Your definition of competence seems to differ significantly from mine. For one thing, there's not some binary threshold of competence vs. incompetence. What I'm describing is a temporary condition caused by depletion of mental willpower. You also seem to be applying a degree of the typical mind fallacy. Maybe you are the ubermensch incarnate and could maintain total control of your creative mental faculties through the most painful torture, but most people have limits. That doesn't make them incompetent; it just makes them human.
Maybe you are the ubermensch incarnate and could maintain total control of your creative mental faculties through the most painful torture...
Hardly. I certainly wouldn't hold a person being tortured responsible for their actions, but I also wouldn't permit them to make their own decisions.
My position is that the right to make a choice and the responsibility for that choice go hand in hand. Either the poor are allowed to make choices and suffer the consequences, or they aren't. If you'd like shades of grey, perhaps they could jointly make decisions with a guardian, and the guardian is partially responsible for those choices.
I take exception to the example of invisibly raising of insurance prices as a result of unannounced data mining. It's entirely unfair to hold people to standards they aren't told about in advance.
