Quote:
Originally Posted by Cowboy89
I don't know how I feel about this. I have a strong negative emotional reaction to this and its hard for me to put my finger on it exactly. I'm a fairly Libertarian person and on the surface this aligns perfectly with many of my libertarian slants. However, on a macro level this makes me really sad and could be used as evidence in a way that the western world has probably slid too far off the ledge into nihilism.
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I feel the same way. Ideologically, I believe people should be free to end their life whenever they choose. Economically and socially, I see the aging population and relentlessly rising health care costs as the biggest threat to the sustainability of public services - not only health care itself, but public education and every other program we’ll have to cannibalize to pay for health care.
And yet…
If we remove the professional gating of assisted suicide,
and we remove the stigma around suicide,
and we make it easier and more comfortable to carry out, I expect we’ll see dramatically higher suicide rates. Some of them will be people who were so miserable that death was a relief. But others will be people suffering from temporary despair.
Furthermore, it will be an indictment of our society as a whole, and the decreasing sense of purpose, belonging, and happiness.