There are some laws like that, certainly. Those are the most basic ones, and have existed for centuries. They don't seem to be anywhere near the dominant form. We long ago moved on from laws which do prevent harm to laws that might prevent harm. And as societies get ever more risk averse, liberty will suffer at the hands of people who insist on achieving the ideal of living free of risks.
And at that point you are incorrectly eliding many independent concerns.
Perhaps so. But the existence of a concern does not automatically justify a restriction on liberty. In fact, liberty is so difficult and expensive to recover once it's gone that I argue that a restriction should not be placed on liberty unless there literally is no other choice.
Of course, few value liberty in that way, because they're so used to not having it. It gets worse with each generation.
You do realize, of course, that tyranny is the historical norm, right?
Lawlessness is not what I'm arguing for.
Oddly enough I didn't think you were arguing for that! But lawless anarchy is the natural consequence of your loose thinking and wishes. Be careful what you wish for; you might get it.
Apologies in advance for the long-windedness. I don't know how to properly address this with greater brevity.
Lawlessness is not the
natural consequence of my wishes. What I wish is for liberty of the variety of "your right to swing your fist ends at my face" or some analog thereof. What I wish for is an at worst
stable amount of liberty, where those liberties that are removed have been removed because there really was no other choice, and not merely because some amount of the population (and especially not because some people who regard themselves as leaders) wanted it. It is not enough that there merely be "good reason" for a restriction on liberty. "Good reason" is sufficient to justify all restrictions on liberty, most especially if it includes what
might happen as opposed to what
will happen.
In this view, the purpose of government is to ensure that liberty is maximized, and to act as an arbiter whenever liberties collide. Clearly, liberty is reduced when some people are forcibly imposed upon by others, which means that the government's purpose is to ensure that such imposition is minimized. And yes, that clearly must include the imposition by the government itself.
Most laws are not of that variety anymore. It may be that at one time, that was the type of law that was prevalent. Most certainly, laws of that type tend to be the oldest ones. But people seem to have this desire to simultaneously do what they want while controlling others, and the latter is what usually wins because they control others by proxy, through the leadership that exists (whether elected, appointed, or through force), and generally don't realize or don't care that their pleas to control others are also being made by others who have the same desire to control them. The end result is that everyone is forcibly restrained through the wishes of everyone else, and this goes on for
centuries before some influential group of people (such as the founders of the United States) decides they've had enough of it, and manage to recover some of that lost liberty through force of arms. And then the cycle repeats, because nobody has been bright enough (or, alternatively, influential enough) to design and implement a system with the necessary feedback mechanisms to prevent it.
That role of government I mentioned is quite clearly something of a contradiction, which is why people with the views I have generally tend to believe that government size and power must be kept to the absolute minimum necessary. It's precisely because that role is something of a contradiction that failure to zealously keep the government in check (either through active management or through a systemic feedback mechanism) will inevitably result in the government acquiring ever more power and control, and the loss of liberty that is inescapably tied to it. Whether it is government power or the desire of the population to control others that comes first doesn't matter. That feeds back into itself, and the end result is that people in every generation end up telling their grandkids about the things they could do that are now forbidden.
What I wish for in the above is not achievable in a stable fashion with a typical government structure, even ones that initially respond to the wishes of the minority. It can only be achieved through proper engineering of the government structure itself, so that it includes feedback mechanisms that ensure that even tyranny of the majority cannot prevail.
You realize, of course, that the liberty that is left after imposition of the union of all restrictions that people would impose upon others is something approaching the null set, right?
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