Lockdowns and libertarianism (1)

by George J. Dance

In October, just as in March, a wave of coronavirus swept through Europe, followed predictably by a new wave of media and public panic leading to lockdowns. One by one, like dominoes, democratic governments in Europe – Ireland, Czechia, Spain, Poland, Italy, France, Germany, and finally the UK –fell to the latter wave, with only a few  (notably Norway and Sweden)  managing to resist being swept under by it. 

Unlike March, though, when the voice of panic was all that one heard, this time some dissenting voices managed to make themselves heard as well. This time, even the mainstream media has had to take note of: 

an increasingly heated [public] debate between two unlikely groupings of scientists, columnists, campaigners and politicians.
On one side there are the lockdowners. They think the only hope of triumphing over Covid-19 is shutdowns to bring numbers of cases back under control. Pubs and restaurants may have to close and households once again may be told not to mix.
On the other are the libertarians. They say we cannot return to those days because it would trigger an economic collapse and allow thousands of untreated cases of cancer, heart ailments and other diseases to mount. Tens of thousands might die, they say. (stress added).

"Each side points to different nations that have had greater success than Britain in fighting Covid-19, albeit with very different policies," the news story continues. "Each has attracted its own set of cheerleaders, politicians and journalists, as well as scientists who have also adopted strong contrasting stances." Some of the scientists have even produced duelling manifestos: for the libertarians, the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD), which advocates for "allow[ing] those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally;" for the lockdowners the John Snow Memorandum, which calls that very idea "a dangerous fallacy unsupported by scientific evidence." 

Some people dislike those terms. On the lockdowner side, for instance, economist Tyler Cowen insists that "the emphasis on lockdowns is a strawman," on the grounds that current U.S. lockdowns "are not severe," with relatively few activities on the prohibited list (though he quickly adds that "that list should be expanded"). On the libertarian side, epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta (a co-author of GBD) objects that her politics are Left-leaning, and that she disagrees with libertarians "about the distribution of wealth, about the importance of the Welfare State, about the need for publicly owned utilities and government investment in nationalised industries." 

Since Prof. Gupta has been vilified as a "right wing libertarian extremist" (and even a minion of Charles Koch), one must emphasize the point she is making. Many if not most lockdown opponents are not  libertarians on other issues, and philosophically many are not libertarians at all. (Perhaps 'Covid libertarians' would be a better term.) Still, the key recommendation of GBD – "Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal" while "People who are more at risk may participate if they wish" – is the libertarian position on lockdowns, and its supporters (like it or not) are libertarians on this particular issue. 

Libertarians believe in individual human rights, which limit what any person or group (including a government) may do to a person. Though 'liberty' gets most of the attention, those human rights include rights to life, liberty, and property. Calling those 'rights' simply means that harming another's life (by killing, maiming, or raping), liberty (by enslaving or confining) or property (by taking or vandalizing) is a wrongful act that should be prohibited. 

Lockdowns involve various measures to restrict people's movements and actions: by preventing them crossing a city or state boundary, or travelling only a few miles, or even leaving their own homes; from using the public streets or sidewalks; from working or shopping, by closing businesses; and from meeting with small groups of people (in the extreme case, from meeting with any people). All of those measures are compulsory mandates, enforced by coercion  – by the police power. They violate rights to property (ask the bankrupt businessmen) and liberty (our normal rights to work, travel, shop, dine out, visit friends)  – and, as GBD emphasizes, they do not respect our right to life, either. Lockdowns kill.

Libertarians cannot reject lockdowns merely because they are coercive, though, because libertarians do not reject coercion per se. Almost all libertarians (pacifists being the major exception) would allow coercion to prevent people from violating others' rights; which justifies some use of police power in a pandemic. As libertarian philosophy professor Jeffrey Huemer (quoted by Amitai Etzioni in the National Interest) puts it, "“Preventing the spread of infectious disease is within the legitimate functions of the minimal state, which most libertarians accept.” 

Some libertarians try to argue in good faith from that position to lockdowns. A typical argument goes like something like this: 

1. Governments may use coercion to stop any person from violating another person's rights.
2. For person A to give another person B a potentially deadly disease is a violation of person B's right to life. 
3. Therefore, a government may use coercion to prevent person A from giving Covid-19 to person B.

The argument is sound. But it is not an argument for lockdowns. It is an argument for quarantining someone who is known to be (or at least can be reasonably suspected of) giving others Covid; that is, for quarantining the contagious. Quarantine is a power that can be misused; but as per the above argument a libertarian can accept that there is a police power to quarantine. Like all government powers, it should be used as a last resort, if consent cannot be procured, and the quarantined person should have full procedural rights (to testing and a medical examination, for instance). 

The argument's conclusion, though, cannot be stretched into an argument for 'quarantining' the entire 'non-essential' population, because most of that population is not contagious. As many as 90% of Americans have never had Covid-19. 60% of those who have had the disease no longer have it. And 90% of those who do test positive for it play virtually no role in spreading it. None of these people poses a danger to anyone's right to life. The comparative few who do pose a danger, on the other hand, can just as easily be among the 'essential,' still active in the community, as among the segregated 'non-essential.' As uses of the police power to quarantine, lockdowns are both overly broad – as they are used to coerce contagious and non-contagious, innocent and culpable, alike – and also not broad enough, as they fail to quarantine all the culpable. 

Another libertarian philosophy professor quoted by Etzioni, Dan Moller, argues that "What's weird about a pandemic is that our everyday behavior suddenly puts others at risk  – just showing up to work can have huge negative externalities. So libertarians see restrictions on individual liberty in a pandemic as akin to restrictions on pollution." It is instructive to examine the analogy. Governments can and will restrict a known polluter, if they have clear evidence that the company is polluting, and that the pollution is harming someone's health (and therefore violating that person's right to life). They have never claimed the power to shut down all the 'non-essential' businesses, on the grounds that some of them are polluting and they cannot tell which ones are and which ones are not. Yet that is the power being claimed to justify lockdowns.    

Etzioni also quotes the old libertarian chestnut, "My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins," variants of which he tells us were famously said by Abraham Lincoln, John Stuart Mill, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (The above quote is Lincoln's version.) That is indeed a good libertarian statement, which draws the boundary between competing rights quite well. But, once again, it is not a statement that justifies lockdowns. The latter would be something like: 

In order to save noses, everyone must be handcuffed in the back so they cannot swing their fists (except, of course, when we think it is essential that you be allowed to swing your fist). What, you don't want to wear the handcuffs? Why do you want to give your Granny a bloody nose?

Now, that sounds like what a lockdowner would say. As for me, though, I'll stick with how Lincoln and Mill put it. 

Also read: Lockdowns and libertarianism (2)