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There is the negative equivalent, when people want to prevent you to do something. "Don't do this! Imagine if everybody would just do like you?". No, everyone i

• maest 5y ago
  But absolute moral standards do make sense, in a Kantian way. In particular, imagine a world where everyone has to make some sort of sacrifice to avoid harming everyone (e.g. wearing a mask, not polluting, not overfishing etc). If _most_ people make the sacrifice, you can have freeloaders not follow the rules and the world would still survive: you can have a small number people not staying at home during the pandemic and still keep R<1. you can have a small number of people polluting as much as they want and still stop global warming. you can have a small number of boats fish where they shouldn't and still maintain not fully exhaust fish supplies. Criticising those actors for doing something that doesn't work if everyone would do is perfectly valid (and it's correctly pointing out the reason why their actions are wrong). "I'm not going to stay at home during the pandemic because I don't want to" "Don't do this! Imagine if everybody would just do like you?" "No, everyone is not going to just do like me, there's room for most people's actions"
• jmcqk6 5y ago
  That's basically just a restatement of the problem of the commons, and it can definitely be extremely problematic. There are countless examples around us where problems are created because people think themselves to be special.