[ralusek]

Human trafficking violates consent. Violence violates consent. Sexual abuse violates consent. The government has a role in preserving consent in transactions. The third-party negative externalities I mentioned fall within the purview of government responsibilities precisely because they have an impact on those who have not consented.

Gambling does not violate consent. Drug usage does not violate consent. Prostitution does not violate consent, or in the cases that do, those independent instances are where enforcement needs to occur.

[UnFleshedOne]

Would you change your position if at some point there exist a technology that modifies consent with a certain success rate so a bad actor in a free market can reliably make a significant number of people act against their interests but out of their own "free will".

Is this a matter of competence or a matter of principle?

If I can talk to some people and without threats or deceit convince a good number of them to hand me over all their savings (using a zeroday in wetware for example), does the government has a right / responsibility to stop me?

I expect ad-tech and other persuasion techniques will only become more effective. At what point do we declare regular people unable to consent similar to the way we say children and few other groups can't legally consent?

[kingdomcome50]

While I agree with your views here, it is incredibly important to understand that "consent" is not as black and white as you are painting it above. In many ways it suffers from the same problems as attempting to define what is "good" -- in that what qualifies an individual to be able to give consent or what consent even looks like can be arbitrary and subjective.