In a recent piece for the Daily Sceptic, David Martin Jones and Michael Rainsborough object to the attempt by medical ethicist John Harris in the Telegraph to co-opt the famed liberal-utilitarian philosopher J.S. Mill to the side of mandatory vaccination. Mill was a keen defender of individual freedom, but allowed that actions which affect others may be regulated by Government. Harris argues that for a person to refuse vaccination constitutes, using Mill’s words, “a positive instigation to some mischievous act”, and thus is not a protected form of personal discretion.
Jones and Rainsborough object that this misrepresents Mill, who rather held that conduct may be prohibited under his famous ‘harm principle’ only if it is “calculated to produce evil to someone else”. This formulation of Mill’s principle suggests it is only intentional (“calculated”) harm to others that Mill thinks may be prohibited, while unintentional harm escapes the scope of coercive regulation.
But does Mill really hold that it is only intentional harm to others that may be coercively prohibited? It’s hard to square that with the following statement of his principle, found in the same essay (emphasis mine):
For such actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishments, if society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite for its protection.
Plainly, actions that are “prejudicial to the interests of others” are not only intentional ones, as many unintentional actions can be prejudicial to others’ interests. Furthermore, Mill here is saying that it is up to “society” to determine whether, given such prejudicial action, some measure or other is “requisite for its protection”. It is therefore hard to see how an appeal to an action being unintentional can save it from coming under the scope of “harm” for Mill and thus subject to the control of “society”.
Besides which, Jones and Rainsborough themselves allow that Mill, as a “utilitarian and a moral consequentialist” would “quite possibly”, in the modern context given the existence of socialised healthcare, have argued that “if a responsible adult refused the vaccination the NHS offered to prevent an infectious disease, the individual would either forego any right to NHS treatment or be required to pay the cost of his care”.
Alternatively, Mill may well have just argued that “society” was entitled to determine that refusing vaccination in a context of socialised healthcare is “prejudicial to the interests of others” and so, under his principle, accountable and punishable. But even if Mill would personally have declined to make such an argument, there is nothing to stop others doing so on the basis of how he defined the principle, as John Harris has done.
The underlying problem here is with the harm principle itself. The notion that merely protecting ‘purely self-regarding’ action from social regulation and interference will guarantee individual freedom is, in the end, fundamentally mistaken. Such a category is far too narrow – or at least can be construed as far too narrow – to allow any real scope for freedom once “society” is given the right to determine what is “prejudicial to the interests of others” and thus subject to “punishments” according to its discretion.
What is needed, rather, is an underlying commitment to personal freedom notwithstanding that such freedom will often impinge on others’ interests in certain ways.
For example, many people may regard it as “prejudicial to their interests” to be offended, criticised or disliked. Or to be rejected, failed or disadvantaged by being bettered by others. Or (in a Marxist vein) to be subject to unfavourable power relations arising from inequalities in wealth or status. Or (to take the topic of the present article) to be infected with contagious disease or have public services burdened due to other people’s choices. Or to live in a society where people have easy access to ‘misinformation’. Or to experience a damaged natural environment. Indeed, it’s evident that all the currently most contested political issues relate to how our choices affect other people. And while Mill himself distinguished between “harm” and “offence” and argued that causing offence should not be prohibited, others may not agree with the niceties of this distinction, and anyway many of the current contested topics would not come under Mill’s definition of “offence”. Thus a principle that confines itself to defending purely self-regarding action is of almost zero assistance in these debates and a poor guarantor of freedom.
This is why we need a principle that defends freedom, not only when actions don’t affect others, but including and even especially when they do. We need a commitment to freedom that permeates all the necessary considerations of how to manage the fact that the interests of others are frequently engaged by the ordinary exercise of people’s freedom.
Consider vaccination. Let us grant that the Covid vaccines offer some protection against serious disease, at least for a while. In the context of socialised healthcare it is then useless to deny that something that significantly improves health outcomes may legitimately be construed as engaging the interests of others, and so is not purely self-regarding. This means the harm principle is of no help to us, as anything not purely self-regarding is handed over by it wholesale to “society” to determine the “punishments” required to address the prejudicing of the “interests of others”.
What we need instead is a deeper commitment to freedom that respects the individual’s autonomy over his or her body, notwithstanding that it may in certain ways be “prejudicial to the interests of others”.
When political declarations historically have set out rights to freedom of speech and assembly, to property, to self-government and so on, they have done so notwithstanding that the advancement of these rights will in many ways be “prejudicial to the interests of others”. Our cherished freedoms of speech, assembly, property and so on are not contingent on the idea that the “interests of others” will never be prejudiced by upholding them, but rely rather on the idea that respecting individual freedom is more important than never offending, upsetting, burdening or disadvantaging others in some way. Of course, the impacts of freedom on others need to be monitored and managed politically and legally. But for liberty to thrive such an enterprise needs to be done in a way which, at its core, treasures freedom above the feelings of others, and isn’t afraid to prefer individual liberty to the protection of “interests”.
In other words, we don’t need a harm principle; we need a freedom principle.
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Interesting post, however Mill’s doctrine is entirely redundant in this case as the “vaccines” do not protect anyone and may possibly even put more people at risk. Certainly it is not clear if the jabs do more harm than good and in order to force action for “the common good” the emphasis is completely on those enforcing the action to prove that it actually is doing good rather than doing harm or simply preserving the status quo.
Mill said a lot of things, much of it contradictory, but I’m pretty certain the Nuremberg Code overrides any convoluted argument needle nazis like Harris might come up with.
The “vaccines” do not protect anyone from anything. Mortality rates only changed last year due to Midazolam murder and the effects of lockdown. We’re dealing with common cold and the flu.
This year, it will be both Midazolam and the “vaccine” which will increase mortality rates, but they’ll put the finger of blame on their phantom virus.
The Covid narrative is insane and illogical…and maybe that’s no accident
https://off-guardian.org/2021/12/29/the-covid-narrative-is-insane-and-illogical-and-maybe-thats-no-accident/
Maybe forcing people to believe your lies, even after you admit you’re lying, is the purest form of power.
Kit Knightly
When you are demonised for speaking the truth you are living in tyranny. Please come and join our friendly events.
Saturday 8th January 2pm – Marlow
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Higginson Park corner of High Street & Pound Lane
Marlow SL7 1NF
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Solzhenitsyn noted that by forcing people to live a lie that they knew to be a lie, is in effect mass humiliation of a population. I’d say that is correct.
“This is why we need a principle that defends freedom, not only when actions don’t affect others, but including and even especially when they do.“
You mean something like this?
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
“That all men are created equal”.
“A lot of people forget that bit” (Ranse Stoddard in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance).
Not as many as misinterpret it to require sameness of outcomes…
👏
❤️
Hasn’t Biden “cancelled’ this non-woke concept yet?
Well it’s clearly sexist and, by omission, homophobic and transphobic, and implicitly antisemitic, islamophobic and racist as well.
Presumably it’s on the list for “reform”.
Sorry, but these experimental mRNA “vaccines may not be mandated under the Nuremberg codes, which we have for good reasons after past atrocities. If they are abandoned indefinitely for a controversial experimental treatment, they are not worth the paper they are written on.
I read this today from a discussion between Reiner Fuellmich Wolfgang Wodarg and information from Mike Yeadon was discussed.
https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/fuellmich-new-findings-are-enough-to-dismantle-entire-vvv-industry/
It is about the jabs and the bad batches and their impact on the adverse events. The article is worth reading in full, but I provide an excerpt below:
“The stupid doctors think they are giving the same injections. But it’s not true. They are being misused for this very big trial where there is no ethics committee! It’s an obscure trial where the people are just the victims. And perhaps they are genetically modifying human beings and they have patents on this stuff. There are 120 new vaccines in the pipeline. They all want to try out their products and now is the time they can do it because we’re still afraid that we need a vaccine. It’s worse than Nuremberg what’s happening now. It is horrible – there are thousands of Mengeles now. Some of them don’t know this, but some of them know very well what they are doing. And they kill thousands of people…. Each one of them is doing their own experiments within an experiment. All of the pharmaceutical industry knows it. They all want to be part of it, including the Paul Ehrlich Institute, so it’s just a matter of time until all the others join in and make it even worse because it is easy to extort those already committing the crimes, so that others will be admitted into this mass serial killing.”
All of this is bad, heinous, but the words which struck me as the most worrying were these:
“There are 120 new vaccines in the pipeline.”
Reminds me of the Nagasaki nuke, the story was that it was not military need but the opportunity to test how the bomb worked in a different situation. And that was the so-called States.
the key point Fuellmich made was that this constitutes evidence that this was planned
I’m afraid that Mill is powerless against the full implications of germ theory. If you are indeed a disease vector, you knew it, nonetheless invaded my space … you as much as intended to harm me. Of course I reject germ theory.
1 point for terrain theory
An outbreak of common colds at an Antarctic base after seventeen weeks of complete isolation (nih.gov)
“A Belgian scientific research station in Antarctica is dealing with an outbreak of Covid-19, despite workers being fully vaccinated and based in one of the world’s remotest regions.”
Coronavirus pandemic: Antarctic outpost hit by Covid-19 outbreak – BBC News
Ooops.
There is literally no place on earth where you can hide from the wholly fraudulent PCR test.
Millions of viruses fall from space every day….https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/science/virosphere-evolution.html
The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life by Arthur Firstenberg. Incredible book about the relationship between electricity and disease. The chapter on Spanish Flu is fascinating. Plenty of examples of ships at sea all coming down with it. And the disease travelling faster than humans could move at the time. Makes the whole idea of transmission of flu from person to person very problematic.
Flu transmission is still not well understood. The SIR model as used by Imperial College, which treats people as interchangeable and all equally susceptible, doesn’t explain why flu typically runs through a relatively small percentage of the population before disappearing, much as the COVID waves have done. Hope-Simpson had a theory that flu is mostly spread by long-term asymptomatic carriers who shed the virus based on some seasonal trigger, allowing flu to break out in multiple places simultaneously without contact between those places.
I know how that one ends…
Isn’t this the kind of thing that got us into this situation in the first place, and won’t let us ever get out of it?
TAKING ACADEMIC SHITE SERIOUSLY.
Very well said.
The harm principle is problematic, as has been discussed here many times.
Perhaps its best and most straightforward application is in the negative: if there is no harm, then there is no right for the state to intervene forcefully. As Mill put it:
“Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. Even if a self-regarding action results in harm to oneself, it is still beyond the sphere of justifiable state coercion.”
I don’t need anybody to formulate a principle of my freedom. I have it. I take it. I exercise it. To the extent you want to regulate it, or remove it, or curtail it, whether you come armed with high falutin’ philosophy, or a shotgun, I’m resisting. Now, if you want to sit down have a drink and talk about it, ok. But my freedom is not subject to how free you think I ought to be. And if that offends you, keep in mind it works both ways. This is the nub of it: if someone else is deciding what definition of freedom applies to you, it’s not freedom is it.
What he said, dawg!
“But my freedom is not subject to how free you think I ought to be.”
But it clearly has to be. If you think (and some surely do, even if you don’t, as I know from direct personal experience) that your freedom should involve wandering into my back garden at night, then my interpretation is going to differ, and it’s going to end in tears for one of us.
Well you can construct all kinds of scenarios. So, ok, property. Let’s wind the clock back to when there was no property. Now I’m free to roam. But what’s this, you’ve put up a fence and are claiming this land as your own. And now you want to keep me out. Well, dude, you started the issue by claiming for your own property a piece of common land. You stole it. All land since then is the same. It’s all stolen. So now, shotguns at the ready: your theft versus my freedom. You’re right its going to end in tears. It’s called history.
So now let’s set the clock back to today. Obviously, for mutual convenience, we all agree to honour property claims. I don’t claim the right to break into your house to prove some point about my freedom. I don’t claim my freedom gives me the right to steal. Of course. But you know, so what. That’s not what this is about.
Forget land, or your car. The freedom I am talking about is about my body, not about my possessions or yours. Freedom to think as I please, speak as I please, go where I please on common ground. My body is my property and we’re talking about the fact that the government wants to trespass on my body. That’s my freedom line.
Woah steady on.
Mark is free to put a fence wherever he likes. How can he steal something that has no owner? He’s simply exercising his freedom to keep you out and have some peace and quiet.
Or maybe he’s doing it to protect his veg patch from trampling, which in turn allows him to keep his body fed – and you’re putting the health of his body at risk by demanding the right to trample said veg patch?
Playing devil’s advocate, clearly, but any insinuation that this is simple is flawed, I’m firmly with Mark on this.
Why then should I not walk across that piece of land. Just because he put up a fence? What if I put up a fence all the way around his ‘property’, and he can’t get out. That fine by you?
So I don’t get your point. Because private property exists, freedom cannot?
What if I put up a fence around the whole world. You can’t walk anywhere now. Happy? Feeling a little boxed in?
This is all artificial, because these properties and fences are extensions of my body, my skin. This idea of projecting your body outwards and denying other people access to that space, that’s not my idea of freedom. That’s not what I’m asserting. Mark might. I’m not. I’m talking about the fence that is my skin.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t walk across that land. I’m saying that doing so could impact Mark’s freedom to grow some veg on that patch, veg that he requires to survive. So by destroying it, you’re impeding his freedom to grow those veg / survive.
I make no point about private property. My point is just this, nothing more: any insinuation that the morality around freedom is simple is flawed.
Wow, so I’ve trespassed on Mark’s land, trampled on his vegie patch, destroyed his crops and forcing him to starve.
Not sure what point you’re making here now. Mark grows beans so I have to take the government mandated vaccine? Is that what you’re saying?
Nobody here is defending the “vaccine” mandates.
The point is just that issues around freedom and its limits are genuinely complicated, and simplistic assertions like “I have it. I take it. I exercise it.” just aren’t going to cut it in the real word.
Terribly sorry to oversimplify the entire philosophical discourse around freedom in, what, the comments section of some random blog. I’ll be sure to write a proper PhD quoting Wittgenstein and publish it through Bodley Head for you to critique next time rather than just offering up my simplistic thoughts.
I said in my first post that I was playing devil’s advocate, but you seem to have taken it as a personal attack. It was meant very innocently I promise.
I’ll just paste what I said above and leave it there as I don’t appreciate the straw man ad absurdum:
Oh you don’t appreciate the straw man. Good for you. But you have no problem equating my argument to, what was it, demanding the right to trample his vegie patch.
“Mark is free to put a fence wherever he likes. How can he steal something that has no owner? “
Takes me back to anarcho-capitalist forum discussions a couple of decades ago, arguing about “homesteading”, and the origins of rights.
Didn’t really get us anywhere then, either, but it’s interesting stuff.
Hehe yep. The tone of debate on here is usually very good, I guess because people tend to start with the assumption that despite different viewpoints we’re all on the same side. Honestly didn’t mean for it to go a little sour above, ah well.
Yes, it rather spiralled……
Yes, I try to avoid getting into these kinds of extended discussions. It’s not the place. But you guys had me trespassing in your land, coming at me with a shotgun, then destroying the vegie crop. All because I failed to provide the nuance you insist on. Maybe next time just keep scrolling and just let me say my piece. Or make your point in your own way.
Freedom is simple. If you don’t think so, great! I do. It’s simple. I’m free. And no, that doesn’t mean you have to fantasise that I’m going to break and enter and smash up your stuff.
“Maybe next time just keep scrolling and just let me say my piece. Or make your point in your own way.“
I did. I don’t think I was unreasonable or unduly hostile, was I? I just gave a reasonable and realistic example to show that there needs to be some way to work out the practical limits of freedom.
I suppose the guy who put up the fence may want to keep you out because if he doesn’t keep you out you might use your freedom to pick (not trample) the veggies HE grew (by putting innately HIS OWN labor to plow the land and what not). So the poor is just trying to protect his freedom to labor and reap the fruits of his labor, and you are denying it to him and calling him a thief. In that particular scenario you seem to be actually more keen on theft (of someone else’s labor) than him.
So yes, indeed, freedom is simple. Just revert the roles and see how you would feel about the neighbor exercising his freedom against your veggie patch and calling you a thief for trying to protect your work.
P.S. I fully agree that you don’t need John Stuart Mill or any other dead guy to make you realize that, and I’m fully confident you will sort it out all right by yourself.
One man’s right is another man’s shackle, you can’t have rights & freedoms.
The injustices of “property” (land) ownership are the root cause of all the fascist, crony capitalist, Marxist, authoritarian, totalitarian & democracy problems of today.
You can not separate the right to own land, a neoliberal philosophy, that most libertarians subscribe too! & the authoritarian. Because those protections have to be enforced. Our economy, banking cartels & British establishment are built on theft of something that was never theirs. Common land never belonged to government to sell or give away.
The most a free egalitarian society could hope for in terms of respect for property should be respect for privacy of an occupier of a place name i.e. your home.
As Jurassic 5 would say:
“My conscience is mine, my justice is mine, and my freedom is a sovereign freedom” Proudhon
Here is your future people…
Swedish startup Epicenter has created an under-the-skin microchip to carry Covid passports in the user’s arms.
At the beginning of December, Sweden enacted new rules requiring individuals to have a passport at all events with more than 100 people.
Following that announcement, the number of people who got microchips inserted under their skin rose: around 6,000 people in Sweden have so far had a chip inserted in their hands.
Epicentre’s Hannes Sjöblad said: “Right now it is very convenient to have a Covid passport always accessible on your implant.”
Coming sooner than you think to all Western Democracies.
I remember not so long ago, when this was just another conspiracy theory…
I wrote earlier about skiing in Italy – FFP2 masks required in all cable cars and other vaguely ‘enclosed’ mountain transport. Gets worse. The lift pass in Italy is apparently linked to your vaccination ID so the unvaccinated won’t even be able to get on a lift! Looks like my skiing days are well at truly over!
Skiing in Sweden
Might hold out for a little longer than Italy, at least….
Or in Sweden you have your lift pass and Vaxx ID on a chip implanted into your hand…
Maybe for some of them, but it’s not compulsory (yet).
come to Slovenia….
Lovey people, lots of small ski areas…
huge dump of snow tomorrow,
just do it….
(We don’t get there till Sunday)
SLAP!
Sounds
Like
A
Plan
“Prejudicial to the interests of others” – doesn’t that argument cut both ways? We know that the vast majority of people do not require whatever protection may be afforded by the vaxx, that only a small minority (if anybody) will benefit from the vaxx. We know, by and large, who that group is. We also know that the group least in need of the vaxx, is the group that suffers the greatest negative effects of the vax. So insisting that the majority take a drug that in the short term has proven to cause harm to people who in all likelihood would have suffered no harm from the virus, so that a small minority, following the false premise of vaxx for all to end the pandemic peddled by pharma companies and the scientists, doctors and politicians they have co-opted, might feel more protected, is surely just as prejudicial to the interests of others – indeed, prejudicial to the vast majority.
The assault on the rule of law, constitutions, fundamental rights and freedoms carried out by those pushing vaxxes and lockdowns is also prejudicial to the interests of all of us.
On a separate note, can we stop the lie that people do not pay the cost of their care, as if the service were free. Most European health care systems are taxpayer funded (or co-funded) – those who pay taxes, do pay for their care. The argument is vile and I’m sick of hearing it and even sicker of hearing idiots repeat it.
I agree that unvaccinated should be locked out from health care but I would add much much more: diabetes 2 patients, smokers, drinkers, reckless drivers, people causing any accident, extreme sports fanatics and so on. Let’s see how people react. Or it is only fine to get locked out until it fits your idea right?
You can debate the intellectual and philosophical arguments until the cows come home.
Is a person who goes skiing in winter taking an unacceptable risk (it is a risky sport after all), are they being selfish? What about mountain biking, running, or DIY? All causes of accidents and admissions to hospital. Should we ban any sport that is not sedentary or any activity that comes with the slightest risk?
The examples you gave are mostly about personal risks, unless you’re referring to a skier taking an unreasonable risk that results in mountain rescue being called to a situation that puts the rescuers at risk unfairly.
My interpretation of the moral argument above is that it focuses more on potential harm to others.
I prefer to use the example of cars – drivers are putting pedestrians on the pavement at risk.
The Telegraph takes stacks of cash from the Vaccinator General, Bill Gates and so the musings of John Harris on the prospect of mandatory vaccination will carry zero credibility with anyone who has a brain that’s still working.
Those poor souls who chose to allow any of these untested, unlicensed and clearly dangerous products to be injected into their bodies might want to excuse themselves from the still working brain description. Instead it might be better for them to concentrate on getting their affairs in order, while time allows.
There are two quite different scenarios here, and both fall flat for me for different reasons.
The FIRST is more hypothetical and does not relate to the current crop of adenovirus vector or mRNA “spike-only” vaccines. If a vaccine truly does protect against transmission and infection, then the argument in favour of mandates states “you should not have the freedom to cause harm to others”. However, since those vaccines protect against transmission and infection, we can solve this moral conundrum very easily – the person who wants to be protected can simply opt to have the vaccine. So in this scenario, the only remaining ethical question in my eyes is: “should mandates be put in place to protect those unable to have the vaccine and newborn babies?”.
I think this case is actually arguable, and while I still wouldn’t support mandates (because I don’t trust the authority of those who would mandate them), it still feels like a valid ethical debate.
The SECOND scenario is actually pertinent to the current situation, and relates to leaky vaccines that don’t prevent infection or transmission and carry risks to the vaccinated. In this scenario, it is very hard to make the moral case for forcing someone to take a risk by having the vaccine, because they don’t protect other people. If these vaccines do offer some protection against severe symptoms, then as above, the onus is again on the person who wants to be protected to get the vaccine.
However, this scenario requires us to consider myriad other factors too. There is no simple moral conundrum that we can pose with simple ethical thought experiments or over-simplified value systems. Instead, we need to account for all of these factors.
Does the presence of a leaky vaccine increase the rate of immune escape? What is the impact on rate of evolution? What is the potential risk of the vaccine? How much protection is offered, and for how long? How do these risks or benefits change based on age or other factors? Does the vaccine offer some limited reduction in transmission rates for some temporary period? Etc.
Ultimately this leads us to the conclusion that we need a thorough risk/benefit analysis that. In the case of risky vaccines for a low-risk virus, it is near-inevitable that this will not result in clean moral choices. If the conclusion is that vaccines reduce risk for both the vaccinated and those around them at the 3 month mark, but increases the risk of immune escape into wider society at the 3 year mark following repeated boosters, what steer would Mill or other philosophers give on this? My view is that you’d have to ask them, if they’re still around, because you won’t find the answer in their writings. Their writings will be in clean theoretical world, but the reality here is very very messy.
The harm principle isn’t applicable to any of this, the key phrase being individual is accountable for. This necessitates that said individual made a conscious decision to do something and could have made a different conscious decision instead. But getting infected with a virus is not the result of a conscious decision: It’s one of (unknown) environmental circumstance said individual cannot realistically control: The only surefire way to avoid that is to spend one’s complete life in isolation in a suitable facility, ie, one designed to be safe in an environment contaminated with biological warfare agents. Further, the individual can also not stop viruses replicating in its body from jumping to other hosts unless the same condition is met.
This means people trying to argue based on this harm principle must demand that all of mankind must be permanently locked up in separate, bioweapon-safe compartments. And this, in turn, would mean must demand self-extermination of the human race by starvation. Insofar they don’t, they’re just using a sleight of hand to justify why their own, largely irrational fears justify enforcement actions targetted at other people.
I love the cartoon that accompanies this story. That’s what great political cartoonists do – they capture in one drawing and dialogue boxes the essence of what’s taking place. Of course, now-a-days there are hardly any brave cartoonists left in mainstream media. I recall one cartoonist in Australia produced a “Covid skeptic” cartoon and was promptly fired.
Good summary of the experts’ past pronouncements:
https://www.facebook.com/chris.buechler/videos/1015799722480254
Nice example of a duper’s delight smirk from Mr Gates there at about 30 seconds.
The man who drew the above cartoon, the great Bob Moran, has indeed been fired.
He was “offence-mongered” out of his job.
I didn’t know THIS was that cartoonist. Well, there you go – they fired the best and smartest cartoonist.
He has a website and sells cartoons … I was thinking of getting the one captioned “Never give up the right to spend time with the people you love”.
Bob Moran art
We do need a deeper commitment to freedom, agreed.
As for ‘the underlying problem’, one might question whether utilitarianism as a system of thought and of which Mill was an exponent is the philosophical light one should be guided by at all. The basing of social policy on the ‘happiness of the greatest number’ has a totalitarian tendency at its very root. The endgame is a ‘Brave New World’ dystopia where the majority appear to be happy but in fact are drugged; they do not have the independence of mind, freedom of thought and therefore right of dissent that help to give dignity to human life; and they do not care to see such things expressed in the minority, rather they are ‘happy’ to see the minority oppressed.
What, fundamentally, is the difference between being forced by law to wear a seatbelt and being forced to get jabbed? Both involve bodily autonomy. Both involve potentially burdening the NHS unnecessarily. Both involve calculations of risk. Mandatory seatbelt-wearing is the equivalent of a covid passport: you can’t travel by car (train/aeroplane/coach) unless you satisfy the imposed condition.
Philosophical consistency may oblige one to acknowledge the justice of the analogy and, if one values freedom highly enough, to argue that making seatbelt-wearing mandatory was a mistake.
Making seatbelt-wearing mandatory is (or rather was) nonsense as there’s no practical way to enforce that. But that’s an entirely different conversation.
Tell that to those who’ve been fined for breaching it (as I have). Not that it’s stopped me doing so, as it’s a matter of principle for me, but the fact that enforcement can be evaded much of the time doesn’t make intrusive laws much less obnoxious.
The reality is that most people obey the rules, and for some of those people it’s because they don’t want to get fined.
It’s certainly an excuse to extort some more money from somebody whom the police targetted for a completely different reason. But that’s not the same as effective enforcement.
Yes, I’ve been fined too – it’s certainly not a dead letter – and I remember how pleased the policewoman looked to be able to add me to her record of offences apprehended. Introduce a new legal restriction and there are always people eager to enforce it.
Making seatbelt wearing mandatory was clearly morally wrong, and a gross error, as crossing an ethical line without serious need will tend to be.
The seatbelt law parallel was one of the first resorts of those rationalising the facemask mandates.
The first is essentially a discretionary contractual arrangement whereby the state enhances individuals’ natural capabilities, for mutually-agreed benefit, in exchange for compliance with a set of rules; i.e. the state provides a road network and associated infrastructure which allow people to travel at far higher speeds than they could naturally, in exchange for users’ agreement to use that network responsibly (which a majority agrees includes complying with certain rules intended to limit the burden on emergency services when accidents happen).
The second is the state using its monopoly of force (which the public grants it for the purpose of constraining and punishing violations of generally-agreed rules, and without which highly developed societies would be impossible) to impose a potentially damaging modification of individuals’ natural state, which gives no benefit at all to some people, for a purpose which some regard as inimical to a healthy society.
It’s always seemed like a totally spurious analogy to me.
“The first is essentially a discretionary contractual arrangement whereby the state enhances individuals’ natural capabilities, for mutually-agreed benefit, in exchange for compliance with a set of rules“
This is pure sophistry.
There’s no contractual agreement involved at all. The seatbelt laws were imposed by coercion.
And the reference to “emergency services” amounts to the same point anyway, that these unjust laws are rationalised by the cost to the public purse, consequent on the collectivisation of health (and emergency) services.
Mark, you may disagree with the idea that it is in essence a contractual arrangement, but that doesn’t make it sophistry. To my mind, it is very clearly different to laws which are fundamental to the existence of organised society (such as those which punish killing another person, or the taking of property which society at large recognises as belonging to someone else). It’s a law which only applies to people who choose to engage in an activity (travelling at high speed) which the world managed very well without for many centuries.
Your ability to travel at high speed, at ground level, depends on the state providing the roads and associated infrastructure and services (including cleaning up after accidents). Are you saying that it doesn’t have the right to make people’s use of that network conditional on their abiding by an agreed set of rules?
What laws aren’t imposed by coercion? Do you think laws of contract aren’t?
Actually, I was thinking more of the emotional cost to the unfortunate people who have to clear up the mess after an accident. You might think that’s irrelevant. I don’t.
Big protest in Kazakhstan, Almaty tonight around soaring inflation. Typically doesn’t happen there as the police are truly brutal, but this time they were outnumbered. Instead of censoring, they’ve literally shut the entire Internet down and detaining journalists.
We’re seeing massive unrest across the globe
> be required to pay the cost of his care”.
that’s it. hit them where it hurts them the most in their pockets.
While the MSM condemns the use of ivermectin, the most populated state in India just declared they are officially COVID free after promoting widespread use of the safe, proven medicine. In addition to this, Ivermectin attaches to covid spikes and prevents them from binding to ACE2. Get your Ivermectin today while you still can! https://ivmpharmacy.com
But ‘harm’ is far more complex than that.
Moving away from the contentious subject of coronavirus vaccines — consider vaccination against chickenpox as an argument.
This vaccine definitely works. What’s more, by becoming vaccinated you also protect others against disease, such as the immunocompromised. Great — vaccination is a utilitarian good.
But what about vaccine side-effects? They’re rare, but then so are complications with chickenpox, with hospitalisations running at 1:3,000 or so.
But now the vaccines have been identified as significantly increasing the risk of shingles in older age, which can be very painful/distressing and comes with a risk of serious complication (eg, loss of sight). This occurs because immunity to the chickenpox virus needs regular exposure over the years for the immunity to remain effective — as vaccination has reduced childhood chickenpox the elderly have been denied this ‘top up’ of their immunity.
Ah, but those at risk of shingles can have the shingles vaccine, which reduces the problem…
What a merry-go-round — we need medicine to counteract the problems introduced by medicine for a problem that, while non-trivial, also wasn’t that serious in the first place (I’d be happy to accept a counter-argument here, but I’d note that the UK’s position is that chickenpox does not warrant universal vaccination when downstream consequences are taken in to account).
So, what would Mills say?
I’d suggest the answer would be ‘you can’t really apply utilitarianism to complex matters like this where the full set of consequences aren’t trivial to identify‘.
I’d suggest that Mills, were he to see the current covid vaccine situation would say ‘really we don’t have enough evidence yet — perhaps vaccinate those most at risk, but leave the children be, because harm to them might result in a lifetime of harm’.
But this “we need a solution to a problem we created by solving the previous problem” is generally the story of civilization…
If your vaccine protects you, leave me alone.
If your vaccine doesn’t protect you, why did you take it?
Stop blaming a flawed treatment on those who refuse to take it.
Look this has already been, agreed on in advance it’s time we stopped engaging theoretical debates that justify fascist narratives. There are numerous treaties, declarations & laws that prohibit this totalitarian criminality. It’s time to stamp out pro vaccine marxists who are inciting hate & violence on others. Set an example No1. Issue an arrest warrant for the health secretary for Savage Jabit.
The Nuremberg Code (1947)
Permissible Medical Experiments1.The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision
The Law is clear on force, coercion & blackmail in regard to vaccines. The British Government are braking it! If you engage with these people justifying their criminality, you are complicit.
The problem with any collective decision making is that the decisions can be wrong; not just for certain individuals or certain groups, but for society as a whole, possibly even for the groups that are meant to benefit the most (the elderly in this case).
Individual decision making can also be wrong but is less likely to provide dramatically poor outcomes for society, as not all individuals will do the same wrong thing, some may take more time than others to way up their options and so on.
This so-called crisis has been the best advert for libertarianism that I have ever seen. It is not, to me, about abstract notions of liberty, that justify minimal government, but the fact that government is so often inimical to life, wealth, dignity and happiness.
Sorry, but this is over-laboured. If the virus was actually dangerous – and an IFR of 0.096 clearly makes it not so – then maybe you could argue for Mill’s prevention of harm to others. But it’s not and never was, so the point is moot. The same thing goes for the ‘vaccines’ that are not vaccines.
I think we do ourselves a disservice with these overworked, ponderous pieces. A short, sharp para or two is much more likely to hit home. Sorry Will.
Too many words. We don’t need philosophers for this one. We don’t even need any science let alone ‘the science’. Mandatory vaccinations are and have always been wrong. End of story.
That would have been the mainstream view 2 years ago. I can’t believe how far we’ve gone in such a short time. We used to have an Hippocratic Oath.
Virtue ethics get us where we want to be faster than utilitarianism, for the major flaw with the utilitarian approach that the governments claim to have used is that it relies upon predictable consequences. Here the consequences were unknowable, given the fact that they were never tested over the long term, (though the previous animal tests for MRNA vaccines in cats and other animals had been known to be disastrous.)
Of course the consequences may well have been known by a significant inner cohort. The essays and papers by both Stanley and Boris Johnson on the desirability of a much much lower population (eg. 10-15M in the UK) do not inspire confidence that they innocently failed to recognise that the consequences were unknowable, sadly.
Casuistry, derived from and predicated by lies and malfeasance.
Jeremy Chardy: I regret getting vaccinated, I have series of problems now.
Former world No. 25 Jeremy Chardy says he has a “series of problems” after taking the COVID-19 vaccine and his 2021 season is over. This summer, 34-year-old Chardy decided to get vaccinated and it didn’t work out well for him.
https://www.tennisworldusa.org/tennis/news/Tennis_Interviews/102836/jeremy-chardy-i-regret-getting-vaccinated-i-have-series-of-problems-now/
The problem with applying JS Mill to modern-day questions is that he lived and wrote in that happy time prior to August 1914, when as AJP Taylor noted, “a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman.”
We’re discussing problems that Mill could never have foreseen, and his thoughts are sadly no longer relevant.
Is the cartoon a Tory election poster?
Goodness me, you academics do waste time wrapping yourselves in the minutiae of a topic.
No, John Harris has no right to claim Mills would have backed mandatory vaccination, he cannot possibly know what Mills would have made of it all, although it doesn’t surprise me that he is arrogant enough to think so.
But let’s get back to basics once again. It’s a virus that seriously affects less than 1% of the population and, of that less than 1%, the vast majority are very old with underlying health conditions. In other words, the same demographic that sadly die during every flu season. Does Harris now propose mandatory vaccines against flu?
A rational person who truly believes in liberalism can clearly see that widespread draconian measures against such a discriminating virus is illogical, illiberal and very damaging to society.
Yup, liberals pfffft.
Johnson blathers about knowing how wrecking (sob) his pointless lockdowns are blah blah, and then introduces ‘stealth shortages’ by clogging up the food processing industry and transport with pointless fake Covid tests to disruptively create bottlenecks and panic buying – does the porker think we are totally stupid – he is dissembling and devious to the core!
So is this the start of his massive deliberate ‘food panic’ and shortages offensive?
This will all never end – unless we stop complying!
Then there is mandatory vaccination threats – forcing people to take a vaccination against their will and better judgement – with products that we know have killed, at the very least, 1,800 and injured over 1,300,000 in this country and we now know damage our immune system, permanently – is a violation of the Nuremberg convention and a Crime Against Humanity with serious prison sentences on conviction.
Why would a Government, operating under ‘duty of care’ obligations still be trying to force these increasingly ineffective in their stated prime purpose, deeply and even fatally flawed products onto its citizens?
There is no kind answer to that.
We don’t even have to be non-compliant, all that’s required is don’t volunteer to take the tests. Just don’t participate.
Its barmy, there is no case to answer. The ONLY argument is a 2nd or even 3rd order one, that the unvaxed stop public health services performing because of the extra strain they put on it. Even this is bunkum. The ‘vaccinations’ are no such things, they do not stop transmission or infection. Even any possible case for arguing the 2nd/3rd order benefits to ‘society are so short-lived as to be useless.
Its all arguments to support the unsupportable.
Freedoms are being trampled to benefit no-one but meglomaniacs.
Well…actually it’s the insistence that the unvaccinated be vaccinated which is the thing “prejudicial to the interests of others;” i.e. you want me to take a series of experimental gene therapy shots that might injure or kill me.
Am I missing something?
The argument is: we have to protect the NHS. Same argument as with seatbelts. So it seems inevitable that “free” healthcare, inevitably leads to fascism. The system “owes” you care and therefore you “owe” the system compliance.
You have to hand it to them, despite the narrative being riddled with holes it’s an incredibly profitable scam.
Testing is doing far more harm to the NHS than covid patients. Is that by mistake or design?
Oh please, not the seatbelt argument again.
It’s incomparable to anything going on now and is actually a sensible measure for the merest inconvenience.
“Just wear the damned belt”
Calm down. It is about the rationale for the whole thing. Are you obliged to protect yourself?
It’s about lines crossed, passes sold.
Imagine for a moment an alternative world in which the proposal to regulate us for our own protection in our own vehicles had been defeated by a mass movement of popular and elite outrage, resisting such nanny state nonsense and insisting on clear prohibitions on laws coercing us for our own good.
Now imagine trying to impose facemasks etc on that society…
That’s why it’s good to stand firmly on moral principles.
“Same argument as with seatbelts. So it seems inevitable that “free” healthcare, inevitably leads to fascism.”
Indeed so.
Once everyone is forced to pay for everyone else’s healthcare, everyone’s health becomes the concern of the state, because the costs of ill health are collectivised.
The result, inevitably and necessarily, is the nanny state that we have seen growing around us over the past few decades, with seatbelt and smoking etc laws, culminating in the covid abomination.
The argument can be made that if the truth were known, the vaccinated will stretch and strain the NHS more than any other cohort. In time. Not every victim simply drops dead, (although plenty do).
Yes, it’s your duty to protect the NHS comrade (sarc).
In reality, the Tories are just deflecting to cover-up 10 years of their maladministration of health care to enrich their cronies.
From Thurber’s “Mr Preble gets rid of his wife”
Let’s go down in the cellar,” Mr. Preble said to his wife.
“What for?” she said, not looking up from her book.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “We never go down in the cellar any more. The way we used to.”
“We never did go down in the cellar that I remember,” said Mrs. Preble. “I could rest easy the balance of my life if I never went down in the cellar.” Mr. Preble was silent for several minutes.
“Supposing I said it meant a whole lot to me,” began Mr. Preble.
“What’s come over you?” his wife demanded. “It’s cold down there and there is absolutely nothing to do.”
For a fuller text: Mr. Preble Gets Rid of His Wife | The New Yorker
The wise are deeply suspicious at the way that the authorities are so desperate that all should be jabbed- so very, very insistent, so anxious, and so bullyingly determined.
And, an experimental jab that the manufacturers wanted a guaranteed non liablity clause for, from ALL governments
All this philosophising, all this handwringing, all this “This is why we need a principle that defends freedom” bollocks means nothing to these men. All they want to know is “what the fuck did we fight and die for?” As I see it, they fought and died for nothing. In eighty years, we have gone from ‘show me your papers’ to ‘show me your papers.’ …Yes, that is Normandy.
Being “unvaccinated”, to use the globalists’ misnomer, does not amount to acting, and, hence, cannot be an “action … prejudicial to the interests of others”; it is no action, at all.
Rather, it is the “vaccinators” who are acting, and whose actions are prejudicial to the interest of others in not becoming the subjects of medical experimentation.
Not going to say you’re necessarily incorrect in your position regarding action/inaction. But insofar as the topic of this article is concerned (JS Mill’s philosophy), Mill explicitly included inaction:
“There are also many positive acts for the benefit of others, which he may rightfully be compelled to perform; such as, to give evidence in a court of justice; to bear his fair share in the common defence, or in any other joint work necessary to the interest of the society of which he enjoys the protection; and to perform certain acts of individual beneficence, such as saving a fellow-creature’s life, or interposing to protect the defenceless against ill-usage, things which whenever it is obviously a man’s duty to do, he may rightfully be made responsible to society for not doing. A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury. “
JS Mill, On Liberty, Ch 1 Introductory [Pg 20]
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm
Mark,
Thank you.
You’ve really blown Mill’s cover. The author of “On Liberty” was yet more controlled opposition.
With his stretching the definition of a word to encompass that of its antonym, he was ninety years ahead of “Orwell”. I think we have to admire his chutzpah, and his sleight of tongue (or quill) makes the recent “silence is violence” look timid (in addition to vacuous).
Of course, if I choose to take some action, this raises the possibility of conflict between my rights and those of some other, and, on the same basis, a desirability for the community to arbitrate. The distinction that Mill intended to obscure is that the community (or our overlords, who may, from time to time, claim to be operating on behalf of the community) dictating actions to me is an entirely different matter, and one that places me squarely in the position of a slave.
The swamp is deeper than most of us appreciate, and we are still sinking. We now need to build a dyke: https://ourdecisiontoo.com/Issue/there-s-nothing-left-to-do-but-go-our-separate-ways/320/
“We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it.” – John Adams
Mill:
How would wise judge King Solomon rule on this? I’ll be presumptuous and attempt to jump into his mind as he’s making his deliberations at the start of the pandemic in order to advise the government on the best way forward.
He’d have to begin his deliberations with herd immunity versus the vaccines, and about which of these a carrying host would pose the most harmful or detrimental threat to others.
The judge would, undoubtedly, have the information that the vaccines had not yet been put through the usual clinical trials and testing. Foremost in his mind would be the fact the vaccines are actually experimental and unproven medications.
The judge’s next insight would be that immunity is not experimental. It has been tested and put through the type of rigorous field trials that scientists can only dream about. Seven billion people on the planet would attest to the judge that immunity had passed its clinical trials, field tests and all rolling reviews. Immunity, the judge would presume, has been tried and tested, and is un-experimental.
The judge at this stage would veer towards ruling that overall – even from the hypothesis that the vaccines were safe but as yet still untested for effectiveness – immunity had been proven to be less prejudicial to others in society, than would be the unproven vaccines.
The judge would further deliberate on the fact that the human body is a biological unit which learns. The body imbibes various germs and viruses throughout its lifetime and has been proven to read these invaders, find their weak spots, and defeat them.
This learning is encoded in the body’s immune system for future reference. But, just as importantly, this coding is passed on to offspring which gives them a head-start on germs and viruses that are inevitably going to infect them as they go through life.
With his deliberations finished, the judge would rule that a person at risk of carrying and spreading a disease would pose less danger to others in the society, if said person had natural immunity to the disease, rather than if they had relied on untested vaccines to avoid catching and spreading the disease.
The judge would also base his ruling on the fact that when Mill talks about society, he’s not just talking about society in the here-and-now, but also about society in the future. And it has to be assumed his reference to “prejudicial to the interests of others” is not solely to an immediate present in the society, but also to future others who have yet to join this society.
For individuals in a society to pose less prejudicial threat to others that join the society in the future, it would be obligatory on them to pass on via their genes to their offspring healthy, well developed, well exercised and well practised immune systems.
The maxim referred to in Mill’s essay is essentially about the wellbeing of society and the treatment and actions of individuals within the society. Another of Mill’s maxims that comes just before this one:
This second Mill’s maxim says it is totally unacceptable for a society to use force or punishments to make an individual change behaviour that isn’t harmful or detrimental to the society. There are no incidents on record which show that natural immunity has ever been harmful to a society. Quite the opposite, it’s effects have always been provably beneficial to societies.
No matter what way you twist or turn Mill’s maxims around, they can’t be shown to favour the enforcing of mandatory experimental vaccines upon individuals or upon societies as a whole.
Complicated piece of Lawyer esc proportions ! My heads gone whist trying to decipher it 🤦🏼♂️
1. These viruses are harmless to the vast majority. 2. The “vaccines” offer little or no protection against infection. 3. “Vaccinated” individuals can transmit the virus. Therefore the intellectual gymnastics in the article are irrelevant and redundant. Move on…
Obviously every society has to compromise between freedom and the harm that freedom might cause. No society gives you the freedom to drive on whatever side of the road you wish. No society dictates every single thing you can do. So it is not a case of a harm principle or a freedom principle. It is a case of deciding how to draw the line. I guess the distinctive feature of vaccines is that it involves control over someone’s body. So should everyone always have the freedom to control what is done to their body however much harm it might cause others? An interesting comparison is abortion where the ant–abortionist want to control a woman’s body because of the harm to the foetus.
Here, in a few words, do not take this sh..
A harm principle which respects freedom must surely allow an individual to act in ways that could inadvertently cause harm to others. Just about any action in society could be interpreted, by those so inclined, as a cause of harm to others. In my opinion, the right of an individual to choose to act in ways that could inadvertently cause harm to others ought to be defended unless the probability and extent of the potential harm are so high that prohibition becomes reasonable. This should be a very high bar. A respiratory virus as transmissible as SARS-Cov-2 but much more deadly might justify coercion provided the coercive measures were effective and proportionate (which lockdowns, vaccine passports, and mask mandates are certainly not).
In my opinion, the right of an individual to choose to act in ways that could inadvertently cause harm to others ought to be defended unless the probability and extent of the potential harm are so high that prohibition becomes reasonable.
It is a rather empty debate unless you get into more detail. How much potential harm makes what limitations reasonable?
There is also the problem of who assesses the potential harm and the importance of particular freedom in question. Most people see being vaccinated against Covid as a minor imposition (rightly or wrongly) and therefore a correspondingly low risk of harm will justify that imposition. Most people on this forum will disagree. You can hardly let every citizen decide for themselves whether maintaining a particular freedom outweighs the harm they might do. That would imply that any nutter who thinks that driving at 100 mph in a built up zone is a vital freedom should be allowed to do it.
Posing this as simply harm versus freedom grossly oversimplifies a complicated and subtle issue.
Where there is risk there has to be choice. It should not be compulsory to risk harm to yourself in order to protect others.
All of this is predicated on the idea that the “vaccines” are safe and effective. We know they are neither. There is no ethical argument for enforced jabs with these faux vaccines.
The problem with the analysis and suggested remedy, is that Mill’s argument is (correctly) identified as consequentialist, but the remedy to it relies on applying a general principle. The attempt to bolt on a deontological qualifier to a consequentialist approach is flawed.
“This is why we need a principle that defends freedom, not only when actions don’t affect others, but including and even especially when they do.”
Much better to ditch Mill and the qualy counters completely.
If these so-called ”vaccines” were licensed, then this might be an argument. As it is, they are still in the experimental stage and therefore to order people to take such an experimental drug is in contravention of a whole swathe of ethical stuff, especially the Nuremburg Code. Dr Mengele would be proud.
“The Athenaeum Club … was a premier unlimited hangout of the London elite. Just check out its membership list, which included George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll, Charles Dickens, Benjamin Disraeli, George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, Rudyard Kipling, Washington Irving, John Stuart Mill, Sir Robert Peel, Edward Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby, William Thackeray, Gore Vidal, …”
http://mileswmathis.com/wilber.pdf