I disagree. I have no problem with a cookie that sets a completely anonymous option, or which tells the server that I'm on a certain state, or that I've been here already so don't show me X, show my Y instead. I only dislike tracking cookies.

Browsers have no way of deciding which cookies are tracking and which aren't, and disabling them all causes all kinds of problems, including with sessions. Legislation, on the other hand, is less 'blind' and lets websites using cookies for functionality the user required and/or is informed of (like sessions, preferences and such) without letting websites perform unauthorized tracking.