John Stuart Mill versus Great Barrington Declaration libertarians on vaccine mandates
The Great Barrington Declaration is the founding text of one influential school of covid-libertarianism. The GBD made two claims –
- First, that we should try to protect the vulnerable from contracting covid, and,
- Second, that we should let the virus spread freely through the non-vulnerable population to reduce the time needed to get to herd immunity.
More recently, many of the people associated with the GBD have taken to arguing vigorously against vaccine mandates, especially but not only in the case of people who have recovered from covid and now have natural immunity.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the covid vaccines are effective at preventing serious illness, but are not effective at all at preventing infection or transmission. If this is true, it seems to suggest that the vaccine is individually valuable but not socially valuable: whether I get vaccinated has no influence on whether you get sick. This, in turn, seems to suggest on that mandates are unjustified, since the standard justification for mandates is that vaccines protect other people from infection. It is easy to find essays with a libertarian bent that flirt with this argument, as well as encouraging vaccine hesitancy.
I want to make two points about this argument.
First, even if vaccines do not protect third parties from covid, getting vaccinated still has considerable social value. Widespread vaccination can accelerate a return to normal life by making people less fearful. It can reduce medical costs (which are largely insured and thus socialized). It can prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. And it can reduce the harm to family members of people who, if unvaccinated, would die or become disabled. In the United States, over 120,000 children lost a parent or caregiver to covid between April 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021.
Is it acceptable to pressure parents to get vaccinated for the sake of their children? Well, let’s see what John Stuart Mill, arguably the greatest liberal defender of individual autonomy, said about the subject in On Liberty. Naturally, Mill did not address the subject of vaccine mandates. But he was clear that parents had strong, legally enforceable duties to their children. In Chapter 4, we find this:
If, for example, a man, through intemperance or extravagance, becomes unable to pay his debts, or, having undertaken the moral responsibility of a family, becomes from the same cause incapable of supporting or educating them, he is deservedly reprobated, and might be justly punished . . .
This seems to suggest we might have cause to punish people who fail to get vaccinated to protect their children (and their creditors!), but the “might” makes this conclusion uncertain. In Chapter 5, however, we find this:
. . . if from either idleness or from any other avoidable cause, a man fails to perform his legal duties to others, as for instance to support his children, it is no tyranny to force him to fulfil that obligation, by compulsory labor, if no other means are available.
OK, then. I note in passing that there is also textual support in On Liberty for using vaccine mandates to deal with the other harms I listed above, although of course vaccines, hospitals, and health insurance are not mentioned.
The second point I want to make concerns paternalism.
Mill appears to stake out a strong position against paternalism in On Liberty, although he qualifies his insistence on free choice considerably in the final chapter of the book where he considers applications, and there are real questions about how On Liberty should be interpreted. The point I want to emphasize, however, is that Mill simply did not address a political situation in which large numbers of people were deliberately bombarded with anti-vaccine propaganda they were unable to critically evaluate. Nor as far as I know is this possibility addressed by other anti-paternalists (Nozick, Feinberg). But there is an analogy, admittedly imperfect, between pressuring people who have been conned by anti-vaccine propaganda into getting a shot and laws prohibiting fraud or annulling transactions based on fraudulent statements, laws that do restrict freedom of choice but are not particularly controversial.
Eric:
I like Mill, so for you to write on his views makes good reading for me. To wit thoush, the individual is responsible to society too. Cause no harm in your being an individual practicing their beliefs.
“A person should have the right to act as they wish as long as the negative consequences of such actions are only felt by that person. However, if a person’s act is not self-regarding and adversely affects others, a person should be held accountable for their act.
Mill thinks individual autonomy is opposite to the instincts of society, he asserts that society encourages and rewards conformity.”
I believe an individual acting as an individual may benefit society as long as no harm is done to society or other individuals. Where we go wrong is in the matter of interpretation of another’s actions. This is truly Liberty.
Being vaccinated protects others from Covid by increasing your resistance to it. Not being vaccinated creates a threat to others and even those who are vaccinated.
Run
I think your last comment is one I was about to make, but I wish you would validate it with some statistics and ouse-and-effect argument. I don’t know but I been told..that getting vaccinated lowers (please note because it is an important point..lowers is a matter of degree not of either-or) the rate of transmission of the virus..i think because “not sick but infected” lowers the number of virus paricles available to spread the disease from one person to another. transmission of disease is a matter of numbers: more exposure equals greater likelihood of getting sick. i am not saying this very well, but i am hoping readers will think it very well.
so far, I think I agree with the vaccine mandate people, but
Mil and everybody else who says grand things about freedom is completely susceptible to the “except when you do something i don’t like or that scares me” fudge. i agree that this fudge is unavoidable. the trick is to try not to use it as a get out of jail free card. we need to think very hard about imposing our will on another person. it is too easy to say, “well, she’s a witch so she is endangering the souls of my children, so we need to kill her.”
i get hate mail every time i try to say this, and that’s why war and injustice will always be with us. but at least try.
the “libertarians” also miss this point: “My freedom to infect you, is superior to your freedom to prevent me from infecting you.” I would extend this to “your freedom to come into my house or place of work or children’s school is not superior to my freedom to keep you out [because I am afraid you might carry a dangerous disease] {parentesis to indicate this is only one possible justification. there are infinite others}.
there are no easy answers to this. only the hope that people will be more careful, first about the non-absolute conclusions of “science” and the degree of harm they are willing to do to someone who “represents a threat” to them.
but yes, I’d like to see some science about the risks of infection from vaccinated population vs unvaccinated. i think they will support the pro-mandate position…but not absolutely, and will say nothing about the morality of “forced” vaccination, or the unvaccinated, unmasked forcing themselves on those who don’t want them in their airspace. there is a difference between being arrested, or killed for resisting being arrested, and given a vaccination against your will, and just being told to stay outside…or even to find another job.