Fast answer: update your TVOS to the latest version (version 16), and update your Amazon Prime Video app to the latest version.

Explanation: Until today (September 17, 2022), my Apple TV video streaming box was running version 14.4 of the Apple TVOS operating system.  My box was set to do automatic updates, but – apparently it hasn’t been updating.  A little googling allowed me to discover that Apple has had numerous newer TVOS versions since version 14.4.  This summer (2022), Apple released TVOS version 16.

Last night, I went to my Apple TV menu and clicked on the Amazon Prime Video app icon.  Nothing happened.  I tried all of the fixes found on youtube, including:

– I unplugged the Apple TV Box and plugged it back in: no change.

– I did a “hard reboot” of my Apple TV Box: no change.

– I deleted my Prime Video app, went to the Apple app store, and downloaded it.  It installed.  No change.  Still not working.

Today, I decided to look at my Apple TV box’s operating system (TVOS) version number.  I saw it to be version 14.4.  Then I went to find a list of TVOS versions.  The list contained many versions that follow 14.4.  The most recent: version 16.

Then I did some googling about “compatibility” between the “prime video app” and “TVOS 16”.  I found a news story about how Prime Video had – in mid August 2022 – released a new version of its app for Apple TV.  The article said that the new Prime Video app is compatible with TVOS 16.

I can only imagine that, within the last few days, my Apple TV box updated the Prime Video app to the most recent version.

So I force-updated my TVOS by (a) turning off “automatic updates”, and (b) manually updating the TVOS to the most recent version (version 16).  It took about 24 minutes to install.  After it installed: tada!  My Prime Video app now works.

Upshot: I think that the boneheads who made the Prime Video app didn’t take care to make it backwards compatible with older versions of the Apple TV operating system…and also didn’t bother to tell us that it isn’t compatible.

Anyway: best of luck to you if – like me – finding information about this incompatibility was elusive.  Hopefully, this post will find you and help you to remedy your problem.

Cheers,

Paul

The Monty Hall problem asks: To maximize her chance of winning the prize, should the player trade her door for the remaining door?  Interestingly, according to Pinker, most people answer that there is no point in switching doors because – there being only two doors left – the prize is just as likely to be behind one door as it is to be behind the other remaining door (i.e., there is a 50/50 chance of choosing correctly). However, the mathematically correct answer to the question is that the player should trade her door for the other remaining door, because there is a 2/3rds chance that the prize is behind the door Monty did not eliminate, and their remains only a 1/3rd chance that the prize is behind the door initially chosen by the player.

As many people see it – including many reportedly testy PhDs of mathematics – if there are only two doors, and a prize may be behind either one of them, the prize is no more likely to be behind one than behind the other. For most, it is counter-intuitive that the chance of the prize being behind one door is double the chance of it being behind the other. However, I offer the following – an analogy to the game played in the Monty Hall problem – in the hope that it might assist you (as it did me) to find it easier to see that – at least in the Monty Hall scenario – switching one’s door is always advantageous. Specifically, I bring you the game show: “Piece of Cake”.

Rules of the Game

The host, Monty, presents you with big round chocolate cake. He tells you that the cake’s baker dropped his house key into the cake batter, such that the key is to be found somewhere in the cake. The cake is decorated with lines of pink icing that demark 12 equal wedge-shaped areas of cake. The key is hidden within one of the areas. Monty knows which area holds the key, but you do not.

Monty lets you pick any one of the 12 areas of the cake. Once you make a selection, Monty will cut from the rest of the cake the wedge-shaped 1/12th of the cake that you selected. He’ll put that on a plate in front of you.  Let us call your little slice of the cake “your portion” and let us call the rest of the cake “Monty’s portion”.  To be clear, your portion is 1/12th of the cake, and Monty’s portion is 11/12ths of the cake.

Now, at this point, it should be intuitively obvious that the key is less likely to be in your portion than in Monty’s portion.  Consider: if you were given a choice between (a) searching most of the cake for the key, and (b) searching very little of the cake for the key, would you choose to search most of the cake, or just a little bit of it? Your probable answer is: (a) most. Why? Because if the baker’s key could have landed anywhere in the cake, then – all else being equal – the chance that you’ll find it in a large portion the cake is higher than the chance you’ll find it in a relatively small portion of the cake.

The rules require Monty to cut one more 1/12th wedge from Monty’s portion after handing you your portion. However, the rules say that if the key is in Monty’s portion, Monty must cut from the remaining cake only the 1/12th wedge that contains the key.

Monty cuts his wedge. The throws out the rest of the cake.

Then Monty asks whether you would like to switch your slice for his before he reveals which of the two pieces contains the key.  If the slice you ultimately choose holds the key, you will win the baker’s house.

Common Sense that Corresponds to the Correct Result?

Now ask yourself: Did throwing out 10/12ths of the cake change the fact that the chance of the key being in Monty’s portion is 11/12?  Is it really hard to believe that the chance of the key being in Monty’s portion remains 11/12, whereas the chance of it being in your portion remains only 1/12?  If Monty cannot throw out a key, and the key was 11 times more likely to be in Monty’s portion than in your portion, isn’t it obvious that you should swap slices with Monty?

Isn’t it now equally obvious that, to win the prize, you should swap doors with Monty in the “Let’s Make a Deal” game?  I hope so and, if you found my key-in-a-cake example to make it obvious, please share it with others who may benefit from it.

I believe each of the writers to be proponents of the philosophy of Ayn Rand (i.e., of Objectivism) so, in what follows, I will quote Ms Rand rather than other proponents of individual rights. However, my response is intended to apply to rights-based arguments more generally.

1. The “Rights Argument”

The conclusions of the three aforementioned writers is a consequence of having adopted a view of rights and the scope of government power that is based upon what I herein will refer to as the “Rights Argument”. In a nutshell, the Rights Argument is that:

(a) Everyone has rights of life, liberty, and property that one may defend with physical force. Some Rights Argument proponents say that one has these rights because the rights are “God-given”; others that the rights are in some respect “natural”; and others (especially proponents of the philosophy of Ayn Rand) that they are:

“…a concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context—the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.” (Ayn Rand, “Man’s Rights”, in The Virtue of Selfishness)

Whatever one regards to be their origin, “rights” are said, by Rights Argument proponents, to exist independently of any government or law, and to be things that must be respected by all, including the government.

(b) Everyone (somehow) delegates to his government the right to use force in defence of his rights. Where and how and by whom that alleged consent is actually expressed is rarely elaborated upon. However, in support of this point, proponents of Ayn Rand’s philosophy might quote Ms Rand thusly: “The source of the government’s authority is ‘the consent of the governed.’ ” (Ayn Rand, “The Nature of Government”, in The Virtue of Selfishness)

(c) All of a government’s law-making/enforcement power – i.e., 100% of the scope of a government’s law-making/enforcement power – is the result solely of that delegation. Therefore, the scope of a government’s law-making/enforcement power is limited to using force to defend everyone’s rights. In support of this point, proponents of Ayn Rand’s philosophy might quote Ms Rand thusly: “The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence…” (from John Galt’s speech in her novel Atlas Shrugged)

(d) A government has no authority to violate anyone’s rights. In support of this point, proponents of Ayn Rand’s philosophy might quote Ms Rand thusly: “…a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man’s deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defense.” (from John Galt’s speech in her novel Atlas Shrugged)

(e) For the government to impose a ban on denying a person access to a premises – or a ban on denying a person service – for the reason that the person belongs to some collective or another (e.g., one based upon “race”, or upon whether one has or has not received a Covid-19 “vaccine”) would violate the liberty or property rights of individuals, including those of the owners of shops that are open to the public. Therefore, governments ought not to impose such a ban.

The reader, I trust, will be just enough to recognize my respect for Ayn Rand and her philosophy. However, this essay is not about Ayn Rand. Nor is it about whether Ayn Rand was right or wrong about the role of government in respect of such things as racism. I provide the quotations above simply because those who wrote in response to my position on banning vaccine status discrimination appear to be influenced by Ayn Rand’s statements about the matter, and I want said responders to understand that I do understand their position.

A Response to the Rights Argument

In what follows, I first will provide a bottom-up argument about the role of government and the scope of its laws. With that argument delivered, I will return to the Rights Argument and to what I regard to be wrong with it.

2. Only human decisions or actions are subject to ethical evaluation

A human being depends upon his five senses and his faculty of reason to ascertain facts and to weigh/evaluate alternative courses of action. He must use that faculty to make rational decisions – about the use and disposition of his life, his liberty, and his property – if he is to survive and achieve his own happiness. And, when he makes a rational decision, he must act upon it if he is to survive and to achieve his happiness.

Only human beings have a faculty of reason. The faculty of reason being peculiar to human beings, only humans can distinguish values from disvalues; good from evil. Only humans can make good or evil decisions, and only humans can carry out good or evil actions. Only humans achieve their ends in virtuous or vicious ways.

Without the faculty of reason, one would act as one was hard-wired to act – like a rat, instinctively – without any capacity to do otherwise. Lacking a capacity to do anything except that which one was compelled by to do, one would have no need for ethical evaluation of alternative courses of action.

Ethical evaluations do not apply to the mental processing and actions of things that lack a faculty of reason. Nothing done by a rat is good or evil, virtuous or vicious. Ethical evaluations apply only to the decisions and actions of human beings.

3. A rational philosophy of ethics concerns only oneself

On a rational philosophy of ethics (notably that of Ayn Rand), the good concerns things that aid in one’s own survival or happiness (i.e., concerns values), and concerns rational (hence practical) ways of obtaining them (i.e., concerns virtues). Evil concerns things that threaten or undermine one’s own survival or happiness (i.e., concerns disvalues) and concerns irrational (hence impractical) ways of attempting to obtain values or disvalues (i.e., concerns vices).

Every decision and action by a human being can be evaluated as good or as evil. A rational philosophy of ethics does not concern relations between or among individuals. It concerns only the implications of a decision/action for the thinker/doer. Thus, even the man living alone on an island thinks or does good things or evil things.

It follows that the same, egoistic standard of good and evil applies even when one’s decisions or actions involve other human beings. The impact on others is not directly relevant to the goodness or evil of a decision or action. The essential question, in ethical evaluation, is whether the decision or action is, over the long term, supportive of one’s own survival and happiness, or destructive of it.

4. Political philosophy distinguished from ethics

Just as ethical philosophy is not a part of epistemological philosophy, political philosophy is not a part of ethical philosophy. Nor is political philosophy the application of ethics to social situations or interactions.

Political philosophy concerns itself not with good and evil, but with legal and illegal. It concerns itself not with should and should not but with shall and shall not. It deals not with the persuasive but with the coercive. It concerns itself not with the differing values held – and emotions experienced – by different people, but with the making and enforcement of laws common to all individuals in a given jurisdiction.

5. Political philosophy concerns law-making and law-enforcement

As such, political philosophy necessarily concerns not one but two distinguishable sorts of entities: the government and the governed; the law-maker and the law-breaker. Specifically, political philosophy concerns the source, execution, and scope of a government’s law-making and law-enforcement power.

(a) The Source of a Government’s Power

The source of a government’s power concerns the entity that is served by a government. In a free society, human beings are the entities being served. Accordingly, in a free society, the source of a government’s power is human beings.

Accordingly, in a free society, a person lives not in a theocracy (from the Greek theos, meaning “god”, and the Greek kratos meaning “power”, hence “god power”), or a plutocracy (from the Greek plutus, meaning “wealth”, hence: “wealthy-people power”), or an aristocracy (from the Greek aristo, meaning “best”, hence “best-people power”) but in a democracy (from the Greek demos, meaning “people”, hence “people power”). In a free society, “governance” means governance “of the people, for the people“. It does not mean governance “of the people, for Allah“; it does not mean governance “of the people, for the wealthy people“; and it does not mean governance “of the people, for the best people“.

(b) The executor of governmental power

The executor of a government’s power is a person or group of people who/that makes and enforces laws. Where the law-maker is a single person, the government is a monarchy (from the Greek mono meaning “one”, and arkhon meaning “ruler”, hence “one ruler”). Where the law maker is a few people, the government is an oligarchy (from the Greek oligos meaning “few”, hence “few rulers”). And where the law maker is all of the people – typically represented by a “president” – the government is a republic (from the latin res, which means “thing”, and publica which means “public”, hence “republic” means “public thing”).

That which abuses force is not a government, but an organized, criminal, gang. Accordingly, when those making and enforcing laws are an organized criminal gang, one has no government; no executor. One is living in a state of anarchy (“no ruler”).

(c) The scope of a government’s power

The scope of a government’s power concerns the line between governance and criminality; between using force and abusing force. That scope always is determined with reference to the nature of the things that are governed.

In a free society, human beings are the things that are governed, so the scope is determined with reference to human nature. The phrase “human nature”, in this context, does not refer to what humans tend to do, like vote for socialists, envy the successful, or cheat to get ahead. Rather, in this context, “human nature” refers to the essence of what makes humans humans; of what essential characteristics distinguish humans from other things in nature.

With respect to metaphysics, human beings are individual entities, not parts of a greater entity; not parts of a collective entity. They are akin not to leaves on a tree, but to individual trees.

With respect to epistemology, human beings have a faculty of reason. They are born lacking knowledge (as Aristotle put it, we start as a tabula rasa, meaning “blank slate”) and must obtain that knowledge by way of sensation, perception, and that uniquely-human faculty of cognition: reason. Each individual human being must think and act rationally if she is to achieve her own survival and happiness.

With respect to ethics, human beings are entities each of whose highest moral purpose is to pursue his own happiness, on this Earth, in this life. To that end, human beings are entities who not only can but should attempt to obtain values (material things and spiritual things upon which a human being’s life and happiness depends) by rational means.

Because the scope of government’s law-making/enforcement powers is to be determined with reference to the nature of human beings, that scope is to be determined with reference to each of the essential characteristics of human beings. It must must recognize and respect the metaphysical fact that a human being is an individual entity; the epistemological fact that a human being has and must use a faculty of reason to survive; the ethical facts that a human being’s highest ethical purpose is to pursue her own happiness and that a human being’s highest virtue is to earn the values needed to achieve that happiness by rational – which is to imply practical – means.

6. The nature of law

Every law ultimately concerns the circumstances pursuant to which a government may use physical force. Consider, for example, a law against jay-walking. If you violate the jay-walking law, the government may issue to you a fine, which is a demand that you hand over some money (i.e., property) or else face the possibility that you will be locked in a jail cell (i.e., that you will have your liberty taken from you). And, should you attempt to use force to prevent the officers from taking you to jail, the jay-walking law – like all laws – ultimately gives the government the power to take your life, in defence both of the rule of law and of the lives of those who enforce the law.

7. The purpose and scope of the law in a free society

In a free society, the purpose of law, ultimately, is to direct government’s use of force such that it is used to defend human nature as against those who endeavour to defeat or oppose it. Naturally, that purpose implies making laws to authorize the use of force by government to prevent anyone from taking an individual’s life, liberty, or property without his or her consent. However, it is not the case that the only way to defeat or oppose human nature is for one of the governed to take another individual’s life, liberty, or property without her consent.

Another way is for an organized criminal gang – typically, one elected to abuse the powers of government – to make and enforce laws that deny the metaphysical fact of a human beings’s individuality; that deny the epistemological fact of a human being’s unique mode of obtaining knowledge by way of using his/her faculty of reason properly; or that deny the ethical fact that a human individual’s highest purpose is the pursuit of her own happiness. In other words, another way to defeat or oppose human nature is to make laws pursuant to which governmental force is applied to facilitate collectivism and oppose individualism; to enforce irrational decisions and actions; or to facilitate sacrifice and oppose each individual’s pursuit of his/her own happiness.

For this reason, the scope of laws, in a free society, are never so broad as to permit government to use physical force to oppose human nature. No law exists pursuant to which government – the defender of every individual’s human nature – groups people according to some feature – such as “race”, sex, place of birth, vaccination status, etc. – judges all deemed members of that collective/group the same way, irrespective of material differences among individuals deemed to comprise that collective, and determines whether or not to use force against deemed members of that alleged collective. No law exists pursuant to which government treats human beings as though they have the same nature as animals incapable of reason. No law exists pursuant to which government requires each human being to sacrifice for the alleged benefit of his neighbour or to achieve an alleged “greater good”.

8. The purpose and scope of individual rights, according to the Rights Argument

Now, let us return to the Rights Argument. The essence of the Rights Argument is not about the origin of a human being’s rights of life, liberty, or property – e.g., that they are God-given, or that they are necessary given the nature of a human being and the human mode of survival – but about a government’s obligations in the face of rights. According to the Rights Argument, the only role of government is make and enforce laws that serve the purpose of defending everyone’s rights.

On the Rights Argument view, the purpose of government is to assure that one’s decision – about how to use or dispose of one’s efforts or one’s property – prevails in all circumstances. One implication of that view is that the scope of the government’s law-making/enforcement powers is not limited by the reason for one’s decision; is not conditional upon one’s goal in calling upon the government to use force on one’s behalf.

For example, let us imagine a racist coffee shop owner who – as light-skinned racists did in the past – posts a sign on his shop door saying “We serve only whites: everyone else is not welcome and must not enter!”. A dark-skinned man enters the coffee shop. The shop owner yells out “We don’t serve your kind, get out of my shop!”. The man calmly refuses to leave, and politely orders a cup of coffee. According to the Rights Argument proponents, the coffee-shop owner has a right to his “property” (a reference to the store) and the dark-skinned man, by refusing to leave the store, is violating the coffee-shop owner’s right to decide who to allow on his property and who to serve. According to the Rights Argument proponents, if the coffee-shop owner calls the police to have the man removed for violating his right of property (i.e., for trespassing), it is a proper role for the government forcibly to remove the man from the coffee-shop owner’s shop. “Sure, it’s immoral”, Rights Argument proponents often will be heard to say, “and I wouldn’t do it, but it’s his store and he has the right to admit or bar anyone he wants to admit or bar, and he has no obligation to serve anyone he doesn’t want to serve.”

The argument is not peculiar to racism. The same Rights Argument conclusion will be asserted whether the coffee-shop owner does not want to admit or serve coffee to someone because he is gay, or was born in Taiwan, or is a Muslim, or is “one of the unvaccinated”. The Rights Argument requires that the government use force to remove from the coffee shop whoever the coffee shop owner wants removed, regardless of why the coffee shop owner wants him removed. The law, according to the Rights Argument view, must turn a blind eye to a shop-owners anti-individualist/pro-collectivist reasons/motive for denying access or service to someone. The government must enforce virtually any form of collectivism if called upon to do so.

Nor is the Rights Argument peculiar to collectivism. The Rights Argument is compatible also with the notion that the government has an obligation to use force to treat human beings as akin to barnyard animals instead of thinking, choosing, individuals having a faculty of reason. Let us imagine a wills and estates lawyer who thinks that women are incapable of making wise legal decisions for themselves. Let us imagine that the lawyer refuses to prepare a will for any woman in accordance with her instructions, and that he instead requires her husband to instruct him, on her behalf. If a woman enters his office offering to pay for the preparation of a will, and the lawyer tells her to leave his office and come back with her husband then, on the Rights Argument view, if the lawyer calls upon the police to have her forcibly removed from his office, the police must do so, because the government must respect and defend the lawyer’s property rights and liberty rights. The law, according to the Rights Argument view, must ignore the lawyers anti-reason motive for removing the woman.

The Rights Argument is compatible also with the notion that the government has an obligation to use force to encourage or require individuals to sacrifice their happiness or survival for the relief or lives of others. Let us imagine that a private association of financial services companies have set up a “social credit” system – akin to that which already exists in communist China – that increases an individual’s social credit score if she donates money to feed strangers (i.e., demonstrates that she is altruistic), but that decreases an individual’s social credit score if she buys a high-end restaurant to make profit selling meals to the rich and powerful (i.e., demonstrates that she is rationally egoistic). Let us imagine that a grocer refuses to sell food to a person who lacks a high social credit score, and demands that a person with a low social credit score leave his grocery store. On the Rights Argument view, if the grocer calls upon the police to have the person forcibly removed from his store, the police must do so, in defence of the grocer’s rights of property and liberty. The law, according to the Rights Argument view, must ignore the grocer’s goal of pressuring individuals to be altruistic.

In short, if the scope of government law-making/enforcement power is determined solely by the decisions of rights-holders, without regard to the reasons for those decisions, the government’s purpose includes not only defending individualism but opposing it; not only defending Man’s rational nature but defeating it; not only facilitating one’s rational pursuit of one’s own happiness but punishing it. There is absolutely no incompatibility between the Rights Argument and the use of coercive physical force by government to create a collectivist, anti-reason, sacrificial society. In other words, there is no incompatibility between the Rights Argument and the achievement of a fascist society.

9. Law begets rights, human nature begets law

As indicated above, if one determines the scope of a government’s power by way of the Rights Argument, one ends up with a government that has the power to utterly destroy individual freedom and capitalism. However, if one instead founds the scope of a government’s power upon the nature of a human being – upon a human being’s individual, reasoning, happiness-pursuing nature – one ends up with a government that lacks that destructive power.

Rights are not ethical in nature: they are political in nature. They concern not shoulds but shalls.

Absent laws, governments have no power to use force.  Absent laws, government has no power to recognize or defend rights.  It is only when a law establishes a right that a government can enforce that legal right.  Because laws serve the purpose of defending human nature, that purpose determines the nature, and delimits the scope, of rights.

It follows that, in a society with laws that defend the individuality of humans – i.e., in a free society – every individual is equal under the law, without regard to any alleged membership in a collective, so nobody has a right pursuant to which the government must use force for or against collectives (whether defined by “race”, “sex”, “vaccination status” or what-have-you). In a free society, the law does not regard any normal adult to lack the capacity to consent or to withhold consent – no normal adult is thought to lack a rational faculty – so nobody has a right to have government make or enforce personal decisions (e.g., the decision to undergo a medical procedure) on behalf of the governed. In a free society, the law respects the fact that every individual’s highest moral purpose is to pursue his/her own happiness, so nobody has a right to have the government forcibly punish someone for making decisions consistent with the pursuit of his own happiness. In short, because all of the rights enforced by a government are created by laws, and because all laws in a free society serve only the purpose of defending the individual, reasoning, happiness-pursuing nature of human beings, there is no right to use one’s life, liberty or property for the purpose of defeating individualism, or with the aim of opposing the role of reason in the lives of individuals, or with the goal of punishing or discouraging the pursuit of one’s own happiness.  All rights serve the purpose of defending individuality, reason, and the pursuit of happiness.

In a society with laws (hence rights) that defend human nature, there is no circumstance in which an individual’s life, liberty, or property can be taken from him without his consent. If the coffee-shop owner calls upon police forcibly to remove an individual who always comes in and starts fist-fights and fires, the police rightly use force to prevent the individual from harming the store owner, his patrons, or his store. If the lawyer calls upon police to remove from his office a person who routinely causes a disturbance and makes it impossible for others to hear and learn from the lawyer, the police rightly remove that person in defence of the lawyer’s liberty to advise in exchange for monetary reward, and in defence of the lawyer’s clients’ liberty to obtain advice in exchange for payment. If a person attends a grocery store not to buy food but only to interrupt shoppers and tell them about why they should read Ayn Rand’s works – or those of Karl Marx – the police rightly defend the liberty and property of the grocer – and the liberty of his patrons – if they, when called upon to do so by the grocer, forcibly remove the pushy advocate. In each of these examples, the purpose of using force is not to defeat human nature, but to defend it. In each case, the life, liberty, or property of the individual goods or service provider is defended, and no person’s rights of life, liberty, or property are violated.

10. The failure of the Rights Argument

The Rights Argument fails ultimately because it fails to recognize that rights exist to serve the purpose of defending human nature. As a consequence of that failure, it implicitly advocates the propriety of government using physical force to defeat individualism, reason, and the rational pursuit of one’s own happiness. It implicitly advocates the position that government has no business defending individualism from the attacks of collectivists; no business defending the law-maker’s recognition of Man’s rational nature from the demands of some to treat the governed like barnyard animals. It implicitly advocates the position that government has no business defending one’s pursuit of one’s own happiness from those who want everyone to sacrifice their happiness – even their health or their lives – for others or for the “greater good”. In short, the Rights Argument presents a perverse notion of rights; one in which rights can be used to defeat the very thing that makes them necessary: human nature.

I have little doubt that proponents of the Rights Argument genuinely want a government that uses force to defend every individual’s freedom. However, by continuing to propound the Rights Argument, proponents of freedom are presenting – in the name of freedom – an argument that can be used for the advancement of collectivism, irrationality, and altruism; for the championing of fascism. If advocates of freedom are to have any chance of opposing the tyranny now being foisted upon the globe – often at the request of businesses – they must stop empowering fascism with the Rights Argument. They must demand that government use force only to defend human nature. The consequence will be rights worth having.

Hi all:

[…]

I agree re: [the Objectivist]. It’s not that I dislike him or anything. However, he seems to share the libertarian curse of being indifferent to the role of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics in governmental decision-making. There’s a common fallacy – shared by libertarians and many Objectivists alike – that only the political branch of philosophy guides (i.e., has any relevance to) governmental decision-making.

As examples to the contrary, consider the various decisions that governments make, every day, about ethical, epistemological and metaphysical questions:

(a) That the pursuit of your own happiness is your highest purpose is a claim in ethics, not in politics. That achieving that happiness requires you to obtain objectively-determined values by rational means is a topic in ethics, not in politics. Why does government need to guide its decisions by such ethical concerns? Because it has to know *what* it is governing/defending, and *say* what it is defending. It is *making* only those laws that prevent others from preventing you from attempting to fulfill your ultimate purpose. If, according to government, Man’s nature is such that his highest purpose is to sacrifice of himself for the “greater good”, then government cannot justify making laws against someone taking your life, liberty, or property without your consent. If, according to government, Man’s nature is such that his highest purpose is to pursue his own happiness, then government cannot justify making laws pursuant to which it takes your life, liberty, or property without your consent. The moral issue of ultimate purpose is not a political non-issue. Every bloody day, government says or implies that our highest moral purpose is to stay locked down so that someone else’s granny doesn’t die. Every bloody day, government says or implies that your highest moral purpose is to sacrifice for the greater good. It says or implies such things because it has DECIDED such things to be the case. PURSUANT TO decisions about moral questions, it then makes political decisions to pass and enforce laws to lock us down, stick us with technology, and group us into those free to pass and not free to pass. The government’s political decision is preceded with its moral decision.

(b) That values are things that contribute – in the long term – to your *own* survival and happiness is claim in ethics, not in politics. When government decides that “We’ve got to deal with today’s problems today, and worry about tomorrow’s problems tomorrow”, it is deciding that your long term survival and happiness is irrelevant. That’s a moral decision, made by a government. It is not a political decision. When it says that fluoride is a good thing to add to the water supply, even if you take care of your teeth, it is deciding – at least implicitly – that value is intrinsic, not objective. That is a moral decision, not a political one. When it adds the chlorine, it is making a political decision that was preceded by its decision about the nature of moral value.

(c) That virtues are actions that facilitate your obtaining of objective values is a claim in ethics, not in politics. Before a government makes the political decision to impose a tax on “the rich” to fund a universal basic income, it first decides that it is virtuous for the governed to obtain values not by way of rational efforts but by way of force. That’s a moral issue, not a political one.

(d) When a government decides to impose lockdowns, mandatory vaccinations, or vaccine passports because 60% of physicians polled say that lock-downs, or vaccines, or vaccination passports save lives, the political decision to impose these measures is preceded by a decision about what to treat as a means of obtaining knowledge [i.e., the decision that a show of hands is a means of obtaining knowledge]. It makes an epistemological decision and, only thereafter, makes a political decision.

(e) When government decides to pass a law against “mis-gendering” because one’s gender is determined by how one “identifies”, or invests money in “the economy” because there reportedly is little “confidence” in the economy, it is acting upon its metaphysical decision that consciousness has primacy over existence. First it decides “mind over matter” metaphysically, then it decides “matter over mind” politically.

In short: a government is a *decision-maker*, and every political decision is preceded by a host of metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical decisions.

It is no different than you are, as a decision maker. Try it out on a personal basis. Pick any action on your part, and trace back all of the decisions that had to be made before you acted. Example: forcefully preventing a person from taking your glass of milk. Why should you do it? That’s not a political decision, that’s a moral one: “I decided that it is right that I put my own survival before that of a stranger who I do not value more than my survival”. Why did you decide that? That’s not a political decision, it’s an epistemological one: “Because I’ve experienced first hand that my nature is such that when I do not drink my milk I get hungry and suffer pain and ultimately could cease to exist; reason also tells me that I can expect that to be the case going forward…it’s a rational induction”. Why did you decide that it is a rational induction? That’s not a political decision, it’s a metaphysical one: “Because a thing’s nature is a thing’s nature: A is A”. Now wind the tape in reverse: I am what I am (metaphysics). I have sensory experiences to the effect that when I do not drink milk, I suffer pain; my experienced sensations of pain or pleasure are biological indicators that I’m doing something consistent with death or survival; reason tells me that it is rational for me to induce that it always will be the case that I must drink my milk to survive (epistemology). There are no shoulds or should-nots for me, if I’m dead – ethics is for the living – so my survival, hence my happiness, is my highest purpose (ethics). CONSEQUENCE: “I’ve decided to beat your ass unless and until you return that milk to me” (politics). No political decision is made without first making a host of metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical decisions.

Yet [the Objectivist in question] cozies up to the libertarians – and their belief that only political philosophy is relevant to government decision making; their belief that everyone who “loves freedom” can favour all of the same governmental decisions even if they have made different metaphysical, epistemological, or ethical decisions – as though Objectivism requires nothing other, when it comes to electoral politics, political parties, politicians, and governments.

Same goes for that [other] fella [the libertarian].

There’s not a single political position that anyone can advocate without defending the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical decisions upon which it is founded. “It doesn’t matter why as long as we (or most of us) agree” is the same as saying that consciousness has primacy over existence. When that’s one’s position, freedom is no more defensible than any other popular stance (e.g., tyranny). Without a commitment to a foundation, a structural form, and materials of sufficient strength, a roof has no chance of remaining overhead. Political freedom doesn’t stand a chance without an unhidden commitment to reality, reason, and self.

Cheers,

Paul

The alleged new law is actually an “instruction” set out in a July 6, 2020 letter from the Durham Region’s medical officer of health, Robert Kyle, which was addressed to “Commercial Establishments in Durham Region”. Kyle’s authority to issue such an instruction is given to him temporarily by subjection 4(2) of the Ford Government’s temporary Ontario Regulation 263/20 which pertains to Stage 2 of the reopening (from its closure of much of the economy due to Coronavirus2).

Titled “Order under 7.0.2(4) of the Act – Stage 2 Closures”, regulation 263/20 was made pursuant to subsection 7.0.2 (4) of the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act, which allows for the making of regulatory orders “during a declared emergency”. The emergency itself was declared by way of the Ford government’s March 2020 issuance of Ontario Regulation 50/20.

The emergency is set to expire on July 15, 2020, though it was reported that the Ford government will extend the emergency one last time – to July 24, 2020 (to give the government time to pass new legislation discussed below). However, Regulation 263/20 is set to expire on July 10, 2020 (unless the Ford government extends it). Accordingly, at present, Robert Kyle has no authority to issue a mandatory mask law that takes effect 1 minute after he no longer has any power to impose it.

If the Ford government extends the life of regulation 263/20 beyond July 9th, then Robert Kyle will have authority to issue his mask-wearing instruction. If the Ford government does not extend the life of regulation 263/20, then Robert Kyle’s “instruction” will have no power to make anyone wear masks, and no power to impose fines.

In short: As of the time of publication of this July 8, 2020 report, Durham Region businesses have no obligation to start requiring their patrons to wear masks on July 10th.

Moreover, even if the expiration of regulation 263/20 were extended beyond next Tuesday, July 14, 2020, the regulation would die on July 15, 2020, when the emergency ends, at which point, Robert Kyle’s instruction would cease to have any legal effect. Subject to what I discuss below, Kyle’s mask mandate has no force or effect once the provincial emergency is ended.

Which brings me to the last piece of this report. On July 7, 2020, the Ford government introduced a new bill (Bill 195) titled An Act to Enact the Reopening of Ontario. Once it is proclaimed into force (probably during the week of of July 13th) it will end the provincial emergency. It also will allow the government to turn emergency regulations into regulations that do not require the provincial emergency to be in effect.

Why bother doing that?

One possibility is that the government wants to keep the regulations in place, but feels it is getting increasingly controversial to call the current state of affairs an “emergency”. Coronavirus2 testing is showing a decreasing number of people are testing positive for the virus. The hospitals are not under any strain due to Covid-19. Indeed, the anticipated demand for hospital resources has never happened, whether the “curve” was “flattened” or not.

Another possibility? It may be the case that the province no longer wants unelected local health officials to create a subjective, patchwork quilt of health policy across the province that interferes with an orderly centrally-planned “Reopening of Ontario”. If the province is indeed going to try to “re-open” the economy (you know: the economy that it shut down), it may have to disempower local health officials who oppose the province’s policy direction.

Also, whether it is a motive or not, when the emergency ends, so does the effect of a July 6, 2020 court order (which was sought by the Ford government, mind you) that prevents landlords from evicting tenants until the end of the month in which the emergency ends. Book your U-Haul today, tenants.

The Ontario Example

Let us start with an example. In Ontario, Canada, the provincial government posts daily testing figures. Until March 27th, the information included the total number of people tested, the number who tested positive, the number who tested negative, and the number whose test results were still pending. The government also listed all newly-tested individuals (by number) each day, indicating the mode of transmission: “travel”, “close contact”, or “community”. In the few days leading up to March 27th, the mode of transmission for all new cases was identified as either “travel”, “close contact”, or “pending”. In other words: at least for the few days leading up to March 27th, “community” transmission was not listed as the mode of transmission for any of the new cases listed.

On March 27th, the government stopped listing the newly-listed individuals. They stopped telling the public the mode of transmission for each of the newly-tested individuals whose results were known.

On March 30th, the government again changed what it reported. It now provides information about the sex and age range of those tested.

The title of this daily report – at least at this point – is “The 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)”. That title caught my eye yesterday for one reason. Specifically, the title implies that “COVID-19” is a synonym for “The 2019 Novel Coronavirus”. But it’s not.

The World Health Organization’s Explanation

On a web page titled “Naming the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and the virus that causes it”, the WHO explains as follows:

“Official names have been announced for the virus responsible for COVID-19 (previously known as “2019 novel coronavirus”) and the disease it causes. The official names are:

Disease: coronavirus disease (COVID-19)

Virus: severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)

Why do the virus and the disease have different names?

Viruses, and the diseases they cause, often have different names. For example, HIV is the virus that causes AIDS. People often know the name of a disease, such as measles, but not the name of the virus that causes it (rubeola).

Keep that in mind as we proceed. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is the thing that is being spread. Covid-19 is the disease that affects some – not all – of the people who become infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. When you hear that those with pre-existing conditions and those over the age of 80 are particularly vulnerable, you should understand that to mean that not everyone reacts to infection the same way. Some people become infected with the virus, but do not suffer from the disease (which can include such symptoms as cough, fever, and difficulty breathing). Others develop the Covid-19 disease. Some who develop the Covid-19 disease die. Some of those who die die from Covid-19. Others who suffer from Covid-19 die from other causes.

Because you can be infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus without experiencing symptoms of Covid-19 disease, you can be infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus without knowing it. Indeed, it is suspected that many have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, have suffered no disease while infected, and are no longer infected with the virus. Without testing for that, we just do not for how many people that is true.

The WHO goes on to explain why, when speaking about the SARS-CoV-2 virus, they do not just refer to it by its actual name:

ICTV announced “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)” as the name of the new virus on 11 February 2020. This name was chosen because the virus is genetically related to the coronavirus responsible for the SARS outbreak of 2003. While related, the two viruses are different.

[…]

From a risk communications perspective, using the name SARS can have unintended consequences in terms of creating unnecessary fear for some populations, especially in Asia which was worst affected by the SARS outbreak in 2003.

For that reason and others, WHO has begun referring to the virus as “the virus responsible for COVID-19” or “the COVID-19 virus” when communicating with the public. Neither of these designations are intended as replacements for the official name of the virus as agreed by the ICTV.” (emphasis added)

So, there you have it. The name of the virus – SARS-CoV-2 – has the word “SARS” in it. Using the word “SARS” can create “unnecessary fear” for some people, so the WHO prefers to refer to the disease (Covid-19) that some people suffer as a result of infection by the virus.

Ontario’s Explanation

Now, let us return to the Ontario example. Whereas the WHO refers to the virus as “the virus responsible for COVID-19”, Ontario has dispensed with subtlety and instead decided to just tell everyone that the virus and the disease are the same thing. If you do enough digging, you’ll find this page, on which Public Health Ontario’s Laboratory Service department explains:

“The causative agent for COVID-19 disease is SARS-CoV-2 virus. For the purpose of clear communication, PHO uses the term COVID-19 to refer to both the virus and the disease.”

That last sentence makes no sense at all. If what one is aiming for is “clear communication”, one does not use the same term to refer both to the cause and the effect (i.e., to both the virus and the disease). Clearly, the goal is “unclear” communication. I leave it to the reader to guess why.

Mis-labeling Facilitates Misrepresentation of Meaning of Virus Data

Leave aside the matronizing nature of that decision, however, and consider the effect of the decision on the reporting interpretation of test results. At the top of the table of results, Ontario places the title “Summary of cases of COVID-19”. The problem is: the data is not a summary of cases of the disease. The test that is being administered is one that checks for the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, not for the presence of the Covid-19 disease. The table is therefore a summary of the results of people tested for the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Does this difference matter? It might or it might not, depending upon whether those who are tested are already showing symptoms of the Covid-19 disease. We know how many of those who are tested test positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus (it has been holding pretty steady at about 1.5% of those tested, whose results are not “pending”), and we know how many tested negative (as of March 29, 82.6% of those with test results were found not to be infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus). But we are not being told what percentage of the infected are falling ill with the Covid-19 disease. The virus/disease distinction is an important one, because it is believed that fifty percent (50%) of those who are infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus show no symptoms of having the Covid-19 disease.

Those who are infected should certainly be quarantining themselves until they are no longer infected, so that they minimize the likelihood that they will transmit the virus to others. However, if some of them are not suffering from the Covid-19 disease, Ontario’s summary of “Covid-19” data that is actually SARS-CoV-2 viral infection data falsely inflates the number of infected people who are suffering from Covid-19.

Why does that matter? Because those who are infected with the SARS-CoV-2 do not necessarily need the services of a hospital, whereas those heavily affected by the Covid-19 disease might. By presenting us with virus data, and telling us it is disease data, we are getting an inflated sense of current demand for health services.

There is little doubt that our health services are constantly challenged, and will have a hard time dealing with what is sure to be a large bolus of Covid-19 disease patients. We’re facing a crisis. There’s no need to goose the numbers.

It’s not “clear communication”. It’s misinformation. We deserve better from our communications people.

Faced with the rise of the latter fears, politicians are beginning to worry. On one hand, they have told the populace that it is right for us all to sacrifice for the good of the people who are vulnerable to the disease caused, in some, by the Coronavirus: Covid-19. On the other hand, it is becoming increasingly obvious to all that the government’s shut-down of the economy is not practical. The question for politicians is: How do I now justify ending the governmental policy that I’ve already told everyone is the right and moral thing to do without being morally condemned for it? Alternatively, how do I justify not ending the shut-down without looking like I’m impractical?

“An Impossible Dilemma”

Enter the “impossible dilemma” idea. “An impossible dilemma” reads the headline on the front page of the massive Saturday, March 27, 2020 edition of Toronto Star newspaper. The paper is quoting one Nicola Lacetera, the chief scientist at the Behavioural Economics in Action centre at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. Lacetera is referring to a choice between ending the government’s current economy-strangling responses to the the spread of the CoronaVirus, and continuing those responses. According to his claim, policy-makers face an “impossible dilemma” because, whether they continue the economic shut-down or end it, people will be harmed.

The Star attributes to Lacetera the view that “the debate” – between continuing or discontinuing the economic shut-down – “will revolve around the values society considers absolute, and those it decides can be compromised.” In other words, allegedly faced with the impossible, he expects that politicians now will begin to advocate some sort of compromise. However, if politicians explicitly compromise on their ethics – if they come right out and say that we must end the economic shut down even though the shut-down is altruistic – they face the very real prospect of being called morally corrupt.

Politicians need another way of compromising. They need a way that does not look like it involves a violation, by the politician, of the ethical code that gave rise to the economic shut-down; one that will leave the gullible public with the impression that – whether they do a 180 degree reversal on the economic shut-down policy or not – their governmental leaders have neither compromised their ethics nor embraced the impractical.

Enter Economics

Their answer, as is usual, will be to defer to economists. Specifically, those who want to end the economic shut-down without appearing immoral are now are replacing ethics – which is chock full of clear, uncompromisable rules – with a science that is portrayed to be devoid of ethical philosophy and to be committed to determining the right course of action quantitatively.

It is no coincidence that the Toronto Star includes, in the article with Lacetera, quotations of three (unnamed) economists in the aforementioned Toronto Star article (whose names I’ve discovered to be Martin Eichenbaum, Sérgio Rebelo, Mathias Trabandt). These three fellows authored an article titled “The Macroeconomics of Epidemics“. The three economists submit, in the Star article, that:

“Those containment measures cause a large recession. But this recession is worth incurring in the hope that the vaccination arrives before many people get infected.”

The problem with the strategy of deferring to economists is that economic judgments are always implicitly laden with moral judgments. Moreover, every economic recommendation can be morally evaluated.

Note the word “worth” in the quotation of the three economists, above. To say that a “large recession” is “worth” the hope it buys is to assert that it is morally right to cause the large recession. I haven’t read the three economists’ article, but it does not matter why they think the recession is worth the hope. Whatever the reason – whether it will minimize economic losses, maximize the number of saved lives, or what have you – to assert that X should be done to achieve Y is to assert that doing X is morally the right thing to do.

My point is that to replace “it’s the moral thing to do” with “it’s the economic thing to do” is not to replace ethics with economics. It is to replace one person’s moral judgment (say, that of a physician) with another person’s moral judgment (that of an economist).

Thus far, politicians have been deferring to physicians and virologists. They have not merely sought data. They have essentially allowed physicians and virologists to set public policy. A physician’s whole role in professional life is to ease pain and help prevent death. When that is translated into social matters, life-saving ends up trumping all-else. All other considerations must be sacrificed to the physician’s life-saving role. Sacrificing of yourself so that the physicians’ patients are less likely to die is held to be the right thing to do; the moral thing to do. Consequently, when the government allows medical professionals to set public policy – as they have – they necessarily end up with policy founded upon an altruist ethics which deems it morally right for non-patients and won’t-be patients to sacrifice their businesses and jobs (none of which are of any medical interest) so as to save the patients and will-be patients.

Now, seeing the economic damage being done by their economic shut-down policy, politicians appear ready to defer to economists. Will this change anything fundamental? It’s unlikely.

You will note that the three aforementioned economists’ paper concerned “macroeconomics”, not “microeconomics”. Their concern is not for what decisions are right for any one individual, but for what decisions are right for everyone, considered as a unified whole. It is a necessarily collectivist point of view, hence a point of view in which the rights and interests of the individual are trumped by the alleged pursuit of the good for the collective. In other words: the lives, liberty, and property of the individual are dispensible concerns for the economist whose interest is the collective good. They are things that the individual is expected to sacrifice for whatever “greater good” is identified by the economist.

Replacing the altruistic public policy of physicians with the altruistic public policy of economists will yield the same collectivist sacrifice of the individual to the collective. The allocation of the wealth stolen from all for the alleged good of the collective might be distributed differently by economists than it would be by physicians, but the basic principle of wealth redistribution from those who earn to those who do not shows no signs of exiting.

Economics Is Trusted Because It Purports To Be Amoral, Scientific

Despite the fact that economics is implicitly and inescapably guided by ethics and subject to moral evaluation, economics is widely and erroneously viewed as amoral. The policy recommendations of economists are often taken to be respectable not because they are moral, but because they are thought to be “scientific”, economically practical, and purportedly immune to the ethical influences or judgments that some find objectionable or divisive. Indeed, the majority of today’s libertarians take their guidance not from ethical philosophers – because libertarians disagree on ethics – but from economists. The libertarians, like so many other misguided or deluded folks, view economics as a way of knowing what one should do without having to consider what one morally ought to do…as though “should” and “morally ought” were different things.

Though politicians will now begin resorting to what economists are saying as a way of dealing with their allegedly “impossible” ethical dilemma, the fact of that matter is that if a politician acts upon an economist’s recommendation that the economic shut-down be ended, it will remain the case that the politician has done an anti-altruistic thing. And, if a politician acts upon an economist’s recommendation that the economic shut-down not be ended, it will remain the case that the politician has done an impractical thing. Politicians cannot escape moral or practical culpability by founding their decisions upon the recommendations of economists. The “economists made me do it” is no more convincing, to a rational person, than “The Devil made me do it”.

Tracing It Back: Altruism Is The Root Issue

Let us assume that the altruism ultimately will yield to practical reality (as it always does for those who continue to live). Let us trace this backward before going further forward. A politician cites from economists a recommendation to end the economic shut-down because economic advice appears morally neutral (even though it isn’t). By acting on purportedly morally-neutral economic advice, the politician hopes to avoid moral condemnation for reversing a policy that was founded upon the altruistic philosophy that underpins the economic shut-down; a philosophy that has been adopted because politicians have been deferring to physicians, whose profession requires them to make life-saving the only priority; a philosophy that ends up sacrificing the lives, liberties, and property of the governed. The politician seeks a reversal of policy because it turns out that the altruistic policy of saving lives by shutting down the entire economy is not practical. The policy is not practical because altruism itself holds not the the pursuit of one’s own happiness, but the sacrifice of oneself to others, as the highest virtue and purpose of ones life.

Self-sacrifice is not self-preservation. If nobody is preserving himself, and everybody is sacrificing to everybody else, nothing gets produced. Altruism is a philosophy diametrically opposed to making and acting upon the decisions that aim to help one survive on this earth and achieve happiness. It is a philosophy attractive to something-for-nothingers, who hope that they will get more than they contribute amidst the orgy of sacrifice, and it is attractive to those who are trying to earn their wings in Heaven (most religions demand an altruistic life as the ticket to an after-life of effortless bliss). However, it cannot be reconciled with economic prosperity, and medical services cannot exist in the absence of economic prosperity. The commitment of our policy makers to founding policy on an altruist ethics is the root killer in this whole ugly fiasco.

A Commitment to Altruism Is What Gives Rise To An “Impossible Dilemma”

A commitment to altruism is also the only thing that makes an “impossible” ethical dilemma possible. Think of it like this: When you come to a fork at the end of Altruist Road, and both forks lead to a dead end, it is not the case that you face an “impossible dilemma” and must therefore follow one of the forks. You have an alternative. Your alternative is to turn around and get off of Altruist Road. But if you are committed to staying on Altruist Road, you are committing yourself also to a dead end.

So it is with respect to the making of public policy in response to Coronavirus. By shutting down the economy, the government bankrupts employers and employees, ruining lives. By not shutting down the economy, a virus spreads more quickly, potentially causing more demand for health care services than can be supplied at one time, which potentially leads to more deaths from Coronavirus infection. Those are the two forks in the road – each leading to a dead end – when the government founds its public policy upon an altruistic ethics.

Such is not the case if one doesn’t go down that road. Ethical dilemmas do not arise when a government’s policies are founded upon a rational egoist ethical philosophy. Under that philosophy, the government respects that every individual’s highest purpose is the pursuit of his own happiness on this earth, in this life. The government acknowledges that, to pursue one’s own happiness successfully, one must be free to make the choices that, in the long run, may result in the achievement of one’s own happiness. The government acknowledges that one is not free if others can take one’s life, liberty, or property without one’s consent. And the government, when it is operating on a rational egoist ethics, makes laws to prevent others from taking one’s life, liberty, or property without one’s consent. It does not make laws that take one’s life, liberty, or property without one’s consent.

Now, consider, from the rational egoist perspective, the decision either to continue the government’s shut-down of the economy, or to end it. If the government chooses to strangle the economy, it is deliberately choosing to harm millions of people: it is taking lives, liberties, and property from people, which is contrary to the rational egoist ethics. Choosing to take that path is choosing to deny people the means of pursuing their own survival and happiness. It is what rational egoism deems the wrong/evil choice.

However, if the government chooses to end the economic shut-down – if it allows people to take personal responsibility for their healthcare decisions (including decisions about whether to open or close one’s business; or decisions about how much to expose one’s self to other people) – it is acting perfectly consistently with the rational egoist ethics. It is defending every individual’s freedom to make choices that may or may not be self-harming, while defending every individual from those who might attempt to take away the individual’s freedom to choose. Choosing to take that path is choosing to defend every individual’s means of survival. It is what rational egoism deems the right/good choice.

In the context of CoronaVirus policy, the implications for alleged moral dilemmas are clear. If every individual’s highest purpose is to pursue his own happiness by rational means – i.e., by means that do not involve taking another person’s life, liberty, or property without her consent – then those who are in need of medical services have no desire to attempt to survive by taking the lives, liberties, or property of other people without their consent. Nor do they want the government to engage in such vicious conduct on their behalf. Nor does the government fail to make a moral choice when it decides not to engage in such policy, even if the goal of the policy is to save someone’s life. There are some means that one never resorts to, for any end, if one is moral by the rational egoist standard. As a result, one never ends up faced with a moral dilemma. By acting in accordance with rational egoism, the government is acting morally for the ill and the non-ill alike. The interests of the ill and the non-ill are the same: to be free.

The Government Has Authored Its Own Dilemma: It Is Not Excusable

In deciding upon public policy in response to Coronavirus, our governments have maintained a commitment to making decisions on an altruistic ethical foundation. Altruism being impractical, the politicians now feel that they face an “impossible” ethical dilemma. However, that dilemma would not exist but for the government’s commitment to an altruistic ethics. Consequently, our policy-makers are the authors of the dilemma they now claim to face. Being the authors, they cannot use the dilemma as an excuse for the decisions that they make going forward, whether they decide to continue the economic shut-down or end it.

Were our policy makers to commit themselves to founding public policy upon a rational egoist ethical base, there could be no moral dilemma. There would be no need to use economics as a purportedly amoral excuse for reversing course and ending the economic shut-down. Our policy makers could assert, with complete moral fidelity, that by ending the economic shut-down, they are doing not merely the practical thing, but the morally right thing.

If they are not to be condemned morally in the history books, today’s policy-makers would be well-advised to change their ethical footing without delay. In truth, they require not an excuse for violating altruist ethics, but an excuse for not doing so sooner.

{Paul McKeever is the leader of the Freedom Party of Ontario, in Canada}

The Price System

What economists call the “price system” is so basic that we all come to understand it as children. If the price of a good or service is higher, we are less likely to buy it than were its price lower. So, when there is not enough of a good or service for everyone to have it right now, in any quantity, raising the price reduces the number of people who want to pay for the good/service, or reduces the quantity of the good/service that people buy. In this way, demand is persuaded not to exceed supply.

I have no idea what a package of Lysol wipes normally sells for in Toronto. For the sake of argument, let’s say that Pusateri’s normally sells a package for $5.00. Let’s assume as fact that which I believe to be true: that, at present, there are not enough packages of Lysol wipes to sell to everyone the quantity that they currently want to buy. At $30.00, Pusateri’s is charging for one package the price that 6 packages normally fetch. Demand for $30 packages of Lysol wipes, obviously, is not as great as demand for $5 Lysol wipes.

Now, ask yourself: Will some people who have $30 available to them decide against using that money to buy one package of Lysol wipes? The clear answer is: “Of course”. Some people will decide that their $30 would be better spent on other things, at present (e.g., food, perhaps). Now ask yourself: Would any of those very same people decide to buy one or more packages of Lysol wipes if Pusateri’s was still selling them for $5? The clear answer, again, is: “Of course”.

Hoarding

But “Of course” is only a part of the answer. When the demand for something really important – e.g., food, toilet paper, or, during a viral outbreak, Lysol wipes – is greater than the available supply, buyers fear that if they do not buy more than they currently need, they might not have what they need days or weeks into the future. The urge for many people – which we’ve seen on any number of youtube videos in recent days – is to essentially take the attitude: “Early bird gets the worm, sucks to be you”. The result of that fear and disregard is: hoarding…sometimes even fistycuffs.

The result of the hoarding is empty shelves. The clear example, today, is the seen-everywhere empty toilet paper shelves. Apparently, fearing that the government would quarantine them in response to the viral spread (and it was clearly a justified fear), folks bought an unusually large quantity of toilet paper. Fearing the virus, they bought an unusually large quantity of Lysol wipes. They left behind toilet paper shelves reminiscent of those found in Venezuela: empty. The hoarders took it all. Everyone else was left wondering if they would be resorting to disgusting or plumbing-damaging alternatives to bum tissue, and praying that soap and water would be good enough in the absence of Lysol.

Hoarding’s Negative Ripple Effects

There is, of course, a ripple effect. Retailers have to decide whether to order an unusually large quantity of paper/wipes. If they buy too much, they might not have anywhere to put it without investing in more storage. And they might not be able to buy as much as they want because the manufacturer might not be willing or able to manufacture as much as is wanted by wholesalers and retailers. For example, a factory might already be manufacturing at full-speed. Or, by say doubling production now, they might be guaranteeing a slump in orders weeks or months from now. And, if they have such a slump, they’ll likely need to lay-off workers.

In short: hoarding screws up everything and makes a bad situation much worse for a longer time. So let’s get back to this “price gouging” issue.

Raising Prices Discourges Hoarding

By charging higher than the normal price for goods that are in short supply due to a fear-inducing crisis like the Coronavirus spread, hoarding is discouraged. There’s no point in pulling up a truck to Pusateri’s and loading it up with all of the Lysol wipes that Pusateri’s has to sell if it’s going for $30 a pop. Within weeks – after the hoarders have all the Lysol wipes they need to feel secure – there will be plenty of Lysol wipes on the shelves; enough to meet everyone’s demand for them. The moron who buys a truck full of $30 Lysol wipes will discover himself to have made a stupid investment when he sees shelves with plenty of $5 Lysol wipes in a few weeks.

The price system brings down demand to the level of available supply. It ensures that, when demand exceeds supply, people think very, very carefully about their immediate needs. They are discouraged from thinking “Heck, they’re only $5, let’s load up to be safe!”. They are encouraged to buy only what they need, when they need it.

So far as I can tell, the current demand for Lysol wipes greatly exceeds the currently available supply. By charging $30 for Lysol wipes, Pusateri’s was doing you a favour. They were ensuring that your fellow biped doesn’t hoard Lysol wipes, so that – if you really need them – Pusateri’s would have some available for you to purchase.

For those who would reply that the same control on demand can be effected by placing a N-per-customer limit on high-demand products: you’re not thinking like a hoarder. A family of four can enter a store with a one-per-customer limit, and each can buy one. Alternatively, they can come back to the store over and over again. Alternatively, they can make the rounds at numerous stores. But hoarders cannot play such games when the price of goods is increased, unless they’re willing to break the bank.

Higher Profit A Reward For Preserving Product Availability

Now, I can hear some of you saying: “Pusateri’s was just trying to make a killing on Lysol wipes! They don’t give a damn about discouraging hoarding!”. I sincerely doubt that the owners of Pusateri’s are going to be buying a Lambourghini with the extra hundreds or thousands of dollars they could have made (see below) selling Lysol wipes for $30 per package for a few weeks. I’m sure they’re doing just fine, thank-you very much, without the tiny profits to be made selling Lysol wipes. I’m reasonably confident that they’d be perfectly happy and profitable even if they chose not to sell Lysol wipes at all (and frankly, were I the owner, I’d be tempted to stop selling them for a while, because the bullying they’ve received from the economically ignorant and greedy anti-pricing-system scolds is just not worth the chump change to be made selling a few packages of Lysol wipes).

But let’s play along with the morons – after all, the Premier did – and assume that Pusuateri’s owners will be bouncing around on beds of cash as a result of charging $30 per package for a few days or weeks. That changes nothing.

The price system works whether the seller is doing it to stuff his pockets or to prevent hoarding and better serve those of his patrons who really, really need Lysol wipes. If you’re really in need of Lysol wipes, would you rather see none on the shelf than see it priced at $30? If your answer is yes, then you don’t really need the wipes like others do. If your answer is no: Why should you care that Pusateri’s was financially rewarded for pricing that ensured that they had some Lysol wipes to sell to you? Frankly, that’s what the extra profit is: a reward for ensuring that demands did not exceed Pusateri’s available supply, so that there would still be some on their shelves for you to buy.

The Hypocrisy Of Opposing “Price Gouging”

I would be remiss in failing to point out the hypocrisy of the folks who would criticize a retailer for “price gouging”. Consider, as an example, that extremely low price of gasoline at present. Part of that price dip is caused by the Middle East flooding the market with an above-normal amount of oil. However, part of it is also the fact that the governments have us all staying home so as to lower demand for their ill-equipped (usually government owned-and-operated) hospitals as the Coronavirus spreads and sickens the most vulnerable. Traffic is exceptionally sparse. People aren’t driving, so they are not consuming gasoline. Gasoline sales are way down.

What does a humble gasoline retailer do when demand for his product is much lower than his supply? You guessed it! He lowers prices to encourage people to buy more gasoline than they normally would buy. In a word, he encourages them to…hoard.

Just last night, I was at a local Shell dealer buying some exceptionally inexpensive high-octane fuel for my gasoline-hungry V8. At the pumps near mine were a husband and wife. Both were taking advantage of the low prices. She was topping up their fuel devouring V8 pick-up truck, and he was giving his Ford Mustang a full helping of the hi-test gasoline.

Now, while this was going on, do you know what none of us saw or heard? There was nowhere to be found a person to shame us gasoline consumers for, in effect, price-gouging the gasoline retailer. Let’s face it, he probably won’t be able to make ends meet despite the sales. He has overhead – electricity, labour, etc. – that he has to pay whether he makes enough money to pay for it or not. Where were the scolds calling for the Premier to condemn people who gouge retailers by taking advantage of their hardship during this Coronavirus crisis? Absent.

And, do you want to know why? Because, at the end of the day, the whole “price-gouging” complaint is nothing but the whine of an economically ignorant, greedy person who imagines all business persons to be bazillionaires (when most business owners are just middle-income schmucks like their patrons), who hate and resent anyone they think to have more money than them, and who do not give a damn about the fact that you’d be out-of-luck when it came to finding Lysol wipes at Pusateri’s if Pusateri’s did not raise the price. Behind every anti-“price gouging” activist is an awful, small, envious and hateful little snake of a person; a person who cares more about getting Lysol wipes for $5 than about whether there will be any available for you.

The Premier and the Scolds Owe Pusateri’s An Apology

Finally, let’s address Premier Doug Ford’s response to the complaints about the price. Given the essential role that the price system plays in discouraging hoarding at a time like this, the only thing I find infuriating and disgusting is that the Premier was infuriated and disgusted. It is vicious for his government to thuggishly exclaim to an honest retailer that the Ford government – a government that once pretended to be in favour of a province that was “open for business” – would “come after [Pusateri’s] hard”. It is an abuse of governmental power, not only even when hoarding is a problem, but especially when hoarding is a problem.

There is a sad and unfortunate ending to this story. Pusateri’s has released a statement, in response to the Premier’s economically and morally ignorant temper tantrum, saying that the pricing was a mistake, that it apologizes, and that it will offer a refund “to every individual who purchased this product”. To be bullied into apologizing for a virtuous, anti-hoarding, pro-patron act is among the gravest forms of injustice.

The Premier owes Pusateri’s – and all retailers who responsibly have discouraged hoarding by raising prices – an apology. Consider visiting Pusateri’s this week, and thanking them for being a good neighbour at a time of disrespectful hoarding.

{Paul McKeever is the leader of the Freedom Party of Ontario, an officially registered provincial political party: https://freedomparty.on.ca}

The Material Coronavirus Facts

With respect to ethics, the material facts are these.

Numerous reports estimate that the SARS-CoV-2 virus will infect 70 percent of the population. Children appear not to fall ill after infection. Many adults will and have overcome the virus without ever knowing they have been infected. Thousands around the globe already have died from illness caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection, though they are a small percentage of the infected. Most who die of SARS-CoV-2 infection are those over the age of 80 or who otherwise have health conditions (including obesity) that compromise their ability to cope with SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Many of those who fall ill are sent home to recuperate in isolation. A minority require medical services in hospitals. In some countries, the demand for those medical services already has exceeded the supply. In other countries, it is expected that demand will spike above the available supply.

The virus passes from one person to another when an infected person’s respiratory liquids enter one’s nose, mouth, or eyes. One might inhale while a nearby infected person sneezes or coughs, or one might pick up the virus on one’s hands and introduce it to one’s nose, mouth, or eyes unwittingly by touching them with virus-laden hands.

To manage demand for medical services, many governments have decided to implement policies that will spread out demand for medical services over a greater time period. Many governments have introduced policies requiring the closure of spaces used by large numbers of people, including not only government venues but privately-owned business venues. Some have imposed curfews, requiring people to stay in their own homes.

The effects of such policies are quickly becoming apparent. Those who lose their jobs are not being paid. Unemployment could rise to 20% in America, according to the United States Treasury. People who are not getting paid are not shopping for anything except the necessities of life (if they have enough money to buy them). Those who normally sell goods or services are not selling, so they are not getting paid, but they have overhead costs for which they need to continue paying.

“A worldwide credit crunch triggered by the coronavirus will set in motion a wave of corporate bankruptcies that will make the global financial crisis look like “child’s play”, investors have warned.” – The Guardian

Unemployed renters and home owners are facing the prospect of not being able to pay their rents or mortgages, and are looking at the horrifying prospect of eviction or foreclosure in the near future. Landlords and lenders, likewise, have obligations that they will not be able to honour. The United Nations Organization anticipates a 2020 economic loss of one to two trillion dollars.

In response, many who are suffering a loss of revenue have their hand out to government. The hard-hit airline industry, which is facing bankruptcies, is seeking government bailouts. Banks too are expected to be bailed out again, as they were in response to the economic downturn of 2008. Renters and home owners want the government to force landlords and lending institutions to delay their demands for payment, eviction, and foreclosure (the Trump administration is doing just that, for the period ending April 30, 2020). Some governments are offering time-limited subsidies for the wages paid by private employers in small businesses, but business organizations and academics want more.

In short, government policies that aim to spread use of limited health care resources out over time are having dramatic economic consequences that will affect everyone. Some people have died, and others are yet to die, from illness caused by the virus (indeed, they have died in Ontario, Canada despite the fact that demand for related health care services such as ventilators has not yet exceeded supply in that province). No matter how many or how few people die, the current government policies are causing – and will continue to cause – every individual to suffer pain and losses of numerous forms (lost jobs, lost businesses, lost savings, even lives lost by way of hardship-induced suicide).

Government Policy Is The Inevitable Product Of The Government’s Underlying Ethical Philosophy

With those facts in view, let us consider ethics. Ethics is the branch of philosophy that underpins every decision about what one should or should not do. It is the do-or-don’t, should-or-shouldn’t, good-or-evil, virtue-or-vice branch of philosophy. Everything any individual or organization does is the result of a decision on its part that it should do that thing; that it is good or virtuous to do that thing.

The same applies to the policy decisions made by any government. The ethical philosophy chosen by a government is the foundation for all policy decisions. The government’s chosen ethical philosophy tells it what policies it should impose, and which it should not.

The aforementioned losses being suffered by everyone as a result of the current Coronavirus policies adopted by most governments are ultimately the result of those governments adopting an ethical philosophy that makes those losses inevitable. That ethical philosophy is the same one that underpins the policy proposals of both the Dark-siders and the Straddlers. Unless the ethical foundation currently guiding responses to the spread of SARS-Cov-2 is recognized to be flawed and to be the cause of the losses, and until the government adopts an ethical foundation consistent with human survival and happiness, the government’s adoption of the policies proposed by the Dark-sider or Straddler camps of policy wonks will lead to the same policy-induced pain and losses.

The Dark-sider Camp

The Dark-siders favour government doing everything it can to reduce the demand for medical resources. They are prepared to limit social interaction as harshly, and for as long, as is necessary – some advocating that it continue for 12 or 18 months – to spread the demand for medical services out over time (the pharmaceutical industry expects development of a vaccine to take 12 to 18 months, and a March 13, 2020 U.S. federal government response plan states that the pandemic could last 18 months or longer).

The Dark-siders realize that using laws, regulations, or emergency governmental powers to limit social interaction necessarily will involve violations of individual freedom: confining people to their homes, preventing them from trading goods and services, etc.. They realize that such use of force by government will result in the destruction of a great deal of wealth, and in the curtailment of wealth-producing activity. However, the Dark-siders claim that their ultimate goal is to minimize the number of people who die from the “Covid-19” version of SARS that some people suffer when infected with SARS-CoV-2.

For some Dark-siders, saving lives really is their ultimate goal. In some cases, that is because the Dark-sider is a medical professional whose entire professional purpose is to save lives.

However, for other Dark Siders – anti-capitalists and collectivists of every stripe (socialism, fascism, communism) – the life-saving claim is just a cover for what is actually their political goal. The collectivists in the Dark-sider camp actually are eager for the violations of individual freedom and for the destruction of private property and business. They hope that Dark-sider policy will ultimately crush the prospects for individual freedom and capitalism, and usher in the big-government, command economy, eat the rich, something-for-nothing collectivism for which they and their predecessors long have hungered and demanded.

As just a few examples of such collectivist drooling, consider:

• Leftist darling Naomi Klein is desperately attempting to get her latest phrase, “Coronavirus Capitalism” to catch on. She’s produced a new video in which she explains that the Coronavirus crisis is an opportunity:
  

  “…it’s possible for crisis to catalyze a kind of evolutionary leap. Think of the 1930s, when the Great Depression led to the New Deal. In the United States and elsewhere, governments began to weave a social safety net, so that the next time there was a crash, there would be programs like Social Security to catch people…social movements and insurgent politicians are already mobilized. And like in the 1930s, we have a whole bunch of other ideas lying around.”

  She lists a number of “ideas lying around”, including government-supplied (at taxpayer expense) healthcare for all, housing for all, the elimination of all student debt, and, of course, the “Green New Deal”. She concludes:

  “If there is one thing history teaches us, it’s that moments of shock are profoundly volatile. We either lose a whole lot of ground, get fleeced by elites and pay the price for decades, or we win progressive victories that seemed impossible just a few weeks earlier. This is no time to lose our nerve. The future will be determined by whoever is willing to fight harder for the ideas they have lying around.”

  Klein’s not the only person seeking to politically capitalize on the economic crisis caused by the current governmental policies, of course.

• There is also long-time poverty-rights activist John Clarke in Ontario, Canada, who asserts:

  “We are only beginning to understand the incredible changes and possibilities that will be opened up by the shock waves passing through the lives of millions of people. Social consciousness always lags behind social being but this is a time when a sudden narrowing of that gap can, literally, change the course of history. There may well have been no time when the need for such a surge was as desperately required or the political need to maximise it so utterly imperative.”

• To find more, just google “capitalism coronavirus”, and you’ll be able to find numerous collectivists likewise citing the economic turmoil – largely caused by the government’s policy response to Coronavirus – as an opportunity to defeat capitalism and usher in what any honest individual who has read “The Communist Manifesto” would identify as communism.

As Madeleine Kearns puts it in a recent contribution to the National Review:

“This global pandemic may not kill as many millennials as it kills boomers. But there’s a real possibility that it will destroy our already-diminished economic inheritance. And if that happens, another danger looms: Opportunistic socialists will have a chance to make their case to a resentful generation that has neither the personal memory nor the grasp of history necessary to resist their advances.”

In summary, whether motivated by a myopic, all-consuming focus on minimizing the number of people who die from illness caused by Coronavirus infection, or by a desire to create a crisis of sufficient severity to invite a political revolution, the Dark-siders want government to continue and magnify the policies that are destroying the economic livelihoods of each and all.

The Straddler Camp

Let us call the other camp of policy wonks the “Straddlers”. The Straddlers have one foot in healthcare demand-management, and the other foot in maintaining the economic status quo that prevailed before the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2. Specifically, the Straddlers agree with the Dark Siders that demand for medical resources should be spread out over time by way of government-imposed limits on social interaction. However, the Straddlers are sounding the alarm about how such government policies risk the loss of respect for destruction of “the economy”.

The Straddlers find themselves straddling precisely because they ultimately have the same ethical philosophy as the Dark-siders. The straddle can be recognized by language to the effect that “Yes, the government must save lives with the current policies, but not so long that we destroy the economy.” For example, conservative talking head Ben Shapiro (who I respect a great deal notwithstanding his Straddler-camp membership) is not happy about it, but he does not object to the current government policy provided it is time-limited enough to prevent irreversible economic damage:

“As people have to choose between the risks of Coronavirus and the reward of having a job – as that calculation becomes more and more immediate, which it’s going to be over time – the government is going to have to lay out a timeline for how long this thing lasts…” – Ben Shapiro, “What The Hell Happens Now?” (Ep. 975)

The Straddlers argue that some balance must be struck between the harm caused by the disease and the harm caused by the government’s response to the disease; between leaving the ill to die and deliberately destroying “the economy”. For example, Canadian historian John Robson recently tweeted:

“…in a pandemic 1st step is react strongly in case it’s very contagious & very lethal. Then give it sober 2nd thought, because a months-long shutdown certainly has a high mortality rate. & figure out the real COVID-19 mortality rate so we strike the right balance.”

Straddling – attempting to find a balance between following but also not-following government policy that destroys the economy – is a doomed and, ultimately, corrupt undertaking, as a matter of political philosophy. The Straddlers, saddled with the same ethical philosophy as the Dark-siders, find themselves desperately looking for a way of having their cake and eating it too; praying for a discovery that will allow ethical philosophy simultaneously to dictate and not dictate policy.

The Common Ethical Foundation of the Two Camps: Altruism

What, then, is the ethical philosophy that is causing government to adopt Coronavirus policies that necessarily inflict pain and loss on everyone? What is the ethical philosophy that founds the proposals of Dark-siders and Straddlers alike? The formal philosophical name for that ethical philosophy was coined by 19th century French philosopher Auguste Comte. He called it “altruisme” (in English: altruism), which is a word derived from the Latin “alteri huic” meaning “to this other”, and from the Italian “altrui” meaning “somebody else”.

According to altruism, each individual’s highest purpose is to save others from loss, suffering, or death. That which is of the greatest value to an individual is said to be the survival of people other than himself or herself. Thus, according to altruism, the greatest virtue one can practice – the greatest means to that end – is self-sacrifice.

Self-sacrifice entails giving without receiving in exchange anything that is of any use for your own survival and happiness (keep in mind that, when you do receive something of equal or greater value, that is not a sacrifice: it’s just a trade). It entails giving money, food, shelter etc. to anyone and everyone who is in need. It does not matter whether the person is a sinner or a saint. Another’s need is the only price he or she pays in exchange for what altruism commands you to give to him/her. In this sense, need is the currency of altruism.

Altruist ethics applies with equal vigour to your conduct. If another person is in need of your services or assistance, the altruist ethics requires that you provide it, and not instead favour using your time and energy to pursue your own survival and happiness.

Altruism is not limited to material goods and services. It commands that you express admiration, respect, love, or friendship to anyone and everyone who is in need of it. Again, whether a saint or a sinner – whether on one hand a brilliant inventor, a person of integrity, a family member or mate, or a consistent holder of good will toward innocent individuals, or whether, on the other hand, a brain-dead heroine addict, a shameless bullshitter, a stranger, or an abusive jerk – if the person lacks/needs admiration, respect, love, or friendship, you are to give it unconditionally, an in the same measure you would give it to anyone.

The greatest act of altruism is the sacrifice not merely of one’s material and spiritual things of value, but of one’s life. Yes, you ultimately will die without material values such as food, and you ultimately will die if you do not conduct yourself in such a way as to produce those material values. However, in a clear-cut case of “him or me” – i.e., if another person is probably going to die unless you die instead – the most obvious and perfect act of altruistic virtue is: to die. The most widely-recognized example of this, of course, is that of Jesus who – according to Christian beliefs – saved everyone else by dying for their sins (it is, of course, for this reason that the symbol most associated with Christianity is the cross on which he was crucified).

The Political Philosophy That is Founded Upon Altruism: Collectivism

Every political philosophy is a logical consequence of an ethical philosophy. When altruism is the foundational ethics, the logical consequence is collectivism. Such is the political philosophy espoused by Naomi Klein and others.

According to collectivism, every individual’s highest purpose (saving others from loss, suffering, and death) dictates that every individual has a political duty to serve not himself, but the entire collective of which he is deemed to be nothing but a part. “We’re all in this together”, say some, because there is no “I” in “we”. The individual is nothing. The collective is all.

But which collective? What is the nature of this collective? What does the collective we “need” from you? The answer is: there is no one answer. Altruism provides politicians and other policy wonks with a political philosophy blank cheque. Thus:

• Russian Communist Vladimir Lenin concluded that good collectivist public policy was “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. He believed his government should therefore seize the property of the wealthy and productive and redistribute it to the poor and underproductive.
• German “national” socialist Adolf Hitler said that his blonde, blue-eyed German “Aryans” were superior to other “races” primarily because of their willingness to sacrifice of themselves for others. He believed that it was good collectivist government policy to seize the property of non-Aryans (Jews and others who he believed lacked the virtue of self-sacrifice), and also tell his Aryans what to produce, at what price to sell it, when, and to whom.
• Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg implies that her generation is superior to older ones primarily because of their purported willingness to make the sacrifice of doing without all of the things that large-scale, reliable, power generation makes possible. She believes that those unwilling to engage in such sacrifice, for the alleged benefit of future generations, should be put up against a wall (i.e., sacrificed to serve the needs of younger generations)
• Everyday vanilla “liberals” and “conservatives” – including, notably, Toronto Mayor John Tory – in North America will regularly assert that we let business people build big business and make lots of wealth so that it can be taxed and be spent on the “needs” of the public, such as, well, tax-funded health care goods and services. For the same reasons, they argue, also, for a “robust economy”, and for enactment of whatever government policies they believe will achieve it.

“Ontario has all the right stuff to be on top, to be a leader again. All that’s lacking is a government which gets it. A Premier who understands that you need a strong private sector job creation to pay for public services.” – John Tory, from a 2008 budget-related speech

The current governmental response to the Coronavirus is no different in principle. Your highest purpose is to save others (in this case, that minority of us who might die as almost all of us are infected with SARS-Cov-2) from loss, suffering, or death, so government policy must make that purpose your legal duty. You are to regard the survival of others – in this case, those who might die from SARS-Cov-2 infection – to be more important than the survival or happiness of everyone else, so government policy must ignore or place relatively little weight on the harm that policy does to your prospects for survival and happiness. It is virtuous for you to sacrifice of yourself in order to save the vulnerable minority, so the government must enact laws and policies that force you to make those sacrifices. In short: altruist ethical values and virtues necessarily yield collectivist Coronavirus policy.

The Problem: Altruism Is Not Practical

Sacrifice is not a means of survival. It is a means of becoming needy. Going without a job, without an income, without food, and without shelter is not a way to produce anything that is of value to anyone.

Altruism is not practical. It is not a means of survival. If pursued with integrity and consistency, it is a means of suicide. And, when it is enforced by law, it is a means of murder.

That’s not merely theory. It’s a matter of recorded history. Witness the millions murdered in Russia, in China, and – of course – in Nazi Germany – in the 20th century alone – all in efforts to achieve an ethically altruistic, hence politically collectivist, ideal.

Moreover, it is not as though one can make altruism practical by finding a balance between the harm caused by the virus and the harm caused to “the economy”. “The economy” is just a word used to refer to collective, overall, macro result of the decisions and actions of individuals. Even if it were possible for a government to “save the economy” by telling people what to do with their energies and property – for example, by using tax revenues to pay private businesses to build ventilators or to make certain drugs; by bailing out banks; by telling employers that they must stop doing business but pay their laid-off employees; by telling landlords that they must not evict those who stop paying their rent; by telling banks that they must not foreclose on homeowners who stop making mortgage payments; etc. – such collectivist political measures would be the fruits of altruism. The earner must sacrifice earnings to government so that it can pay businesses for that equipment/medicine; the producers of that equipment/medicine must sacrifice their liberty to pursue more profitable production; the landlords and banks must go further into debt so that their employees, tenants and mortgagors do not; etc.. Suicides, marital break-downs, the estrangement of children from their parents: all such things will result from ill-founded attempts to “save the economy”. Such measures do not and cannot save the economy. In the long run, they can only destroy it.

In short, if our governments continue to found Coronavirus policy on altruistic ethics, the result will not be pro-life. It will be anti-life. It, inevitably, will do more harm than it prevents. It will harm many more people, and for a much, much longer time.

There Is An Alternative: Rational Egoism

If the government’s Coronavirus policy is to be good, it must be founded on an ethics that defends human nature rather than attempting to defeat it. That ethics will recognize that human nature is such that a human cannot survive without rational productive effort: rational production is the uniquely human mode of survival. To defeat human nature is to defeat the human mode of survival. Ethics must defend, not defeat, that mode.

A pro-human, pro-survival, pro-happiness ethics will recognize as an individual’s highest purpose the pursuit of one’s own happiness, which is achieved by producing that which saves oneself, and one’s loved ones, from loss, suffering and death. That ethics will recognize that the greatest value to an individual is his own life (which life depends upon personal attainment of material and spiritual things that are supportive of survival and happiness). That ethics will recognize that, if one is to remain alive and pursue his own happiness, he must make and act upon decisions in a way that, in the long term, will achieve that end.

Such an ethical philosophy is referred to – by the honest – as rational egoism. Egoism refers to concern for oneself, but not all forms of egoism are pro human nature. “Rational” qualifies egoism with human nature: Man is the rational animal. “Rational” is a qualifier that refers to the rationality of the means by which one achieves the material (money, food, shelter etc.) and spiritual (respect, admiration, love, etc.) values upon which one’s own survival and happiness depend. Rational means are those used by honest, productive, independent, just, individuals of high integrity; those used by individuals who are rightly proud to have achieved their happiness by such virtuous means. If egoism is not rational – if it is irrational – the result is a series of usually unsuccessful efforts to survive and achieve happiness by resorting to dishonest, unproductive, dependent, unjust means of which nobody could feel any pride.

The political philosophy that is the inevitable consequence of rational egoism is: individualism. According to individualism, every individual’s highest ethical purpose (pursuing one’s own happiness) dictates that it must be government policy to defend every individual’s freedom to pursue his or her own happiness by rational means (or, if he/she chooses, not to pursue it). In particular, government must make it illegal for anyone to take your life, liberty, or property from you without your consent. The natural consequence of the political individualism that is founded upon rational egoism is that all trading between individuals – whether the trade of goods or services for other goods or services, or the trade of one’s love for another’s love – requires the consent of the traders involved. Such a system – a system in which the individual traders decide for themselves what they will give in exchange for what is offered – is referred to as: capitalism. Murder, slavery, rape, theft: all of these things are condemned by capitalism because they are irrational (hence vicious). They are irrational and vicious because they are attempts to obtain someone’s life, liberty, or property without his consent.

The Light-siders: Coronavirus Policy Founded Upon Rational Egoism

Enter, therefore, a third camp of policy wonks: the Light-siders, who want government policy to be founded upon a rational egoist ethical foundation; whose policies are pro-human, pro-survival, pro-happiness, pro-individual, and pro-capitalist. Light-siders put at the heart and foundation of their policy a commitment to ensure that every individual remains free to pursue his own happiness by rationally pursuing the material and spiritual values upon which his survival and happiness on this earth depends, even while a virus makes the rounds.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” – The Declaration of Independence

Light-siders make neither “the health care system” nor “the economy” their central focus. Their focus, instead, is on defending every individual’s freedom to pursue his or her own happiness by rational (hence peaceful and consensual) means. This is done by making and enforcing laws to prevent anyone from taking your life, liberty, or property from you without your consent, and to prevent you from taking someone else’s life, liberty, or property from him/her without his/her consent.

Such individual freedom necessarily implies great personal responsibility. If you are not competent to juggle chain saws, it is rational for you not to juggle chain saws. Likewise, if you are physically seriously vulnerable to the effects of SARS-Cov-2, your survival and happiness will depend upon you making and acting responsibly upon the decisions that will either make your infection less likely, or will make it less harmful to you. As a free individual, you can isolate yourself in your home. You can have food and other necessities delivered to you by paying others to do that for you voluntarily. You can pursue medical treatments that might be of assistance to you in coping with the infection.

However, in a pro-individual society that founds its policies on rational egoism, you have no moral or legal right to force others to make your infection less likely, or will make it less harmful to you. That you are vulnerable does not give you or your government a right to lock people out of their workplaces or into their homes. The possibility that you will die does not give you licence to impoverish workers and their families, their employers, their landlords, or their mortgagees.

Nor, in a pro-individual society, are you free intentionally to infect others or otherwise deliberately harm them without their consent. For example, if you have tested positive for a virus that is lethal to some, you are not free to enter another’s home without first telling its occupants that you are infected and letting them decide whether to allow you to enter. You are not free to infect food that you serve upon unwitting customers who may be particularly vulnerable. You are not free to hide your infection from border personnel who are responsible for preventing carriers of the virus from entering their country. At all times, the central question is: do you have informed consent from those who might become infected if they choose to interact with you? Put it this way: You would not – if you are a rational egoist – have sex with your spouse after contracting a sexually transmitted disease as a result of your infidelity, unless (a) you first told your spouse about the disease and how you obtained it, and (b) you next obtained his/her consent. The same applies with the Coronavirus.

Nor, in a pro-individual society, does your economic hardship entitle you to a bail-out. Calling upon the government to bail you or your business out is calling upon the government to rob from your neighbours; to sacrifice your neighbours to one extent or another.

Charity, Not Entitlement: Consensual Assistance

It is not as though, in a free society of individuals pursuing their own happiness by rational means, there is no support for those in need. It is merely the case that support in such a society is voluntary in nature, rather than obtained under threat of fine, imprisonment, or murder.

Such support is founded not upon a legal entitlement that you have, but upon the good will that the helpful have toward innocent victims of such things as Coronavirus. It is charity freely given, not welfare forcibly taken. It is something for which one should be thankful, rather than self-righteous. And, if given a chance to flourish, it is plentiful in a society of good people who love this earthly life, love pursuing their own happiness in it, and have no wish to see innocent victims in want or pain. For examples that already exist as responses to Coronavirus, see here and here.

A Few Arguably Light-sider Coronavirus Policies

I close this article with a few proposed Light-sider policies. The following is not an exhaustive list, of course, but the nature of the items in this list should convey to the reader a palpably different sense of life and of what constitutes good public policy:

• Governments should end the current mandatory closures of businesses;
• Governments should end the mandatory “shelter in place” of people who have not tested positive for the virus;
• Governments should encourage – without legally mandating – the following:

– “social distancing” (i.e., the maintenance of a healthy separation between people who do not know themselves to be infected) – as a means of slowing the spread of the virus.

– voluntary self-isolation. Those who are vulnerable to suffering the worse reactions to infection to take the greatest precautions to minimize their likelihood of exposure while science and technology attempts to find medicines or vaccinations.

– voluntary rationing by retailers. Retailers should be encouraged to place limits on the quantity of goods that otherwise might be hoarded by the frightened or ill-motivated, and that will cause weeks or months of supply chain disruption.

– voluntary social distancing rules by retailers. Retailers should be encouraged to require patrons to purchase goods or services in ways that maintain social distancing, such as limiting the number of people allowed in their store/place of business at any one time, requiring that people line up in certain zones designed to maintain social spacing, etc..

• Governments should make it clear that those who test positive for the virus will not be permitted to deliberately infect others. Temporary quarantine of those who are found to test positive for a potentially lethal virus is not anti-freedom but pro-freedom.
• The government should attempt to alleviate the impact that the virus is having on people by reducing taxes. However, it should not take on a great deal of additional debt in lieu thereof: money borrowed by government today is money taxed out of your pocket tomorrow.
• Governments should eliminate red tape and barriers to tests or development of new or experimental drugs or treatments.
• Governments should eliminate laws that prevent the ill from volunteering themselves as test subjects.

Generally: Dark-sider and Straddler proposals should be rejected. Government must immediately and deliberately become mindful that anti-human-nature ethical philosophy is giving rise to the losses caused by de facto collectivist public policy. The sooner governments come over to the Light Side, the better.

{Paul McKeever is a lawyer, author, documentarian, and the Leader of the Freedom Party of Ontario in Canada}

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