During the Covid crisis, the federal government and state governments imposed mask mandates, vaccine requirements, and lockdowns on private businesses. Such measures were, of course, illegitimate exercises of governmental power.
As I have long pointed out, however, the ultimate solution to such measures lies not in playing an endless game of whack-a-mole against them but rather to constitutionally separate healthcare and the state entirely at both the federal and state levels, just as our ancestors constitutionally separated religion and state. Once federal and state governments are prohibited from providing or regulating healthcare, people no longer have to concern themselves with playing that endless game of whack-a-mole against tyrannical healthcare measures.
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During the Covid crisis, however, some people went astray by arguing that private businesses should not be permitted to establish mask mandates and vaccine requirements on their employees and customers. That was a wrongheaded position. Under principles of private property, private owners have the right to operate their businesses any way they want.
Thus, a private business owner has the right to require his employees to get vaccinated or to wear masks. He also has the right to require his customers to wear masks. In fact, he even has the right to require customers to show proof of vaccination.
By the same token, workers are not required to accede to these requirements. If workers don’t want to get vaccinated or don’t want to wear masks, they are free to quit and secure work elsewhere. The same principle applies to customers. If they don’t like the mask policy or the vaccine policy of a particular business, they don’t have to patronize that business. They are free to take their business elsewhere.
That’s how things operate in a free society, one based on the principle of private property.
Some people might respond, “But Jacob, you’re not taking into consideration the fact that the government pressured private businesses into adopting tyrannical healthcare measures. It’s wrong for the government to do that.” Oh, but I am taking into consideration the possibility of such pressure.
First of all, let’s all agree that the government has no business pressuring any private business into adopting any healthcare policy. That simply is not a legitimate function of government.
But let’s assume that the government does pressure private business owners into adopting mask requirements or vaccine requirements. Such being the case, the basic principle of private property continues to hold. The private business owner has the right to succumb to the governmental pressure or not. That’s because it continues to be his privately owned business.
In other words, let’s assume that the government pressures a private business into requiring its employees to get vaccinated. How does it do that? Let’s say it threatens to terminate all governmental contracts with the business. Or it threatens an IRS audit for the company.
At that point, the business owner has a choice. He can choose to succumb to the pressure and impose the vaccine requirement or he can choose to resist the pressure by giving up governmental contracts or taking the chance of an IRS audit. The choice is his. Some people are stronger and will resist the pressure. Some people are weaker and will succumb to the pressure. But under principles of private property, each private owner has the freedom to decide for himself whether to succumb to the government’s pressure or not. If he decides to succumb to the pressure by imposing a vaccine requirement on his employees, the employees, as pointed out above, have the right to quit and go elsewhere.
In fact, it’s not clear what some people would do to prevent a private business owner from succumbing to governmental pressure. Would they make the decision of a private business owner to succumb to governmental pressure a felony offense, punishable by jail and fine?
As I stated above, the ideal is to separate healthcare and the state. But another ideal would be to terminate the means by which government pressures private businesses to adopt healthcare measures that the private business might not otherwise choose to adopt. That would entail a termination of such things as illegitimate government programs that come with contracts or other tax-funded largess to private businesses as well a termination of income taxation and IRS audits. By separating healthcare and the state and by terminating the means by which government pressures private businesses, we bring ourselves closer to a genuinely free society.