Instead, citizens need to learn too many arbitrary rules. Objection A disadvantage of that approach is that things become incoherent and unintuitive since no general principles are employed.That is getting rather general, though: should we legislate in neat general binary categories or should we employ arbitrary limits and boundaries? We need to do the latter anyway, as in the arbitrary choice of driving speed limit and age of legal adulthood. Objection True, but it is perhaps better to have a haphazard patchwork providing some reduced harm than have no harm reduction.Banning alcohol could also reduce harm on social level, if only it was practicable. Objection Perhaps, but what it means is that we abandon sound principles and replace them with a haphazard patchwork depending on haphazard acceptance and possibility of enforcement.By contrast, seat belt legislation finds good support. Banning such food could be beneficial but cannot be done until it is widely accepted. Objection Practicability and public acceptance has to be taken into account.Should Americans perhaps be banned from eating all their unhealthy food, demonstrably leading to obesity? That would perhaps have greater numerical effect than seat belt legislation. Objection Unhealthy food also applies to hugely many individuals.Objection Since seat belts apply to hugely many individuals, unlike mountain climbing, the social benefit accrues even at low risk rates.Furthermore, that would do almost nothing to justify seat belt legislation since the risk of death from non-use of seat belt is really low, depending on the risk of an accident in the first place. Objection If so, should Himalaya mountain climbing be banned? The death rate in 20th century expeditions (Everest, Nanga Parbat) was so high that, based on frequencies, the death risk approached that of Russian roulette.Objection Could we use quantitative criteria? Thus, should citizens perhaps be prohibited from engaging in Russian roulette since the probability of death resulting from the action is high?.Objection Perhaps, but then the opposition should submit that principle that presents the middle ground for consideration rather than positing its existence.Objection Could there perhaps be a middle ground?.Hardly any state is really serious about implementing the logical conclusion of rejecting Mill's principle, so what they do is haphazard and inconsistent. The logical consequence would be a state with all-pervasive control of its citizens. Thus, we need to ban many sports including car racing and paragliding, Hillary must not climb Everest, the North Pole must not be attempted, and in fact, in so far as public transport is safer than individual cars, driving individual cars must be greatly restricted or disincentivized, unhealthy food must be banned, etc. The alternative is to ban all non-productive or not strictly necessary activities in which individual expose themselves to more risk of harm or death than necessary. Argument for The principle is the only sound one that leads to reasonable tolerance of individual freedom. There may be objections to that, but not ones following from Mill's principle.
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