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Josh Slocum's avatar

I've come to the same conclusion; liberal society cannot justify "lockdowns." Liberty must win.

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Darij Grinberg's avatar

Thank you -- this is the anti-lockdown argument I've always waited for someone to make. Far too many have focused on opposing the interventions based on utilitarian calculus as opposed to on fundamental values. As far as the lockdowns were concerned, there are good utilitarian arguments against (Maxim Lott has done the maths and it didn't come out great https://maximumtruth.substack.com/p/the-covid-fudge-factor ), but they aren't worth swallowing the implicit assumption that freedom of movement is to be bought and sold for some number of micromorts, some difference in life expectancy, or any other value that came out of someone's calculator. On the topic of vaccine mandates, however, the purely scientific arguments failed almost entirely (the risk-reward calculus still comes out pretty good for vaccines if you don't do stupid things like boosting 10-year-olds), and the only real question was whether we're a state that does things like this or one that doesn't. This is a meaning-of-life question, and most of our media and internet philosophers didn't even notice it's there, let alone tried to answer it.

The saddest thing is that I feel many people have *wanted* to make these fundamental-value points, but for some reason shied away from them in public and chose to fight on the utilitarian battlefield instead. And as the topic changed from lockdowns to vaccines, the fight turned into a rout, while also causing serious collateral damage as far as vaccine intake was concerned. Needless to say, both sides are responsible for the latter (without heavy-handed lockdowns, anti-vax sentiment would probably have stayed much more marginal), but I have rarely seen so much destruction wrought by the unwillingness of people to communicate clearly where they stand and what they want.

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