Comment by neogodless
6 hours ago
You can kind of tell when people think about only themselves or the community when they present arguments for things like smoking and vaccination.
"I don't want to be controlled" is a perfectly valid argument, and I prefer humans can make choices for themselves and have reasonable autonomy when it does not have a negative affect on others.
Vaccination and smoking affects people around you. Drinking does too - in certain cases, but much less directly, in most cases. For example, drinking and operating vehicles is already illegal. Drinking and punching someone is already illegal!
> I prefer humans can make choices for themselves and have reasonable autonomy when it does not have a negative affect on others.
How far do you want to take this? Your choice of diet may have a negative effect on others by way of having to pay for additional medical care.
Is taking concepts to logical extremes a good way to govern?
(No.)
But are you saying we don't care if things have negative effect on people? If we go to extremes, well then obviously everyone should have 100% autonomy? Oops that doesn't work.
So, this is the hard part - you have to find balance, compromise, a reasonable middle ground. That's always going to be the hard part. Not black or white, but the grey areas.
You're not going far enough. We need to mandate exercise.