People making decisions

Suggestion from - WP article - that conservatives trust people to make good decisions. When is this effective? What are the situations in which people consistently make bad decisions against their own interests?

For example, taxing the richest 1% of the country more is in the best interest of 99% of the population, yet many people oppose this on principle. I'm certain there are other examples. Also, for some reason, people often have a hard time balancing long term risk. And if presented with an appropriate third option, people may be swayed one way or another. Decision making is a very interesting thing to me.

But I'll also concerned about the things which people do not choose: illness, etc. People do not elect to have debilitating afflictions, so as a society, are we not somewhat responsible for these folks. It gets more confusing with things like smoking and lung cancer, heart problems and obesity, etc. In these situations, the short term decisions may have long term consequences that affect many others. Who is responsible in these cases? Using the government to control vices only makes sense to me in the case of direct negative consequences (i.e. drunk driving, theft, murder, certain drugs). Otherwise people should be left to decide what's best for themselves.

No I've royally confused myself and seem to have gone off on a half-rant. Ah well.

Lastly, I'd like to put down my vote in favor of evolution again. Sometimes, science wins and rightly so.