Hi Kristof, if the steelman case is that autonomy is valuable and we should be averse to using coercion unless there is strong justification, then I do agree. However, I would add that Iāand many othersāsee public health (i.e. saving lives and preventing unnecessarily disability/āpain) as pretty good justification. Also, in this case, weāre talking about taxation and regulatory interventions; people arenāt banned from e.g. eating salty good or drinking sugary drinks. A key point too is that because our tastes are adaptive, people donāt even notice reduced sodium/āsugar content if done slowly; thereās also empirical evidence of this from studies on reformulation (i.e. the consumer literally doesnāt notice), in which case itās not even clear one has reduced freedom in terms of ābeing able to eat/ādrink food that tastes X to a certain extentā.
Hi Kristof, if the steelman case is that autonomy is valuable and we should be averse to using coercion unless there is strong justification, then I do agree. However, I would add that Iāand many othersāsee public health (i.e. saving lives and preventing unnecessarily disability/āpain) as pretty good justification. Also, in this case, weāre talking about taxation and regulatory interventions; people arenāt banned from e.g. eating salty good or drinking sugary drinks. A key point too is that because our tastes are adaptive, people donāt even notice reduced sodium/āsugar content if done slowly; thereās also empirical evidence of this from studies on reformulation (i.e. the consumer literally doesnāt notice), in which case itās not even clear one has reduced freedom in terms of ābeing able to eat/ādrink food that tastes X to a certain extentā.