James Smith critiques Robert Levy's inconsistent libertarian stance on vaccine mandates, arguing that utilitarian cost-benefit analysis justifies immoral government compulsion and ignores property rights. He challenges claims that mandates prevent hospital overcrowding, citing systemic failures like certificate of need legislation, while questioning data linking vaccines to reduced viral mutation due to single-protein spike risks. Smith condemns fellow libertarians for selectively defending lockdowns despite obesity statistics showing 80% of severe cases involve lifestyle choices, asserting that true liberty requires uniting against totalitarian measures regardless of minarchy or anarchy disagreements. Ultimately, the episode suggests that supporting mandates undermines self-ownership and validates centralized control. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Long Time Coming Gig00:03:19
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gas Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, James Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am the most consistent motherfucker you know, Libertarian Tupac.
He is the king of the Cox, Robbie the Fire Bernstein, at home, looking good.
How you feeling, my brother?
Oh, dude, I'm so ready for Rochester party weekend.
All weekend.
Me and you, drinking with the random upstate New York people.
A weekend of shows in Rochester, New York.
This gig, by the way, has been a long time coming.
If I'm not mistaken, this gig was originally scheduled for March 2020.
Around February 2020, looked like nothing could possibly get in its way.
And then around early March, started thinking something could get in its way.
A week later, it was insane to think this was going to happen.
Plus, when we initially booked it, we booked it like oddly far out.
We're like, all right, we never booked things that far out, but what the hell?
Yeah, well, here we booked it really far out, as it turns, because it's this weekend.
We'll throw a ticket link description in the comment section, and then I'll tweet it out again today.
But we got a live stand-up show Thursday, I believe two shows Friday, a stand-up show and a podcast on Saturday.
Is that correct, Rob?
Sounds right.
Okay, there we go.
So that should be a lot of fun.
Looking forward to doing this.
Yeah, you know, it was weird.
There was like, it's like, I remember in March 2020, there were things where it all happened so fast that I remember, you know, like I had a bunch of stuff booked that March.
At this Rochester gig, we had Skank Fest that was supposed to happen.
I had some corporate gig that I was supposed to go do, like a bunch of these road things.
And it was like five days before one of the shows, and I was like, okay, like, I don't know, this may not end up happening.
And then by the time the show came, it was like insane that you were even thinking this was possibly going to happen.
You know, it was like, it was just like those five days where it was like, I don't know, the NBA just canceled their season and Italy's locked down.
You think we're going to be doing shows like normal?
And then like a few days later, it was like, oh, you can't leave your house, let alone go do a show somewhere.
So anyway, it was a wild time and this gig makes me remember.
Now a full year and a half later, we figured it out and the world's free again.
You just need a COVID passport.
But luckily, after a year and a half, they managed to get the whole situation under control.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
Yeah, it's really something.
Anyway, so this these shows were making me think about that.
It's also going to be my last gigs till the wife gives birth.
And then I'm going to take a couple months off afterward to spend time with the baby and the family and get everything set up.
Spreading Libertarian Message00:12:56
So this is the time to come see me because it'll be a little while before I'm back on the road.
Anyway, so for today's show, I just can't not, so I will.
I wanted to talk about this article, which I just happened to see because Jeff Dice, the great Jeff Dice, president of the Mises Institute, he posted this.
And it is an article about vaccine mandates.
It ran on the Hill on theHill.com.
And the title is Vaccine Mandates, a Liberty Perspective.
It's written by Robert Levy, who is evidently an opinion contributor for The Hill.
And he is also the chairman of the Cato Institute, which is a libertarian institute that was founded by Murray Rothbard and Charles Koch.
I don't know how many people listening know the inside baseball on this, but evidently Charles Koch found Murray Rothbard, who's our guy, who's like the greatest libertarian philosopher who ever lived.
And he was enamored with him the same way lots of us are when we find his writing now, but he actually started reading him and met the man.
And Charles Koch was one half of the Koch brothers, very, very wealthy man.
And he found this guy and he was like, this is just incredible.
You know, this is like the most brilliant human being on the planet.
He wanted to start this institute to promote the ideas of libertarianism and Austrian economics and all this stuff.
And somewhere along the lines, as they got into the game of influencing politicians, let's just say, I think broad strokes, Charles Koch, excuse me, was more willing to play the game.
And Rothbard was like, nope, we're going to stand on principles and we're not going to make compromises that pretty much defeat the entire point of what we're doing here.
And so it led to a big split amongst them.
They ended up kicking Rothbard out in a really messed up way.
Anyway, this is all ancient history, but Cato has been around for a long time.
There's a lot of really good people who work at Cato, particularly their foreign policy team.
They've had some really great people there over the last few years.
But anyway, you know, so this is another piece written.
This is written by the head.
And I got to say, I read this.
It angered me and just left me kind of shaking my head about the whole thing.
And I thought it was useful to kind of talk about and to kind of get into what the split here is, because there are a lot of people at the Cato Institute who are certainly very, let's just say, not big fans of me and people like you, Rob.
No, everyone likes me.
Yeah, that is true.
And you know what?
I take that back.
I walk that back.
Everyone likes Rob.
And there's a lot of people in our camp who aren't big fans of the Cato types.
And so maybe we could read through this and maybe it'll shed some light on what exactly this divide is.
You'd have to think, is the Cato Institute the most well-funded, like on paper, libertarian organization?
You know, I would guess.
I would guess the answer to that is yes.
I don't have it right in front of me.
So you think the head would have some sound principles or a good straight libertarian thinking?
Yeah, one would hope.
One would hope, particularly on a topic like this that's so easy to tell you what the libertarian position is.
I mean, like, it's vaccine mandates a liberty-minded perspective.
I mean, isn't it just fairly straightforward what the libertarian take on that would be?
It's like, okay, I mean, you have a virus that kills essentially people in a very certain limited demographic.
Now you have a vaccine that's free.
I mean, not free because the taxpayer is picking it up, but essentially it can be taken for free.
Getting into all the other stuff that's so much so antithetical to libertarianism, to liberty, leaving all of that aside for a second, the obvious libertarian take on this would be those who want to get it can get it, and those who don't don't.
And they're comfortable with the risk.
And that's that.
But let's look into this and see what he has to say.
I will say that, you know, I think part of the frustration that I have with some of the Cato types and the Reason magazine types.
And again, I just want to state, it's not, there's lots of people at these organizations who I like.
And I'm not, I really am not.
And I know maybe some people don't exactly believe me when I say this.
I can kind of understand why.
You know, I've made the point before that I'm sure people see me, you know, like arguing on Twitter with different people in different camps within the broader, you know, libertarian world.
But as I've said before, and I think I'm right about this.
There could be one or two times that are slipping my mind.
I don't think I've ever thrown the first punch.
I don't think I've ever gone out of my way and said, I want to go attack this libertarian organization or this libertarian.
I really don't do that.
If I ever did that, it was probably way early in my career before I was like, you know, established or had a big audience or anything like that.
It's like, I don't really, that's not, I still am at heart the young romantic libertarian.
And particularly after the last 16 months, I'm like, more than ever, I'm like, I want anybody who opposes this insanity, I see as, if not an ally, at least a potential ally.
Yeah, okay.
If you're, if you're for liberty in these times, whatever.
Like, what are we going to sit here and argue about, like, I don't know, whatever the issues that libertarians split on?
Are we going to argue about minarchy versus anarchy or intellectual property while the government's like going completely totalitarian?
Who cares?
Whatever.
We'll solve those problems later.
So it's not that I'm genuinely not looking for a confrontation or a fight with these guys.
I want to just get along with them.
Like, that's why I was happy to do Nick Gillespie's show the other week.
And I'm happy to work with any of these guys, come together, whatever.
Let's do all of it.
I said when I gave that speech in Pittsburgh, I was like, look, man, like, we need all hands on deck.
Like, the Cato Institute, Reason, the Mises Institute, the members of the Libertarian Party outside the Mises caucus, in the Mises caucus, Liberty Republicans, Liberty Democrats, if there's such a thing, whoever the hell you can get who's good on any of this stuff.
I also gave, you know, I introduced Naomi Wolf to speak out at Freedom Fest, and I was just like thrilled.
I gave her like a glowing introduction.
And she's a lifelong progressive Democrat feminist, but she vehemently opposes vaccine passports because of just how insane and tyrannical they are.
And it's like, okay, great.
You're on the team too.
Whoever we can get, like, I'm not, let's make this as big as possible.
However, there's something about like the idea that you're going, and I hate the like not a real libertarian, you know, arguments.
They're kind of silly.
But if you're going to fly, like at a certain point, if you're going to fly under the banner of liberty and argue on the side of the COVID regime, I can't tell you how much that just drives me crazy.
And it just seems insane, like to such a level that how can you not call that out?
You know, there are like there are libertarians or people who believe in liberty who will make the arguments, which I think are legitimate arguments, that spreading ideas about liberty is not our best use of time.
That we should be trying to take direct action that in some way, you know, increases liberty in people's lives, not just talking about it on podcasts.
Okay.
So there's lots of different types of actions that people are talking about.
Some people are talking about just like civil disobedience.
You think about the gyms that just stayed open through the lockdowns or something like that.
The restaurants who just were like, yeah, you're going to have to find me.
That woman in Texas who had the salon who did a night or two in jail because she's like, I'm going to keep my salon open.
There are people who advocate Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as being the solution to kind of, you know, like, you know, opt out of the state monetary system.
There's people who advocate like the, like our friends over at the Free State Project, you know, concentrating locally and trying to change things on a local level.
I'm not, I think there's a legitimate argument to be had with all of those things.
My response would be basically that I think that all of those strategies, whichever one is the best, and I think there's an argument to all of them, to be honest.
And also it's kind of a false choice.
I mean, you could buy a whole bunch of Bitcoin and start trading in that, move to the Free State project and keep your business open, right?
So you could do all of them.
But I think any of them are going to be way more effective if we have more people who are on board with them.
And so I think there is value in like spreading the libertarian message.
However, that's not even the argument here.
If you're a Cato guy writing articles, you're already on board with spreading an idea.
That's why you write an article so that people read it and hear what you have to say.
And if you're doing that and doing it on the side, or at the very least, giving cover to the side who are pushing government mandates in the middle of all this craziness, that I have a real problem with.
So, you know, again, I guess like in a sense, when I say the fighting on Twitter, I don't really throw the first punch.
I guess here you could say I am throwing the first punch, but this is on a pretty important substantive issue.
I would argue, perhaps the most important.
Okay.
So there's my little preface.
All right, guys, let's take a quick moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is iTrust Capital.
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Vaccine Mandate Morality00:14:27
All right, let's get back into the show.
You read the article, Rob?
I did.
All right, so let's go through this and respond and give our take.
Okay, so the title once again is Vaccine Mandates, a Liberty-Minded Perspective, and it is written by Robert A. Levy or Levy.
I'm not sure.
Okay.
Quote, your right to punch ends where my nose begins.
That quote attributed to various sources is a libertarian maxim now invoked in connection with COVID vaccine mandates.
Here's the controversy.
If the vaccine causes no appreciable injury, can you still refuse to be injected, notwithstanding that you might be visiting significant risk on others?
So.
That sentence is vomit, dude.
Yeah, it's a really, really rough.
It's a really, really rough start.
And already, it's kind of to even put this question out there as if it's just...
There's like a few assertions buried within this question, like the idea that this quote is now invoked in connection with COVID vaccine mandates.
It's like by who?
This libertarian quote is certainly not, you know, I don't know.
First off, it's not a very good quote.
It's like one of these very broad strokes.
Your right to punch ends where my nose begins.
It's kind of like one of these things that, I don't know, like you could say in, you could talk about things like freedom of speech or freedom of movement.
But if you're really getting down to brass tax, which is clearly what this article is attempting to do, how does libertarian philosophy apply to this very real world problem?
Then the idea of like freedom of movement doesn't really exist.
We believe in private property, right?
Because like you don't have freedom to just go into someone else's house or apartment or something like that.
We don't really believe in just freedom of speech.
We believe in property rights because we don't believe you have the right to run in someone else's house and start screaming or stand up in the middle of someone's performance and start screaming obscenities without being asked to leave by the establishment, right?
So these are just kind of abstract ideas.
And the idea that your right to punch ends where my nose begins, well, not necessarily.
I mean, you actually do have the right to punch someone in the face if they attacked you first and you're defending yourself or if they're on your property and refuse to leave and it's the only way you can get them off your property.
I mean, or just if they ask you to.
You know what I mean?
Like there's lots of scenarios where this is not, this is like a kind of conceptual abstract sentence.
And to then take that, it's like if I were talking about whether or not, say, just the example, like whether or not I have the right to, you know, stand up in the middle of a comedy club and start screaming throughout a comedian's performance.
And then like, you know, the security guy comes over and is throwing them out.
And we were like, well, let's take a look at this libertarian, you know, argument here.
You know, we believe in the freedom of speech.
Let's start with that quote.
And then this is all just misleading because it's like this is a very empty way to start, whereas the obvious answer here is that we believe in property rights.
Also, who wants people just throwing jabs at your nose and not connecting?
That's fighting right off the bat.
So it's a dumb quote.
I don't care what you're getting at.
So, yeah, well, that's actually another really good point.
It's like you also don't have the right to just go around throwing punches that come one millimeter like away from someone's nose.
That would also be considered an act of aggression.
So it's just not accurate.
It's just, it's a platitude type thing.
Now he says, if the vaccine causes no appreciable injury, can you still refuse to be injected notwithstanding that you might be visiting significant risk on others?
Well, that's vague.
How exactly do you define what the injury is?
And how exactly do you find what significant risk is?
Also, I hate the language of can you still refuse to be injected?
Like there's some sort of a norm of that you're supposed to be injected.
Right.
The starting point of that sentence is that there's a norm that you're supposed to be injected, but do you have a right to refuse it?
Which is not a framework I would agree to at all.
It's a very, I mean, if the vaccine causes no appreciable injury, so you're starting your sentence with an if.
So you're not even making the bold statement of like, let's understand, or like you're not even willing to say that it doesn't.
And so therefore maybe people should do, it's just so backwards.
If the vaccine, so you're not even taking a stance, you can still refuse to be injected.
That's an annoying statement because there is no norm of that you're supposed to like that that almost assumes that there's a norm amongst government vaccines that we all have to do it and you have a right to refusal in certain circumstances.
No, that's right.
And it's an interesting side of the same coin to pick to say, do you have a right to refuse to be injected rather than saying, does someone have a right to hold you down against your will and inject you with something you don't want in your body?
How often do they have the right to do that?
You know, like, what are they, what is the punishment for refusal?
All of these things.
Like, there's many other libertarian angles.
But look, since he's starting this first paragraph in the realm of the philosophical and in a very vague sense, but since he's doing that, you're like, well, wouldn't you right away, if you're liberty-minded in any sense, realize that this conceit would destroy the entire premise of liberty?
I mean, like, now anyone can kind of come in here and rush to like judgment of, you know, what exactly is significant risk and what isn't.
I mean, you know, for example, you know, the flu, which I know you're not allowed to compare COVID to.
And by the way, COVID kills more people than the flu.
But.
Yeah, when you borrow flu numbers.
Well, right.
Yeah.
And flu lends them a few.
But let's just saying, like, you know, in a bad flu season, you could easily have like 60,000 people die, maybe even more.
Is that not significant?
Seems pretty arbitrary to decide that 60,000 people dying isn't significant.
Well, it might be, Dave, because might be means anything.
Right.
Anything.
Might be anything.
So, so, okay, now does the government, what can the government force you to do to mitigate that risk?
Like, what, I mean, preemptively we're talking about here, right?
So the truth is that germs exist.
Everybody knows as of right now.
I mean, I don't know if there's a goddamn person who does not know that there's a coronavirus known as COVID-19, like out there in the world, and that you can possibly get it.
And so I think it's much more reasonable to say that if you are not vaccinated, though this is already assuming the vaccine covers the risk, but if you're not vaccinated and you're going out there and you're in an area with other people, that you're assuming that risk.
Anyway, so he answers his own question, by the way, in the next paragraph, where the question, of course, was, can you still refuse to be injected, notwithstanding that you might be visiting significant risks on others?
It's a close call.
I would beg to differ.
Even those who resist government intervention in private matters will endorse rules that bar some persons from violating the rights of others.
Ordinarily, these rules ban speed, excuse me, or ordinarily, these rules ban or limit harm-inducing activities.
Occasionally, however, advocates of limited government will condone directives to engage in benign activities, even when not cost-free, if failure to do so might cause injury to innocent bystanders.
Safety requirements for nuclear power plants would be one example, or obligatory pollution controls.
All right.
Punishing aggressive acts.
I mean, but just that sounds like a private property issue.
Oh, yeah.
Well, that's it certainly can be.
Yes.
So I'm not sure exactly how his point would correspond to COVID here.
So I don't even get what he's trying to say.
Well, I suppose the idea would be that, like, okay, a nuclear power plant or something like that, there would be rules in place that you can't just, you know, have a nuclear power plant in some state where it could, you know, have a meltdown and kill a whole bunch of people around you.
So we're putting rules into place to make sure that you don't hurt other people.
And that's his connection.
To me, this seems awfully, it seems like really grasping at straws to compare that to forcing a vaccine shot on people.
Punishing aggressive acts that have already caused damage is a routine government function, but it's more complicated when government compels conduct that might minimize or alleviate future harm.
This is an area of law endangerment where rights theory is difficult to apply.
How much increased risk do I have to endure before you potentially malign failure to act can be redressed?
When your rights theory doesn't provide adequate guidance, defenders of liberty often look to utilitarian cost-benefit trade-offs.
In the context of the vaccine, here are a few relevant factors.
So he's basically already worked to try to throw the idea of caring about rights out the window.
You know, this could like to just and to use these kind of like a few extreme examples to then say, eh, well, rights, we can't really look at this from a rights-based perspective anymore because something bad could happen to someone else.
This is, I mean, I find it absurd.
If you're going to look at something where you, you know, like, again, this is not a nuclear bomb, say, going off and killing hundreds of thousands of people.
This is a germ with, you know, like a 99% survival rate, even if somebody were to contract the virus from you.
Do you agree with his nuclear option, though, that like there are reasons for preventative measures?
So for example, like if I own, you know, my forest land and I decide I'm building, let's go with this example.
I'm building, I'm starting to attach microwaves together because I think it's fun and someone thinks it's dangerous and it could potentially cause harm to me.
So is there a right to come onto my private property and prevent me from doing something that could potentially be harmful to other people?
Well, it's an interesting, that's an interesting kind of advanced libertarian question.
I think that if you're going to, if you're in a libertarian scenario society in this scenario, then there might be a case.
There certainly might be a case where you are doing something that is the equivalent of putting everybody around you in jeopardy.
You know what I mean?
Like I'm walking down the street shooting a loaded gun off in the air in every single direction.
I don't hit anybody, but it certainly could, you know what I mean, like hit somebody.
So there probably are extenuating circumstances where that would be justified.
However, if you believe in liberty, the overwhelming onus is on you to demonstrate, not just ask the questions and then say, oh, it's a wash.
The overwhelming onus would be on you to demonstrate that this is catastrophic for other people in their own private property and in their own persons.
Okay, so that's where at least you would start with.
And you still wouldn't throw the rights argument out the window.
So for example, you would still say, if you were to break onto that person's property, right, and go in there and then found when you went in there that he wasn't actually lining up microwaves in a way that was devastating for everybody else, you would now have committed a criminal act and would have to be punished or owe restitution or something along those lines.
Now, here's the problem, right?
And I've probably given this example before on the show, but once you say we're throwing out natural rights philosophy and we're just going into, as he describes it, utilitarian cost-benefit trade-offs, you can, it's very easy to go down some very ugly paths.
The example that I've given a lot, and I don't know who originally came up with this, it's like an old, you know, libertarian example, but it's a real good one.
But if you're talking about what does harm or what does more good or the utilitarian approach, if you were, you know, the example of the doctor who kills you, you go into a doctor's office for a checkup.
He, when you're not looking, you know, injects you with something that's going to kill you.
He cuts you open and he harvests your organs.
And he goes and saves seven other people's lives because someone needed a lung transplant.
Someone needed a liver transplant.
Someone needed a heart transplant.
And he's able to save all these people's lives.
Now, that is, right, in terms of just the cost-benefit, as he puts it, you could argue pretty convincingly that the benefit outweighed the cost.
I mean, look, I killed one person and saved seven people, right?
So if you are purely going to throw morality and rights and libertarian principles out the window, you can get into an argument where you're arguing for some really dark shit.
But I think everyone listening, you would understand that even though seven people's lives were saved and only one was killed, you know right away that was evil.
And then on top of that, to the next level, there's also like a practical utilitarian argument that you really don't want to live in a society where you've empowered doctors to have the right to kill people, right?
Blue Chew Tablets Review00:02:09
That has its own practical problems.
And much like that, you can't look at this in a utilitarian sense and not also go, well, what have I just empowered the government to do?
How does that work out practically?
So it's like, number one, it's just horrifically immoral.
And number two, why doesn't that aspect of it get factored into, you know, the cost-benefit trade-offs?
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Personal Choice vs Policy00:14:49
Let's get back into it.
All right.
So, first, how safe is the mandated act?
As of this writing, nearly 170 million Americans have been fully vaccinated against COVID.
According to the CDC and prevention, the CDC, the vaccine under the most intensive monitoring in U.S. history, is remarkably safe.
Adverse events are rare, and long-term side effects are extremely unlikely.
Moreover, vaccine mandates are nothing new.
Wyoming, an indisputably conservative state, requires a vaccine for 12 diseases if a child wants to attend either public or private school or a care facility or participate in school-sanctioned activities.
So, to just say the vaccine is remarkably safe, again, I don't know exactly how you objectively determine that, but there's also lots of different conditions where maybe it's not incredibly safe.
There's also, if you're going to acknowledge that there's any risk at all, there are certainly arguments to be made for, say, people who have natural immunity.
Why should I take any risk?
That's one thing.
Now, the fact that vaccine mandates are nothing new.
Well, first off, they are.
Like, this type of mandate of what we're talking about, like vaccine passports, are absolutely new.
I'm sorry.
That's like what's going on right now.
And as of the time this article is written, is not the same thing.
So, you can't just say, oh, this is nothing new because kids have to get vaccines to go to school.
Yeah, but adults don't have to get vaccines to go to a restaurant.
So, that is something new.
It's not, and besides that, whether it's new or not means nothing.
Would this be either morally or from the consequentialist point of view?
If we were to start interning Japanese Americans, would it be an argument that this is nothing new?
That we've done this before?
This is meaningless.
Oh, it's happened.
And even in Wyoming, an indisputably conservative state.
Okay, well, Cato guy, conservative doesn't mean libertarian.
So, okay, yeah.
And even in conservative states, they throw people in jail for decades for drugs.
Okay?
None of this is relevant at all to building an argument, either from the moral or consequentialist point of view.
Now, the idea that they require vaccines for 12 diseases, I'm going to bet, and I don't know.
I have not clicked on the link.
I haven't looked at the 12 diseases that we're talking about.
I bet every one of them is more dangerous to children than COVID is.
That would be my guess.
I'm pretty comfortable making that.
Okay.
So, you know, like to me, if I'm looking at this, this just reads like, libertarians should support this because things similar to it have happened before and even in the conservative place.
I don't get what type of argument that is.
Okay, second, what's the magnitude and frequency of an injury that could occur without a mandate?
Three groups are at risk.
People who, for various reasons, cannot get vaccinated and are therefore exposed to transmission mainly from others who are not vaccinated.
People in states like I think that sentence alone is worth it's worth a bit of a mention because he says people for various reasons cannot get vaccinated and are therefore exposed to transmission mainly from others who are not vaccinated.
So one, we don't know that the second half of that sentence is definitely true, that their exposure is more from vaccinated than non-vaccinated.
And then also, why are people who for various reasons cannot get vaccinated essentially people who are currently so sick that they're not able to get vaccinated?
I believe that's who we must be referring to.
So you got a problem here.
So if there are people that are so sick, they can't get the vaccine.
So it sounds like there's some sort of an issue with the vaccine.
There's some group of people that you're saying should not be getting the vaccine.
Well, why is that?
Is it because the vaccine might harm them?
So apparently you acknowledge that there is some form of harm from the vaccine.
And for two, why are we giving preference to the people who have a medical issue that they can't get vaccinated to force something on a different subset of group of people?
Why is that?
Like, why would that be a given to him?
Why would it be a given that somebody who's has some type of condition that makes them vulnerable, assuming not just to the vaccine, but also.
It's like not running no cars because people have asthma.
There's people with asthma and they can't handle the harsh conditions of the outdoors because of pollution from cars.
So no one should be able to drive a car.
Is that the way we live?
Yeah, it seems like just, again, from a consequentialist practical point of view, that's an unworkable system.
There's also another contradiction in here, which doesn't seem to get cleared up.
But so if you are going to already say, look, there are some people, and he says, people who for various reasons cannot get vaccinated.
He's not clear about what groups he's talking about.
It seems like he would be talking about people maybe who are maybe infants or very young children who have not been approved to take it yet.
Perhaps he's talking about people who have severe allergies, who have different medical conditions.
I know some people whose doctors have advised them not to take the vaccine because they have autoimmune flare-ups or something like that, and they're concerned about their immune system.
If you're talking about that group of people that are unable to take the vaccine and your whole article is a case for mandating the vaccine, then wouldn't you have to grant that there's certain exemptions for who's mandated from taking the vaccine, right?
Which is a weird thing to not discuss in an article about mandated vaccines.
Like, well, what about the people who can't take it?
Well, I thought we mandated it.
So what are you saying?
Oh, okay.
So there are some people who the mandate will not apply to.
Well, okay.
Now what's the standard for that?
I mean, these are pretty important questions if you're just going to say we're coming, we're throwing rights out the window and we're just coming at this from the perspective of cost benefit.
And hey.
But, you know, so in other words, within the within, say, the New York COVID passport key to the city totalitarian scheme, they've made no exemption for people with health problems who can't take this.
It has not been made.
You have to show proof of vaccination if you want to go sit down in a restaurant.
If you're one of those people, you know, so in other words, just if I'm trying to be clear here when we're talking about the real world, right?
Don't tell me that you're trying to protect those people by keeping the restaurant fully vaccinated because those people aren't fucking allowed in the restaurant.
All right.
So then don't turn around and start using this as an excuse for why we have to, you know, implement these type of policies.
No, you've just literally robbed those people of basic, you know, participation in society.
So you don't get to use them now as an example of why we must do this.
So you better, you better find a way to square that circle.
Like, what exactly who gets exempt from this mandate?
And then I also think without quantifying the numbers, so if you're looking out for, from his perspective, kind of a greater good thing.
So let's say you got 90 million people who are uncomfortable with the vaccine and a million people who can't take it because of health reasons or otherwise.
So why are you going to give preference to the 1 million over the 90 million?
Yeah.
That's a very fair point.
All right.
Or a very fair question.
People in states like Texas and Florida who await medical services that aren't available because hospitals, equipment, and personnel are overwhelmed by COVID cases and people who must take precautions against or who have been affected by the new Delta value.
I think it's worth another pause because this to me was his most interesting article, man, which is the people in states like Texas and Florida await medical services that aren't available.
So what he's talking about is, let's say you've got people that need their cancer treatments and they can't get into the hospital because all the resources are being used for COVID-19.
So now this is it.
That's somewhat interesting because he's putting forward like, look, there's actual real harm that's happening to another group of people.
I got two problems with this.
One, what is going on in our medical system here where they have customers and they're not able to serve customers?
That sounds to me like there's got to be some sort of a free market issue here where you literally have paying customers that they're not even paying out of pocket.
Their insurance companies will be charged.
And for some reason, the market can't figure out how to service paying customers.
That just doesn't.
This is all certificate of need legislation, right?
The fact that you need permission from the government and the hospitals surrounding the area to open a new hospital.
It's a big racket, basically.
And by the way, people don't think of it this way, but hospitals are businesses.
Hospitals are businesses.
So how many businesses, it's like if you had to go to all the other, you know, shoe stores in your area and say, hey, do you guys think we need a new shoe store competing with you guys?
What are they more likely to say?
Yes or no, right?
That's a licensing issue.
Yes.
So there's a huge, if there is this huge demand for hospital beds and there are people paying enormous sums of money, maybe not them, as you pointed out through their insurance company, but still getting paid enormous amounts of money.
Yeah, let's imagine what might happen under pure market conditions.
And maybe that's the point that a libertarian should be making rather than doing all of these mental gymnastics to justify government mandates.
And then I think the other crucial factor, and I'm not the first person to point this out, but if we're going to create some sort of a new health insurance structure where you're responsible for your behavior, either that you're responsible for choices such as risk not to get vaccinated.
And so therefore, maybe there needs to be some sort of a tiered system where since you've made a personal choice that you are okay with this risk, maybe you don't get your health care in the same way.
But then you're going to have to make the same kind of decisions for people who are smoking, people that are overweight.
Like if we're all of a sudden starting to make accommodations for lifestyle decisions to say this particular individual took on a risk, firstly, that's not the way insurance works.
And we can get into the flaws of insurance, but yes, the problem with insurance is that you're insuring against risk.
And then sometimes people get to do stupid things and they still get coverage for it.
And you got an even bigger problem when the government just starts giving people free health care.
If you want to talk about just, you know, putting your risk on other people and maybe overrunning the system.
But I'm just saying if you're going to put forward this new idea, which is not the way healthcare works in this country, that you bear some responsibility for what you're doing.
And so you're depriving other people who might be more worthy of that treatment, then we're going to have to make a lot of structural changes.
Look, you're 100% right.
And the idea of saying, like, look, again, I forget the exact numbers of all this stuff, but somewhere between two-thirds and 70% of medical costs in this country are associated with preventable illness.
You're talking about people, you know, lifestyle choices, the way people diet and exercise, all types of cancers that result from these lifestyle choices, drinking, doing drugs, smoking, all of these things.
There's an enormous burden on the healthcare system.
Now, if you are making the argument that someone not getting vaccinated and then gets COVID and has to go to the hospital is taking away attention from other people who have these other medical conditions.
By the way, just going off the numbers, a lot of them probably have some of these other preventable conditions as well, right?
But if you're basically arguing, oh, this was preventable if you just got the vaccine, which is still debatable, but perhaps, but then the exact same argument is going to apply to government-mandated diet and exercise routines to make sure you don't get all fat and have to go to the hospital for some, you know, obesity-related reason and take away from somebody else.
Now, by the way, I'm certainly not suggesting that there isn't nothing to that argument.
It just doesn't justify a government mandate.
But yeah, I mean, look, like if there's limited attention from doctors and you're doing heroin, you know, and like overdosing and you're going in there and getting a doctor and somebody else has to wait for like, you know, a mammogram or something like that, you've got a real argument that it's like, ugh, this person, you know what I mean?
It's lifestyle choices that led to this and this person's just an innocent victim.
However, this stuff happens all the time.
And to act like COVID, oh, COVID raises these deep philosophical questions.
Like, no, this is like what the majority of medical costs in the country are.
And also, by the way, this has a lot of overlap with people who are sick from COVID, vaccine or no vaccine.
I mean, the people who are very likely to get sick from COVID, not all of them, but a large portion of them are related to lifestyle choices.
There's 80% or 78%, something close of the people who have gotten severely ill and died from COVID have been obese.
These are just facts.
And so, again, this is like the thing where when libertarians like apply, and this is what's so infuriating about the whole goddamn thing, right?
It's like, if you're going to do these mental gymnastics and bend over backwards to selectively apply a quasi-libertarian principle to defend the totalitarian regime, you know, where there's all these other, you could use these exact same principles, right, to just argue why those people's life, they're responsible for their lifestyle choices who get sick and die of COVID, this huge percentage of them.
Like I said, close to 80% in the country, right?
But oh, you don't want to apply it in that way because that may not get you a pat on the head by thehill.com, right?
But I mean, literally, to like to watch this regime institute lockdowns and mandates and passports and all of this.
And this is where you're going to apply your liberty.
Here's, let's take a liberty take on this.
Oh, they've got a point.
It's anyway, it drives me crazy.
And then this next part's flagrant.
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Israel Variant Mutation00:15:55
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Okay.
Hospital equipment and personnel is overwhelmed.
Okay.
And people who must take precautions against or who have been afflicted by the new Delta variant, more vaccinations would have slowed transmission and thereby afforded fewer opportunities for the virus to mutate.
We got to stop there.
Let me just finish the paragraph because I think we want to do all of this.
Significantly based on the data from 40 states, persons fully vaccinated accounted for as little as 0.2 to 6% of COVID deaths and 0.1 to 5% of hospitalizations.
All right, go ahead.
All right.
Well, just starting with fewer opportunities for the virus to mutate, what evidence do you have on that?
As we pointed out from the Sarah Silverman video, I don't believe the mutations took place in the U.S.
So I don't know what evidence you have that if more people were vaccinated here, we wouldn't be dealing with Delta or the Lombada variant.
So I just, I don't know where his evidence of that would be.
Furthermore, and now we're less just in pure factual.
I've heard the theory that because we didn't go for a just live our lives and basically herd immunity approach, we actually slowed down the process of beating this virus, which gave it more of an opportunity to mutate.
Maybe true, maybe not true.
But then I've also heard, and you guys go check this out.
We just did a long run your mouth.
I had a super smart scientist on.
He broke it down.
But there's reason to think that perhaps we are actually forcing mutations because of the vaccines, because the vaccines are single protein spikes.
They only work against the active variant, which means that you're creating a lot of hosts available for mutations.
And so we're actually, it's almost comparable to like, we don't give antibiotics to people that aren't sick because you're going to end up with like your super things.
It's somewhat predictable that you can end up with a certain thing with a similar thing because of the vaccines because the original one, which you would have ended up with immunity for the other variants, you've blocked that, but you haven't blocked the variant.
So we're just creating more hosts for the variants.
You're almost forcing the mutations.
Yes, I've heard people, listen, I've heard scientists make this argument.
I've heard scientists argue against this.
I really don't know whether it's right.
It seems plausible to me, but it also seems plausible to me that the mutations are going to come about in a similar sense through natural immunity.
So I don't know.
But I do know this, right?
To just state as a matter of fact that more vaccinations would have slowed the transmission and therefore the fewer pro, right?
Like this idea, look, in Israel, okay, just to take, I think Israel is a good example because they're an extremely high vaccinated country.
Israel has about 80% of their adult population vaccinated.
So they've got the they've used, it's the Pfizer one, the only one that's been FDA approved, is the one that Israel has an 80% vaccination rates, which, by the way, is not far off from what you could hope for from a vaccine mandate.
I mean, just to keep in mind that as someone at Cato should probably know, just because the government mandates something is never going to make it 100%.
That's just, I mean, I suppose if you want to go like North Korea style enforcement of it, maybe you could get close to 100%, but, you know, then we've kind of got bigger problems.
But, you know, in the same sense that governments all around this country and including the federal government have said weed is illegal.
That doesn't mean there's zero weed.
You know what I mean?
Like there are people who will disobey the government edicts.
But so they had 80%.
They're having one of their biggest waves of COVID currently right now.
This is as of a few days ago.
So this number might be updated a little bit, but as of a few days ago, the percentage of vaccinated people who of the people hospitalized in Israel, the percentage who are vaccinated is 60%.
Now, that certainly, that would indicate that the vaccine is doing something to help people from getting hospitalized, right?
So in other words, if 80% of the population is vaccinated and the vaccine had absolutely no effect, you'd expect around 80% of the people hospitalized to be vaccinated, but it's not.
It's 60%.
So there's an argument from that data to suggest that the vaccine is doing something.
But to act as if the problem wouldn't exist if we had people vaccinated.
No, no, no.
60%, the majority of people hospitalized in this most recent wave have been fully vaccinated with the only FDA approved vaccine.
I think you got the Israel story wrong because that's six months since the vaccine and they don't work after six months.
So it's not good data.
It would work if they just had three or maybe even four.
We just don't know yet, but we do know that there aren't any side effects and we certainly know that there's low risk for long-term side effects, but it's working exactly the way we said because, hey, we're only six months out and people are going to be able to do it.
Because we just decided, basically.
So when this data comes in, then we just decide, oh yeah, because that's.
It's just you didn't have enough of it.
It works.
You just didn't have enough of it.
Right.
Like every good scam ever in human history.
Hey, listen, you're not, you're gaining weight on my diet.
You just haven't been on the diet for long enough.
Right, right.
You better buy another book from me or something, right?
Like, so that's like what we're looking at here.
So to just assert that like this problem wouldn't be happening and that it is the unvaccinated doing this, look, as you pointed out, the story here with this Delta variant is that fucking a foreign country, some variant mutated and evolved and spread all around the world.
Well, because we don't have closed borders, you know, we'll ship you in.
You got a Lombarda variant, that's the new passport.
As long as you got some snot in your nose, you don't need green papers, nothing.
We'll ship you right into middle America.
Well, someone tells me that's not where this Cato guy is going to go with all of this.
Third, we can be sure that a vaccine.
Well, also, you got a secondary statement of for as little as 0.2 to 6% of COVID deaths and 0.1 to 5% of hospitalizations.
Where are you getting that from?
That sounds like the old 95% of hospitalizations, which they've already shifted.
They've thrown out that stat because it turned out to be false because they were taking data from the beginning of the year.
And now the new thing that they're flounding is that you're 30 times more likely if you're unvaccinated.
That's their new thing.
They've already ditched this 95% line.
It's gone.
They're not even using it.
Again, I just, you know, I'll look at Israel where, yeah, look, you can make the same argument about like the six-month thing or that the boosters are needed or whatever.
And they've started giving older people the boosters in Israel.
But here in America, there's no boosters available yet, even though they're floating out the idea.
And I'm just saying that in Israel, 60%, it's the same vaccine that we're taking here, or at least one of the three.
60% of the hospitalizations are vaccinated.
So, okay.
Third, can we be sure that a vaccine mandate will remedy the problem?
Put differently, haven't we seen numerous breakthrough cases in which vaccinated persons have nonetheless been infected?
Yes, but the key reason breakthrough cases are a growing part of the total is that we vaccinated a higher percentage of the population.
Most importantly, as noted above, people who are fully vaccinated experience far fewer hospitalizations and deaths.
Okay, look, even like there's nothing factually wrong about saying that, yes, you're going to experience more breakthrough cases the more people that are vaccinated, but that's kind of circular logic, right?
It's kind of like more people are going to die, the more people are born.
Yes, it can't happen unless you have people vaccinated.
So I don't know what that means.
To say that it's here to give a little strength to what you're saying, you'd have to clarify actual numbers.
So, in other words, it doesn't matter if a higher percentage of vaccinated people are getting sick.
It's is it still at a rate that we'd have to shut down the country over, which is what everyone wants to get past.
If you're looking at real numbers, even with zero vaccine, we're not at a pandemic level that you have to shut down the country.
That's why they don't want to have a conversation about real numbers.
It's not in their favor if you're looking to do something authoritarian.
So, like you were saying, it's circular because he points out, he goes, Well, of course, we know that there's going to be more cases amongst the vaccinated.
The percentage is going to be higher because more are vaccinated.
That doesn't really matter.
It doesn't matter how many cases there are in either category.
The more important figure is it at a number that we have some giant pandemic that we have to solve for.
And if you start looking at those numbers, the answer is no.
Yes.
Okay.
I think that's exactly right.
Okay.
Fourth, are there remedies available that are less intrusive than a vaccine mandate?
Perhaps periodic testing is the answer, but many, if not most people, would find that alternative to be more burdensome than a quick zero-priced jab in the arm.
Okay, here's, let me tell you what just drives me crazy about this.
I mean, I guess, number one, it's not zero priced.
It's not zero priced.
And libertarians should realize this and shouldn't say just like, oh, it's free without giving the caveat that actually it's not.
That actually you pay for it.
Nothing is zero priced.
And particularly the things that the government says are zero priced are actually more expensive than they would be on the market.
But this argument, oof, does it drive me crazy for any libertarian to be making this argument?
Many, if not most people, would find that alternative to be more burdensome.
Oh, would they now?
So now we're going to justify government mandates on the basis that people would prefer that to the alternative.
Well, you know, the only way to know what people would prefer is to let them choose.
I mean, what type of libertarian ever makes the argument that the government needs to mandate something because that's what people want?
If that's what people want, then you don't have to mandate it.
And if people want the alternative, you'll find out very quickly.
The other thing about this is that I just can't stand libertarians conceding these false choices from the government.
Or we could do none of this, which, by the way, they are doing in lots of places.
Or we could do what Florida is doing or what Texas is doing.
By the way, you know, you remember like two, three weeks ago, you kept hearing a whole lot about Florida and their hospitalization numbers and their case numbers, you know, because every time Florida does real bad, everyone jumps on it.
Like, it's so weird that we haven't heard about them as much this week.
Oh, yeah, that's right, because the numbers are coming down.
So when the numbers come down, everyone pretends they don't exist anymore.
They're having stadium-packed events in Texas, in Florida.
They're having these huge events.
There's not a choice between do we want to mandate random testing or do we want to mandate the vaccine?
Get the fuck out of here with this.
This is a complete bullshit choice that the statists are imposing.
And then you're saying, well, this one's, you know, I mean, think about the angles you could go down if you were to allow evil people who are totalitarian to let you pick between two awful choices.
And then your liberty-minded approach will be to decide which one is the not as bad choice.
Well, you know, I mean, Rob, should we castrate the population or should we, you know, genocide the population?
Well, the libertarian argument is that castrating them is not as much of an inconvenience.
Like, no, the argument is it's evil to do either one and there's absolutely no need to.
That's it.
You also can just live your life.
And of course, these options are there for people to choose.
People can get vaccinated.
People can test.
They can do whatever they want to.
And also, people can avoid a place that doesn't require them to do those things.
If you're so afraid of this virus, then fine.
But my God, the idea that we have to reorganize society around people who are afraid of a virus.
Any libertarian justify this?
Anyway, but the consensus is that the vaccine would still be necessary and far more effective.
Again, not a consensus if you need to mandate it by the government.
And if it was a consensus, you wouldn't need to mandate it.
Perhaps natural immunity from contracting the disease is stronger than the vaccine-induced immunity.
But most studies say otherwise.
I guess now they're saying you only get six months out of the vaccines anyway.
Perhaps a vaccine mandate can be geographically or demographically constrained.
That's an obvious consideration, which suggests that local officials be given substantial discretion in establishing the scope of any mandate.
Or perhaps vaccinations could remain optional, but with restricted access to selected activities by the unvaccinated.
The notion of vaccine passport has supported nearly 82% of Americans, according to a recent study.
Again, he's just making this goddamn bullshit argument that it's supported and therefore the government can mandate it.
I don't know how else to tear this apart.
If it's supported, then the government doesn't have to mandate it.
Now, it is pretty creepy that 82% of people support, in this one poll at least, the idea of a vaccine passport.
82% of old people who answer their phones when you do polls.
Well, that's right.
Yeah.
But even right, even if that was a true figure of the American people, like, so what?
82% of people aren't liberty-minded.
That doesn't make the case that liberty-minded people should agree with them.
It doesn't make something right, either from a moral perspective or from a consequentialist perspective, that a large number of people agree with it.
It just means nothing.
And if anything, if 82% of people or whatever are so like on board with all this stuff, then it would make the argument that mandates are unnecessary because so many people are already on board with it.
But the fact that 82% of our population isn't vaccinated makes me kind of question whether 82% of people really support vaccine mandates, right?
Doesn't it seem like the unvaccinated would be unlikely to support that?
Narrowly Tailored Rules00:03:18
Okay, finally, what peripheral concerns can be addressed before implementing compulsory injections?
What will the enforcement process and the punishment for non-compliance, what will be?
Will there be reporting requirements, data tracking?
Will special interest drug companies, be one example, exploit their government-conferred market power?
Will politicians use the next crisis to rationalize even more invasive decrees?
Those are crucial questions which should be examined before embarking on a program that encroaches on personal autonomy.
And yet, we are in the midst of a health emergency, which means that suitably modified, narrowly tailored, time-limited rules may be justified.
Talk about the height of naivete and just how insane it is for a libertarian, and not just a libertarian, the chairman of the Cato Institute, to just, oh yeah, no, we can totally support a government policy.
We can ask these questions, which we all know the answer to.
We all know the answer to.
Will politicians use the next crisis to rationalize even more invasive decrees?
Who even needs to ask that question?
Right?
But if you just throw it out there, then I guess you've checked that box.
We threw it out there.
But don't worry, he uttered the words narrowly tailored and time-limited.
And suitably modified.
Which, by the way, we might as well just have one authoritarian dictator government on all issues, because if government is capable of suitably modified, narrowly tailored, time-limited rules in specific, then why vote or anything?
They can do it all.
They've got the magical answers.
You believe the government's got magical answers.
Let's call it a day.
Let's put that government in charge of everything, have one central government, and be done with it.
They've got magical answers.
And, you know, like, forget even, I would also add, because you said, why even have a democracy at all or anything like that?
I would also say, I mean, if the government can pull off suitably modified, narrowly tailored and time-limited rules with this insane authoritarian policy that you're proposing, then why be a libertarian?
Yeah, they're perfect.
Why be a libertarian?
Centralized government.
They got it down.
Why even pretend to be one?
The idea that you're going to come out and try to give libertarian cover for a naked authoritarian violation of self-ownership, but then throw out these words at the end.
Just, I don't like, dude, I don't care if you're not with us, if you're not fighting for liberty.
But just stop acting like you are.
Just don't fly under our banner.
I don't know.
I'm not saying like, I know that the no true Scotsman thing gets old.
I'm saying not a real libertarian and all of this can get like annoying.
But man, in the most totalitarian 16 months of my life, to come out and run cover for the regime, oof.
It's a fine example of a regime libertarian, if Lou Rockwell ever saw one.