June 2022
Assuming free will is held by everyone, governments cannot innately take away one's ability to make their own choices; rather, they can set regulations and enforce them as they please, creating a perceived obstruction of "free will". The extent of these enforcements, in the form of punishments and for what they can apply, is where differences between seemingly democratic nations and authoritarian regimes widen. As the duty of government is to implement policy in the best interest of its citizens, I proclaim that there is no limit to curtailing perceived free will, assuming the outcomes of doing so benefits the individual and collective majority. Therefore, imposing unnecessarily oppressive measures and harming other facets of well-being would be an unfair use of legislative power by the government and go outside the realm of what a government should do, even in the name of public health and safety. This paper argues in favour of soft liberal paternalism: governance that may interfere with an individual's wants when necessary, in the name of public health, assuming the state is transparent and allows individuals to express their democratic rights. Such governance discourages behaviour that may contribute to the spread of a pandemic - imposing suffering on others - but still will enable individuals to act as they please. Interventions include government enforcement within reason and choice architecture that optimizes for the safety of the majority.
First, explaining what an ideal public health system looks like and works towards is essential. Democratic and utilitarianist principles are what governments should strive to implement because all public health interventions should maximize the wellbeing of as many persons as possible, and this is likely to be accomplished by public servants who are best suited to represent the best interests of their subordinates when elected through the democratic process. Furthermore, utilitarianism assumes the best interests of all beings as equal - a critical principle contributing to the efficacy of the moral theory within a public health context. Although there are many scholarly iterations of utilitarianism, within a public health context, the most applicable is the satisfaction of informed preferences that promote act utility - meaning that an action is deemed suitable if it optimizes for the most net utility according to the current situation. Alongside its underlying principles, utilitarianism is simple and intuitive. It is easily measured quantitatively, allowing the public to understand the ethics that govern their worlds and promote democracy and transparency, making it a superior guiding principle to autonomy, liberty and trust, all of which can be provided following utilitarian principles. (2016)
Achieving good public health outcomes-- in the event of a pandemic - means preventing as many deaths as possible, reducing strain on hospital systems and reducing the severity of disease - all of which require coordination and collective efficiency. Collective capability enables the effective anticipation, detection and reaction to biological threats. (Ruger, 2020) Relying on separate rationales to determine the best courses of action for their benefit leads to coordination failure and slower progress. Everyone’s varying interests and care for the wellbeings of others and themselves is a crucial contributor to decreased efficiency. For example, the child of a parent with severe physical illness or high susceptibility to severe disease is likely to be more cautious, wearing physical protection and getting inoculated as fast as possible. A young person who frequently participates in social outings may not wear face coverings at all. However, within the context of public health, everyone must make an effort for any measures to be effective.
Rulings that apply to the majority are easier to enact and are way better than asking people to come up with decisions. However, a lack of trust in officials, crucial to collective efficacy - begins to diminish. Trust plays a significant role in group decision-making, to start with. Although some communities have high trust and would likely take action to protect other community members without government intervention, this is less likely to happen in an increasingly ideologically divided society. Without government intervention, people with radically opposing views are less likely to follow rules that have not been explicitly prescribed, especially if they intervene with their hedonistic preferences.
The Tragedy of the Commons game theory model exemplifies how rational agents still manage not to cooperate even if it is in everyone’s best interest to do so. Group rationality ensures the optimal outcome for the entirety of the group, and when an individual chooses to act solely in their self-interest, the group outcome worsens. For example, Stuart Vyse contends that people disregard public health advice and damage a collection of everyday goods for all of us, including "the economy, the healthcare system, and the very air we breathe." (Riordan, 2015). This model proves that agents fail to make good decisions due to their bounded rationality. As a result, political institutions can overlook individual preferences for increased net utility with the advantage of public knowledge. Generally, governments are more knowledgeable and less susceptible to harmful cognitive biases such as availability bias, prospect theory, and bounded rationality.
Democratic institutions have robust methods of aggregating expertise and tend to come to decisions that are the mean of opinions mainly deduced by experts. Individuals are likely to succumb to bounded rationality, where they make suboptimal decisions based on the time used to make a decision and the information readily available. It is suspected that individuals are highly susceptible to suboptimal outcomes, especially cognitive biases perpetuated through social media. Recommender systems contribute to availability and confirmation biases that can support harmful ways of thinking. More than ever, malicious agents can launch campaigns supporting treatment plans and the underminement of authority.
Nonetheless, it is plausible to have empirical claims about government actors' questionable competence and motivation, but many (if not most) in the liberty tradition oppose such interventions on normative grounds as well. (Brink, 2018) The public elects democratic administrations, and therefore political processes should be maintained even in a public health crisis, meaning that if the people decide their officials are not suitable to carry out their responsibilities - the public still holds power over their representatives. According to public reason theorizing, political power is legitimate if and only if it is exercised per shared political values or normative reasons that idealized members of a political community can accept, would accept, could not reject, or would not reject, thus relying on an epistemic that the general public would not agree on, then policy and rulings are deemed illegitimate. (Brink, 2018) Eliciting violence, for example, for religious reasons, is not only harmful but also illegitimate based on its reasoning as members of the public may not align with these spiritual values.
Despite this, individuals tend not to apply the harm principle in their decision-making. The harm principle established by John Stuart Mill represents benefiting the greater good versus an individual and how resources are distributed to express that. Consider the allegation that not getting vaccinated causes harm to others because not getting vaccinated diverts limited medical resources and staff to care for people who could have avoided their illness and are now decreasing accessibility to people in desperate need of medical services with no other options and limited opportunity for presentation. Considering the downsides of getting inoculated are time and minimal risks of harmful side effects, there is a much greater opportunity to reduce suffering for others and the individual by getting vaccinated.
In conclusion, public health policy aims to achieve optimal mutual gain; thus, the weight of the liberty of the minority is arguably lower than the health of the majority. Especially considering vaccines, wearing masks and other interventions are both cost-effective and relatively low-risk to the people who abide by them. Moreover, by lowering epidemiological risk, hospital systems are less strained, resources can be more effectively allocated, and hospital workers are less susceptible to medical error. All in all, political institutions with strategies that are based on rational decision-making are better fit to make high-utility decisions that promote wellbeing and ought to do so even if it means curtailing free will.
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