We don't have to choose between the extremes of allowing people to do whatever they want with their resources (as long as they don't use them to directly harm people) or legislating against any socially suboptimal usage of resources. I think people should have quite a bit of freedom to use their resources the way they want, precisely because we don't want to disincentivize people from working, and also because a government that is constantly monitoring its citizens to ensure socially optimal resource usage would be unbearably intrusive. But I also think there are cases where the benefits of government intervention outweigh these costs.
Where exactly to draw the line is a difficult question, and there are a number of cases where I'm unsure whether a government mandate is advisable. However, there are also cases that are clearly on one side or another of the line. Banning all luxury consumption, for instance, is definitely a bad idea. I also think its pretty clear that mandating organ donation (perhaps with a religious exemption clause) is a good idea. In this case, the costs aren't that great. I can't see any disincentivization of productive behavior, and the additional intrusiveness required to adequately enforce the policy does not seem all that burdensome. And by all accounts the social benefits would be quite significant.
Since the government is hardly going to do the best possible thing with our money, my last comment was vastly exaggerated.
Even so, I don't think people are generally expected to help others with their money. If they manage to do something particularly wasteful, you can tax them for it to make up for it.
I generally prefer the idea of subsidizing the stuff that does help people, but it works out the same if you add a tiny change in how you do income taxes.
Or is the convention against discussing politics here silly?
I propose a test. I'm going to try to lay down some rules on voting on comments for the test here (not that I can force anybody to abide by them):
1.) Top-level comments should introduce arguments (or ridicule me and/or this test); responses should be responses to those arguments.
2.) Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
3.) Try not to downvote particular comments excessively, if they're legitimate lines of argument. A faulty line of argument provides opportunity for rebuttal, and so for our test has value even then; that is, I want some faulty lines of argument here. If you disagree, please downvote me, instead of the faulty comments, because this post is what you want less of, not those comments. This necessarily implies, for balance, that we not excessively upvote comments. I'd suggest fairly arbitrary limits of 3/-3?
Edit: 4.) A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate. (My apologies about missing this, folks.)
I'm going to try really hard not to get personally involved, except to lay down a leading comment posing an argument against abortion, a position I don't hold, for the record. The core of the argument isn't disingenuous, and I hold that this argument is true, it just doesn't lead to my opposing abortion. I do not hold the moral axiom by which I extend the basic argument to argue against abortion, however; I'm playing the devil's advocate to try to help me from getting sucked into the argument while providing an initial point of discussion.
Which leads me to the next point: If you see a hole in an argument, even if it's an argument for a perspective you agree with, poke through it. The goal is to see whether we can have a constructive political argument here.
The fact that this is a test, and known to be a test, means this isn't a blind study. Uh, try to act as if you're not being tested?
After it's gone on a little while, if this post hasn't been hopelessly downvoted and ridiculed (and thus the premise and test discarded as undesirable to begin with), we can put up a poll to see whether people found the political debates helpful, not helpful, and so on.