Life is a more important right than liberty, but loss of any right must be compensated appropriately. The same is true for property. The government currently seeks to co-opt private property for its use fighting the pandemic. I think it is right to do so. However, any co-opting of private property (i.e., eminent domain powers) must be met with an appropriate compensation, as the constitution requires.
Otherwise, you basically are calling for the legalization of civil asset forfeiture (which, if I'll remind you, the Supreme Court declared illegal).
I don't think efforts to deal with a pandemic is "legalization of civil asset forfeiture" and it feels like your understanding of the law is swerving all over the road here.
Without that it is just "something bad happened to me someone should pay".
Do we ignore that the pandemic itself seems to call for the government to do a thing? The pandemic sure isn't government action.
it's a bit more specific than "something bad happened to me someone should pay". restaurants are going under as a direct result of government action. if they failed because people were too scared to go out to dinner, that would be a different story. can you not accept that it's possible for the government to do a good thing, but also owe compensation to people who are disproportionately harmed by that thing?
Just the basics of liability would seem to have to include being "liable". Hard to be liable for a pandemic.
I don't know what the right answer is here but it's an interesting discussion.
We don't want people who make good faith efforts to protect / help people sued... because the end result was not entirely positive.
Dude is in a car accident and his car is on fire. I pull him out but his arm breaks?
I didn't cause the accident, neither did he, I didn't have to pull him out of that burning car.... but it probabbly makes sense that I'm not legally liable because we want people to help.
Same goes for this sort of ultra expanded view of government liability.
If they're not protected, the result is without question inaction. Voters don't want that, nobody really does.
The concept is just general fairness / incentivizing good acts and isn't hard to understand within the concept of anyone acting, not just individuals.
The idea that someone / anyone must pay regardless is just ignoring the actual circumstances. That makes no sense.
That is not at all what I said. I said that stopping the economy without compensation to deal with a pandemic is akin to civil asset forfeiture. This has nothing to do with law, but with ethics. You take something away, you have to pay it back.
That seems like double dipping / transferring responsibility of all the problems of the world onto the government regardless if they created them or not.
Yes, like how I expect the government to do things like conduct high speed chases of dangerous criminals, but if their police car hits me, I expect reimbursement.
> That seems like double dipping / transferring responsibility of all the problems of the world onto the government regardless if they created them or not.
The Government's checkbook ultimately comes from people's taxes, and yes, I expect people to be willing to float the cost of this economic shutdown. After all, the government's actions are undoubtedly keeping you safe.
Taxes are a way of reallocating the cost. As someone making income during the shutdown, my taxes will be higher than someone who is not (even if they get a bailout). Thus I will help pay for them. This is good.
Not every business is equally affected. Those that continue to remain active are able to do so because the government has taken massive steps to prevent a lot of people from dying. These businesses are unfairly benefiting from the current economic climate, while some businesses are being forced to suffer. The costs of this economic shutdown ought to be socialized, since the benefit of the shutdown is for society.
This kind of economic action is unprecedented. I do not expect government compensation for natural disasters in general, because those are not the government's fault. I especially do not expect government compensation when people or businesses make mistakes. For example, in 2008, banks wrote bad loans, and irresponsible consumers took them on. There should have been no bailout at all. None of what happened was really the government's fault. However, if we did that, I don't see how anyone can escape responsibility here.