Jeff Tucker says this about me:Thanks for reading Walter’s Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. “We could also mention the tragic case of Walter Block, a famed anarchist and student of Murray Rothbard, who somehow got very confused in thinking that passing on a respiratory virus is a form of aggression that the state is right to punish. Such a position would of course mean that freedom could never exist. From his armchair, he never considered that the acquisition of natural immunity might just as easily be regarded as a positive externality to provide protection against illness. This is why many generations practiced deliberate exposure in the form of variolation. Indeed, I was personally exposed to chickenpox and grateful for it!”
Joel: I think you are entirely correct, now, with the benefit of hindsight. but when covid first appeared, our info about it was far less. then, it was not unreasonable to posit a possible analogy between covid and typhoid. Best regards, Walter
The major difference between Typhoid Mary and what happened the past three years is it was proven conclusively that Mary was the vector, while the past three years every single person alive was deemed a vector with zero evidence. Can't pass something to someone if you don't have it, yet all were treated as criminals. I recently heard you mention on your Sam Seder debate that you support 'vaccine' mandates, while in the same debate you spoke of bodily autonomy. Can't have both. Either a person owns their body or the state does. You made it clear that so long as YOU are scared of the flu, bodily autonomy is tossed aside and that you support state sanctioned medical experimentation and tyranny.
Back on May 26, 2020, I got to weigh in on this issue in a comment on Zachary Yost's article in the Mises Wire ( https://mises.org/wire/how-we-might-respond-pandemic-were-society-not-so-dominated-state ). I spelled out the reasons _why_ enforcing NAP-based personal liability for causing infections was important; outlining the case that it is precisely because individual rights enforcement would deal with problems related to externalities and ignorance better than any tyranny of public health experts would:
-----
The libertarian non-aggression principle implies that (1) contagious individuals would be held personally liable for infecting others unless such liability was waived by voluntary consent, (2) property owners get to decide what restrictions apply to the use of their property, and (3) the provision of health information, diagnostics, and therapies only requires the voluntary consent of recipients.
The fundamental presumption of "public health" and other progressive nannies is that ordinary property owners and medical consumers are too selfish and too stupid to do the right thing with respect to (2) and (3). The obvious counterpoint to this argument is that in the absence of (1), there is no incentive for ordinary individuals to internalize negative externalities or to overcome information deficits. Libertarians stand for the rights of all individuals, including the rights of those who do not consent to exposure to potentially fatal agents that leak out of a foreign government lab. Ultimately it is the enforcement of these rights, not domination by the state, that makes peaceful coexistence with other autonomous individuals and socially-minded conduct possible in the first place. Without individual rights, there is no genuine sense of responsibility to others, only the never-ending lose-lose gaming of the system to try to get the state to favor one's own short-run interests.
A tyranny of a small band of supposedly benevolent experts is no less selfish and stupid than the behavior of judgement-proof individuals. A "public health" czar neither has a monopoly on expert knowledge, nor knows about all the particulars of a dizzying variety of circumstances on the ground and the ramifications of various protective measures under all those circumstances, nor can fit a narrowly-defined value of reducing mortality, etc. into the broad range of ultimate ends pursued by hundreds of millions of different individuals, nor is immune to the temptations of ambition and avarice unrestrained by any accountability to others for one's actions.
Whatever epidemiological science has to offer to society, its benefits are negated by coercive centralization. In the current pandemic, who can doubt that the sickening spectacle of politicians, bureaucrats, and politically-connected billionaires endlessly touting the coercive imposition of their own favored therapies long before any real evidence for their efficacy and safety has emerged, not to mention suppression of rival narratives and criticisms on social media, is proof that elite privilege-mongering and obscurantism, not science and open debate, are what are really driving health-care decisions?
Joel: I think you are entirely correct, now, with the benefit of hindsight. but when covid first appeared, our info about it was far less. then, it was not unreasonable to posit a possible analogy between covid and typhoid. Best regards, Walter
Dear Vincent: Thanks for sharing these important thoughts. Perhaps you should write them up and publish them. Best regards, Walter
When we err, we should always err on the side of freedom.
My J.P. Sears' shirt slogan says it best, " You stay safe; I'll stay free."
The major difference between Typhoid Mary and what happened the past three years is it was proven conclusively that Mary was the vector, while the past three years every single person alive was deemed a vector with zero evidence. Can't pass something to someone if you don't have it, yet all were treated as criminals. I recently heard you mention on your Sam Seder debate that you support 'vaccine' mandates, while in the same debate you spoke of bodily autonomy. Can't have both. Either a person owns their body or the state does. You made it clear that so long as YOU are scared of the flu, bodily autonomy is tossed aside and that you support state sanctioned medical experimentation and tyranny.
Back on May 26, 2020, I got to weigh in on this issue in a comment on Zachary Yost's article in the Mises Wire ( https://mises.org/wire/how-we-might-respond-pandemic-were-society-not-so-dominated-state ). I spelled out the reasons _why_ enforcing NAP-based personal liability for causing infections was important; outlining the case that it is precisely because individual rights enforcement would deal with problems related to externalities and ignorance better than any tyranny of public health experts would:
-----
The libertarian non-aggression principle implies that (1) contagious individuals would be held personally liable for infecting others unless such liability was waived by voluntary consent, (2) property owners get to decide what restrictions apply to the use of their property, and (3) the provision of health information, diagnostics, and therapies only requires the voluntary consent of recipients.
The fundamental presumption of "public health" and other progressive nannies is that ordinary property owners and medical consumers are too selfish and too stupid to do the right thing with respect to (2) and (3). The obvious counterpoint to this argument is that in the absence of (1), there is no incentive for ordinary individuals to internalize negative externalities or to overcome information deficits. Libertarians stand for the rights of all individuals, including the rights of those who do not consent to exposure to potentially fatal agents that leak out of a foreign government lab. Ultimately it is the enforcement of these rights, not domination by the state, that makes peaceful coexistence with other autonomous individuals and socially-minded conduct possible in the first place. Without individual rights, there is no genuine sense of responsibility to others, only the never-ending lose-lose gaming of the system to try to get the state to favor one's own short-run interests.
A tyranny of a small band of supposedly benevolent experts is no less selfish and stupid than the behavior of judgement-proof individuals. A "public health" czar neither has a monopoly on expert knowledge, nor knows about all the particulars of a dizzying variety of circumstances on the ground and the ramifications of various protective measures under all those circumstances, nor can fit a narrowly-defined value of reducing mortality, etc. into the broad range of ultimate ends pursued by hundreds of millions of different individuals, nor is immune to the temptations of ambition and avarice unrestrained by any accountability to others for one's actions.
Whatever epidemiological science has to offer to society, its benefits are negated by coercive centralization. In the current pandemic, who can doubt that the sickening spectacle of politicians, bureaucrats, and politically-connected billionaires endlessly touting the coercive imposition of their own favored therapies long before any real evidence for their efficacy and safety has emerged, not to mention suppression of rival narratives and criticisms on social media, is proof that elite privilege-mongering and obscurantism, not science and open debate, are what are really driving health-care decisions?
-----