Monday, January 10, 2022

Vaccination : a proxy battle between 1) public good and 2) personal freedom?

My neighbors live right next door to me. They are a hoot to live next to. I am always invited to their parties, where they serve fantastic home made food. But this comes at an indirect cost to the public good. Here is how:

1) Saturday 7:30AM : they start a huge fire BBQ in their backyard in preparation to roast a pig for the party. The smoke enters and exits via the open windows in my bedroom upstairs. I leave the windows open because I love the fresh morning air.

2) Saturday 11:30PM : they exercise their personal freedom to enjoy music, played loudly in their backyard. Not only is my household bothered, the sound radiates for nearly the entire block. My other neighbors want to call the police, but hard to when you just was attending that same party.

In these cases, the public good, as defined by a reasonable person,  seems to be "diminished" - smoky air, loud music - because a family chooses to exercise their personal freedom do as they deem fit.

Extrapolating from this, COVID vaccination might be a battle in a similar vain : a personal choice NOT to be be injected by this untested mRNA experiment - versus the public good that vaccination will stop the spread and make you less sick. Are the two cases - 1) neighbor wants to BBQ and blast music vs 2) a person refuses vaccination - the same?  (Note : I am 50-50 on this, so there is no bias here).

To put some thinking around this, I propose a simple framework. 

Definition of public good, responsibilities, and expected : roughly stealing from wikipedia, public good is "shared benefit for all". An example of public good is clean streets. So as an individual,  1) expectations as a public good consumer : clean streets  2) what am I expected (responsibilities) to do to uphold the public good  : don't litter 3) do laws enforce public good.

Definition of harm to the public good: I define this as anything person/thing/law that diminishes the benefits of public good. So if clean streets is a public good, someone littering is harming the public good.

Definition of personal freedom: I am entitled to enjoy my God given life, and no public good shall  mess with that!

Overlap causes conflict: This is the root of the problem - personal freedom of one (I want to play loud music) intersects with public good good another ( I expect peace and quiet from any loud music - especially rap/grunge rock/classical music).

A framework to resolve conflict: maybe it should be to determine 1) who every came first gets to set the rules - "hey I was here first" 2) majority rules 3) an elected central committee decides.


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