Come on, just wear a mask. Why would you resist it as though it's something to be proud of? Even if the only thing that it does is make other people feel safe, that's a good enough reason.
When did I say I don’t wear a mask? You’re making some big assumptions. This is the danger with vilifying someone who you disagree with.
There will always be different opinions and views. Being civil and accepting of others seems to be less and less common under the guise of doing “the right thing”.
Well the same reason you don't share your email with the FBI and agree to be monitored at all times.
I wear a mask, and I choose to wear a mask. I also wore a mask before it was "supported" by the CDC. If tomorrow it was legally required, I would stop wearing a mask.
The issue is not wearing masks. The issue is legally mandating them.
You should wear a mask. You may be an asymptomatic carrier, and masks have fairly good odds (~90%) at stopping liquid droplet spread.
However legally mandating masks is a different problem. The state is engaging in compelled action - which is usually right out save a few cases. Just as the state can't legally mandate someone to say they support the president, the state can't mandate helpful behavior - it's just not a power the state has.
Could the state legally require condoms unless you were intending to conceive? Condoms are effective at stopping almost all std/sti, and are 99.98% effective when used properly at preventing unwanted pregnancy. We could eliminate HIV tomorrow if the state forced their usage. You should use a condom, but that isn't the same as legally mandating them.
You are confusing mandating masks in order to protect the wearer with the real purpose: to protect people around them. Wearing masks protects other people from being infected if you unwittingly have the disease. Clearly, states have the right (and indeed responsibility) to mandate that their citizens do not recklessly endanger other citizens in specific encoded ways. For example, do you think it is unreasonable for there to be speed limits on roads? Or even that if someone shot their firearm around at random in a crowded place and happened to kill someone that they shouldn't be held responsible if they could prove they hadn't specifically meant to hurt anyone, they were just having a bit of a laugh?
Maybe you actually do think the state shouldn't intrude on those freedoms, but you would be in a minority holding those views. Personally, I like laws that impose mask use during pandemics, speed limits on roads and restrictions against firing shots randomly into crowds, because their absence intrudes on my freedom to continue existing.
I even consider it possible to like these things while not considering it reasonable to "share your email with the FBI and agree to be monitored at all times". An analogy about condom use does not explain the connection at all.
This is a subtle point but it's a difference between compelled action and a restriction.
When I'm not allowed to drive over 65mph, that's a restriction. I have no innate power to use government roads, so even requirements like a license and a seltbelt are aligned.
Let's talk about discharging a firearm since that doesn't have some of these special cases like government vs private roads. I do have a right to bear arms, I don't have a right to discharge them.
Typically there are restrictions even on private property. You can't discharge a firearm in a city, or on property that is too small. But, if I have several acres in the country I can discharge a firearm. If my discharge (either the noise or the round) crosses my property, then I may have an issue.
I agree these are good things but good and legal are unrelated. I think universal condom usage and donating to non-profits is good, but legally mandating those things would be problematic.
If everyone shared all of their data with the FBI - well, we could stop a lot of crime. Insider trading, lots of fraud, some premeditated murder. Though, that would be a grave invasion of your rights, wouldn't it?
I see. Well, that is a very specific, and frankly rather bizarre, thing to get hung up on.
Would you consider a law that disallows people from getting too close outside, or being in the same room, acceptable? Technically that is a restriction rather than a compelled action... one that's much more onerous than a mask mandate, but that's not the point, right?
Edit: "universal condom usage and donating to non-profits" are still red herrings regardless of this technicality. The point of masks is stop you from personally and directly killing someone that did not consent to you getting near to them and infecting them. Condoms only directly affect people that consented to be with each other (if one didn't consent then obviously that's another matter). Donating to charity may save lives but that's not the same as stopping you from personally killing someone.
Edit 2: I also feel like masks could be phrased in terms of being a restriction rather than a mandate. Surely a law not allowing you to spit in someone's face is a restriction? What about a law restricting the concentration of your breath droplets that get onto other people's faces, at least during a pandemic? If the only way to satisfy this is to stay well away from everyone or wear a mask, that's still a restriction. (Even I feel like that's cheating. But I also think that the existence of "cheats" like this is part of why the distinction is so silly to start with.)
No, of course not. This is just a matter of setting a sensible threshold when the borderline from acceptable to unacceptable is fuzzy, and applies to any number of other things that you'd surely consider reasonable.
Going back to speed limit analogy, driving at 100mph down a crowded high street (I'm thinking of a narrow European-style street here where there's no such thing as jaywalking) is tantamount to murder. But - like your seasonal flu argument - even if you set the speed limit at 10mph (imagine a fantasy world where people stuck to that speed limit) occasionally there would be a road death to pedestrians. Does that mean that is essentially murder too, and that we should ban all driving altogether? No, we have to choose some threshold, a speed limit, that is an acceptable trade off between allowing people to live their lives vs safety to others. Any limit like that will always be somehow wrong - too high and too low at the same time, in some sense - but you have to draw the line somewhere. The same goes for a limit to how much we allow people to risk spreading potentially deadly diseases to others.
If that trade off only involves the safety of the participants then you can leave it to them to choose that threshold. For example, some might choose to take part in extreme sports while others consider them too risky. But if the trade off is between the benefit of the participant vs risk to an unconsenting third party, then the threshold of course has to be set in law.
(BTW, on the subject of comment votes, I've not been down voting your comments (except the first one so others don't end up down this rabbit hole), actually I've been upvoting them to ungrey them. Although I still find your views extremely strange it has been interesting and you do seem to be constructively engaging, and I hope I have been too.)
I would not be surprised if at least one “reckless endangerment” had not already been filed for that reason in the past. Probably many years ago.
I recall reading years ago about an AIDS patient who was convicted for manslaughter after knowingly having unprotected sex with many people without disclosing their condition.
Phrased as a restriction, the requirement for masks is a limit on how many droplets of saliva can fly out of your face in public. If it's worded that way, are you satisfied?
> it's a difference between compelled action and a restriction.
No, you're making the wrong distinction. The right distinction is between causing actual harm, and not causing actual narm.
You do have a right to travel unimpeded over public roads (since you're a member of the public and a taxpayer). Imposing a 65 mph speed limit on you and giving a cop the power to stop you and write you a ticket that imposes a fine (or a court appearance) for exceeding the limit, even if you have caused no harm to anyone, is wrong. However, posting a sign that says "maximum safe speed 65 mph", and then imposing extra liability on you if you cause an accident and it is found that you were exceeding that posted limit would be fine.
Similarly, forcing you by law to wear a mask in public, even if you have caused no harm to anyone, is wrong. But if you aren't wearing a mask and you cough or sneeze on someone and they get COVID-19 because of that, having a law that imposes liability on you would be fine.
ah, the old post-facto libertarian dream. in short, it's only OK to sanction behavior after it has caused harm, never OK to sanction behavior that increases the odds of harm.
there are places you can live in the world that work much more closely to your post-facto ideal. however, if you want the benefits of the rest a contemporary western industrial society, you'll either have to convince a lot more people that post-facto only is right, or just live with the fact that most of the rest of us thing that post-facto only is wrong.
> most of the rest of us thing that post-facto only is wrong
Yes, because most of the rest of you do not see the harms caused by sanctioning behavior that some government official believes increases the odds of harm. If you did, you would realize that only sanctioning behavior that causes actual harm is the right rule for the government, because humans simply cannot be trusted with the power to dictate the behavior of others based on some estimate of "the odds of harm" when no actual harm is caused.
Most of the rest of you also do not realize that the sanctions of law are not the only kinds of sanctions that can be applied. For example, I do not believe the government has the right to require me to wear a mask whenever I go out. But I do believe the grocery store I go to, for example, has the right to require me to wear a mask before I enter the store (which it does, and which I happily comply with--indeed, I'd be doing it even if it wasn't required), as a condition of being allowed to shop there. (And all the store employees are wearing masks as well.) I also believe I have the right to require anyone who comes into my house to wear a mask (as my wife and I did a few days ago when two people from the flooring company came to look at gaps in the laminate floor they installed--they made no objection to wearing the masks).
When I describe cases like this, I get asked: well, if you're doing the same thing the government is telling everybody to do anyway, what's the problem? The problem is that the cases I just described are the easy ones. What about the hard ones, where someone's particular circumstances make the best thing for them different from what the government is mandating for everybody? For example, an acquaintance of my wife's recently was forbidden from visiting her dying grandmother in a nursing home, because of government mandated lockdown rules. (No family members were permitted to see her.) The family would have been fine with wearing masks and gloves, washing their hands, and taking all other prudent precautions; but nobody was even permitted to exercise common sense, because the government lockdown did not allow for that; it was just a single, one-size-fits-all, hard and fast rule. So the grandmother died with no loved ones there with her, because of a government diktat. That is simply wrong in any country that calls itself a free country. And a government that forces such things on people loses the confidence of the people.
In this case, the core of your position seems to consist of 3 fairly conventional libertarian axioms/tropes:
* government policy/law is always one-size-fits-all and that never works
* government is incapable of nuance or intelligence when deciding policy
* government preventing harm preemptively is oppression
I have 500MB of transcripts from rec.politics.theory during the first half of the 1990s that consist of discussions between libertarians of several stripes and other non-libertarians (including me). Some of those folks are still floating around online (hi, Perry Metzger!)
So far, I see no evidence that you have any arguments that were not a part of that usenet group from 25 years ago. I feel fairly comfortable with the way these were debated and shot down back then, so in the absence of an actual new argument, it doesn't seem worth continuing.
Is not what you say. If you insist on breaking it down into "axioms", here are some:
(1) Government policy/law cannot take into account the individual circumstances of individual cases, since it is impossible for government officials/lawmakers to obtain that information; so government policy/law that dictates what people must or must not do will always dictate the wrong thing for some people.
(2) The government dictating the wrong thing for anyone is wrong in a free country.
(3) Therefore, government policy/law should not dictate what people must or must not do at all unless failing to do so would make it impossible for a free country to exist.
Whether or not the government dictating that everybody must wear masks in public, or must not leave their homes except for a certain small number of reasons, would be justifiable under #3 is a question that might be worth discussing (I personally think it wouldn't be, but others might be able to give reasonable arguments that it would). However, the grounds under which the government dictating those things is actually being justified is nothing like that. The grounds on which it is actually being justified is that we don't actually have a free country: that the government does not need to meet anything like the above standard before dictating what people must and must not do.
If your response is basically, yes, indeed, we don't have a free country (which is what it seems to me to be), then I guess you're right that the discussion isn't worth continuing. But it certainly seems like a sad outcome considering the country's original goals.
Same logic as I said: driving drunk, by itself, if you don't cause any actual harm, should not be punishable by law. But a law imposing extra liability on you if you cause an accident and are found to be drunk would be fine.
Driving whilst intoxicated (or under the influence of drugs) is straight-up illegal in basically every single civilised country I'm aware of.
This is because alcohol impairs your judgement and reflexes - and when you're driving a 1 tonne piece of metal that can maim and kill, you want your wits about you.
I confess I find this kind of reasoning very bizarre - I truly do admire the US, and all the freedoms, literature, and amazing critical thought it's given to us. But I still don't understand the strange logic that seems to emanate from certain circles - where people will sincerely claim it's their God-given right to drive over the speed limit and kill people, to take drugs and kill people, to shoot guns and kill people, and other such things.
It's also in this context I hear people from the US complaining a lot about the "nanny-state".
Or that somehow, if the government provides any modicum of healthcare, you are infringing on their God-given right to make really poor healthcare spending decisions.
I get it there's happy medium between the two - and I apologise if there's hyperbole in the above - but as an outsider looking at how the US has handled the COVID-19 pandemic - it's heart-wrenching.
As a country, you have nearly 100,000 people dead (the worst in the world I think?) - and people are still talking about how "mask wearing is oppression", or "lockdowns are trampling on our rights!".
Even your leaders - if the press can be believed - apparently see wearing a mask as a sign of weakness. Yet other governments (e.g. UK, Australia, Scotland) have sacked high-level ministers, simply because they breached the health lockdown rules. It's the complete opposite - those governments are taking it seriously (or at least trying to be seen to be).
In the US, we don’t have the same faith/trust in our government that many Europeans seem to either enjoy or suffer from, depending on one’s political views.
There are some things our government does well and many things it does far less than well. Government is also self-perpetuating, so if you’re going to make a mistake, I think it’s wise to make a mistake in having too little government, as that’s easier to correct.
(In any event, I think it’s also fair to observe/predict that “drunk driving is OK as long as the outcome does not result in a crash” is an extremely minority view in the population and does not reflect the laws in any US state.)
> “drunk driving is OK as long as the outcome does not result in a crash” is an extremely minority view
You are misstating the view I was describing.
I did not say drunk driving was OK as long as it doesn't cause actual harm. I only said drunk driving should not be punishable by law if it doesn't cause actual harm. Not being punishable by law does not make it any less stupid or irresponsible.
I also did not say that there are no ways at all to address drunk driving that doesn't cause harm. For example, consider the following scenario: I'm a cop, and I see a car driving erratically. I turn on my lights and pull the car over. I am perfectly justified in doing that because the car is driving erratically.
I find out that the driver of the car is drunk. I tell the driver, "sir, why don't we leave your car parked here, off the road, and lock it, and I can call someone to come and pick you up?" If the driver protests, I put him in the back of my police car, make sure his car is safely parked and locked, and drive him to the police station--where I then call someone to come pick him up. No ticket, no citation, no fine--just getting him safely home and avoiding possible harm to anyone else.
Have I overstepped the boundaries that I have argued must be placed on what the government can do? Not at all. First of all, a cop is still a citizen, and any citizen has the right to try to stop someone from continuing obviously reckless and irresponsible behavior. Second, I didn't punish the person; he gets no fine, no jail time, no record of any offense. So the rule that nobody should be punished by law unless they cause actual harm has not been violated.
It is true that supporting the kind of regime I just described, in preference to what we have now, is an extremely minority view. But I think it's because people have simply failed to think through the implications.
> where people will sincerely claim it's their God-given right to drive over the speed limit and kill people, to take drugs and kill people, to shoot guns and kill people, and other such things.
I have made no such claims. I did not say anyone had a right to harm anyone else. I explicitly said that people who cause actual harm should be punished.
You are simply attacking a straw man here. And you should definitely not be judging the US by what you see in the popular press.
So wait - you're saying it's ok to engage in risky behaviour - as long as it doesn't result in maiming/killing somebody?
Surely you can see that's a recipe for disaster?
People are very bad at judging risks - and everybody things they're cleverer/more careful/better than the average.
That's exactly why no government that I'm aware of has ever enacted what you dscribed.
Ok - so you make it that driving whilst drunk is OK - and you will only be charged if you kill/maim somebody. You will soon get a whole bunch of young 20 year old males, who think they are invincible (or that they can hold their liquor like Captain America) who end up destroying families in completely preventable MVAs.
Everybody thinks they're a "better driver than the average" - or that "their reflexes are really good". Unfortunately, the average is exactly that - the average.
Sure, according to you - you can now charge them after having killed a mum and her kid walking across the road - but what about the fact that you've essentially encouraged this behaviour, and raised the probability of such things happening?
Similar logic applies to any risk taking behaviour - yes, there are certainly grey areas - but there's a reason handguns are a restricted item and not anybody can buy them at any corner store. Having a gun in and of itself doesn't "harm somebody", as you say - but having more handguns distributed among the population, without any attempt to reduce the risk (e.g. background checks, safety checks, licensing checks) will increase the risk that something bad will happen.
Likewise drugs are a controlled item.
And with public health directives like this - the aim is to force people to take sensible precautions to protect those vulnerable among the population. I hate to say this, but people are sometimes selfish and only think of themselves (we all do this). So sometime you need somebody to look out for society as a whole.
> you're saying it's ok to engage in risky behaviour - as long as it doesn't result in maiming/killing somebody?
No. You evidently lack basic reading comprehension, so I suppose it's futile to ask you to go back and re-read what I wrote to see that I explicitly contradicted this.
> People are very bad at judging risks - and everybody things they're cleverer/more careful/better than the average.
First of all, speak for yourself.
Second, evidently you have no clue about how people who actually are good at judging risks get that way. Hint: it isn't by "thinking" anything. It's by objectively evaluating your own behavior the same way you objectively evaluate other people's behavior. Everybody can see when someone else is doing something dumb. All you need to learn is how to look at yourself as the someone else. This is a learned skill.
Third, if it's true that "people" are very bad at judging risks, that's just as true of government bureaucrats and lawmakers. Why should I trust them to properly balance all the risks vs. benefits of various laws and policies? Let alone "look out for society as a whole", to use your phrase? All the historical evidence we have says that they suck at it.
Fourth, drunk drivers don't kill other people, if and when they do, by magic. And they don't do it purely on their own. There is always a chain of events, and there are plenty of places to break the chain. For example, you describe a drunk driver killing a mother and child walking across the road. How did the mother and child come to be walking across the road when a car was coming? If they had waited, they'd still be alive. If you say "well, it was a blind turn and they didn't see the car", why weren't they taking extra precautions if it was a blind turn? And so on.
Similar remarks apply to other situations where irresponsible actions by one person harm others. Everybody focuses on the harm to the victims and the badness of the irresponsible person. Nobody spends any time teaching themselves, or their friends, or their kids, how not to be the victim. But knowing that there are some irresponsible and dangerous people in the world, and learning how to keep from being harmed by them, is supposed to be part of being an adult human being in this world. Certainly an adult human being is not supposed to expect the government to make sure no bad things happen to them; no government can possibly do that, or even come close. But that's what our mentality has become.
Okay, let's take another thing turns out fine by itself but might cause harm with irresponsible behavior. If I discharge a gun at my spacious property while pointing it at someone and miss, should I be punishable for attempted manslaughter or a similar offense?
> If I discharge a gun at my spacious property while pointing it at someone and miss, should I be punishable for attempted manslaughter or a similar offense?
Were you firing it at someone on purpose? Or did you just not realize you were pointing it at someone?
If you were firing it at someone on purpose, even if you didn't hit them, that's already a common law crime: in most jurisdictions it's called assault with a deadly weapon or something similar. Whether it would also qualify as attempted manslaughter would depend on your intent: were you actually trying to kill them, or just scare them?
If you just didn't realize you were pointing it at someone, and you didn't cause any harm, you should not be liable for any offense. But if I were the someone you were pointing the gun at, I would do my level best to avoid all further interaction with you since you're clearly a careless and irresponsible person. I would also spread the word amongst the neighbors so they know it too.
Who cares? If among all the things the state shouldn’t do and doesn’t have the legitimate authority to do, this is where you put your foot down, you’re just being an ass. I can’t think of anything that could hurt the cause of freedom and limited government more than making masks the hill to die on.
I put my foot down on illegal seizures of poor people's property under the guise of stopping drug trade. I put my foot down on attempting to have legal penalties for supporting the Israeli BDS movement even though I don't personally support it.
I also put my foot down on legal penalties for compelled actions such as mask wearing. I also give masks out for free to my neighbors and friends. I support wearing a mask, I will never support fining or jailing an American over not wearing one.
The state requires me to wear underwear on the bus, put kids in car seats, signal at intersections, keep a gun safely, not let my tires go bald, and many other things to protect people around me.
If they had made it a temporary law and fined people heavily at the very beginning it would have saved thousands of lives and jobs. Look at the countries that acted swiftly back in January and February.
That people consider civil unrest because they're told to wear masks for a few months in order to prevent countless deaths is more a sign of a broken culture than anything else.
This is a US specific phenomenon, and it's not a new one. I will further argue it is a critical principle for Democracy.
The issue is not being asked to wear a mask, the issue is legally mandating them.
I can ask you to donate money to a political party - you may say no, but me asking is perfectly fine. If I force you under duress to donate - well, that's something else, isn't it?
Freedom is the ability to say no, even if that isn't an optimal choice. Taking that freedom away leads to bad outcomes like arresting people for unpopular views and sending Muslims to "re-education" camps.
I assume you're also against seatbelt and helmet laws. What about those laws applying to children? What about smoking laws?
The US already has numerous laws that few people complain about because they've come to recognize them as necessary for the public good. But that was only after they were passed and enforced.
Likewise, kids do not have rights the same way an adult does. The government can compel education until you're 18 (thankfully).
We do not have laws because they are good. It is the case that some laws are good, but we have laws because the goal of governments is to govern the people. The difference between a democracy and an oligarch is the source of that right.
I have no special rights over you. I am not any better, I am not empowered by any god or special bloodline. I, if elected in a democracy, can pass laws but I can't limit your rights. I can't compel you to worship somebody, limit what you say or take your property - even if I have a good reason.
Well, being good and for the public good are separate concepts in my mind. That aside, you never addressed the smoking, seatbelt or helmet laws with regard to adults. Permissible or not?
Smoking laws are restrictions. You can't smoke within 30ft of an eating establishment or in a car with a child. You want to go home and chain smoke yourself to cancer? Have fun. Likewise, you couldn't restrict smoking at home typically.
Seatbelt and helmet laws are a condition of using property that isn't yours (the road). Likewise for drivers licenses and minimum road hours.
A good case here is the Texas anti-sodomy law (Lawrence v Texas) that was struck down in 2006(!) after being used to go after gay men. Here Texas made claims it was acting for the public good, SC ruled the state had no presence on a private matter outside the public eye.
> Seatbelt and helmet laws are a condition of using property that isn't yours (the road).
"Mask laws" are a condition of using property that isn't yours (the road, the town square, the park, the trail). Nobody is going to force you to wear on mask on your own property.
There is no "government" as an owner of anything. Anything not owned by individuals (within the USA) is owned by some sector of the public (either the entire nation, or a state, or a city etc. etc.). Governments do not own courthouses, they do not own national parks.
Governments are the structures we use to make decisions about legal, economic and social policy. They are not owners - the public is.
But I've forgotten your posting history, so I can't really tell if we're in violent agreement or if you're just flipping your terminology around.
> Seatbelt and helmet laws are a condition of using property that isn't yours (the road).
In England, at least, the law also applies in the (somewhat unusual) circumstances that you happen to own the road.
Going meta here: There seems to be a mental condition that causes people to try to interpret everything in terms of contracts and property rights. In extreme cases it leads to phenomena like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_on_the_land
You seem to be changing the argument rather than answering the question. Do you believe public decency laws are the result of the state overextending its hand?
You are doging the question, maybe because you realize that you can't answer it without lying or contradicting yourself. Do you agree with the fact that you are compelled to wear clothes? After all a mask is essentially clothing.
Nobody checks these conditions when I use the roads. I could be a tax avoider and my use of the roads is unimpeded. Arrest of my use of the roads is consequent to being arrested for tax noncompliance, but I am not expressly forbidden from use of the roads.
Indeed, I could go live under a bridge and never pay taxes, and I would still be able to access and use roads.
Visa holders, undocumented immigrants, and more can use the roads. People without jobs, teenagers, etc. can use the roads. Your point is made without evidence and without observational adherence to reality as I've experienced it.
Do you have a source you can direct me to showing me the requirement that any publicly (taxpayer) funded road is only usable by taxpayers?
> the requirement that any publicly (taxpayer) funded road is only usable by taxpayers?
I never stated any such requirement.
What I did say was that taxpayers have a right to use public roads. That is not the same as saying anyone else is prohibited from using them. The latter is a matter of how we choose to make public policy.
Our current public policy is that anyone is, in practice, allowed to use public roads, whether they are taxpayers or not. We could choose a different, more restrictive public policy regarding non-taxpayers, but we don't. (That is probably, as I said before, because it's not worth the cost to check everyone using public roads to see their taxpayer status.)
But we cannot, at least not based on the legal principle I stated, choose a public policy that does not allow taxpayers to use public roads, since they have a right to do so.
> Yes, you do, if you're a member of the public and a taxpayer.
The idea that being a taxpayer gives you an innate right of use of government resources is bizarre. Being a citizen gives you an innate right of supervision, of course, but being a taxpayer doesn't add anything to that, and supervision isn't use.
> The idea that being a taxpayer gives you an innate right of use of government resources is bizarre.
They're not "government resources", they're public resources. We all collectively own them. The government is an agent that we use to manage those resources, but it doesn't own them. The public does.
They are public resources that the public has elected to administer through the government. It is possible to have resources that are public because there are no constraints on their use, but the two types of public resources are not the same.
> We all collectively own them.
In much the same way that corporate shareholders collectively own the assets of a corporation. And, for much the same reason as this is not true of corporate shareholders and corporate resources, the constituents of a government don't each individually have the right to arbitrarily use the resources administered by government on behalf of the public.
> The government is an agent that we use to manage those resources, but it doesn't own them. The public does.
The public collectively does, but being a 1/~300millionth owner doesn't give you the right to arbitrarily use resources so owned in contravention of the direction of the management agent employed by all ~300 million owners to protect their interests.
> In much the same way that corporate shareholders collectively own the assets of a corporation.
A public road is not the same as, say, a factory. As a shareholder in a corporation, I have no use for a factory, and the factory is not built for direct use by anyone. It is built to produce things that get sold, and as a shareholder I get a piece of the proceeds. (Actually it's often much more complicated than that, but going into all the current problems with corporate governance would take way too long.) But a public road is built with public money for the direct use of the public.
> being a 1/~300millionth owner doesn't give you the right to arbitrarily use resources so owned in contravention of the direction of the management agent employed by all ~300 million owners to protect their interests
The management agent is still just an agent. Yes, I myself am only a 1/~300 millionth owner of the public roads, but I have the same right to use them as the other ~300 million owners. The management agent cannot arbitrarily deny or restrict that right of usage to any of the owners. All it can do is manage the roads: build them, maintain them, repair them, and assess taxes to cover the costs of doing those things.
At least, that's the legal doctrine that should be in place in a free country. Of course it's not the one that's in place in the US at present. To me that's a bug, not a feature.
I think the confusion stems from the fact that US citizens are used to thinking of "the government" not as their representative but as an independent agent that has its own interests that don't necessarily align with their own interests. A powerful institution that can compel them to do things they don't like. Sort of like banks.
This is something that has always made me wonder. The libertarian ideal of "less government" makes more sense if one sees the government as above, an independent agent with its own interests. As a citizen of an EU nation, the way I think of it is that voters elect a government to represent them, so "less government" means "less power to voters to represent themselves". But to libertarians it means "more freedom".
So when the government compels you to "shelter in place", social-distance, wear a mask and so on, it is clearly not doing that because it is trying to protect you, because government is not an agent that has your own best interests in mind, but its own. Instead, it's trying to take away your freedom, because that is what government does, it takes away your freedoms.
That's my best explanation, as someone who has never lived in the US. In any case it's clear that the question of "mask or no mask" has become politicised by being caught up in this peculiar interpretation of "freedom". Which is very unfortunate because it's not a political matter, whether everyone wearing masks makes it less likely that anyone will catch the virus. It's a practical matter and what is necessary is a practical decision. But such practical decisions cannot be taken when everything has to be politicised.
> I think the confusion stems from the fact that US citizens are used to thinking of "the government" not as their representative but as an independent agent that has its own interests that don't necessarily align with their own interests.
I think the confusion is on the other side, and stems from the fallacy of division, wherein people mistakenly treat what is true of the public collectively as true of members of the public individually.
> such practical decisions cannot be taken when everything has to be politicised.
But what politicizes it is precisely the fact that the government is making the decision for everybody, instead of letting each free person make the decision for themselves. If the government didn't force its decision on everybody, then it would not be politicized at all. It would just be a practical decision, exactly as you say.
> US citizens are used to thinking of "the government" not as their representative but as an independent agent that has its own interests that don't necessarily align with their own interests.
US citizens are (or should be) used to thinking of the first as the ideal and the second as the reality. The reason we favor limited goverment is that we know the reality will never measure up to the ideal, so the best we can do is to limit the extent to which we make the attempt.
> As a citizen of an EU nation, the way I think of it is that voters elect a government to represent them, so "less government" means "less power to voters to represent themselves".
Again, this is the ideal, but the reality is that "less government" means "less opportunity for the government to advance its own interests to the detriment of the people". There is simply no way to eliminate the inherent conflict of interest that arises whenever you give some humans the power to dictate what other humans have to do or not do, and that's what a government is.
> when the government compels you to "shelter in place", social-distance, wear a mask and so on, it is clearly not doing that because it is trying to protect you, because government is not an agent that has your own best interests in mind, but its own. Instead, it's trying to take away your freedom, because that is what government does, it takes away your freedoms.
I realize that some people's rhetoric frames it this way, but the actual conflict of interest is deeper and does not require a conscious intention on the part of government officials to take away people's freedoms.
The actual conflict of interest in a situation like the current one is that government officials can't predict the future, yet they know they are going to be held responsible for bad things that happen, because they know many people have this idea that the government is supposed to act in the people's best interest. Government officials cannot prevent bad things from happening, because they're not omniscient or omnipotent and no central authority can possibly know all of the individual circumstances in each situation. They can't possibly balance all the tradeoffs for each individual person. No central authority can. So the best they can do is minimize the chance that they will get blamed for the bad things that do happen. They are less likely to get blamed for issuing draconian orders to stay at home, wear masks, etc., and jailing people for non-compliance, than they are for letting indiivdual citizens use their best judgment in their individual situation. So they do the former and not the latter.
But from the standpoint of an individual citizen like me, I know I am a better judge of my individual situation than the government, so if my judgment of what's best for me conflicts with what the government is ordering everybody to do, I am going to have a severe problem. And in a country of hundreds of millions of people, there are going to be a lot of people in that situation. And if it's supposed to be a free country, having a lot of people in that situation is simply intolerable.
For example, my wife knows a woman whose grandmother recently died in a nursing home. The grandmother was ill and family members, including the woman my wife knows, wanted to visit her before she died. The nursing home would not allow it because of the government lockdown orders, even though all the family members agreed to wear masks, protective equipment, wash their hands, etc., etc. In short, the government took away what should be an inviolable right of people to pay their last respects to a loved one, and to have loved ones with them when they die. It does not help at all to say that the government has to go by the greatest good for the greatest number and some people are bound to be negatively affected. To a person who truly understands what freedom means, that's no better than Stalin's famous remark that to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs. People are not eggs.
Current law does not allow you to do this, yes. But current law also allows you to be ticketed if you exceed the speed limit. So obviously not all of current law is consistent with the basic principle I have stated. The application of the basic principle I stated to these cases should be obvious.
(Btw, it seems a little odd for you to be saying, on the one hand, that certain current laws are wrong--such as the 65 mph speed limit--and on the other hand to be relying on other current laws for your understanding of what "rights" you have. Surely you should apply the same principles to all of the laws?)
> Can you legally walk down a highway?
I actually don't know what the law is on this one. The application of the basic principle I stated to this case, as to the ones above, should be obvious.
Current law in much of the US absolutely allows this, as long as you aren't on a public road or private property where the owner has opted-in to the rules generally applicable to public roads.
Of course, most of the interesting trips a person might want to take by car involve traversing public roads.
I don't think the government should be able to make smoking outright illegal (except on government property like government buildings), but I think owners of individual homes and businesses and public spaces (e.g., malls) should have the right to prohibit it, with violations of the owner's prohibition being punishable by law (similar to how, say, trespassing would be handled).
> I assume you're also against seatbelt and helmet laws.
Laws that allow you to be fined or punished simply for not wearing a seat belt or a helmet? Yes, those are wrong.
Laws that impose extra liability on you if you are in an accident and cause harm (including harm to yourself) and aren't wearing a seatbelt or a helmet? Those would be fine. Indeed, people would probably be more likely to wear seatbelts and helmets under such a regime than they are now. Now they're just risking a fine. Under that regime they'd be risking, for example, not having their medical insurance cover the costs of treating them.
"Laws that allow you to be fined or punished simply for not wearing a seat belt or a helmet? Yes, those are wrong."
Why should I have to pay, through increased insurance and other societal costs, for your increased economic burden if you are paralyzed or run up huge medical bills because you could not be bothered to wear a seatbelt?
> Why should I have to pay, through increased insurance and other societal costs, for your increased economic burden if you are paralyzed or run up huge medical bills because you could not be bothered to wear a seatbelt?
Go back and read the second part of my post, which you failed to quote, which addresses exactly this issue.
> Indeed, people would probably be more likely to wear seatbelts and helmets under such a regime than they are now. Now they're just risking a fine. Under that regime they'd be risking, for example, not having their medical insurance cover the costs of treating them.
That is not how people work. They never think it will happen to them.
It's not dangerous at all. The US already has helmet laws for motorcycles and kids on bikes, seatbelt laws, gun laws around safe use and numerous other laws that prevent people from inadvertently affecting others lives.
Making people wear masks in public transport or other public settings during a pandemic is hardly an overreach in comparison.
So how do you feel about speed limits then? Do you just go ahead and break the speed limit every chance you can get, because it's legally required to follow them?
I don’t think it is a strawman. The parent commenter said he wears a mask, knows that it’s the right thing to do, but if there were a mask law he’d deliberately stop wearing it just to prove a point.
If tomorrow you started fining or charging people not wearing a mask, who would it be?
Statistically, a mixture of immigrants, minorities and the poor. Not a bunch of well off white soccer moms or gun toting rednecks, but the vulnerable.
And who can stand up for themselves the least? Well, it's those same people - people who have the same rights as you and I on paper if not so much in a court system.
So yes, I would challenge that, because I am in a position to defend myself and go to court. I have the funds, I own a suit, I can retain a lawyer. That's not true for those most likely to be affected by fines and criminal charges for not wearing a mask.
Right, so I think the analogy holds. If you believed that speeding laws were enforced disproportionately against the vulnerable, you would presumably endanger people speeding so that you could go to court and prove your point.
You can never be naked in public, so the proper comparison is whether you are never naked at home. Most people probably sit around their room naked at some point.
Because you've set up the comparison in an illogical fashion it inevitably leads to nonsense.
> Well the same reason you don't share your email with the FBI and agree to be monitored at all times.
So if G=government requires me to do thing X, and X=I do thing X
G→¬X
G
-----
¬X
and then:
> I wear a mask, and I choose to wear a mask. I also wore a mask before it was "supported" by the CDC. If tomorrow it was legally required, I would stop wearing a mask.
assuming that again G=government requires me to do thing X, and X=I do thing X, you're saying that
G→¬X
G
-----
¬X
and also (because you have been wearing a mask):
¬G→X
¬G
-----
X
So then the "for the same reason" doesn't make sense. It invites the idea that the two cases are parallel, and the only logical way I see of forcing them to be parallel is if:
> I wear a mask, and I choose to wear a mask. I also wore a mask before it was "supported" by the CDC. If tomorrow it was legally required, I would stop wearing a mask.
My family has already had Covid-19. We wear masks to not be jerks and make others fearful or uncomfortable because we can’t be bothered to put a simple article of clothing on.
