I don’t see how anyone could say what the free market would do in a given situation. I suppose one could postulate as to possible solutions, but I don’t see how it can be determined what actual solution would be implimented. However, we can definately give examples of where government intervention has made disasters worse than they should have been.
I freakin’ can’t believe this. The local high school here has a pandemic flu plan on their homepage and when you click on the link it brings you to this page:
http://www.svsd.net/important-news/in_1may09
I heard Ron P. say yesterday that they canceled Little League in places in Texas for the rest of the year I believe and the Governor of Texas called a State of Emergency for his state. This is all too weird.
I merely said that in this situation, the government would have the authority, not the obligation. Now you’re putting words in my mouth.
And Wilderness, they’ve closed over 100 school districts across the country because of it. Mass hysteria…
What does giving government “the authority” mean to you? Authority to do what? Why should it have authority to do anything in a medical situation (anything other than that which ought to be its role in any situation, i.e., to protect individual rights)?
In a disease outbreak, there is a huge profit opportunity for any private entrepreneur who can develop successful medical treatments for the disease. Government intervention merely crowds out the private investment necessary to bring the outbreak to a halt as quickly as possible.
Add this to the State’s monopoly pointed out in the post above this one, and the State gains more control. It didn’t matter how small this outbreak would have been, the State ramped up the panic for cover. The State saw an opportunity and hid behind hysteria and panic, turned the volume up on it, and something happened here I’m sure of it that the State took advantage of in order to gain more control. As well as WHO and thus the world government. Without a doubt. At least even my over 70 year old grandma listened to her two nurses that were telling my grandmother that this is all silly and the government is doing way more harm than good. The government, they said, is creating a panic. Thank goodness my grandmother listened to her nurses and thank goodness the nurses stuck with their medical knowledge on this one. I didn’t realize how much fear was being struck on this. I don’t have a TV and only browse for news in certain places on the internet. Thanks Patrick.
Patrick did bring up an interesting point about quarantine that was overlooked, I think. In a situation like this, it would be almost impossible to tell if an infected person brought harm to another person by deciding not to quarantine themselves. Forcing them (the only thing the Gov is good at) to be quarantined, or at least kept away from others in some way, seems to be a necessity here and could arguably fall into the role of government “protection”. This is the only sticking point I have stopping me from saying that the government has absolutely no helpful role.
Unless someone has some convincing counter to that problem, I’d have to say that the only government role would be in preventing people known to be dangerous from harming others.
As a side note, I heard on the news about some local school closings on account of flu. And hey, just think, if the gov does enough pointless measures like this to protect people, when it goes away they’ll be able to claim that it helped! [8-)]
Government need not be the only way to “protect” people by quarantining them. Hospitals can do this now. Red Cross type institutions, or people can just stay home, etc.., etc…
The government is simply people. We are people. We can reason this out ourselves without a people monopolizing the efforts. I don’t see why people make the government some kind of super-human magical creature. They are simply people and in their government system their efforts are restrained by corruption and perversion of reason so actually their efforts are far worse than if their natural judgement were actually allowed to operate without coercion bumbling their government minds.
When I was thinking about this, I thought the same initially, but what if the hospital actually needs to use force because you have an unreasonable idiot that just doesn’t care or doesn’t believe they need to be quarantined? I don’t disagree with the above but I think coercion will sometimes be required to protect people, in this case. Take a person who just doesn’t care and is willing to risk infecting others on the way home, or a religious fanatic who believes God will decide who gets sick anyway, etc. It’s an unusual case but this seems to be a legitimate use of force to protect the general population.
I agree with your sentiment that coercion would need to occur in those extreme cases. Self-defense actions would be lawful in these cases. It depends on how far the person is attentive to their spreading of a disease. They could actually be charged with murder. Government not necessary to carry out these acts though.
Morally it might be the right thing to do, but if you do, it would still be a violation of the idiot’s rights (assuming a non-self-defense use of force). Also, what you have to remember is that there will always be an owner of the land upon which situations a would occur. The owner of the land upon which such situations would occur has a say as to was procedure shall be executed. For example, an owner of an apartment complex could have a clause in the lease that states that the leasee shall be vaccinated against swine flu, TB, and so on.
Ah yes. Violence in the name of the ‘common good’. That’s such an original thought…
How is this any different than police stopping a crazed “shooter”?
Hmm, to me that isn’t very different than saying that an idiot should have the right to drive 100mph down a street next to a school. Your rights should end when it comes to harm or endanger someone else’s.
I don’t know if the landowner argument helps much, it’s not a catch all–there’s going to be lunatics or people that just don’t care that completely own their residences. And also you don’t automatically sign away your basic rights by living or being on someone else’s property (when you were legally permitted to be there at least). Your rights should end where it harms someone else’s, but is the property owner really who should determine this, and enforce protection?
I’m kind of torn here, I know government loves to use things like this to excuse it’s overreaching, but the solution for this particular case is still rather foggy. IF you believe a useful function of government is protection (I know not all here do), it seems to fall within that scope.
Two problems: 1) it still hasn’t got a right to unilaterally impose a monopoly over the provision of this service and 2) it must acquire its funds without violating any rights. The conjunction of those 2 means no state is suited to the role. Economically speaking it’d suck as much as the state does at providing any other service…
Dig for similarities all you want but it is not the same and a terrible analogy. A better analogy would have been to say that another automobile driver has the moral resposibility to try to stop the idiot who is speeding, although he would be violating his rights. Of course, this might assume that there is no speed limit and that the idiot has the right to drive at 100MPH. Anyway, the argument I made concerning the driver is seperate from the more general example I gave you of the apartment owner.
It does help and what do you mean by “catch all”? Also, I don’t see how what you are saying follows as an argument to my example.
I suppose. But I didn’t say you automatically did. Re-read my example to see what I actually said. Your rebuttal doesn’t follow.
I don’t understand what you are asking. How do rights end?
You don’t understand the non-aggression principal. Do you understand the difference between “government” and “state”?
Government’s role is to spread more sickness. Think about adding harmful fluoride into the water… or enforced vaccination with dubious effects.
With the analogy I was simply trying to say that wreckless behavior, whether it’s driving, not staying “in quarantine”, etc, isn’t a right because it endangers others’ rights in some way (right to life in this case).
I always try to look at things like this with a practical view. I don’t see a working solution coming from your analogy–perhaps you just need to clarify for me further–but it sounds like you’re saying it would be a hospital/doctor’s moral responsibility to prevent someone infected with a truly dangerous disease from leaving quarantine. Is that a realistic expectation?
This goes off on a silly tangent, but the speeding analogy of a driver’s moral responsibility to stop others from breaking driving laws strikes me as complete fantasy, the way I am understanding it. This is just not going to happen, not only would it be potentially incredibly dangerous for the moral activist, it’s also impossible and impractical.
By “catch all” I mean that using property ownership contracts don’t completely resolve a problem like this. Like a government regulation, there’s going to be a ton of loopholes and differing situations preventing a lease contract (if they even have a landlord, for example) from being used to force a contagious person into isolation. Perhaps I’m missing the point you were trying to make with your argument.
I guess I feel it doesn’t apply because it’s not addressing the specific situation I’m thinking about. By what you said (clarify for me if this is wrong), it sounds like you’d use legal contracts (lease agreements, etc) to protect the general populace from individuals with dangerous ailments. But I don’t see this ever working–and then there’s the fact that landowners themselves don’t have to agree to anything at all. Did I miss your point entirely?
I was asking whether a landlord (property owner) should effectively act as law enforcement within their own territory. Regarding rights ending, that just means you don’t have a right to anything that infringes on another’s basic rights. (side note: We haven’t defined “rights” here but hopefully we agree that liberty, property, peace (and life) are basic rights.)
Explain for me. Non-aggression to me isn’t the same as pacifism, and I’m not a pacifist. If we’re talking about protecting someone’s rights, life or property, I am okay with the use of force.
Interesting response, but I’m not sure we’re communicating clearly. I want to clarify that I’m thinking about a very specific situation here–the one that the OP alluded to about enforcing quarantines on unwilling patients. Imagine a situation where a patient is at a hospital (maybe just a doctor’s office?) and it’s determined that they may have a highly dangerous and contagious disease. The patient, for whatever reason, still wants to leave even though medical professionals feel that they pose a risk of spreading the disease. Who’s responsible for preventing this? Let’s also assume that the “patient” may be a big tough SOB and the medical personnel a pack of old ladies.
(Granted, this may not be a 100% realistic scenario, but I’m not creative enough to think of a better one right now. Unless you want to argue all quarantines are ineffective and pointless (maybe? I’m not an expert on the subject), I’m basically thinking of a quarantine situation which requires the use of force to protect everyone else from a contagious person’s wreckless behavior.)
Use of force, to protect everyone.
Should throw up red flags.
Well, it’s for the common good, of course…