Even rational actors can ruin things deeply. E.g. government intervention is necessary to have network-neutrality.

There's nothing inherently inconsistent between right-libertarian values and a vaccine mandate.

Libertarians believe that force should be applied to person A to protect person B from person A in certain circumstances.

If person A wants to punch person B in the face, restricting person A by force is perfectly consistent with libertarian values.

If person A threatens to infect person B with a deadly disease due to refusing a vaccine, then a vaccine mandate has some justification under the same ideals. The devil will be in the details (e.g., how deadly is the disease, etc).

It's also why a carbon tax and many other measures are not inherently inconsistent with libertarian values on a first principles examination.

But for some reason, libertarians in practice tend to dislike these policy proposals, even though they can follow in principle from the founding axioms. I attribute that to group-think and a general disbelief in the existence of negative externalities, not to a problem inherent in libertarianism.

Wait…what? You think forcing a person to accept a substance into their body under force isn’t inconsistent with libertarian values? As a classical liberal, I can’t think of something more offensive to my values and I am a fully vaccinated person and wished everyone else was too. This is absolutely f’ing horrifying and will ultimately be used against everyone at some point in the future.

The body is the absolute individual. Having maximum control over the individual is probably the most basal libertarian value there is. This is not some external restraint to prevent the commission of a crime. It’s not even punishment for a commission of a crime. It’s the mandated forcing of a substance internally into an individual’s body against their will with a sketchy societal benefit behind its justification. Sketchy because now with Delta there is apparently no scientific basis to believe that the vaccines eliminate the risk of spread of the virus but at this point it only seems to prevent serious illness.

BTW, watch as the GOP uses this mandate to justify the individual state prohibition of abortion. They will be able to too, because this is going to pretty much kill the DNC’s ability to win anything for at least 8-10 years.

We are not talking about forced vaccination. I'm referring to the workplace mandates where people are still free to not vaccinate if they wish, just as their employer is free under at-will employment to kick them out.

But even if we consider literal forced vaccinations, I still don't see that as necessarily inconsistent with libertarianism, due to the reasons I outlined, specifically the non aggression principle.

Suppose that a new disease emerged that had a mortality rate of Ebola and a transmissibility of COVID. Suppose we had a vaccine that was capable of stopping transmission. In such a rare and extreme set of circumstances, forced vaccination (not even mere mandates in workplaces) would be a must under the NAP. The right to choose not to vaccinate is effectively the same as the right to kill people with a disease that you may carry.

Luckily COVID isn't as deadly as that, and the vaccines aren't as effective at preventing transmission, so we don't need to consider such measures. But in the right context, I very much see forced vaccinations as following from libertarian axioms. Just like you would see jailing a serial murderer and depriving them of their liberty to be justified under those same axioms.

For the record, I'm one of the most anti-collectivist people you'll meet. I just pay significant credence to the reality of negative externalities. You can swing your fist all you want, but you can't punch my nose with that fist. In the same vein, you can't cough your deadly virus into my face and not expect to justly have force applied to you.

I think your NAP argument doesn’t really work for a very specific reason. Every punch in the face results in a punch to the face. Every homicide results in a death. Those actions always have an aggressive consequence, so most libertarians can justify prevention and incarceration and removal of liberties as a consequence of the aggression. However, every cough, even from a Covid-19 positive person, does not result in a death…or even an illness. Further, even a vaccinated person could cough and infect someone if they had COVID-19, including another vaccinated person. So is it truly aggression if there is a possibility of no negative consequence and a possibility of a negative consequence no matter which direction was chosen? I think you could maybe make a NAP case if the vaccines were a 100% effective and the unvaccinated ALWAYS caught and passed on Covid-19 causing severe illness. We aren’t at that stage, so this fails the NAP test in my opinion.

No, because I am also rightly not allowed to throw a brick out of my apartment window without looking below, because that might plausibly hit someone in the head. Most bricks that I could throw out my window won't hit someone in the head, but that doesn't mean that it should be legal for me to do it, because it is recklessly endangering people.

Same situation if I put a single bullet into a revolver, spun it, and pulled the trigger while aiming at someone's head. There's only a one in six chance that I'd murder that person, but that action should definitely be illegal and force should be applied to anyone who would pull that trigger.

This is why we have drunk driving laws. Some non-drunk drivers do kill people, and most drunk drivers don't kill people, but the probability is highly elevated for drunk drivers, and it is therefore illegal to do it. Drunk driving laws aren't authoritarian, they aren't a result of a nanny state. This is the state fulfilling its duty of protecting person B from aggression by person A, whether that aggression happens with absolute certainty (punching me in the face) or with an elevated probability (drunk driving)

Now, I don't think vaccines should be forced on people for COVID. I just think that it's a valid thing to do in the right circumstances (e.g Ebola with an R0 of 3).

Drunk driving laws are punitive. They allow the individual freedom of choice. The equivalent in this scenario is locking someone up because they own a car and a liquor cabinet and could drive drunk and kill someone. Then also giving them the keys to the prison bus to drive around the prison yard while providing an unlimited supply of pruno.

You are right that there's a big distinction there. But at the same time, I was attempting to point out that it's not only certainty of outcome where the NAP applies. We all accept that the NAP can validly apply in some situations where an aggression is probabilistic rather than guaranteed.

Let me outline an alternative situation where an individual would have no freedom of choice, but where you might agree with the measures imposed. Suppose we identify the first case of Ebola in the US next year. Do you support forcibly quarantining that person? Such an action is eminently necessary in my opinion. But at the same time, such an action violates the two things you've laid out: (1) it doesn't allow the individual any freedom of choice, (2) it is not guaranteed that they'll spread it and is therefore restricting their freedoms merely on the probability of aggression.

But—they have Ebola. The problem with a mandate of an imperfect vaccine on a person presently without Covid is they don’t have Covid. Frankly, I’d be ok quarantines imposed on Covid patients just like your Ebola scenario.

My problem is the whole “Minority Report pre-crimesque” aspect of it all. It’s an unnecessary aggression imposed on an individual to maybe or maybe not prevent a something that maybe or maybe not would have happened anyway.

A vaccine that was 100% effective and was 100% safe is probably the only way you can make an argument work. But if it was a 100% effective and a 100% it’s likely you wouldn’t need to mandate it anyway.

That appears to be a distinction without a difference. Even though they already have Ebola, they may not infect someone else.

P(infect another) = P(get the disease)*P(transmit after getting it)

With the Ebola example, that's P_Ebola = 1.0*P(transmit after getting it).

With the COVID example, that's P_COVID = 0.3*P(transmit after getting it).

Both of these are sub-1 and not guaranteed to happen. In fact, P_COVID may actually be larger than P_Ebola depending on the relative R0 and assumptions we plug into the above calculations. So I don't see why the distinction you raised has relevance.

Detaining someone with Ebola, which we both agree is a good idea, is also a pre-crime measure, because they haven't infected anyone yet and they may never have infected anyone even without detention.

And I will also point out once more (due to your second sentence) that I do not support forced vaccinations for COVID. The COVID disease just isn't deadly enough and the vaccines aren't effective enough at preventing transmission for me to support that. I am merely saying I do support it in the abstract if a sufficiently deadly contagious disease comes about in the future.

One is a known effective reaction to a danger. The other is an ineffective proaction to a possible danger. If you are going to violate someone’s liberty, you better have a damn good reason to do it.

They're both possible dangers, even though you're trying to frame the Ebola example as a certain danger, which it just isn't, since there's a very decent chance that they won't infect anyone even without detention. It's not valid to label one as "reaction" and another as "proaction". They're both pre-crime measures for possible dangers. Neither of them is a certain danger.

It is also not "ineffective" in the hypothetical I was discussing. You seem to insist on the point that I wish to hoist forced vaccinations for COVID, which I don't. I'm strictly speaking in the abstract given a hypothetical where there's a vaccine capable of preventing transmission of a disease that is much more deadly than COVID.

But I agree with your main point that the circumstances should be very extreme before such measures are considered. If there's a contagious disease that is killing 10-50 percent of infected people and early quarantine measures have failed and we have a vaccine that seems effective at preventing transmission, then I'm probably in support of forced vaccinations, although I suspect it might not be necessary since everyone will be desperate to get it.

Actually, I really don’t think we are really that far off from each other, as we are both making the distinction that an effective measure coupled with an extreme situation would be needed.

I’m more concerned with the existing proposed mandate, because it is not hypothetical and I don’t think it satisfies either test (an extreme situation with an effective prevention).

A hypothetical Ebola situation would be different animal just because of the mortality rate being around 20+ times the average Covid rate. The other factor being who it kills. Ebola is pretty indiscriminate. Covid danger is significantly higher among elderly and folks with pre-existing conditions and it looks like many of those folks heeded the vaccination call (85%+ have at least a single dose in the US).

agreed

People are libertarian for different reasons. Some of them just hate government and look for an ideological framework to justify it. I would say that driving licenses are a similar case.

Except that you don't need a driving license to drive, only to do so on public roads. These mandates are similar, you can be as un-vaccinated as you like as long as you stay at home.

The similarity I’m drawing is that being out and about unvaccinated and driving without proper training both put others at risk, which violates NAP. Therefore both can (arguably) be mandated inside of a libertarian framework.

I think it is less about the concern that others will be infected with severe disease and more about the potential cost and stress that the unvaccinated place on the healthcare system.

The vaccine costs $20 per dose while COVID treatment in the hospital is $23K (in Canada - likely similar in the US).

Perhaps a less draconian approach would be to allow the unvaccinated to purchase additional insurance to cover these costs in the scenario where hospitalization is required.

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/cihi-covid19-canada-hospital-...

Exactly! Not getting a vaccine violates the all-important "NAP". Of course most self-professed libertarians likely would think of a short rest and not aggression when they hear NAP, as its become a generic anti-government term rather than the nuanced political ideology it once was.

Behaving rationally isn't a particularly libertarian ideal. All political ideologies aspire to behave rationally.

Nobody stands up and starts with "Lets approach this irrationally and ..."

Maybe we should give it a try? I mean it's not like our current approach is wildly successful...

Where your comment went wrong was in conflating rational decisions made at the time the rules are made or enforced with routine rational choices made constantly by the population. It’s much easier to have a rule which says “always wash your hands when preparing food” than to have every single restaurant worker have to reason about the level of risk posed by what they’ve done since the last time they washed their hands. In particular, think about how many bad calls are made by people who believe they’re acting rationally but are acting on incomplete or bad information.

Libertarianism involves a state as weak as possible so it critically depends on people to individually make good choices for a society to be an appealing place to live. You can sue your neighbor if he burns old tires upwind but you’re really hoping he’s smart enough not to because that’s tedious, slow, and risks retaliation. If you don’t have the equivalent of Social Security forcing people to save for retirement, you have to make your peace with having destitute old people on the streets, etc.

Libertarianism doesn't rely on all people making individually good choices. It relys on power being extremely spread out so the blast radius of bad choices is contained and the law of averages comes into play because the median person makes ok to good decisions.

And people keep proposing systems that do worse than that and refusing to critically assess how their ideas work out in practice vs a free market.

Note the rest of the sentence where I specified to be a desirable place to live. Outliers matter: if you live on a block with 10 houses, you care more about the one which is falling apart and full of rats than the ones which are mostly okay.

> And people keep proposing systems that do worse than that and refusing to critically assess how their ideas work out in practice vs a free market.

Can you provide examples of the baseline you’re using to say that other systems do worse? Successful implementations, not idealized imaginings.

> Outliers matter: if you live on a block with 10 houses, you care more about the one which is falling apart and full of rats than the ones which are mostly okay.

What is the plan? Imprison the person living in the ratty house? Fine them into oblivion? I've never heard of a case of a town council taking over someone's house to repair it - I'm sure it happened somewhere once but that is quite the outlier.

I've seen plenty of dilapidated houses, and lived near some quite large rats. There is no reason to think it would be worse in a more liberal society.

> Can you provide examples of the baseline you’re using to say that other systems do worse? Successful implementations, not idealized imaginings.

goes to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index and scans down the list

Hong Kong, jewel of Asia? Switzerland is probably pretty decentralised too, they certainly have the most democratic government I know of. And the highest-ranked superpower on the list, everyone's favourite USA, is famous for having some of the strongest constraints on their government in the world.

To be honest, I'd be happy if we all just did what Switzerland does. I'll take extreme democracy over any specific ideology if pushed. We can argue the details later.

> What is the plan? Imprison the person living in the ratty house? Fine them into oblivion? I've never heard of a case of a town council taking over someone's house to repair it - I'm sure it happened somewhere once but that is quite the outlier.

If you have this little information about how societies work, maybe it would be a good idea to do some reading before making bold pronouncements about how hypothetical systems are better. Cities have various approaches and degrees of success so there are plenty of real world examples you can compare with details rather than treating it like a dorm room hypothetical.

> Hong Kong, jewel of Asia? Switzerland is probably pretty decentralised too, they certainly have the most democratic government I know of. And the highest-ranked superpower on the list, everyone's favourite USA, is famous for having some of the strongest constraints on their government in the world.

None of those are commonly considered libertarian states and they all have many examples of rules which most libertarians oppose (e.g. the Swiss gun control laws) so it would again be better to talk about specific real policies rather than hypotheticals which are too vague to evaluate.

> If you have this little information about how societies work, maybe it would be a good idea to do some reading before making bold pronouncements about how hypothetical systems are better. Cities have various approaches and degrees of success so there are plenty of real world examples you can compare with details rather than treating it like a dorm room hypothetical.

I've seen a lot of derelict properties in my time. It would appear nothing was being done.

What various approaches are you thinking here? I think it is more likely that you aren't paying attention to derelict properties and rats than that I've missed something. If a homeowner doesn't want to maintain their home then there isn't a whole lot that gets done about it.

> they all have many examples of rules which most libertarians oppose (e.g. the Swiss gun control laws)

Switzerland does have one of the highest guns/capita in the world though. Nowhere is ideologically pure, it isn't like you can point to an example of any state that is only driven by one ideology. China has capitalists, the US has socialists, the Europeans have literal Nazis, etc etc. Everyone has a mix of policies based on who is pushing what agenda. There is evidence that if the liberty-authority dial is pushed towards liberty then there are some shining examples of success.

But that is all beside the point I wanted to make - libertarianism just doesn't assume that everyone is making great rational decisions. That isn't how groups of people work. Libertarianism is just noting that the evidence government makes things better on average is questionable. Governments are routinely behind the worst massacres - which is certainly cause for a raised eyebrow and asking some questions. And given the regularity with which the financial system collapses it really isn't obvious the government is helping there either. Then regulation is either making us do things that would happen anyway, or blocking quick responses when the situation is changing radically (eg, the lockdowns were official enforcement of stuff I was largely going to be doing anyway).

> specific real policies rather than hypothetical which are too vague to evaluate.

Korea got the first coronavirus tests, and reliable ones, because they let private enterprise develop them. The US tried a government-led response and badly fumbled the first few months. The regulator was the source of the problems. More libertarian policies in the medical field would have prevented that.