There’s quite an eye-opening dialogue at http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block217.html. Libertarian Walter Block is defending his position, which in essence is that (1) an infected person violates the non-aggression principle when others become infected after contact with said infected person, and (2) forcing said infected person to be vaccinated for said infection does not violate the non-aggression principle.
Some thoughts:
1. The non-aggression principle is almost entirely useless.
The provision in the non-aggression principle that allows for the use of defensive force turns the supposed statement of principle into a tautology. When is a particular instance of force defensive, and when is it not? Since it is clear even in this simple case that reasonable people can disagree, the non-aggression principle is useless in application at any level of sophistication above the most basic. The Block dialogue is a perfect example.
Here we have (a) a small number of people involved in a dialogue (b) who presumably care deeply about limitations on the use of force (c) who ostensibly share a philosophy about it (d) faced with a simple, stripped-down, hypothetical thought experiment. The planets and stars are aligned in favor of an agreement. Instead, there is significant disagreement about whether offensive and defensive force is involved, and the factors that should be involved in the analysis thereof.
2. Block’s position is utopian.
Bad things happen. Sometimes these bad things are merely inefficient, other times they are awful. Sometimes they are even preventable. This does not necessarily mean that it is acceptable to use force to try to stop them from happening.
Germs exist. They use human bodies as hosts. This is a state of nature. Why can’t Block just accept that when he chooses to go out into the world and interact with other human beings (or even simply by choosing to remain alive), he is running the risk of exposing himself to such germs?
I shudder when an ostensible lover of freedom like Block classifies as a murderer (!) someone like Typhoid Mary. It’s amazing (and sad) how a human mind can take something that is really about Walter Block (the risks he faces by existing on the face of the earth, and by engaging with other people in that world) and turn it into something that is supposedly the fault of a disease carrier like Typhoid Mary.
The idea of forcibly vaccinating a disease carrier like Typhoid Mary is officious, interventionist and utopian. It is officious and interventionist in that Block would chose to act, rather than abstain from action, in the face of (a) his own use of physical force, (b) reasonable arguments against the propriety of it, and (c) serious uncertainty about the possible outcome of the use of such force. It is utopian in that Block seeks to turn a simple, sad fact about the state of nature (humans beings catch diseases and sometimes get sick or die as a result) and turn it into an excuse to lash out with a needle pointed in the direction of the rest of us with whom he shares the face of the earth.
It is as if Block accepts the “freedom from…” logic of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and would add “freedom from disease” (or, perhaps more precisely, “freedom from diseases that Block thinks may be preventable with actions which Block thinks are reasonable”) to a utopian wish list that will be instantiated for humanity by force.
3. Forced quarantine and forced vaccination are different concepts. Both are both immoral.
A call for help from our medical friends: does vaccination even help a person like Typhoid Mary, or those who might be infected by her? As I understand it, the immune system of someone already infected by a disease is already being challenged by that disease to create antibodies to that disease. Would vaccination add anything to that process? In the Typhoid Mary example, wouldn’t quarantine, rather than vaccination, be the intervention on the table?
With respect to quarantine, who gets to determine whether an alleged disease-carrier is actually carrying the disease? Does it matter whether the disease-carrier is contagious or not? Who determines the criteria for contagion? Can the nervous Nellies of the world simply retreat to their private real estate to avoid infection? I guess if I’m faced with a scenario so fraught with evidentiary issues, my tendency is err on the side of caution and forgo the use of force, even if someone somewhere might convincingly argue that the use of force would be defensive. Isn’t a magnanimous abstention from the use of force (even if justifiably defensive) more becoming a supposed freedom lover? What is the harm in defaulting to non-violence in ambiguous situations, especially when compared to the harm in using force at the drop of a hat? The world is filled with people who will argue that force is defensive (and thus justified) in almost any situation we might describe. Shouldn’t we freedom lovers at least try to promote the concept of not using force?
With respect to vaccination, I briefly touched on some of the issues at http://blog.alentrix.com/?p=191 under the “Page 104” heading. In essence, the question comes down to “Who gets to determine whether the costs of vaccination outweigh the benefits?” Since we’re talking about (a) a needle being stuck into my body and (b) foreign substances being introduced thereto, my answer, to put it bluntly, is that it should be me and me alone, and not Walter Block or anyone else, who gets to make that determination.
4. Summary
Allow me to suggest an approach more parsimonious, generous and more generally applicable than Block’s. In the face of serious ambiguity about cause and effect, and serious disagreement with respect to costs and benefits, why wouldn’t a freedom lover simply choose to abstain from the use of force? Why not assume that any use of force is not defensive unless proven otherwise?
Post a Comment