I don’t think I have to convince libertarians like myself that liberty often leads to more successful societies, but I’m not sure how many understand that the reverse is also true.
It’s not possible to just wave a magic wand and call forth more liberty. Disasters such as war, depression and pandemics often lead to repressive government policies. Thus one way to promote a free society is to do the hard work promoting policies such as peace, prosperity and good public health.
For much of the Covid pandemic (not all), citizens of Australia had more freedom than Americans to live life as they wished (except for international travel). That’s not because the Australian government is more committed to freedom than the US government, rather it’s because there was little or no transmission of Covid in most of Australia over the past 18 months. Now that Australia is being hit by the highly contagious delta variant, however, their government has imposed domestic travel restrictions that are more draconian than anything contemplated in the US.
Over the past 18 months, my views have been somewhat orthogonal to the two sides debating freedom vs. public health, with the right supposed favoring freedom and the left supposedly favoring public health. (In practice, both sides often failed to understand how to achieve those goals.) My view is better described as freedom through public health.
Tyler Cowen has a very good post on the situation in Australia. He makes some of the same points that I’ve been making:
I would stress that if Covid risk has you with your back against the wall and the government is forcing extremely restrictive measures on your citizenry, you should be implementing the following in an urgent manner:
a. Twice a week rapid antigen tests for everyone. (Plenty of time to prep for this one.)
b. Much stronger incentives to vaccinate people more rapidly, including with the large stock (six million or so?) of AstraZeneca vaccines. Demand side incentives, supply side incentives, whatever can be done. Let’s throw the kitchen sink at this one. But as it stands, I just don’t see the urgency.
c. Mobile monoclonal antibody units, as they are used in Florida (modest progress here).
First a bit of context. One can sympathize with the Australia government in one respect. Australia has avoided the high rates of death experienced by the US, Latin America and much of Europe. And then they were hit by the highly contagious delta variant just at the point where they were tantalizing close to the finish line with vaccination:
I’ve spent considerable time in both Australia and New Zealand, and the people in those countries seem more sensible than Americans. Thus I expect their vaccination rates to exceed ours within a very short period of time. But if their governments had placed a higher priority on vaccination earlier on, then they might have avoided much of the delta wave. More specifically, they would have had fewer Covid deaths and less perceived need for restrictions on personal freedom.
Tyler alludes to the fact that the Australian government has been sitting on 6 million doses of highly effective AstraZeneca vaccine because of phony concerns about vaccination risk, which is a lot of doses for a country of only 25 million. (Of course we also made many policy mistakes that led to needless deaths.) Releasing those doses promotes both freedom and public health.
While America’s right claims to favor freedom, too often they act and speak in ways that reduce our freedoms. In Florida, Governor DeSantis took away the freedom of businesses to set their own Covid policies. More recently he put out a very harmful message on vaccines, which is also factually incorrect:
DeSantis claimed last week — as his state continued to experience a surge in the highly contagious delta variant ― that receiving the shot is “about your health and whether you want that protection or not” and “doesn’t impact me or anyone else.”
If DeSantis were merely trying to say that the decision to get vaccinated is a personal choice, then he’d be correct. But what he actually said is false; high rates of vaccination do help society by slowing the spread of Covid. Yes, most of the gains go to the person being vaccinated, but I personally feel that my freedoms are being restricted at least a little bit due to unfortunate government policies triggered by the decision by many other people not to get vaccinated, and my health risk is slightly higher. That’s their right, but politicians should not be putting out false propaganda that a refusal to get vaccinated doesn’t hurt other members of society. It does. If politicians want to speak out on the issue, then do so in a constructive fashion. (Or just stay silent.)
The people that pushed us into WWI might not have believed that their action led to the loss of freedom of speech in America for a period of several years. But in fact this foolish decision did lead directly to repressive actions by the federal government, including the imprisonment of people who spoke out against the war. Conservative proponents of tight money in 1929 unwittingly ushered in a more statist policy regime in the 1930s. Any government policy that creates war, economic depression, high rates of inflation, or a more severe pandemic will eventually lead to repressive government responses.
You may not like to think of it this way, but liberty is endogenous. If it’s liberty that you seek, aim for success. And yes, if it’s success that you seek, aim for liberty. Those two sentences probably best encapsulate what I’ve been doing with my blogging over the past decade. Call it the neoliberal creed.
PS. I’m not saying that politicians should scold people. I’m saying they should encourage people to get vaccinated by pointing out how it will help society as a whole.
READER COMMENTS
Airman Spry Shark
Sep 8 2021 at 3:17pm
— Alistair Cooke
AMT
Sep 8 2021 at 3:58pm
I agree, and would add that economists shouldn’t either. At the very least, they should understand who the least-cost-avoider of the externality is.
https://www.econlib.org/are-externalities-enough/
Scott Sumner
Sep 8 2021 at 7:13pm
Important point, but not related to this post.
AMT
Sep 13 2021 at 7:41pm
Saying that economists also shouldn’t be spreading false and harmful propaganda, sure seems related to me…and a point about what makes their propaganda false seems highly relevant as well.
Mark Z
Sep 9 2021 at 3:26am
If the unvaccinated are the least-cost avoiders, then they’re also the cheapest ones to pay to change their behavior, and if it’s worth it for those with higher risk to pay unvaccinated people to get vaccinated, they would do so. So “because externalities” still doesn’t work. Why aren’t more people willing to pay the unvaccinated to get vaccinated? Probably transaction costs. The value any individual derives from paying an unvaccinated person to get vaccinated is probably so minute that it’s not worth it to find a way to pay them to do so. Many externality problems seem to really be transaction cost problems. That it may not be entirely legal in some circumstances to pay people to get vaccines may also be a factor (but that many employers – the institutions with perhaps the highest benefit/transaction cost ratio – are doing so anyway is encouraging).
Scott Sumner
Sep 9 2021 at 12:27pm
Again, not related to this post, which is about putting out harmful and false propaganda.
AMT
Sep 13 2021 at 7:51pm
They aren’t the cheapest to pay to change their behavior, because they grossly miscalculate the pros and cons to vaccination, as evidenced by their already highly illogical behavior. If they refuse to get a free vaccine that the overwhelming consensus of the medical field vehemently encourages (and not just for public health, but as a very good idea for an individual), these people aren’t going to be easily swayed by money. Haven’t you heard of many people quitting their jobs rather than get the vaccine? They are deluded into thinking it is “poison” and/or far worse than actually getting covid, so they won’t be encouraged much by any reasonable amount of money anyway. At the margin, some will, but there will still be a large minority that will refuse even very large amounts. So they need to be forced to be vaccinated, for their own good, and the good of society.
Plus, if we just vaccinate everyone, then pretty soon R<1 and we should be able to forget any debates about masks or lockdowns too. MORE freedom!
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Sep 8 2021 at 5:38pm
Probably the best way to promote liberty is to advocate expenditures and policies that pass cost-benefit tests with cost and benefits somewhat weighted in favor of low income people.
Jose Pablo
Sep 9 2021 at 8:42pm
Anthony de Jasay has a very interesting analysis of your idea:
“[…]interpersonal comparisons of utility… are merely a roundabout route all the way back to the irreducible arbitrariness to be exercised by authority… [T]he two statements “the state found that increasing group P’s utility and decreasing that of group R would result in a net increase of utility,” and “the state chose to favor group P over group R” are descriptions of the same reality.”
The arbitrariness of the State is the opposite to liberty.
And if “cost and benefits (are) somewhat weighted in favor of low-income people., what’s the point of performing a cost benefit analysis? you have already decided who should get the benefit of the policy to be analyzed, at least don’t waste the time of the people doing the analysis (they, very likely, have an additional cost).
The slow-motion socialism of your proposal is, precisely, what we already have. No “more liberty” anywhere to be seen. Maybe you think you can do a better job that actual politicians picking up policies that favor the “low-income people”. No, you can’t. Although your mistake is pretty common.
Christophe Biocca
Sep 8 2021 at 6:47pm
Holding Australia as an example of “success leads to freedom” seems broken. Australia’s abandonment of COVID-Zero as a desired end state came directly from failure induced by Delta’s increased contagiousness. If it weren’t for Delta it’s likely Australia would have simply continued being subject to rolling restrictions (including draconian exit restrictions, limits on assembly and protest), in near-perpetuity (or at least until some other variant managed to overwhelm them).
Here’s another possible test of your theory. Which US state has the highest vaccination rate? How do its COVID restrictions compare to the US state with the lowest vaccination rate?
“Succeed” is not a primitive action. But “restrict” and “don’t restrict” are, at least if you hold the levers of power (and if you don’t, moving to a jurisdiction that has committed to respecting your rights is a better bet than moving to one committed to “success”).
Scott Sumner
Sep 8 2021 at 7:15pm
I suspect that Australia would have opened up after they got vaccinated. We will see.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Sep 9 2021 at 9:22am
Australia did not aim for vaccine success and they got vaccine failure.
Vera
Sep 8 2021 at 8:45pm
Yes!! Thank you Scott; libertarianism based on utilitarianism keeps the means (freedom) from being confused for the end (utility).
And yes, Australia has an exit strategy based on vaccination rates and that would have been true even without the Delta variant. They screwed up royally on the vaccination front but are catching up now. Because of that screwup the restrictions will last a few more months than they should have, but in five out of 7 regions things have been basically normal since mid-2020, in the two hard-hit regions there has still been more lockdown-free time than almost anywhere else in the world, the national economy has done very well, and the death rate is 2% of the US’s. Worth it.
Mark Z
Sep 9 2021 at 1:06pm
I would be willing to bet that Australia’s lockdowns won’t be remotely over in a few months. Even countries with very high vaccination rates are struggling with outbreaks that Australia seems unwilling to countenance. Is Australia really going to accept case and death rates we see in Spain right now (much higher than Australia, even with an 80% vaccination rate and not exactly laissez faire covid policy) as a reasonable tradeoff for easing restrictions?
Lizard Man
Sep 8 2021 at 10:01pm
“If it’s liberty that you seek, aim for success. And yes, if it’s success that you seek, aim for liberty.”
Is Singapore an exception to the rule? Or are some freedoms more important in generating prosperity, and Singapore has embraced that limited set?
Scott Sumner
Sep 9 2021 at 12:29pm
It’s a partial exception, but even Singapore has more freedom than most countries. Are people in India freer than those who live in Singapore? Clearly not.
Matthias
Sep 9 2021 at 10:57pm
Perhaps the latter.
Eg Singapore has minimal occupational licensing compared to places like Germany or the US.
Taxes are fairly low, but perhaps more importantly also simple.
A complicated tax system not only costs money and effort to comply with, but also is unintentionally or intentionally full of weird little nudges that make you change your behaviour.
If lots of behaviours come with some tax penalty, is that an infringement of freedom?
Scott Sumner
Sep 10 2021 at 1:16pm
Good points.
TMC
Sep 9 2021 at 11:03am
“factually incorrect:
DeSantis is actually correct. If you are vaccinated, your risk from COVID is less than what was normal for the flu in 2019. No one gets a guarantee for 100% risk-free living.
Scott Sumner
Sep 10 2021 at 1:21pm
The main victims are other unvaccinated people. In any case, you are wrong to suggest DeSantis is not providing misinformation, he clearly is. Whether it’s important is another question. I think it is important.
And do you really think that your loved ones are not impacted if you die? Do you think that a higher death toll doesn’t lead to an inevitable loss of freedom?
How about the impact on the fetus if you are pregnant?
TMC
Sep 9 2021 at 11:10am
” In Florida, Governor DeSantis took away the freedom of businesses to set their own Covid policies.”
So this is an interesting case. I’d normally say this decreases liberty, but in this case the the order was to combat a Federal imposition of mandates. Net effect is clearly to increase individual liberties. Companies lose a bit, but the individuals increase in liberty is significantly higher than the companies loss. It would be best if the Feds had stayed out of it in the first place, and I’m sure that’s what DeSantis would have preferred as well.
TMC
Sep 9 2021 at 12:01pm
Someone seems to not have liked my comment that you are wrong in regards to:
“DeSantis claimed last week — as his state continued to experience a surge in the highly contagious delta variant ― that receiving the shot is “about your health and whether you want that protection or not” and “doesn’t impact me or anyone else.”
I’ll back it up with this from Kaiser:
The data reported from these states indicate that breakthrough cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are extremely rare events among those who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 (see Figure 1). The rate of breakthrough cases reported among those fully vaccinated is below 1% in all reporting states, ranging from 0.01% in Connecticut to 0.54% in Arkansas.
The hospitalization rate among fully vaccinated people with COVID-19 ranged from effectively zero (0.00%) in California, Delaware, D.C., Indiana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Vermont, and Virginia to 0.06% in Arkansas. (Note: Hospitalization may or may not have been due to COVID-19.)
The rates of death among fully vaccinated people with COVID-19 were even lower, effectively zero (0.00%) in all but two reporting states, Arkansas and Michigan where they were 0.01%. (Note: Deaths may or may not have been due to COVID-19.)
https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/covid-19-vaccine-breakthrough-cases-data-from-the-states/
Less than any normal year for the flu.
zeke5123
Sep 9 2021 at 5:24pm
I don’t think you are being fair to Gov. Desantis.
First, you need to take a broader read of his quote. He is saying the data shows that infected people can still spread the virus. Maybe less than unvaccinated people, but still spread it (e.g., I think the Israel data shows something in the low 30% in terms of preventing the virus compared to no vaccine). So if everyone else is vaccinated, there is less but not eliminated risk that you will catch the virus.
But that isn’t the end of the story. The question isn’t simply a matter of whether there is an incremental risk; the question is the severity of that risk. If you have had the vaccine, then the harm to catching covid is quite small to you. Given that the harm is already quite low if you are vaccinated, then the incremental reduction in risk to the vaccinated person does not justify mandates (which is the point Desantis was arguing against — mandates). He is also making a point about natural immunity which some studies have suggested provides better protection against for example Delta. Why in that case would it be appropriate to require mandates.
Also, the quote you lifted is false. Florida COVID cases are in fact not surging. They have been falling for two weeks now. I would recommend you not quote something that is incorrect.
Scott Sumner
Sep 9 2021 at 10:16pm
No, the quote is not incorrect. Just because cases are falling in the past two weeks doesn’t mean they aren’t continuing to experience a surge in cases, even if a bit less than a few weeks ago.
And you haven’t given me any reason to think I was being too hard on DeSantis. He put out damaging and false information, which will encourage people to behave in a socially irresponsible way.
zeke5123
Sep 10 2021 at 12:53am
The 7-day average appeared to peak in Florida as of 8/15 at around 24.5k. As of yesterday (i.e., 9/10)it was 14k. That is almost a 50% reduction in cases based on a 7 day average.
Surge is defined as a move suddenly and powerfully forward or upward. In the last almost month Florida has decrease in cases on a 7 day average by almost 50% but you think it is appropriate to describe that as surging? The cases are not moving upward; they are moving downward (quite rapidly). That is the opposite of surging.
To give an example, let’s say the DOW 2 months ago was a 30K. A month ago it was at 40K. In the last month it has gone in a relatively straight line down 5K to 35K. No one but no one would describe the DOW as surging, but that is what you are doing here because you are saying in an absolute sense the cases are still high.
Do you still believe the quote is not incorrect?
Finally, you said DeSantis opinions weren’t just false but damaging. Explain how they are damaging when even you admit that the benefit is quite small (I think you are well overestimating the size of the benefit to you).
Scott Sumner
Sep 10 2021 at 1:23pm
This is a silly debate. “Surge” is a vague term that can mean rising levels or high levels.
Scott Sumner
Sep 10 2021 at 1:25pm
On your second point, see my reply to TMC.
zeke5123
Sep 10 2021 at 2:49pm
Scott — stop being dishonest. Surge is not whatever you want the word to me. Surge is talking about a direction; not a level. I’ve quoted the dictionary to you. I’ve given an example. No one describes something as surging when the rate is falling by 50%. If someone was talking about a COVID hotspot for a month and said the cases are still surging, you would assume rightfully that meant the cases were still on an upward trajectory.
What you are doing is substituting “high count” for surging but that changes of course the meaning of the sentence. Instead of talking about a hotspot that is clearly decreasing (look at the trend) it makes it sound like DeSantis is giving this advice while the trend still increasing thereby to try to under cut his advice. That is why I am taking umbrage with and why it isn’t a silly debate. That is, I am not just saying the article used the wrong word but conveyed the same meaning; I am saying the meaning was changed.
Interestingly enough, you are being pretty literal with DeSantis and misinformation (which you accuse me of being with surge) but I’d argue you are changing the meaning. To quote in full DeSantis:
You are correct in a literal sense that what he said was “misinformation” (i.e., vaccines can help unvaccinated and to a very small extent the vaccinated as you pointed out). But (i) he is talking about trying to increase vaccines in the context of (ii) vaccine mandates where the storyline is that unvaxxed people are putting vaxxed people at risk despite (iii) the vaccine holding up decently against the death and (iv) vaccine not really slowing the spread (e.g., Israel). Taken in that context, it seems clear that the message DeSantis is communicating is correct. That is, whether a third party is vaxxed or not is of no real consequence to the vaxxed (or the unvaxxed because they have accepted the risk) and therefore the externality problem is solved (i.e., if someone wants to protect themselves they can get vaccinated). Because the externality problem is largely solved (i.e., people can make their own risk decisions to protect themselves) it moves from a public health issue to a private health issue. This is how I red DeSantis from the larger text.
So you can’t accuse me of engaging in a silly debate over what you take as a hyper technicality (when I am saying it wasn’t just a poorly worded sentence but one that conveyed the wrong meaning) when you are being hyper technical but missing the spirit of what DeSantis was saying / context to which he was saying those statements.
Jose Pablo
Sep 10 2021 at 4:21pm
The reverse, “that successful societies lead to more freedom” was the idea behind the opening to China in the 70’s (well at least understanding “successful” as “economically successful”). It is fair to say that things have not gone as expected (although it is true that counterfactuals are tricky. Maybe a “closed China” would have been even worse from the “freedom perspective”).
On the other hand, making society unsuccessful thru sanctions, although it seems to be “the policy of choice”, does not bring more freedom either (i.e., Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea …).
The logical conclusion would be then that neither success nor failure brings more freedom to a closed society. Should be a “secret ingredient” somewhere.
Scott Sumner
Sep 10 2021 at 6:19pm
You said:
“The reverse, “that successful societies lead to more freedom” was the idea behind the opening to China in the 70’s”
China is much freer than before it opened up. But yes, it didn’t become as free as most other countries that got richer.
You said:
“The logical conclusion would be then that neither success nor failure brings more freedom to a closed society.”
No, because many other countries did become freer as they became richer (Spain, Taiwan, South Korea, etc.) Freedom is strongly correlated with wealth.
DeservingPorcupine
Sep 10 2021 at 5:39pm
I feel like you are falling prey to a tendency that often affects “big-government people”; it’s not enough to just say “externality” and then wave in any interventions you like. Yes, of course, anything one does has some effect on just about everyone…butterfly wings and all that. But you can’t simply justify any intervention you want from that.
The truth is that almost no intervention any government has enacted against covid passes any kind of cost/benefit sniff test. This is why nobody advocating for lockdowns/masks/border controls/etc. has ever produced such a cost-benefit analysis in favor of them. They all miserably fail any kind of utilitarian and/or libertarian test.
Maybe the best way to put a point on it is this. If you consider what Desantis said to be strictly and wildly false, what actions would you consider true for? In other words, for what X would you consider “Your choice to do X is about your health and doesn’t impact anyone else” to be true? If you can’t specify an X to make that true, I’d argue you’re not playing by the rules of normal everyday language.
Scott Sumner
Sep 10 2021 at 6:16pm
You said:
“But you can’t simply justify any intervention you want from that.”
I didn’t try to justify any intervention in this post. Read it again.
I’m criticizing DeSantis’s interventions.
And I don’t view the freedom to travel as a minor afterthought.
DeservingPorcupine
Sep 10 2021 at 7:52pm
I didn’t mean to accuse you of advocating for a particular intervention. That was a comment on the broader tendency for people to hand wave about consequences without doing the heavy lifting of really assessing them.
Again, I don’t think you’ve made a good case that Desantis’s statement was false (without resorting to strained interpretations of everyday language).
And perhaps most importantly (from the “utilitarian side”) you haven’t made any case that what he said will discourage people from getting vaccinated. He has consistently and loudly encouraged people to get vaccinated. You’re assuming that his saying they should get vaccinated for themselves will be less persuasive than saying they should get vaccinated for society’s sake. I see no good grounds for that assumption. I find the opposite just as plausible.
DeservingPorcupine
Sep 10 2021 at 5:42pm
Also, do you think it’s odd for a libertarian defender of immigration to relegate the right to cross borders (especially the border of the country of which you’re a citizen!) to a minor afterthought like this?
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