> This the same justification that is given for all nanny state laws. If you don't find compelling the proposition that laws disincentivize behavior, then we w

> This the same justification that is given for all nanny state laws. If you don't find compelling the proposition that laws disincentivize behavior, then we won't really be able to come to much agreement on anything. > The correct way to give people an incentive not to cause harm is to punish them if they cause harm. This presupposes that causing harm is entirely within your control. If you drive home drunk, you might kill someone simply because they happen to be there, not because you did anything differently - you may not even have seen them! (Thomas Nagel writes about this exact scenario in his 1979 paper, Moral Luck). Similarly, if you're driving 100mph and get into an accident, you're more likely to kill someone than if you were driving at 70mph and got into the exact same accident. To take a step back, you've advanced a legal framework based on a consequentialist view of morality. Consequentialism can be problematic along a number of axes which is why our legal systems don't work that way. > The problem with punishing people who haven't actually caused harm is that they know they didn't actually cause harm but you punished them anyway. That weakens people's respect for the law in general. They start to view the law as a game, where the government tries to catch you breaking an arbitrary rule and you try to avoid being caught. That is how speeding laws, for example, are treated by virtually everyone. Not if they understand that a particular behavior leads to harm and thus ought to be disincentivized, e.g. drink driving. Your comment on speeding laws is incorrect, because it assumes that speed limits have no bearing on driver behavior. In fact, setting speed limits either too low or too high is problematic. When you set the speed limit too low, you create a potentially dangerous speed differential between those trying to abide by the speed limit, and those ignoring it. Past a certain point, however, most drivers will cluster around the given speed limit which means you're simply artificially increasing the fatality rate of accidents (since they will occur at higher speeds).