[ExI] UN worried about police brutality against protestors

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Tue, Dec 21, 2021 at 3:55 PM Dave S via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> So when the next pandemic comes along, how do we decide which
> countermeasures make sense and which are government overreach? Especially
> when little is known about the pathogen?
>

 ### Speaking as a minarchist (in case anybody wonders, I became a
conditional minarchist in the past,oh, two years or so), almost all
government-mandated countermeasures are overreach, since it's not the
government's job to manage pandemics. Anybody who is stupid enough to get
out of their house without absolute necessity when ebola is afoot deserves
whatever befalls him. Anybody who is timid enough to stay at home because
of covid (except for the old and decrepit ones) deserves to suffer all the
losses resulting from his decision.

It is simply not true that pandemic responses have to be coordinated. As
long as true information about the given disease of the day is promptly
made available, individuals should be able to choose their course of
action, and suffer the consequences or gain the rewards. If a disease is
bad enough, reasonable people will quarantine themselves, no need for a
lockdown. Unreasonable people will make unreasonable decisions and may end
up being culled from the population by the infectious agent. They make bad
decisions and pay for them with their own lives, and yes, we free people
have the inalienable right to keep or throw away our lives, as we see fit.

This is very similar to the question of what to do about people who engage
in extreme sports, and end up killing themselves - it would be wrong and
immoral to outlaw e.g. extreme skiing or birdman flying or freeform
mountain climbing. By the same token, it would be wrong and immoral to have
a law forbidding people to walk out of their home in the midst of a
pandemic.

Rafal
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