Following my recent comments on the government's new alcohol guidelines, I have a blog post on The Conversation in which I consider them from a Millian liberal perspective.
In short, I argue that there's nothing objectionable about warning people of the dangers of alcohol, but that the guidelines would better respect individual autonomy if they simply presented the risks of different levels of consumption, allowing people to decide for themselves how much risk to accept. In other words, I think it's somewhat objectionable for the government to take it upon themselves to decide for everyone that 14 units per week is the right trade off between benefits and risk, even though the guidelines aren't actually coercive.
There's a slightly longer version of much the same argument, but with a bit more Mill in it, over on my department's blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment