Self-Harming Crimes

Most legal and ethical traditions establish individual freedoms. Violations of freedom hurt happiness and utility, which utilitarians would dislike. Violating freedom is a non-universalizable moral maxim, which Kantians would dislike. Legal scholars can point to nearly any constitution as guaranteeing certain freedoms and rights. And, it's simply intuitive to think there exists some sort of freedom, the right to make ones own choices. It seems we should be able to decide what we wish to do, to purchase, to pursue. But, with freedom comes the tricky dilemma of how different people's rights and freedoms overlap and conflict. Some of these issues becoem very apparent in the issue of victimless crimes. For example:

Should the government violate freedom in order to protect other peoples freedom?

Can the government violate a person's freedom in order to protect his own freedom?

Advocates of prohibition would argue that the government should illegalize drugs/prostitution/[insert other 'harmful' behavior] because that activity hurts the general public, and that users are only harming themselves. Which would seem to answer yes to the above two problems. But, this is problematic on several fronts.

The first question is oftentimes asked in such a way that intuitively, it would seem that the answer is yes. After all, murder and theft are illegal because doing so would limit the freedom of murderers and thieves while increasing the freedom of others. However, the problem with this view is that it neglects to address the issue of ownership. Freedom only makes sense when contextualized to individuals who have certain things that they have freedom over. So, the goal is not maximization of total amount of freedom, the goal is respecting freedom in and of itself. Which means that murder and theft are illegal because those acts do not respect freedom. This aim of respect for freedom rather than maximization is for many reasons, I'll skim the surface. Firstly, freedom is pointless if it can be conditionally violated - that's literally not freedom then. Secondly is that it's impossible to make predictions about our actions and whether or not they'll lead to more or less freedom in the future. For example, if action A leads to B, which increased freedom, then you'd think that A is good. However, if B lead to C, which decreased freedom, then A would suddenly become bad. And so on. Trying to maximize freedom for all people is pointless because the consequences of our actions continue throughout time and are unpredictable and never ending (Note that this does not mean you can do whatever you want on the basis of your own freedom. For example, we can still freely agree to contracts like the government that bind us to taxes/etc.). Thus, even if drug use can causally lead to some other negative consequences that may violate freedom later on, we shouldn't condemn the act of drug use itself.

The second question faces similar issues. Even if drug usage can have negative consequences and perhaps decrease an individuals freedoms, it's contradictory to violate a persons freedom in its own interest, and also leads to questions of consequential analysis that is impossible. It also leads to various unintuitive conclusions about the governments role in individual life. If the government can or should force people to do things that it would percieve as making them "more free." For example, can the government now ban overeating because obesity can cause premature death, thereby limiting freedom? Can the government now limit the amount of time you spend watching T.V. to protect your freedom to use your eyesight? If drugs are to be limited because they're bad for you, a whole lot of other practices should follow suit.

Please leave comments with your own thoughts below.