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Politics : Libertarian Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (12464)	3/27/2020 3:58:22 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Recommended By John Hayman Respond to of 13056

At the margin libertarians are less likely to consider government ordered quarantines and lockdowns acceptable but I think most still accept the idea. Depending on how you define the two terms anarchists either aren't libertarians or are the most extreme libertarians, either way they aren't they aren't norm for libertarians. You want some libertarian responses to the epidemic. I posted a couple here already reason.com and libertarianinstitute.org and reddit.com And on other SI discussion areas Tired: There Are No Libertarians in a Pandemic. Wired: There Are Only Libertarians in a Pandemic. From relaxed TSA rules to speedy FDA approvals, the coronavirus is forcing authorities to admit many of their regulations are unnecessary. Nick Gillespie \| 3.15.2020 reason.com I don't really agree with the title. There are plenty of non-libertarians and the overall shift in attitude is anti-libertarian, but I agree with the subtitle plenty of rules are being relaxed and it is largely an indication that they were not really necessary. I agree with the conclusion even more - "Governments rarely return power once they've amassed it. But if you listen carefully, you can hear them telling us what stuff they realize can be safely tossed. When the infection rates come down and the theaters and schools and everything else get back to normal, it may be tempting just to go back to the way we were. Resist the temptation: A lot of the rules we put up with every day are worth reevaluating, and not only during an emergency." CNN has also been pushing using the Defense Production Act, saying things like "companies won't gear up production without a guaranteed order". Andrew Cuomo doesn't need the Defense Production Act to offer a guaranteed contract for a billion masks (or some other different but still large number of some other item) with bonuses for quick delivery of part of that order. New York State's population and budget are larger then those for most countries. If there is federal red tape in the way then yell at Trump (and congress to the extent a change in law is needed) to do something about that. The Defense Production Act allows government to direct the production of private companies but I don't see any reason to think that it would be an improvement no matter who's running the government, and since you seem to dislike Trump so much why do you think he would do such a great job trying to run private companies production schedules from the Oval Office? Message 32633375 I've also posted about how a very anti-libertarian government, that of the People's Republic of China, squashed the news of the virus early on when it still could perhaps have been contained. Many private labs want to do coronavirus tests. But they're still facing obstacles and delays. "I could have tested over 1,000 patients by now instead of checking boxes," said the director of a North Carolina lab. nbcnews.com level 1 PhyllisWheatenhousen 14 points · 18 hours ago I work in a molecular biology lab. Testing for the virus is actually super simple, we do similar procedures all the time. I'm on the mailing list for a biotechnology company that we buy stuff from. They started sending emails at the end of January to try and sell us coronavirus test kits. However the kits have to be "for research purposes only" because the CDC won't approve them for medical diagnostics. reddit.com --- And touching on the epidemic issue (although primarily and economic and tax issue) - After a decadelong U.S. economic expansion, not every company has entered this crisis with the same cash cushion. Apple Inc. AAPL -0.55% ended the year with $247 billion in cash, securities and account receivables, enough to run its operations for more than a year even if it didn’t cut costs or sell a single iPhone. And the left complained about such "hoarding of cash" and thought that there was something wrong with it. That taxing it away would not only allow the government to do more but would be healthy for the economy. It's not even a new idea for them it probably goes back as long as there is anything identifiable as the left or even much longer (what Bastiat called "the ancient ideas from which it <socialism> springs"), but they took concrete form in FDR's depression era "undistributed profits tax". Message 32633774