From a strictly utilitarian perspective, would there be anything to be gained by, say, starting a campaign of assassination against executives of tobacco companies?
No, that would be bad. The heuristic that says violence is always a bad strategy is reliable, and it works for reasons beyond the obvious. One important reason is that whenever someone uses violence, other people respond by trying to figure out what his goals are and undermining them. So the practical consequence would be to move tobacco into the "good" category in some peoples' minds, and to undermine anti-tobacco strategies that actually work (taxes, advertising, and regulations).
On the other hand, displacing cigarettes with nicotine vaporizers or with some other drug looks like a straightforward win.
could you point me to the heuristics that say that violence is always a bad strategy? I have a strong gut feeling that they're right, but I'd really like to see them in a formalized or semi-formalized fashion :-)
The man-made object responsible for the most deaths worldwide is the tobacco cigarette. It isn't even close.
Tobacco kills 443,000 Americans a year and 5 million people a year worldwide. This is more than the total number of people killed by cars and firearms combined. Cars kill about 32,000 Americans each year and 1.3 million people worldwide, while firearms kill about 32,000 Americans each year and "several hundred thousand" people worldwide.
100 million people were killed by tobacco in the 20th century. This is more than the death toll from World War 1 (17 million) and World War 2 (50 to 70 million) combined.
From a strictly utilitarian perspective, would there be anything to be gained by, say, starting a campaign of assassination against executives of tobacco companies?