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Another huge consideration is who it harms. Does it only affect the person who chooses to engage in that activity or is it hurting someone else who cannot conse

• danShumway 4y ago
  This is a good point, but utility/housing bans, lead paint bans, electrical wiring standards, and so on, are often less about someone individually harming themself, and more about having a standard minimum quality/safety level for houses being sold, as well as for protection for other family members/kids. Back to the lead paint example, there's something of an argument to be made that if you want to handle lead, you should be able to. But it's nice for everyone else to not have to wonder if the house they're buying is a toxic death trap that will cognitively affect their children. Similarly, if gas stoves do significantly reduce air quality in a way that matters (again, that's an if), I don't think it's too unreasonable to impose restrictions on people renting out properties or building houses. When we talk about how much harm a regulation is preventing, we treat harm that comes from informed consent as less dire than harm that comes from uninformed action or as a result of other people's choices that an individual had no control over. A lot of building codes and standards have impacts on not just harms that come from informed consent, but also on other people as well who might just want to know that their kitchen isn't silently harming them.