The military, police, and medical professions often train for emergency situations. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/choke/201005/want-success-under-stress-close-the-gap-between-practice-and-competition) First responders and military try to create a system of steps that are to be taken in situations that are not likely to occur on a daily basis. It’s widely recognized that high stress is going to make thinking harder, not easier. Success in an emergency situations depends on thinking ahead of time about what steps need to be taken, and then training before the emergency occurs.
I suspect emergency responders train because the human mind needs a set of guiding principles to deal with the overwhelming sensory information that is presented to it. A person often does not have the time to sit down and evaluate each situation individually and determine what the best course of action is. Action is called for, especially in an emergency.
Concepts are a means of categorizing sensory-perceptual data in a systematic manner to improve one’s chances of living a successful and happy life. (How We Know: Epistemology on An Objectivist Foundation”, Binswanger,2014, TOF Publications, pg. 135; see, also, “The Virtue of Selfishness: The Objectivist Ethics”, Rand, “Man’s actions and survival require the guidance of conceptual values derived from conceptual knowledge.”)
A “principle” is a sort of aphorism or mental statement, made up of simpler concepts. It describes a particular cause-and-effect relationship one must implement to increase the chances of living. (How We Know: Epistemology on An Objectivist Foundation”, Binswanger,2014, TOF Publications, Pg 306.) For instance, a person might adopt the principle of: “When dealing with others, treat them fairly, and in a win-win manner.” This is a principle guiding how one deals with other people socially and in business. This principle of justice is a recognition that just as you want to live, so too, do most other people want to live. You must provide them with a benefit to keep them dealing with you. It is a recognition of a particular cause -giving positive incentives for other people- that will bring about a particular effect -the benefits of trade. A boss pays his workers, the cause, in exchange for their labor, an effect, that he wants. A person listens to his friend describe his fantastic new job, and congratulates him, because he wants his friend to offer him positive reinforcement when something good happens in his own life. Husbands don’t cheat on their wives (the cause), because their wives agree to live with them and have sex only with them (the effect).
Problems can arise from the human mind’s need for principles to live in at least two way: (1) Some principles adopted by people are either false, or are false in a particular context; and (2) Not everyone agrees that the purpose of principles is to improve your life and well-being. Dogma is an example of “principles” that are aimed at some purpose other than living. (For instance, a religious instruction that tells people not to eat certain foods, not because of any health reasons, but simply because it is forbidden by some sort of supernatural authority.)
A feature of the human mind is a tendency to “fall to the level of your training” rather than “rise to the occasion” during a national emergency. People are going to tend to take whatever pre-existing ideas they may have about human nature, society, and the good life, and apply them. If they haven’t thought too deeply about the implications of these ideas, then there can be negative consequences.
Political systems and social systems tend to operate on a sort of “inertia”, in which our cultural institutions are based on long-standing ideas and traditions. As a result, our political systems may last longer than the ideas that created them. In the past hundred and fifty years, the ideas that created American culture and institutions have largely been discarded by academics and intellectuals in exchange for other notions. Our institutions and social mores have changed more slowly, because of “cultural inertia”. Our court systems, political institutions, and some social customs, are based in a better era. They exemplify the “pursuit of happiness” expounded by Enlightenment philosophers, like John Locke and Aristotle. Academics have long since rejected those ideas in favor of the collectivism of Marx and the duty of Kant. (See “Explaining Post Modernism: Skepticism and Socialism From Rousseau to Foucault”, Hicks, 2018)
I am not a historian, but what I think happens in a national emergency or social crisis is that the old institutions need adjustment to the current context, but since academics, lawyers, politicians, and other cultural elites don’t really understand or accept the ideas on which those old institutions were formed, they are unable to offer any sort of adjustment or modification of those institutions. All they have available in their conceptual “toolbox” are the newer ideas, which have never been fully implemented, due to the “cultural inertia” I discussed. As a result, during a social crisis, there is a strong possibility of a sudden overthrow of the old institutions in favor of contrary, newer ideas. The contradiction between the new ideas and the old institutions suddenly becomes unsustainable, and there is a quick shift.
The tendency of old institutions to be overthrown in favor of a new system, representing current ideas, during a crisis is not necessarily bad. It depends on what those newer ideas are, and what the new system consists of. It’s possible the new ideas are better than the ideas that formed the basis of the old regime. It is theorized by some historians that the Black Death in Europe, between 1348 and 1350, helped shatter the old Feudal order:
“What’s often missing from this story, however, is the wider context and the lasting impact of the Black Death. This is a story not only of unfathomable tragedy, but also of transformation and rebirth. The plague, in combination with a host of other related and overlapping crises, delivered a death blow to Medieval Europe, ushering in a new age — the Renaissance and the rise of so-called agrarian capitalism — and ultimately setting the stage for the Industrial Revolution and the modern world.” (“The Black Death led to the demise of feudalism. Could this pandemic have a similar effect?”, Adam McBride, in April 26, 2020 ed. of “Salon”, emphasis added, online at: https://www.salon.com/2020/04/26/the-black-death-led-to-the-demise-of-feudalism-could-this-pandemic-have-a-similar-effect/ )
(Note: I do not agree with the proposed political and policy solutions in the last several paragraphs of this article, but I do agree with the historical account of the Black Death as an immediate cause of the end of the Middle Ages.)
The reason the Black Death could be socially and politically transformative, giving rise to the Renaissance, is because there were underlying ideas that had been circulating in the European culture for some time. The Renaissance was a “rebirth” of Ancient Greek ideas:
“The argument [amongst medieval scholastics] paralleled the classical one between Plato and the Sophists. Plato believed that Ideas (Forms) had a perfect and independent existence, while the Sophists thought that only particular things existed. In the Middle Ages, those who held that ‘universals’ were real were called ‘realists’; those who declared that they were just names (nomina) were called ‘nominalists’. The argument was (and is) of critical importance to one’s philosophical outlook. The extreme realists attached little importance to individual things and sought through sheer logic or divine revelation to approach the universals. The extreme nominalists, by contrast, perceived only discrete objects and refused to admit the existence of unifying relationships among the infinitude of particulars. The realists tended to ignore the observed world; the nominalists could scarcely comprehend it. Most schoolmen took a middle position on this question. Among the moderates, [Peter] Abelard…held that only particular things have an existence in and of themselves. The universals, however, are more than mere names. They exist as concepts in individual minds -keys to an understanding of the interrelatedness of things…By means of many such concepts, inferred from individual observations, we can make the world (to a degree) comprehensible, manageable, and predictable…Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the scholastic philosophers, was a moderate realist…Following the lead of…Abelard…Aquinas set a high value on the faculty of reason. By this time the full impact of Aristotle and the new learning from the East had struck the schools and universities of Europe, and Christian dogmas were being challenged by pagan, Muslim, and Jewish logicians…Aquinas adopted Aristotelian logic and turned it to the defense of his faith….Both faith and reason, he argued, were created by God, and it is illogical to hold that God could contradict himself.” (“A Brief History of Western Man”, 3d Ed., Greer, Thomas, 1977 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Chapter 6: “The Flowering of Medieval Culture, Pg. 214-215)
Thomas Aquinas had brought Aristotelian thought back to Europe, in the sense of giving those ideas institutional respectability in the Catholic church. Most cultural and academic elites of that time were in the Church. By adopting Aristotle to fit with Church doctrine, at least for a while, Aquinas lay the groundwork for the Renaissance. He predated the Black Death, with published works between the 1240’s and the 1280’s. ( https://www.britannica.com/topic/Christianity/Aristotle-and-Aquinas ) A reemergence of the ideas of Aristotle took the focus of intellectuals away from a hard, “Platonic realism”, which focused on alleged revelations from another word. Aristotelianism moved European thinking towards greater observation of particulars in the world of our senses, which is essential to scientific and modern thinking.
This history of the Black Death, the reemergence of Aristotelianism in the late Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, suggests a theory concerning how historical change occurs: A crisis can accelerate what is already occurring in a society. Newer ideas that have been circulating in the culture for some time can quickly and drastically transform social and political institutions during a crisis. Those transformations can be for better or worse, depending on the underlying ideas driving the transformation.
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COVID-19 is our current national crisis. People are approaching it with a lifetime of ideas they have gathered up and accepted, either expressly, or by default, because they didn’t examine the ideas around them too closely. What ideas have a significant segment of the American population accepted? What ideas have the majority of academics, journalists, lawyers, and politicians accepted? In a crisis, there is very little time to act. Immediate action is called for. Just like soldiers will “fall to the level of their training” rather than “rise to the occasion” in an emergency, so too will politicians fall to the level of their “training” from college. What did they learn at the universities? For the most part, their professors taught them to embrace collectivism, and to reject individual rights. This collectivism has taken the form of many slogans over the years, and now, the serpent’s egg is hatching.
I’ll start by defining some of my key terms:
(1) What are individual rights?
“A ‘right’ is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.” (The Virtue of Selfishness, “Man’s Rights”, Ayn Rand)
(2) What is the purpose of individual rights?
“Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational.” (Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand)
(3) What is collectivism?
“Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group—whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called ‘the common good.’” (Ayn Rand, “The Only Path to Tomorrow,” Reader’s Digest, Jan, 1944, 8., http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/collectivism.html)
Our society and legal system are a combination of egoism and individual rights on the one hand and collectivism and “the common good” on the other. The former are older ideas that are based in the likes of Aristotle and John Locke, while the later are based in the ideas of Marx, Hegel, and other 18th Century philosophers. (See “Explaining Post Modernism: Skepticism and Socialism From Rousseau to Foucault”, Hicks, 2018; see, also, The Ominous Parallels, Leonard Peikoff.)
The expression: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” is inaccurate. The road to hell is paved by what one considers to be the good, but is, in fact, the opposite. The road to hell is paved by collectivist intentions. Several commonly held collectivist ideas have resulted in what are logical, albeit unforeseen, consequences of the government’s reaction to the present COVID-19 epidemic. What are some of these collectivist ideas driving the current governmental response to COVID-19?
(1) The Collectivist Idea that “Healthcare Is A Right”
One of the first acts of many state governors in the face of the COVID-19 crisis was to force “non-essential” healthcare workers off the job. Counties and states banned “elective” medical care. https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/dallas-county-enacts-shelter-in-place-effective-sunday-night-to-combat-covid-19-pandemic/
Apparently, politicians thought of doctors and healthcare workers as having “fungible” skill-sets. If they banned “elective” procedures, then they believed this would leave more healthcare “resources” for others. However, just because a doctor can perform a rhinoplasty or a breast-enhancement surgery, doesn’t mean he has sufficient knowledge to treat a person suffering from a viral respiratory illness. A dermatologist can’t perform heart surgery:
“…thousands of health care workers across the nation who have been laid off, furloughed or are working reduced hours as their services are deemed nonessential…The workers range from dentists and general surgeons to medical assistants and nurses, from allergists and dermatologists to primary care physicians and pediatricians.” https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/04/02/coronavirus-pandemic-jobs-us-health-care-workers-furloughed-laid-off/5102320002/
People were told by politicians not to be selfish, and forego “elective” medical procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Who decides what is an important health care matter and what is merely “elective”? When health care is viewed as a right, it’s not you and your doctor. The government owns your doctor’s life. (And your life.) Politicians and bureaucrats, viewing healthcare as a “right” are essentially saying:
“That spot on your arm? Probably nothing, probably not melanoma. That toothache? Probably nothing probably not a life-threatening tooth abscess. That debilitating knee pain? How selfish of you to want to be out of pain when there are people dying. You think you have a life-threatening peanut allergy, and need to see your allergist? Suck it up, and quit complaining, buttercup.”
What was the consequence of government forbidding “elective medicine”? Doctors and hospitals can no longer make a profit, which means, in the long run, they’ll go out of business and there will be less healthcare, not more:
“Government-mandated cutbacks on elective procedures and routine check-ups have forced independent medical practices to temporarily close their doors. The loss of revenue may soon force some practices to furlough staff, and in the worst-case scenarios to go out of business, causing significant access-to-care disruptions once the pandemic subsides.” https://triblive.com/opinion/dr-lawrence-john-covid-19-could-devastate-medical-practices/
Thinking of “health care as a right” has also led to a massive conflict between different groups in our society. One group doesn’t need to go out to work, either because they can work from home, or because they are wealthy enough to avoid work. Another group, needs to work, and cannot do so from home. Their jobs and businesses have been largely shut down due to local and state “stay at home orders”. This reflects the phenomena of “rights inflation”.
“A collectivist tyranny dare not enslave a country by an outright confiscation of its values, material or moral. It has to be done by a process of internal corruption. Just as in the material realm the plundering of a country’s wealth is accomplished by inflating the currency—so today one may witness the process of inflation being applied to the realm of rights. The process entails such a growth of newly promulgated ‘rights’ that people do not notice the fact that the meaning of the concept is being reversed. Just as bad money drives out good money, so these ‘printing-press rights’ negate authentic rights….The ‘gimmick’ was the switch of the concept of rights from the political to the economic realm. The Democratic Party platform of 1960 summarizes the switch boldly and explicitly….The right to a useful and remunerative job…The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health….If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.” (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, “Man’s Rights”, Ayn Rand https://courses.aynrand.org/works/mans-rights/ , emphasis added.)
If “health care is a right”, then “health is a right” – and it will conflict with other people being able to earn a living with shelter in place orders. The wealthy, who don’t need to work, will tend to see “health as a right” that trumps the right to earn a living by people of lesser means. White-collar workers, who can work from home, will tend to focus on “the right to health”, while service industry people in the restaurant and “non-essential” retail businesses will want to leave home. Who do you think has more influence in Washington and the State Capitals? The wealthy/white collar types, or the poor and service-industry employees?
The retired elderly, who are more susceptible to COVID-19, will also tend to see “health as a right”, that overrides the need of younger adults to earn a living, and of children to obtain an education . Who do you think has more political influence in Washington and at the State and local level? The politicians know senior citizens vote, while the young do not.
Right now, the US has enough wealth that it can manage without people actually starving. Not so in other areas of the world. The lock-downs in Africa are causing people to go without food:
“Four weeks into a 35-day lockdown poor communities are facing food shortages as incomes for mostly informal workers have dried up.”
https://news.yahoo.com/violence-looting-point-food-crisis-africa-lockdown-112929125.html
The wealthy of Africa don’t care. They have plenty of food, so they will choose to reduce their health risk, and they’ll impose that choice on the poor.
Years of thinking of “health care as a right”, without considering the context of who is to pay for it and who is to provide it, has resulted in the present conflict between those who can afford the lock-down (the elderly, the wealthy, and white collar workers), and those who cannot afford it (the young, service industry workers, and the working poor.) “Rights inflation” has destroyed real, individual rights to life, liberty, and property. It has lead to “pressure group warfare” in the legislature and government as different interest groups try to ensure their group’s interests are advanced at the expense of other groups. (What I call a “cold civil war”.)
In reality, there is no “right to health care” or “right to food”. There is a right to take the actions necessary to maintain your life, while leaving others free to do the same, by not using physical force against them to deprive them of their values. All law must hold this principle as its touchstone. You have a right not to be robbed. You have a right not to be murdered. You don’t have a right to get together a big enough gang of lobbyists in Washington DC or at the Dallas County Commissioners Court, and then “legally rob” other people through taxes and regulations -or force them to remain in their house and off their job.
(2) The Collectivist Idea of “Prophylactic”, or “Preventative” Law.
“Preventative law”, or “prophylactic rules”, is not aimed at prohibiting the violation of individual rights. It is law aimed at preventing certain actions that could potentially lead to the violation of individual rights. It arises because legislators do not fully understand or comprehend what the purpose of government and law is in the first place: To allow men to live their lives in a social environment, free from the initiation of physical force.
“Gun control” laws are an example of preventative law the left loves. The left wants to stop people who might kill with a gun by banning them for everyone. But, if government officials are entitled to initiate physical force against those who merely choose to own a gun, then there is nothing, in principle to stop them from initiating physical force against anyone deemed a “potential threat”.
Another example are most “environmental regulations”. These laws prohibit certain economic activity not because someone has actually been injured by another person’s pollution coming onto their property, but merely because a business *might* injure someone with its activities.
Another, more relevant, example with regard to the current COVID-19 crisis would be a curfew law. Such a law is enacted to prevent all persons from going outside after a certain hour, because there is a small number of criminals who commit armed robbery at night. This was the example provided by Ayn Rand on a discussion of the concept of law, recorded in the 1960’s. (http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-rand-works/objective-law.html. -Starting at about 14 minutes in, Miss Rand discusses this issue for preventative law, and gives the example of curfew laws. She says a small number of people might engage in “night hold ups”, what we’d call a mugging today, but she did not believe it is justification for holding the best in society to the level of the worst in society.)
Preventative law is very common in the laws regulating businesses, and has been for about a hundred years now:
“…’protective’ legislation falls in the category of preventive law. Businessmen are being subjected to governmental coercion prior to the commission of any crime. In a free economy, the government may step in only when a fraud has been perpetrated, or a demonstrable damage has been done to a consumer; in such cases the only protection required is that of criminal law.” (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, “The Assault on Integrity” Alan Greenspan.)
The effect of preventative law is to make it difficult to maintain your life. Second Amendment advocates will say something like “when guns are outlawed, only the outlaws have guns”. This is said, in part, because “gun control” makes it impossible to legally use a gun for self-defense. A law-abiding person is being held to the level of a criminal when it comes to “gun control”, even though there is no evidence he would commit a crime with a gun. In the case of the COVID-19 emergency, those who want to earn a living are being legally prevented from doing so, even though there is no evidence they are sick.
Similar to “gun control” laws and “environmental laws”, with COVID-19, the left wants to stop the vast majority of people from living their lives, with zero due process, and zero evidence that they are sick or contagious.
(3) The Collectivists Hold a “Platonic Guardian” View of Science, and a Distrust of the “Common Man”
The father of collectivism in Western Civilization is Plato. He divides his collectivist “Republic” into three classes: the producers, the auxiliaries, and the guardians:
“The guardians are responsible for ruling the city. They are chosen from among the ranks of the auxiliaries, and are also known as philosopher-kings.” https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/republic/characters/
Today’s leftists view themselves as our society’s philosopher-kings. Their attitude is: “Don’t bother explaining the science to the people. Don’t try to obtain voluntary consent. The people are too stupid to understand. Force is necessary. Force is the only method that is efficacious.”
“The hallmark of collectivists is their deep-rooted distrust of freedom and of the free-market processes; but it is their advocacy of so-called ‘consumer protection’ that exposes the nature of their basic premises with particular clarity. By preferring force and fear to incentive and reward as a means of human motivation, they confess their view of man as a mindless brute functioning on the range of the moment…” (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, “The Assault on Integrity” Ayn Rand.)
This attitude of the elite philosopher-king who will rule over the rest of us is seen in a common argument amongst environmentalist politicians, which is something along the lines of: “97% of scientist agree that human beings are causing average global temperatures to go up.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2016/12/14/fact-checking-the-97-consensus-on-anthropogenic-climate-change/#45e4f5b71157
This is not an argument based in evidence or logical argument. It’s a sort of “argument from authority’” (At one time, the majority of authorities thought the Earth was the center of the universe.) What matters is the evidence, which can be communicated to anyone with a normal brain. If there is evidence, then show the evidence. Don’t just belittle people and tell them there is a scientific consensus, but they’re too stupid to understand the science. (This argument is probably being used because most of the reporters and politicians who think average global temperatures are going up due to human activity don’t understand the science themselves.)
If you went to the doctor’s office, and he said: “You need immediate surgery, but I’m not going to tell you where or why -just trust my authority as a doctor,” you’d likely want more of an explanation. To the philosopher-king left, no such explanation is necessary or useful during the present COVID-19 crisis. Just obey them because they know better. These decisions are often being made by state governors and mayors, using ill-defined “natural disaster statutes”, with little or no input from legislatures or courts. The actions of California Governor Gavin Newsom, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer reflect the two-thousand-year-old ideas of Plato. Our “Philosopher-king” governors and mayors will rule over us, the “unwashed masses”. We’re too stupid to make our own decisions.
In Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, a major character is a government scientist who sets himself up as a sort of “philosopher-king”, who wants state funded science because he thinks the people are too stupid to make their own decisions, or to understand science. This is the story of Dr. Robert Stadler. He was a brilliant scientist, disgusted by the profit motive and the need to earn a living. He viewed science as something that should be pursued, not to serve human life, but as a “pure intellectual pursuit”. For Dr. Stadler, “reason” wasn’t “man’s means of survival”. It was a sort of Platonic “end in itself”.
Prior to the start of the novel’s main plot line, Dr. Stadler had used his reputation as a scientist to obtain governmental funding for a “State Science Institute”, so that he could pursue “science without a profit motive”. In the end, all that the “State Science Institute” produced was a weapon of mass destruction aimed at the subjugation of the American population. (A fictional version of the atomic bomb.)
The last scene involving Dr. Stadler is him physically wrestling for control of the weapon with Cuffy Meigs, a “two-bit” “mafia type”, who has risen to power in the corrupt government of a dystopian near-future America. Cuffy Meigs has no respect for science or reason. His only interest is gaining power through the use of physical force, and he’s better at it than Dr. Stadler. I think what Rand was trying to say here is: Beware all you men of science who think the masses are too stupid to understand your ideas, so you want to substitute force for voluntary persuasion. If you try to set yourself up as a philosopher-king who rules by the use of force, you’ll ultimately loose to the criminal thugs of the world, who are better at violence than you’ll ever be. The criminals who will come to power will care little for science or reason.
If reason is discarded in favor of force, then the winner won’t be the person with the most logical argument. It’ll be the person with the biggest gun, and who is most willing to use it. The most brutal will come to power, not the men of reason. It’s the thugs like Stalin and Mao Zedong who will be in the political driver’s seat, not a Newton or Galileo.
When individual rights are outlawed, only the criminals will have guns.
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If it’s collectivism that is driving current governmental policy when it comes to COVID-19, someone might ask what is my alternative? It’s fine and good to talk about individual rights, but how would a more capitalist society, committed to the respect of rights to life, liberty, and property, deal with the problem of a pandemic? This is a fair question.
Part of the problem is the average American has a difficult time even imagining what a truly capitalist society would look like. They make assumptions that are collectivist, often just by “default” because “that’s just how it is done” in their minds. Non-academic Americans value individualism and the egoistic “right to pursue happiness”, but they cannot always translate that into practice when it comes to our legal system and institutions. This is not a failing of the American people at large. It’s a failure of intellectuals, college professors, newspaper reporters, economists, lawyers, and politicians to present and explain such ideas. The majority of the intellectual elites are hostile towards individualism, and don’t believe people should pursue their own happiness. “Selfishness” is a dirty word for most of the elites in our society.
How would a government under capitalism deal with a viral pandemic? 1
I want to briefly address another set of ideas circulating in our society. These ideas tend to fall under the term “conservatism”, although, like “liberalism”, that is a poorly-defined term. “Conservatism” tends to reject collectivism, but one strand of that school of thought wants to replace it with religion and faith. In other words, it wants to replace the Enlightenment ideas of John Locke and Isaac Newton with those of the early Middle Ages. The early Middle Ages, the Dark Ages, were characterized by the fall of the Roman Empire, ignorance, the destruction of trade, reduced standard of living, “…frequent warfare and a virtual disappearance of urban life.” https://www.britannica.com/event/Dark-Ages
Today, cultures dominated by religious faith are mostly found in the Muslim world. Religious theocracies like Iran are characterized by violence and the violation of individual rights in order to prepare people for the afterlife. It’s beyond the scope of what I’m writing here, but, I’ve read a compelling argument for the possibility that a large crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic could lead to a rejection of modernism in favor of some version of religion. It would probably take the form of a Christian theocracy in Europe and North America. In other words, it’s possible that religious faith, which still exists to some greater or lesser degree in the minds of Western men, could come to the surface, especially if Westerners widely viewed science and modernism as having failed them during a major crisis. (I refer the reader to “The DIM Hypothesis” by Leonard Peikoff for more on that.) This would largely be the fault of academics and philosophers as well, since they’ve spent the last hundred and fifty years attacking reason. (See “Explaining Post Modernism: Skepticism and Socialism From Rousseau to Foucault”, Hicks, 2018; see, also, The Ominous Parallels, Leonard Peikoff.)
(1) Privatized Cities
First, it must be understood that cities would be private under capitalism. Every square inch of a city would be owned by some particular person, or group of people. There would be no “public property” at all. Force is not used to fund a private city, and all standards of behavior and business safety are established by voluntary contract. (With contracts being enforced by the court system.)
Even today, there already are “quasi-private” cities to some degree. You see this, at least partially, with “planned communities”. A developer will build an entire city grid with streets, neighborhoods, schools, parks, and business districts. Then, anyone who wants to move there, must agree to the conditions of the developer. There is a preexisting agreement not to build a commercial warehouse right next to a neighborhood with families in it. Bars are located in one section of the town, while schools and families are in another, etc. An example of an almost entirely private city may be Celebration, Florida, which was created from scratch by the Walt Disney Corporation.
Major cities are seeing the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the United States, New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco have been hit hard. These are all “port” cities, with a large flow of people and goods into, and out of the country. Additionally, they are “high density” populations, so the virus can easily spread once it comes into one of these cities.
People living in high-density, high-immigration cities like New York, are, in a sense, imposing the likelihood of pandemic on the rest of the nation. It’s an example of what economists call a “negative externality”. People who might become sick due to risky behavior, but are asymptomatic carriers, are wanting to move about and earn a living. When some of them become sick, they then infect other people, who develop more serious symptoms or even die. The people who get sick, but are asymptomatic, are unwittingly imposing the cost of their more-risky behavior on those who do not want the risk:
“The spread of COVID-19 is a great example of an externality, which is an economic term for a cost or benefit incurred or received by a third party. The best example of a negative externality is air pollution, such as when a factory emits air pollution that imposes a cost on neighbors.” https://www.cato.org/blog/less-costly-ways-reduce-harm-covid-19-without-travel-immigration-bans
Negative externalities arise because private property rights in a particular sphere are non-existent, or not well-defined. The solution is to define private property rights, and distribute “public property” to private owners. (Through a public auction, or through some sort of distribution to taxpayers.)
The details of how you take an existing city and “privatize” it would take an entire paper of its own, but in principle, the existing residents of the city, who pay the local taxes, should all be given shares in a corporation that owns all of the previously-public infrastructure. These shareholders then have a right to elect a governing board of directors. Coerced local taxes would be replaced by “user fees”. Shareholders have to pay the user fees, and abide by the rules. The corporation would be free to charge fees for the use of its facilities, such as the roads. The city could also impose health and safety rules as a contractual condition of living there. For instance, a local business would need to abide by health and safety rules in order to have access to the roads in the city. The business would be free not to abide by these rules, but they’d be limited to flying their customers in by helicopter, or some other means that doesn’t involve the use of the roads. Since most businesses couldn’t carry on without access to the roads, they’d all abide by the health and safety rules, or they’d shut down and move somewhere else. Those who don’t like the rules, can move to another city. Competition would then occur between cities to attract residents and customers by offering the best “package” of services, such as roads, utilities, and reasonable health and safety rules, at the lowest cost.
If there are only private cities, then pandemics could be more easily fought. The owners of private city infrastructure have a profit incentive to ensure that pandemics do not spread. Say there are three private cities, and one of them, City A, has a pandemic. Cities B and C can refuse entry from people from City A until the pandemic is over. In other words, instead of the government having to impose a lockdown on City A, all of the other cities will, effectively, “socially distance” at the city-wide level.
There would also only be private highways, and the owners of the private highways could set standards of health for who can travel on them. They would want to protect their customers, so it is even less likely that people from City A would be allowed to travel to City B while the pandemic in City A is going on.
This is a much more “granulated” and precise approach to preventing the spread of disease than at the border of a country, which causes unnecessary disruptions of trade and the flow of healthy people.
(2) Freedom of Immigration Can Increase Healthcare “Resources”
With the exception of short quarantines and refusing entry to terrorists at war with the United States, more immigration would reduce the chances of a viral pandemic spreading and overwhelming the healthcare industry. An example of this could be seen with the fires in Australia in 2019. During that emergency, firemen from around the world traveled to Australia to help put out the conflagration:
“Firefighters from across the US have been helping since early December. On Saturday, a group of 20 will deploy and will be followed by another group of 80 on Monday, bringing the total to 175 American firefighters on the ground in Australia.
Canada, and New Zealand are also part of a mutual aid system, helping Australia in its firefighting efforts.” https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/more-us-firefighters-heading-to-help-australia-fight-wildfires/ar-BBYBhzS
COVID-19 didn’t spontaneously arise all over the world at one time. It started in a specific city in China. It spread from there to the rest of the world, then it spread to nearby countries like South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. (With air travel causing it to spread further, faster.)
If COVID-19 had been revealed sooner, it might have been possible to stop it before it started with doctors and healthcare workers coming into the area to treat patients, similar to what firefighters did in Australia. The spread of COVID-19, however, was moved along by the suppression of information by the Chinese government, which does not respect individual rights, like freedom of the press or freedom of movement.
(3) “Socially Distance” Ourselves From Authoritarian and Totalitarian Nations
The existence of “bad actors” like China makes a viral epidemic more likely to spread to freeer, more capitalistic countries like the United States and Western Europe. The suppression of individual rights in countries like China would have to be addressed by specific foreign policy actions of a fully capitalist nation. Open warfare with nations like China may not always be possible, perhaps because they possess nuclear weapons, making it too risky, or simply because it is not in the national interest of the capitalist nation to go to war with them, in terms of cost and lives lost.
How would a capitalist republic deal with bad actors like China, short of open war? By not dealing with them, and encouraging, but not forcing, their citizens not to deal with them.
A capitalist nation would recognize that it is, in a sense, at war with all totalitarian states, even if no shots are being fired. A free society and a totalitarian state are not compatible. Short of open warfare, which might not be feasible, here are some alternative solutions:
a. Economic boycott – Private citizens within the capitalist nation can be urged to voluntarily sign contracts stating that they will not have business dealings with totalitarian states, and the contracts only become enforceable in a court of law when a sufficient number of people have signed the contract. For instance, there could be a contract which would say: “I agree, upon 75% of the rest of US Citizens signing this contract, to boycott all Chinese companies, and have no business dealings with them for X number of years.” People would then be shown the many atrocities committed by nations like China, and persuaded, using reason and evidence, that dealing with such a country is not in their long-term interests.
b. No Enforcement of Contracts with Chinese Businesses and Nationals – United States Courts would have their jurisdiction to enforce contracts with companies or persons from totalitarian states withdrawn by Congress. (This might take a Constitutional Amendment.) If a US business takes delivery of goods from China, and doesn’t pay, the Chinese business has no recourse in US courts. If a Chinese company wants its money before delivering goods, and then that Chinese company doesn’t deliver the goods, a US court wouldn’t have jurisdiction to enforce the contract. Trade with China would be reduced to Chinese nationals bringing goods to the US for cash exchange. This would eliminate a lot of trade between the US and authoritarian and totalitarian nations, because neither side in a trade could rely on the enforcement of contracts.
c. Higher Voluntary Taxes on Businesses Engaged in Trade With China – This gets into how government would be funded under Capitalism. There are several alternatives. Most of them revolve around paying some sort of fee for government services. For instance, in order to have one’s contract enforced in a court, it would be necessary to pay a certain percentage of the value of the contract ahead of time. A contract for the sale of $100 of goods might have a 5% contract enforcement fee, in which $5 must be paid to the government as “insurance” against breach. In recognition of the fact that any US person doing business with Chinese companies and nationals is helping to prop up that regime, the government could impose a higher contract enforcement fee. The higher fee would cover the cost of increased military spending that is necessary to keep the United States safe. So, a person who does business with Chinese nationals, in any given year, might pay a 15% contract enforcement fee, rather than the usual 5%, on all of his contracts with other US citizens in the next year. In that way, US citizens would be highly discouraged from having business dealings with Chinese nationals at all.
Much higher voluntary taxes on Americans doing business with China are justified because they are making America less safe. They are imposing a cost on the rest of us, which can rightfully be recouped, to pay for extra military protection. The companies doing business with China should pay for the “negative externality” they are imposing on other Americans with their risky behavior. They’re free to do so, but not free to impose the cost on the rest of us.
Other laws relating to viral pandemics under capitalism are also possible. Some may even be better than the ones I have proposed here. The point is to show that a free society is not less “efficient” than an authoritarian one at dealing with the problem. The opposite is true. The principle of individual rights won’t guarantee man’s survival, but totalitarianism will make it impossible.
