Mai choiccce
People really should stop saying this. They’d be better off just drooling.
“It is wrong for the governor to force caring, experienced, and dedicated educators to get a vaccination, or have their jobs, livelihoods, and dreams ripped away from them,” said Rep. Alex Ybarra, R-Quincy, in a statement. “It was my choice to get vaccinated. That’s the way it should be — a personal health-care choice.”
Of course that’s not the way it should be, and of course it’s not simply a personal health-care choice. It’s not simply a personal vehicular choice to drive 90 miles an hour down a residential street, it’s not a personal business choice to sell contaminated food, it’s not a personal marketing choice to say that smoking is good for you. There are such things as personal health-care choices but vaccination isn’t one of them.
I don’t know how to convince people that their lack of action based on “choice” extends this pandemic far longer than it would have otherwise and it would be in the past. Behind us. Give us time to mourn those who have been killed by a contagious virus, and give time for those who are still recovering from long covid, without having to worry about how much longer this will last. If people would get the shots and wear the masks, we wouldn’t need the boosters that are needed more urgently in places that can’t get enough vials for primary protection.
If people understood the social contract that allows them to thrive, perhaps they wouldn’t be so hardheaded about their “choice.” Choices have consequences.
People used to shit and piss wherever they wanted. Now we have fairly strict regulations about where you can do that, and we require people to cover the offending body parts with bits of cloth if they’re out in public. I don’t hear too many people complaining about how that restricts their freedom (even nudists limit their practice to designated areas).
I wonder how many people were pissed off that they couldn’t drink water from the same source as other people shit into once London figured out why everyone was getting cholera and updated the sewers?
MY CHOICE TO DRINK INFESTED WATER!
That’s actually a really good example, Mike, as there was resistance to the germ theory even among the medical community. Imagine the skepticism among the general population. And yet … Restrictions were placed regardless. Despite the undeniable fact that such restrictions abridged citizens’ freedom, placing and enforcing then was within government’s proper purview. Why? Government, at least a constitutional government in the Lockeian mold, partially exists to embody the collective will of the governed. There are times when the People cannot accomplish something when acting as individuals, even though many or most share a common goal.
The ur-example is a Tragedy of the Commons, in which individuals’ freedom to act in their own interest is the very thing that forces each individual to take action that harms everyone. Resolving a Tragedy of the Commons requires universal compliance with a rule that restricts personal liberty. Specifically, it restricts an agent from taking the action that would be most beneficial to him or her. Worse, the relative advantage gained by taking this action increases as compliance approaches universality. Left to act solely as independent agents, everyone follows the incentives, and everyone suffers, even when every agent understands the harm done by the individually optimal action. In order to escape the worst possible outcome, people enter into an agreement that enforces proper action, a contract, if you will, that restricts the freedom of all to the benefit and greater liberty of each.
Constitutional government is supposed to be governance at the consent of the governed; i.e., a social contract. “We the People” agree to trade some of our freedom in return for greater liberty, investing the government with the authority to act as the agent of our collective interest when that interest is at odds with those of individuals. Regulating where people were allowed to relieve themselves was a paradigmatic case of government’s proper role in escaping a Tragedy of the Commons. The same analysis applies to public works like roads, public utilities and services like mail and healthcare, to minimum wage, and even to warfare. Vaccination is just another example of the tension between part and whole in which government’s raison d’etre is the enforcement of compliance to a policy that escapes the negative outcomes of unrestricted individual choice.
I get the feeling that the relationship between rights and responsibilities is taught very much in the schools these days. I am surprised that people don’t even understand that there are functions best assigned to government in even the most libertarian country because government doesn’t require a profit motive to justify action. There are some functions, such as those you enumerated, that need to be performed in every society, and if the government doesn’t do it, someone will. And whoever oes it, will require remuneration or exchange of some sort, which gives that entity power. And if the citizens have no means to balance against that power, then whoever carries that power will leverage to increase their power even more. And with no constitutional restraint, it seems to me it won’t be long until we’re sitting back in a feudal system.
is not taught?
Have you ever seen the musical Urinetown? That’s the exact premise of the movie. And things end badly.