Some liberty restrictions are justified

By Eric Mathison - guest column on October 28, 2021.

Here’s a common view of liberty right now. Before the pandemic, liberty was valued in society. We could do what we wanted. But now liberty has been pushed to the side. We’re restricted in all kinds of ways we weren’t before, which has put us on the slippery slope to the complete loss of freedom. Vaccine passports and mandatory vaccination policies are only the latest evidence of this.
This story is mostly false. It’s true that we are more restricted than we were before the pandemic, but this isn’t because liberty is being dismissed. In fact, if you care about liberty, you should be in favour of many of the policies being used to control the spread of COVID-19.
 The pandemic has forced us to think about the relative value of different goods in society. Most people care about multiple values, such as liberty, public safety, and equality of some form. Conversations don’t always explicitly recognize these values, but the pandemic has led to a greater appreciation of these tradeoffs. For example, if we want to improve public safety, we should limit indoor gatherings.
The exact details are an open question that reasonable people will disagree about, but we know the answer is somewhere between “no restrictions” and “no socializing of any kind.”
 But not everyone thinks there are multiple values to consider, or at least that all the values are of equal importance. Throughout the pandemic, there’s been a vocal group arguing that liberty matters most, and that it’s being unjustly limited. For them, any restriction of liberty – mask mandates, gathering restrictions, border closures and now vaccine passports and mandates – is an injustice.
 To be sure, we’re restricted in ways we weren’t before. The question is how much restriction is justified and what are the alternatives? The people who care about multiple values have some tough choices to make, but you might think that the people who care only about liberty have it easy. Choose the policy that promotes liberty. Any policy that restricts liberty is wrong. What’s the problem?
 It’s not so easy, even for the liberty crowd. Imagine a society with maximal liberty. Everyone gets to do what they want with no restrictions. Would you want to live in this society? I doubt it. There would be no laws, since laws are just restrictions on liberty. You’d be forever fearing for your life and looking over your shoulder. Ironically, the result of giving everyone maximal liberty is that people won’t be able to take advantage of it.
The way out of this puzzle is to recognize that some liberty restrictions are necessary to promote it. If we care only about liberty, we want to find the balance of restrictions that leads to the most liberty overall.
One obvious condition is that the pursuit of my liberty can’t infringe your pursuit. This is the essence of John Stuart Mill’s harm principle, which he defends in On Liberty. Various laws are justified – against drunk driving, speeding, using firearms unsafely, polluting the water supply, etc. – because they allow people to live how they want without being exposed to excessive risk of harm from others. There might be other reasons for laws, such as promoting equality, but society is minimally justified in making laws that prevent harm.
 This doesn’t completely solve the problem, since we still have to sort out what the right level of restrictions is. However, it points to three lessons.
 The first is that, since COVID-19 clearly poses a risk of harm to others, pandemic restrictions can be justified using the harm principle. Which restrictions and to what degree? It depends, and reasonable people will disagree, just as they’ll disagree about highway speed limits.
 The second lesson is that people who claim they have an absolute right to do what they want – that is, a right to liberty without restrictions – are making an exception of themselves. We can’t do all the things we want all the time, since that will interfere with the rights of others. Instead, we have to determine the right balance.
 The third lesson is that restrictions that seem at first to thwart liberty can actually be used to promote it.
Since COVID-19 can cause serious harm, we want to find the policies that allow us to return to normalcy as much as possible while minimizing the risk of harm from the virus.
This is exactly what vaccination achieves. Since vaccination is the most effective way to prevent transmission and serious health consequences, in some contexts it might be ethically acceptable to mandate it. The result will be more liberty, which is why groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have endorsed vaccine mandates.
 One final point. In their quest to defend an absolute right to liberty, some people appeal to freedom of religion or conscience. However, no kind of belief justifies one person in exposing someone else to harm without their consent. It doesn’t matter what you want to do or why you want to do it. If you’re putting someone else’s safety at risk, others can interfere. The argument from liberty shows us why.
Eric Mathison is an ethics consultant.