personal freedom as well.
I don't see how this definition is meaningful or useful for society.
