Walter Olson misses an important point about NYC aluminum bat ban
At Point of Law, Walter Olson notes that the NYC city council has banned aluminum baseball bats from NYC high school games on the grounds that they may lead to more injuries and deaths than wooden bats. Olson preemptively rebuts a common argument used to defend such bans:
Don't miss Julian Sanchez's concise account ("The Nanny Two-Step") of the dangers to liberty in accepting the argument that runs roughly, "We pay through taxes when someone gets injured, why shouldn't we regulate the risks people take in sports?"
Source: PointofLaw.com | PointOfLaw Forum: Aluminum bats and NYC paternalism
Sanchez' post and Walter's citation of it is inappropriate in this context. Sanchez' suggests that perhaps we shouldn't force taxpayers to pay for such programs as Medicaid, thus obviating the need to regulate risky behavior on financial grounds. But here's the big point Olson and Sanchez seem to miss: High school sports are paid for by taxpayers.
The NYC council has no right to tell citizens what bats they may purchase with private funds to use on private property. But it has every right to regulate how public funds can be spent to subsidize high school baseball - especially if taxpayers will be liable for injuries sustained during the ball games. It's worth debating whether metal bats are more dangerous than wooden bats, but it's unreasonable to deny the city council the right to regulate a sport that taxpayers pay for.
Conservatives often complain about so-called entitlement programs such as Medicare/Medicaid, etc. and suggest that society would be better off if those programs were curtailed or eliminated. The same argument can be used against high school baseball: If we're not going to pay for injuries caused when kids play baseball, why should we pay for kids to play baseball?
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