Does making your family unhappy count as harming others?

Their distress matters, but feeling alone does not automatically establish a case for coercion. Ask whether a definite promise, care duty, or shared-life obligation exists and whether the conduct actually breaches it.

Do public health or welfare costs make every risky choice non-private?

Not automatically. Shared costs may justify insurance rules, risk-pooling, or measures aimed at specific spillovers, but not comprehensive control without evidence and proportionality. Alternatives and enforcement fairness still matter.

Can “my choice” release me from family responsibilities?

No. Liberty protects choice but does not cancel debts, support, care, or professional duties already undertaken. The object of accountability should be the definite breach, not mere disapproval of the choice.

On Liberty

Can an action really harm only yourself? Indirect effects, definite duties and perceptible injury

Almost every choice affects family or society somehow. Mill’s cases of debt, family responsibility and drunkenness on duty separate indirect effects from definite obligations and identifiable harm.

Whenever there is a definite damage, or a definite risk of damage, either to an individual or to the public, the case is taken out of the province of liberty.On Liberty, Chapter IV · Self-regarding conduct and definite obligations

The direct answer: few acts are isolated, but not every effect justifies coercion

Mill openly concedes that the damage a person does to himself can distress those close to him, affect their interests, and impose lesser effects on society. He does not therefore abandon a self-regarding sphere. The relevant question is not whether any consequence can be found. It is whether the person has breached a distinct obligation owed to identifiable others, or created definite damage or a definite risk of it.

This distinction leaves competent adults room to make mistakes while preserving accountability for real duties. Without it, anxiety, disapproval, or a remote social cost could redescribe almost any way of life as harm to others.

The passage separates the cause from the breach

In the relevant passage from Chapter IV, Mill discusses debt, family support, and drunkenness on duty. A spendthrift unable to repay a creditor may be blamed for breaching that obligation. A person who has undertaken responsibility for a family may be held answerable for failing to support or educate them. The ground is the unperformed duty, not a general licence to punish extravagance.

Likewise, nobody should be punished merely for being drunk, while a soldier or police officer may be punished for being drunk on duty. A concrete role supplies a definite public responsibility. The same habit can therefore have a different status in a different relationship and at a different time.

Three levels: effect, moral duty, and enforceable responsibility

The first level is ordinary effect: worry, disappointment, or moral disagreement among family and friends. It permits concern, persuasion, and criticism, but usually not coercion. The second is a definite obligation: a promise, debt, care duty, or professional role has made another person reasonably reliant on you. Breach can warrant moral disapproval and a fitting remedy. The third is definite injury or risk: deception, abandonment, or dangerous dereliction may enter legal or institutional enforcement, subject to proof and proportionality.

These levels do not collapse into one another. Causing sadness does not automatically establish a breached family duty. A breached duty does not mean criminal punishment is always appropriate. The stronger the response, the clearer the evidence and procedure must be.

Five questions for “this is not only their business”

Who exactly is affected, rather than an abstract appeal to “society”? Have they lost a right, promised benefit, or basic security, or merely approval and expectation? Did the obligation exist before the disputed conduct, rather than being invented afterward to justify intervention? How direct and foreseeable is the injury? Could a less intrusive response—information, negotiation, withdrawal from cooperation, compensation, or workplace discipline—address it?

A friend’s late nights may first call for advice. A fatigued driver transfers a tangible risk to strangers on the road. The boundary turns on duties and risks, not on how certain an observer feels that intervention is “for your own good”.

The limit: freedom from coercion is neither freedom from judgement nor freedom from duty

Mill does not demand indifference to self-damage. People may offer evidence, make moral judgements, help, and govern their own associations and resources. What you may do when you disapprove of someone’s life sets out those non-coercive responses. Conversely, “my choice” cannot erase debts, care commitments, or a public office already undertaken.

The hard work is to name the breach: who suffers what injury, under which prior obligation, and what limited remedy follows. If the account cannot move beyond dislike of a way of life, return to the harm principle’s proportionality test rather than expanding compulsion.