The Affordable Boat Act

At work today a coworker showed me a funny little piece satirizing the Affordable Care Act. It compared the ACA to the hypothetical Affordable Boat Act, a law requiring every citizen to purchase a boat at great personal expense and to use it according to very strict government-mandated parameters. It described how this legislation would increase the cost of boat ownership, while threatening non-boat-owners with steep fines or imprisonment. It closed with the boldface declaration: “If the government can force you to buy health insurance, it can force you to buy a boat. Or anything else. Yeah, it’s that stupid.”

It made an excellent point, since health insurance and boats are exactly equivalent. A boat is not a luxury, but a necessity for living a secure and productive life. After all, our entire nation is covered with water. There is no land, so anyone without access to a boat is forced constantly to tread water, exposed to all the associated risks such as drowning, hypothermia, and attacks from aquatic predators. Tragically, because of the high costs of boat ownership, thousands of Americans tread water for significant portions of their lives, resulting in a vast loss of productivity as it is difficult to get much done in the water.  The extremely high cost of all this risk is paid by taxpayers, since boatless individuals cannot get out of the water themselves.

The vast majority of boatless people are young adults, due to the fact that every child is unceremoniously pushed off his parents’ boat as soon as he reaches an arbitrary age, whether he can afford his own boat or not. Since these kids are often still in college or recent graduates when this happens, it can make the search for a job very difficult - they have to find one that will provide them with a boat, or face years of treading and the aforementioned risks. Not to mention never having dry socks. Unfortunately, many young people don’t understand the risks they face by not getting a boat as soon as they can. Many end up maimed by sharks because they foolishly believed they could live without a boat. I myself lived without a boat for a few years in my early twenties, and during that time had many close calls with sharks and other dangerous creatures of the deep. Some of my friends were not so lucky.

Making matters worse, boat sellers refuse to sell boats to anyone who’s already wet. Any period of boatlessness can result in never having access to a boat at all, even if you can afford it. Also, boat sellers often charge more to customers who have more of a need for a boat, such as those who can’t swim or those who live in areas of particularly tempestuous sea. Couples who are not legally married often can’t share a boat, and must each buy their own, resulting in a huge financial strain on same-sex couples.

Since the cost of boat ownership is prohibitively high, most people can only get a boat if it’s provided by their employer, and not every employer provides boats. This means that many people choose their jobs solely on the basis of whether they will provide a boat - and that entrepreneurship is especially discouraged, because most small businesses can’t get off the ground if their proprietors are too busy fending off sharks and gasping for air. The cost to our economy and to innovation in general is immeasurable.

On top of all that, the current system is detrimental even to the boat-owning population. Boat sellers often get away with selling inferior boats because there is no law preventing it. Basic boat parts are left out or available only as extremely expensive add-ons. Many boats are sold with the condition that the owner only sail in certain restricted areas. The existence of so many people treading water affects the lives of boat-owners as well, since their bodies block major travel routes and are a threat to public health.

Yeah, it’s that stupid.