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How should we think politically about the current global crisis? Do extreme circumstances reveal truths of political philosophy or do they reinforce whatever it is we already believe? Mark, Wes, Seth, and Dylan talk about applying philosophical insights to real-life situations rife with unknowns, John Rawls's veil of ignorance and Adam Smith on our interconnectedness, utilitarianism, libertarianism, and more.
The only article we explicitly talk about is "How Coronavirus Is Shaking Up the Moral Universe" by John Authers, which surveys some philosophical positions. Some of the other articles we reviewed in preparation for this included:
- "The Ethics of Ordering Non-Essential Items Online During the Coronavirus Lockdown" by Laura Steele
- "What Our Contagion Fables Are Really About" by Jill Lepore
- Slavoj Zizek's blog posts about the pandemic in Russia Today (which will be a book soon)
- A couple of essays that Zizek's posts are responding to by Giorgio Agamben
- "Overview: Ethical Concerns in Responding to Coronavirus" from Johns Hopkins
- "Pandemics: The Ethics of Mandatory and Voluntary Interventions" from the Hastings Center
End song: "Date of Grace" by Rob Picott (pronounced "Pie-Caught," not the way Mark pronounces it here), as discussed on Nakedly Examined Music #80.
Audio probs.
There are lots of viruses we don’t have vaccines for. Most famously the common cold. There is no guarantee that because this virus is more lethal that we will find a vaccine for it.
It is a common phenomenon that people respond well during emergencies. Reliable communication is important.
The US did far worse than Australia, where I am. This is worthy of investigation – we are a federal system too.
Appealing for co-operation doesn’t result in 100% co-operation. People are more likely to comply if they have enough to eat etc I think.
The way our behaviour’s effect on others has been dramatically highlighted shows up the inadequacy of the notion of the isolated (Western Enlightenment) individual. We need a notion of the person who is ecologically reliant and socially connected and individually valuable – no; I haven’t figured out how to do this. Worth discussing on the next discussion of this?
The argument against guaranteed minimum income presumes that it is ok to inflict misery on people for the sake of money. It is worth seriously considering alternatives. We may wish to think through home-brewing for instance.
Does authoritarianism act quickly? Maybe not – eg Chinese officials not wanting to hear the bad news (which is a common feature of authoritarianism I think).
There are also lots of costs to people losing and then having to find one again. There is a good case for preserving (some) business.
If we compare the U.K. as another Anglosphere country with partially devolved governance among the four nations, we see a government tiptoeing into instructing the population into lockdown. Policing has been criticised immediately despite being far less heavy handed than on the continental mainland. Conversely in Greece (where nobody values liberty less), we see acceptance of immediate stringent lockdown policed with drones and SMS certification.
Greece is I believe the most successful country to date. I speculate that-
1) in Greece we see an oft employed coming together on red alerts when neighbours threaten them.
2) we see less elderly in care homes and more elderly fit both physically and mentally – active purposeful citizens with greater longevity.
In the U.K. I believe people would not have accepted lockdown sooner because we were unable to perceive any real threat.
Throughout Europe half the deaths have been in care homes where the elderly suffer underlying conditions.
So issues of democracy and civil liberties vs preparedness to trust governance to take charge firmly in a crisis and other important issues of societal structure where as mortgage and wage dependents in the U.K. we have nuclear families and use care homes vs in Greece where there is far greater ownership of land and work despite far far more austerity, with extended family and community networks in tact.
We don’t have a vaccine for the common cold because there are too many strains and it changes. No one vaccine could cover the many strains we get. This isn’t the case for COVID.
You’re also trying to reduce opportunities for the virus to mutate into something deadlier. The playbook for pandemic viruses is 100 years in the making and people still struggle with the math. This is the ultimate marshmallow test for humanity.
I think ultimately the debate would be around the old question of defining the public good. Take the drunk-driving example. Apparently now there is a consensus about it, as you noted in the show. The same might be true about mandating people to not go to their workplace if they’re sick. But aren’t also the externalities of smoking big and consequential enough for the public to ban it? What about noise-making motorcycles? What about the psychological effects of the clothing or general appearance of your coworker at the office?!, How far the codes and rules and regulations should go?, and who decides? Scientists may not have all the answers, plus many for whatever reasons want to not agree with scientific facts. Currently, answering to such questions has been relegated to the free market, by which we’re witnessing the travesty in realtime.
When you were talking about a guaranteed minimum income, I was wondering if it’s not a logical consequence that wages will rise. We see now that someone who works at a liquor store and risks their life in doing so, does so because it makes them money. Someone who would have a guaranteed minimum income would be less likely to make that choice. So in the absence of COVID-19 and social distancing, it would still work that way. With a guaranteed minimum income, employers will need to offer more incentive for workers (especially for so called ‘shitty/essential’ jobs. It would take away some of the desperation that exists in America’s current “free market capitalism”, and gives a better bargaining position to employees.
That’s certainly the idea, yes! Though as we’ve seen with nursing/care-giving, rising wages do not necessarily meet demand. Instead we just get a long-running shortage of those kinds of workers, perhaps because there’s not enough money in the relevant systems (…whatever that means exactly; would there be available funds if profit/advertising/insurance admin were removed in a public system? I’m not sure… not if the funding were artificially kept low by public financing.) to pay the nurses more even though the shortage should dictate that.
Thanks for a great podcast full of thoughts!
I just would like to point out one thing: as far as I know of, the vast majority of China regions don’t have police with gun to prevent people to go out.
In cities, people usually live in condos in a community, where 10 to 40 buildings are grouped together, with a clear boundary (usually fence), and patrolled by private companies 24 hours a day. At most places, people can go out as they like, but have to wear masks. People usually can’t go into a community if they don’t live there.
In rural areas, people live in a village arranged shits to patrol the roads and entrances to the village, and don’t allow any outside person to go in.
perhaps the way to change the systemic economic inequity is to establish value based on essentiality (?) – essential workers shouldn’t have to choose between a shitty wage, or a shitty wage death, or just death – maybe those who are completely useless (and unsurprisingly make the most) during a pandemic should make less everyday – invert the system that presently pays pennies for those who maintain human valuation and life – there would be plenty of essential workers including liquor store clerks…
I posted this argument on the PEL Facebook page, but it apparently was not philosophical enough, so I am placing it here since it does correspond with the podcast regarding possible responses to our current crisis.
If we open up the economy too soon without a vaccine, then the virus will spread exponentially (see Math of the Covid Virus from the The Great Courses, you can find this for free on Youtube).
The math indicates that if nothing was done to combat the virus, with our starting point being the middle of March, then the virus would spread exponentially every 2.5 days, with a 1 in 10 hospitalization rate. Which leads to an interesting question, how long will it take before all hospital beds in the US are filled with Covid victims (there are 400,000 hospital beds)? The mathematical answer is the middle of April, and the reason why our government and governments around the world are scarred shitless.
Opening up the economy without a vaccine, and undoing stay at home orders, will trigger this exponential threat, and if we take the lower bound of the infection fatality rate (IFR), which is .01% (per Oxford Covid 19 Evidence Service, see conclusion of linked article), then the worse-best case scenario (I am assuming the lowest IFR where everyone contracts the virus), then we’re looking at:
328,000,000 x .01 = 328,000 American Deaths (this is not likely)
Now experts are saying that approximately between 40-70 percent of the population will actually get the virus, so:
328,000 x .7 = 229,600 America deaths (worse case scenario), and:
328,000 x .4 = 131,200 American deaths (best case scenario)
So American deaths will be between 131,200-229,600
If we reopen the economy to the way it was before Covid 19, then you have to imagine dying people and an overburdened healthcare system will trigger an economic downturn.
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates/?fbclid=IwAR3NlH4FhwEK7OiWo2u-7-jntm0E66RSItyVAIKBvzOYO8T-KkazmABS8RQ
This assumes many things about the nature of virus, society, demographics, and the future which are not and cannot be known, not even by math. For whatever it’s worth, the UW-Madison projections have changed a few times, but their number has been circling around 80,000 since the beginning of April, and as far as I can tell their state-by-state numbers have been more or less accurate.
But your comment does raise an interesting question. Suppose we never get a vaccine for this virus? Then what? Your worst case scenario, while tragic, is not going to break American society. However, a five year lock-down probably would, eventually. How is one to know when the line has been crossed?
I live in a region of the country that has been relatively unaffected by the virus; we were not locked down. It seems that much of the discussion and debate has come from those in the highly affected areas, and is therefore somewhat unbalanced. It isn’t a 24/7 issue for my region, and we don’t “weigh in” on the national debate much. We aren’t that affected by the sickness itself, but just by the effects of the economy being closed, and by the federal restrictions on our movement. It is inconvenient for most of us; not a question of life or death — that’s the frame of reference from my region. I’m not in NYC; I’m in the southwest US.
This pandemic very much underscores the need for local, vs federal control. Many of the regulations from the feds were imposed on us because they made sense in NYC; it is the “one size fits all” approach that doesn’t work. Federal oversight and coordination is different than federal CONTROL. What was absent from the discussion on the podcast was in regards to individual freedom in the US. My friends in heavy-hit areas are horrified that I would risk harming others by going to the bookstore (which remained open), unmasked. In my community we had the freedom to go to the bookstore as much as another individual, with the same information (the importance of “information” underscored in the podcast) has the same freedom to stay at home, isolate themselves, and not go to the bookstore. I am not forcing them to go to the bookstore; they should not force me to stay at home. Individual liberty.
Another person commented in this thread about the problem with defining “the greater good,” and that slippery slope of giving up individual freedom to an authoritarian state. As a former military member, I fought for “freedom.” I already risked my life for that concept, and many have died for FREEDOM. It isn’t about “saving one life at all costs.” What is the equilibrium of risk between freedom and saving lives?
Listening to this in October, I would love to hear you guys follow up on the subject. In hindsight this episode seems extraordinarily, naively, optimistic about the capacities of the US political systems and culture, to deal with the pandemic. I would love to know how you think about it now.
Agree — would love another episode some time down the line for reflections. I’m listening at the heel of the Thanksgiving bump and just had to sigh at Wes’s predictions.
Others said it above: you all should listen to this episode again and then reflect upon your own abilities to carry out an analysis. Wes and Dylan especially come off as desperately naive, and it seems to stem from their philosophical tendencies. Maybe it’s time to stop being quite so enamored with the beauty of markets and ideas of liberty that leave vast swathes of humanity as cannon fodder for the capital-owning class.