> If the bridge has loose stones, you put up a sign that says the bridge is hazardous and has loose stones and provide a map with an alternate route.
This is quaint, but not actually the problem. The problem is that every bridge manufacturer will cut corners on materials and design (because it's cheaper) meaning that there will be zero safe bridges. The bridge manufacturer's incentives do not line up with its users.
When I walk up to a safe-looking bridge, how am I supposed to know it's been made with insufficient rebar or dodgy concrete until it's collapsed on top of me? A sign?
> If a person in a situation makes a judgement call and they're wrong, they could die. If a legislator makes a judgement call for everyone all at once, people will die because different people will be on different sides of the trade off, possibly more of them than would otherwise if they'd each been able to make their own decision in context, and certainly some of them who would have lived if they'd been able to choose for themselves and choose differently.
Like I said, it's a balance of harms. There's both appropriate and inappropriate places for government intervention, and we're already legally not prevented (encouraged, even) from engaging in a bunch of very dangerous activities.
But the assertion that legislative intervention will always result in more deaths than letting people "decide for themselves" seems highly dogmatic and unsupported.
> It sounds like you want to trade the lives of people who choose well for the lives of people who choose wrong without even knowing which number is bigger.
We know which number is bigger. Go look at non-natural death rates in much countries with much smaller governments / regulatory frameworks.
