 In many public health contexts, the only feasible or acceptably efficient way to implement a policy affects the entire population, leaving no or only very burdensome options open to individual non-cooperation. Perhaps the most celebrated such example is water fluoridation, but all safety regulations affecting the food and drug supply and consumer products share this character, as do many environmental and occupational health standards. Here collective efficiency considerations loom large. Although we want healthy environments and products, individuals are simply not positioned on their own to ensure that the air is safe to breathe, nor can they make meaningful decisions about the safety of the hundreds of thousands of food and other products available in the modern marketplace. According to this rationale, ceding this function to government institutions staffed with health experts is justified in the same way as ceding protection of our interests in personal physical security to government institutions staffed with law enforcement and national defense experts (Mill 1859).