I tent to agree. The State has no business in dictating the attitude to risk of an individual.
The risk to unrelated 3rd party casualties is negligible.
There is a bit of a grey area however when it comes to passengers. What expectation of safety should they have? Tricky one...
As regards midairs, I do think Mode C should be mandatory in all cases unless technically infeasible (no electrical system). Then, the remaining pilots could make a reasonable choice on whether to spend money on some form of TCAS. Currently it is largely a waste of money. Mandatory Mode C would also help ATC in the hundreds of serious CAS busts that occur every year.