The Ethics of Social Distancing: A Libertarian Perspective | UNZ Review - Ilana Mercer:
April 23, 2020 - 'Having lived in both the developed and underdeveloped world, I have always associated social distancing with civility and civilization. Cultures that honor personal boundaries have always seemed better than cultures which don’t — more genteel, refined and respectful. Ditto people who keep a respectful distance: They have more merit than those who get in your face....
"In the absence of clinical therapies or a vaccine for coronavirus, the successful return to work rests, very plainly, on the willingness of the citizenry to cover up, keep clean and keep a distance. Why would anyone wish to infringe on another’s personal space, when the stakes are clearly so high? Insisting on unfettered freedom to come and go as one pleases, sans protection, comes at a grave cost to others — it could constitute aggression against innocent others.
"[T]he shuttering of private property by the State is an incontrovertible violation of private property rights. 'Without property rights,' wrote Ayn Rand, 'no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life.'
"Even more fundamental, however, is that without dominion over one’s self — self-ownership — there can be no property rights. Rights to the avails of your labor originate in the right of self-ownership. If you don’t own yourself, you cannot own anything else, or produce anything, the avails of your labor and the products of your mind included. And if you are DEAD, DYING or INCAPACITATED — you own nothing....
"In libertarian theory, private property rights originate in that most important of all titles: The title in one’s own body. That body, that fount of life whence all rights originate, is the legitimate object of government protection in a pandemic. For, as I noted years ago, 'Whether they are armed with bombs or bacteria, stopping weaponized individuals from harming others — intentionally or unintentionally — falls perfectly within the purview of the night-watchman state of classical-liberal theory'....
"Against this background, the natural rights of economically stricken individuals to reopen their businesses are righteous; they stem not from a state-created right or regulation. Rather, the right of ownership is the very extension of the right to life. In order to survive, man must — and it is in his nature to — transform the resources around him by mixing his labor with them and making them his own. Man’s labor and property are extensions of himself. So, my countrymen are correct to protest the shuttering of their privately owned property, also their sole means of sustaining their lives.
"All the same, there is another, equally compelling side to the ethics of this emergency situation.... Each and every individual is or could be, inadvertently, harboring a weapon of mass destruction. Yes, a WMD — for how many men and women have died and will still die because of the inadvertent actions of the coronavirus-carrying Index Patients, during the 'seeding events'? Each one of us could be firing off deadly virus into a defenseless population, bereft of immunity. Each one of us could become armed and dangerous, or be felled by someone who is. In this case, individuals who willfully violate social distancing strictures can be viewed as willful aggressors against innocent others."
Read more: https://www.unz.com/imercer/the-ethics-of-social-distancing-a-libertarian-perspective/
April 23, 2020 - 'Having lived in both the developed and underdeveloped world, I have always associated social distancing with civility and civilization. Cultures that honor personal boundaries have always seemed better than cultures which don’t — more genteel, refined and respectful. Ditto people who keep a respectful distance: They have more merit than those who get in your face....
"In the absence of clinical therapies or a vaccine for coronavirus, the successful return to work rests, very plainly, on the willingness of the citizenry to cover up, keep clean and keep a distance. Why would anyone wish to infringe on another’s personal space, when the stakes are clearly so high? Insisting on unfettered freedom to come and go as one pleases, sans protection, comes at a grave cost to others — it could constitute aggression against innocent others.
"[T]he shuttering of private property by the State is an incontrovertible violation of private property rights. 'Without property rights,' wrote Ayn Rand, 'no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life.'
"Even more fundamental, however, is that without dominion over one’s self — self-ownership — there can be no property rights. Rights to the avails of your labor originate in the right of self-ownership. If you don’t own yourself, you cannot own anything else, or produce anything, the avails of your labor and the products of your mind included. And if you are DEAD, DYING or INCAPACITATED — you own nothing....
"In libertarian theory, private property rights originate in that most important of all titles: The title in one’s own body. That body, that fount of life whence all rights originate, is the legitimate object of government protection in a pandemic. For, as I noted years ago, 'Whether they are armed with bombs or bacteria, stopping weaponized individuals from harming others — intentionally or unintentionally — falls perfectly within the purview of the night-watchman state of classical-liberal theory'....
"Against this background, the natural rights of economically stricken individuals to reopen their businesses are righteous; they stem not from a state-created right or regulation. Rather, the right of ownership is the very extension of the right to life. In order to survive, man must — and it is in his nature to — transform the resources around him by mixing his labor with them and making them his own. Man’s labor and property are extensions of himself. So, my countrymen are correct to protest the shuttering of their privately owned property, also their sole means of sustaining their lives.
"All the same, there is another, equally compelling side to the ethics of this emergency situation.... Each and every individual is or could be, inadvertently, harboring a weapon of mass destruction. Yes, a WMD — for how many men and women have died and will still die because of the inadvertent actions of the coronavirus-carrying Index Patients, during the 'seeding events'? Each one of us could be firing off deadly virus into a defenseless population, bereft of immunity. Each one of us could become armed and dangerous, or be felled by someone who is. In this case, individuals who willfully violate social distancing strictures can be viewed as willful aggressors against innocent others."
Read more: https://www.unz.com/imercer/the-ethics-of-social-distancing-a-libertarian-perspective/
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