What If Everyone Does It?

I think that one of the ways to judge whether an activity is good or bad is to consider what would happen if everyone did it.  It's easy to imagine the trouble that we would have if everyone routinely lies, steals, and murders. What about more private things, like engage in unprotected sex?

Well, "unprotected sex" is not enough information to evaluate this activity. The reason it's not enough is that it can be consensual or not, between monogamous partners or not, between two people who are known to each other not to have any diseases and not to have other partners since being checked - or not. We know from social experience that a lot of people having unprotected sex can spread disease - but there are implied behaviors in that statement. It's implied that there is a lot of switching partners, that not everyone is checked for disease, and that even if a person is checked for disease they don't insist their partner is checked and that they don't have sex with anyone else since being checked.

Two consensual monogamous people with no diseases and no other partners could have unprotected sex with each other every day for the rest of their life and not spread any diseases.  So where's the evil? The evil is in the nonconsensual. The evil is in the laziness of people who don't want to get checked. The evil is in the carelessness of people who don't insist that their partners get checked. The evil is in the cheating where one partner gets checked and advertises he or she is clean but has unprotected sex before a secure sexual relationship starts - thereby compromising the screening results.

I think it's wrong to condemn an activity just because some people don't do it properly. Another example? A lot of people lose their money when they invest but does that mean that investing should be illegal? Of course not. Not everyone does it right, and even if they do the activity involves risk and some failure is to be expected.

So I think any debate about whether an activity is moral and should be outlawed needs to be mature enough to consider the details, so that when we imagine "everyone doing it" we imagine doing it different ways. Only this way can we arrive at nuanced distinctions that we take for granted such as murder versus self-defense, or investing versus gambling.

When I think about murder versus self-defense, the distinctions are the initiation of force, or "who started it", and for what reason, or "taking versus protecting".

When I think about investing versus gambling, the distinctions are, do you know what you are doing or are you relying on luck, and are you willing to accept the risk, and are you using your money or someone else's, and are you investing or gambling with all your money or just money that you are willing to lose, and do you have an obligation to protect that money to take care of someone else or is it acceptable to lose it.

When I think about unprotected sex, the distinctions are consensual or not, careless or safe, by cheating or with integrity.

I think that if an activity done a certain way is not harmful to other people (or it's harmful in a morally acceptable way like self-defense) then if we imagine everyone doing it that way and under the right conditions the imaginary world would be fine. For some activities the negative consequences alone should be enough to dissuade people from doing it. That might require some education since not everyone knows what the negative consequences of their actions are. And for some activities the only people who could be hurt are the ones engaged in the activity. In these cases I think it's wrong to make it illegal.

For example, riding a motorcycle without a helmet is dangerous to the rider. See how I added "without a helmet" and "to the rider"? Yet I'm still assuming that the helmet to be worn is an appropriate one for the task. A rider could easily be killed in an accident if the rider is thrown off the motorcycle and is not wearing a helmet. Because of that, some people got together and decided that they would protect other people from themselves and passed laws that make it illegal to ride a motorcycle without a helmet. Recently there was a rally to repeal this law, and one rider in the rally who was riding without his helmet had an accident and died. His death would have been prevented had he been wearing a helmet. It's ironic but it doesn't make the law alright. You see? Even with the law in place someone rode a motorcycle without a helmet and died. He broke the law! Now how is he going to be punished? Where will we get justice? The point is that the damage he did to himself is punishment enough and there is no justice to be served here because that law against riding motorcycle without a helmet is an unnecessary law. The difference in chances of survival between wearing a helmet and not wearing a helmet should be enough to convince riders to wear a helmet. But since the choice affects them only and not anyone else, they should be free to make it.

If the rider has a family that depends on him or her, does that mean there are now other victims besides the rider and that riding a motorcycle without a helmet should be illegal because the rider could have a family? No and no. The rider's family may be sad about the death of the rider but they are not hurt. If they don't want to lose the rider to an accident then they should pressure the rider to wear a helmet. If they don't try, or the rider doesn't care, the consequences will be their own.

So while I think that it's wrong to have laws that restrict personal freedoms for all just because some people act irresponsibly (imagine if swimming pools were outlawed because some people drown, or driving were outlawed because some people drive too fast) - I know that this is a minority opinion and that the majority of people in America jump at any chance to lose their personal freedoms in order to be  safe and secure.

Maybe a compromise could be that people who are caught riding without a helmet (and other unsafe only-to-themselves activities) could be "punished" by being forced to attend a safety class for that activity. At the end of the class they would get a small certificate that would fit in their wallet. Then next time they are caught doing the unsafe activity they can just show their safety certificate to the enforcer and be left alone. That way the majority would get a warm fuzzy feeling like someone is watching over them, yet still allow people to make their own educated choices.

If that works for riding motorcycles without a helmet, or investing, or having unprotected sex, then it could work for a wide range of personal choices that are currently legislated. If personal activities with risk only to oneself or group activities with risk only to the group cease to be illegal it would free up government justice departments to work only with real crimes.