Libertarian's denying COVID to oppose the state.

in #libertarianism3 years ago

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Engaging in COVID denialism to oppose the state is like telling teenagers marijuana will turn them into giggling zombies to oppose drug abuse.

It just doesn't work. In fact, it makes people think there is no real argument for responsible drug use. Because it's set up as a black and white culture war issue, and then dishonesty is employed to try to push people to one side. Instead, we could be demonstrating that our way of running society is actually capable of handling this kind of threat. But no, far too many "libertarians" are just being the DARE program.

We are in the midst of a pandemic and an society-wide epistemological crisis. Trying to live in our own versions of reality constructed in a way that confirms our biases is terribly dangerous. We have got to recognize reality or we have no way to make good decisions.

People have to assess COVID for themselves. For most people, it IS a mild respiratory illness. But mild respiratory illnesses kill some people every year. We don't all have the same risk profile, and we don't all have the same options available to us to deal with that risk.

We MUST make it clear that people are not required to engage in right think and right speak in order to have freedom. The wisdom of crowds is a heuristic, almost never correct in absolute terms and often enough not even "good enough".

Yes, we really need people to understand and express the civil mechanisms other than the market that make up society. We need libertarians, conservatives, and liberals all to acknowledge those mechanisms of civil society which cannot be captured in their entirety by any description due to complexity and lack of full information.

We also need some awareness of how the message is being received and tailoring to the audience so they can accept it. But that's just packaging, not the prize itself.