On Libertarianism and Pandemics

The Wēnyì (Chinese: 瘟疫; plague, pestilence, epidemic, murrain) of 2019–20 has subjected the ruling regimes of the world to a test that they have not faced in a century. City-wide lockdowns have been imposed, public spaces have been closed, quarantines have been implemented, flights have been canceled, and the resulting pressures have strained many economies close to the breaking point. The models upon which political leaders have based their decisions have been shown to be both fundamentally flawed and derailed by faulty inputs. All of the aforementioned have been analyzed and criticized by other writers at length, but what has yet to be explored in proper depth is the manner in which a libertarian social order might respond to such a challenge.1 Let us refresh ourselves on the fundamental philosophy of a libertarian reactionary order, consider the current pandemic, then apply these tenets to the issues of quarantines and pandemics.

(Reactionary) Libertarianism 101

The starting point for libertarian ethics is self-ownership; that each person has a right of exclusive control over one’s physical body and full responsibility for actions committed with said control. This is demonstrated through argumentation ethics; in order to argue against self-ownership, one must exercise exclusive control of one’s physical body for the purpose of communication. This results in a performative contradiction because the content of the argument is at odds with the act of making the argument. By the laws of excluded middle and non-contradiction, self-ownership must be valid because it must be either valid or invalid, and any argument that self-ownership is invalid leads to a contradiction.

The non-aggression principle is little more than a restatement of self-ownership; if each person should have exclusive control over one’s physical body, then it is wrong for one person to initiate interference with another person’s exclusive control of their physical body against their wishes. Private property emerges from responsibility for one’s actions; one should be responsible for the improvements that one has made with the natural resources upon which one has labored, and it is impossible to own the improvements without owning the resources themselves. Personal responsibility also means that one should owe restitution for any acts of aggression that one commits against other people or their property. Every aspect of (reactionary) libertarianism that is more complicated than this arises from the following facts:

  1. Each person is (or, at least, necessarily has) a physical form which occupies space and requires sustenance.
  2. Situations may arise which put the aforementioned principles into conflict with one another.
  3. Human actions frequently fail to adhere to principle.

It is this general framework which must be applied to the particular case of the Wēnyì to see how a libertarian social order would deal with a pandemic.

Enter Corona

The pathogen responsible for the Wēnyì is a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) that bears resemblance to those which caused the SARS epidemic (2002–04) and MERS outbreaks (2012 Middle East, 2015 South Korea, 2018 Saudi Arabia). It is a different subspecies of the former. Four other coronavirus species (HCoV-229E, HCoV-HKU1, HCoV-NL63, HCoV-OC43) cause variants of the common cold and are less dangerous than MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2.[1] In humans, these viruses cause respiratory tract infections ranging from mild to lethal, while other mammals and birds are affected differently.[2]

Common symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 include cough, fatigue, fever, joint pain, loss of sense of smell, muscle pain, shortness of breath, and sputum production. Diarrhea, nausea, runny nose, sneezing, sore throat, and vomiting have also been observed with less frequency.[3,4,5] Less common and more severe symptoms include bluish skin, breathing difficulty, chest pain, confusion, difficulty waking, organ failure, viral pneumonia, and death.[6] Symptoms usually onset around 5–6 days after exposure, but ranges from 2–14 days.[7]

A significant minority do not develop symptoms but may still spread the disease[8,9]; the number of those infected by asymptomatic people may be as high as 40 percent.[10] The Wēnyì spreads primarily through close contact, such as through droplets spread by coughing, sneezing, or talking. It spreads more easily than influenza but not as easily as measles. People are most infectious around the time that they begin to show symptoms, but may be infectious for two days beforehand and two weeks afterward.[11] Droplets may also contaminate surfaces for up to 72 hours, which can cause infection if a person touches the surface and then touches their mucous membranes.[12] Surfaces easily are decontaminated with household disinfectants. The R0 (number of people infected by one infected person) is estimated to be 3.28 without control measures.[13] This number must be reduced below 1.0 for a given disease to fade away and no longer be an epidemic, which is the ultimate goal of control measures.

The Wēnyì began in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China on 17 November 2019[14], and was first identified in December.[6] At the time of this writing, more than 15.6 million cases have been reported across 188 countries and territories. By official counts, at least 636,000 people have died and 8.91 million people have recovered.[15] These figures give a mortality rate of 4.08 percent and a recovery rate of 57.1 percent, with 38.8 percent of cases ongoing. However, those who survive can suffer lasting damage. The virus is known to attack the central nervous system (CNS) through the brain stem, though the exact mechanism by which it invades the CNS is not yet known.[16,17] Gastrointestinal organs are vulnerable to chronic damage[18,19], as are the cardiovascular system[20] and the kidneys.[21,22]

There is not yet a standard treatment protocol for SARS-CoV-2. Vaccines are in the early stages of clinical trials, and their development is occurring on a rushed timetable.[23] On May 1, 2020, the United States gave Emergency Use Authorization for remdesivir because a study suggested it may reduce the duration of recovery.[24] Other considered medications include hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, zinc[25], and tocilizumab. Recommended countermeasures include avoiding touching one’s face, covering coughs and sneezes, frequent hand washing, physical distancing from others, and the use of face coverings.

Quarantines, Voluntary and Coercive

How is a libertarian social order to deal with such a menace? It is here that the need for reaction rather than leftism as a complement for libertarianism proves essential, for open borders and individual choice left to their own devices can have catastrophic results with a deadly virus on the loose. This is especially true in the case of the Wēnyì, as the nature of it allows for people to carry and spread the disease without realizing it. As with many other problems, private property rights are uniquely capable of offering solutions.

In a libertarian social order, the boundaries of private property are the borders, and they are generally anything but open. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe explains,

“All private property is by definition exclusive property. He who owns property is entitled to exclude everyone else from its use and enjoyment, and he is at liberty to choose with whom, if anyone, he is willing to share in its usage.”[26]

This coupling of freedom to dissociate with control of physical space makes quarantine easy to accomplish for those who wish to isolate themselves from those who might infect them with a deadly disease, so long as they possess the ability, willingness, and coordination to use defensive force as needed to repel violators of their wishes. One could also choose the conditions under which admittance to one’s territory would be granted, such as submitting to a disease test or remaining within a waiting area for a period of time. Additionally, those who believe that achieving herd immunity as quickly as possible is the best strategy would be free to host pox parties on their property without harassment from government officials, so long as they did not travel into territories controlled by those who do not share their assessment of how best to handle the disease. In either case (or any other), a libertarian social order allows for greater decentralization of response so that the correct answer may be found faster without encumbrance from bureaucratic largesse. This alone makes such an order superior to the current system, as there would be no authority capable of performing such misguided actions as shutting down the economy in such a fashion as has occurred on such a scale, which arguably has caused more problems than the Wēnyì itself.[27,28]

The exact level of threat from disease which would justify a quarantine is an empirical question that each sovereign community must decide for itself, as is the right of a property owner or covenant community of property owners. The terms of such a covenant would almost certainly include pandemic measures, as it is such an obvious problem that any competent community leaders would at least create rudimentary guidelines for handling it. All that can be said from an a priori standpoint is that the threat that justifies quarantine may be indirect and/or uncertain. Sending a harmful object in a person’s general direction, whether a virus, a car driven by a drunk person, or anything else, is sufficiently similar to aggression (initiated force) that it may be treated similarly, for no one should have to endure unreasonable risks to life and limb simply because other people choose to behave carelessly. Again, the localized nature of a libertarian social order aids in finding the optimal level of strictness in disease containment by allowing for greater experimentation.

While voluntary quarantine is easy to understand in a libertarian framework, coercive quarantine poses a greater intellectual challenge. A person who carries a communicable disease which is known to have a significant chance of imposing death or serious bodily harm upon others poses a threat to other people, especially if that person chooses to interact with others in such a way that the disease may be spread. It is reasonable for healthy people to take defensive measures against such behavior, including physical removal of such a disease carrier from their presence. The liberty of the disease carrier is important to preserve, but not at the expense of the lives and property rights of everyone else.2 As such, a Typhoid Mary is not free to roam in a libertarian social order; she would be physically removed by as much force as necessary to prevent her from aggressing against others by infecting them with a deadly disease.

Whether voluntary or coercive, quarantine in a libertarian social order would be quite similar to house arrest or home imprisonment in the current system, especially if no one is in the mood for pox parties and other herd immunity strategies. But there are several important differences between quarantine and imprisonment which must be considered. While both are intended to protect the community from danger, a quarantine is not meant to punish an individual. Second, disease and its harms can spread exponentially, while the spread of crime is linear or nearly so. Third, an infectious disease can be spread unwittingly, especially if one is contagious while asymptomatic. A criminal must take deliberate action in the form of committing more crimes to be a further danger. Finally, it may be difficult to collect and analyze evidence in the case of a novel disease, while the vast majority of criminal cases involve known elements. The ethical standards for quarantine may therefore be lax compared to those for incarceration. Any errors would be subject to liability like any other civil offense that causes damages.

Deliberate Infection and the Coase Theorem

A controversial but time-honored strategy against the Wēnyì was put forward by Robin Hanson in February 2020.[29,30] He advocated for variolation, which is a method of controlled, deliberate infection which is meant to cause a mild case of disease that results in immunity. It is named after the genus Variola, which contains the viruses responsible for smallpox. Before the modern smallpox vaccine was developed by Edward Jenner in 1796, variolation was used to immunize people against the disease, especially in China and the Middle East. In February, the Wēnyì was believed to be more dangerous than it now appears to be, but the question of controlled exposure and deliberate infection remains. To the extent that Hanson’s proposal would involve democratic votes binding upon a community or other means of involuntary participation, it would be incompatible with a libertarian social order and cause for the use of defensive force. But if it would be constrained to voluntary participation, an interesting comparison arises.

One way to interpret a pathogen, such as the coronavirus responsible for the Wēnyì, is as environmental pollution. Like automobile emissions or toxic fumes from factories, a virus is an airborne substance whose presence is generally unwanted and is hazardous to human health.3 As in more familiar examples of air pollution, it is possible to apply the Coase Theorem to variolation. Hanson writes,

“People selected to be exposed earlier might be paid extra cash, to compensate for perceived extra risk. (Maybe X days worth of their usual wages, so as not to especially select the poor.) Or perhaps they could be paid in extra priority for sick associates if medical help is rationed later. (I’d seriously consider both kinds of offers.)”[29]

Ronald Coase explained that such negotiations will result in some level of pollution (as well as infection in this case) and some restitution that is satisfactory to all parties.[31] He recognized four assumptions that must hold for a Pareto efficient outcome to be reached without government intervention when dealing with an externality: 1) clearly defined property rights, 2) minimal transaction costs, 3) few affected parties, and 4) no wealth effects. While no social order will not be perfect in all four assumptions, a libertarian one necessarily would be far superior to the current system of nation-state governments which have centralized power to a large extent, both geographically and demographically. Once more, the smaller scale of polities in a libertarian order rescue it (at least partially) from the obfuscations and discoordinations of empire.

Conclusion

A pandemic is a challenge for any social order, but if history is any guide, then we may expect them to occur going forward at semi-regular intervals, especially if no lessons are learned from the Wēnyì in terms of political, social, and economic responses. But the current crop of elites have demonstrated their unfitness to rule for all to see, and their performance has been sufficiently bad to raise questions about not only them, but the systems that produce them and their ilk. As shown above, a libertarian social order offers a superior framework for handling pandemics, in that it relies upon individual preferences and local knowledge while avoiding the groupthink and monolithic approaches that result from attempting to mobilize the capacity of a modern nation-state.

Footnotes

  1. A notable exception is the matter of healthcare in a libertarian social order, which has been explored elsewhere.
  2. Of course, such a person should not be prevented from obtaining the necessities of sustenance, and would be justified in using force to obtain them if denied, but quarantining a disease carrier can be justified so long as the person is not so deprived.
  3. A disease that is intentionally released, such as a biological weapon, would make for a stronger analogy, since the types of air pollution that would be the subject of Coasean bargaining, litigation, or defensive force in a libertarian social order tend to be purposefully created and released.

References

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  2. Corman, V.M.; Muth, D.; Niemeyer, D.; Drosten, C. (2018). “Hosts and Sources of Endemic Human Coronaviruses”. Advances in Virus Research. 100: 163–88.
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  17. Baig, A.M.; Khaleeq, A.; Ali, U.; Syeda, H. (Apr. 2020). “Evidence of the COVID-19 Virus Targeting the CNS: Tissue Distribution, Host-Virus Interaction, and Proposed Neurotropic Mechanisms”. ACS Chemical Neuroscience. 11 (7): 995–8.
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  20. Zheng, Y.Y.; Ma, Y.T.; Zhang, J.Y.; Xie, X. (May 2020). “COVID-19 and the cardiovascular system”. Nature Reviews. Cardiology. 17 (5): 259–60.
  21. Wadman, M. (Apr. 2020). “How does coronavirus kill? Clinicians trace a ferocious rampage through the body, from brain to toes”. Science.
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