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Your alcohol use does not affect me. Your use of antibacterial chemicals does. That's the difference.


More precisely When a drunk driver crashes their car, the total damage they're likely to cause to others is about equal to the total damage they'll cause to themselves. Sometimes they'll hit a family car and kill 3 people, more often they'll run into a tree and kill only themselves. It comes out pretty similarly if you look at other harm caused by alcohol.

When you use antibacterial soap, you hurt everyone in the world equally. You hurt me as much as you hurt yourself, but you also hurt 7 billion other people. That means antibacterial soaps cause 7 billion times more damage to others than to oneself on average, while the ratio is about 1 for alcohol.

So someone acting purely in self-interest will mediate their use of alcohol fairly effectively, while a self-interested antibacterial soap user won't mediate their use at all.




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