[whatshisface]

You know, if the condition for giving up your rights is "the government says they have a good reason," then you never really had any rights at all. We're all smart, maybe there's a way to solve this without eliminating civil liberties - a way that we'll never discover if at the first sign of danger we yell "take our rights, oh wise rulers!" to the politicians who, of course, are willing to take them.

[usrusr]

But it is also completely impossible to discover countermeasure methods that are highly efficient in "effect per loss of freedom" if every single change to the status quo is indiscriminately rejected as a slippery slope towards police state.

[whatshisface]

You're talking about "refusing to discuss" rejections, I'm talking about "refusing to implement" rejections. You're right that the former would prevent us from discovering good solutions, but the latter would only stop us from implementing bad ones.

[EarthIsHome]

What civil liberties are you afraid of eliminating in a crisis like this?

[whatshisface]

Not saying any of these are going to happen, but some possibilities include: (To be clear, I'm just spitballing some fiction for parable use only.)

1. Police taking biological samples as a matter of course, even after the crisis. A sneaky politician or official manages to turn this in to DNA sample collection, maybe by sequencing swabs on the side to "catch criminals." Nobody stops it because everyone is focused on the virus.

2. Local governments end up with expanded power to shut down businesses, this eventually gets abused for some kind of extortion in a small town somewhere.

3. Police gain generalized "indefinite detention" powers instead of specific "court-ordered quarantine" powers in some jurisdictions, creating a ticking time bomb set to explode the first time a mayor wants to get rid of a protester.

4. Efforts to stamp out counterproductive conspiracy theories result in legal and bureaucratic infrastructure which sits around and is eventually used to suppress a very productive conspiracy theory.

5. Playing on the above, Google builds a system to delete every video that says 5G and COVID-19 are linked. This is eventually used to delete every video that suggests Darkriver Mercenaries Inc. and the scandal in Kumran are linked.

All of these cases share one thing in common: a bad, over-generalized law gets passed because legislators are panicking and not taking the time to think about civil liberties. The virus spreads fast, but not so fast that you can't take the time to legislate effectively.

[kingkawn]

The idea that freedom depends on tens of thousands dying from needless incompetence is very demonstrative of why America is such a mess in general right now.

[stronglikedan]

Here's the thing - you really don't know until you're asked to give them up, and it's usually implied that you will only be giving them up for the duration of the crisis, but in reality you hardly ever get them back. This is how they get chipped away over time, so an abundance of caution must be used when deciding what you're will to give up, even during a crisis.

[kingkawn]

17,000 dead Americans in this circumstance is not a pittance of caution let alone an abundance

[stronglikedan]

It's the abundance of caution that's kept it so low.

[amiga]

Those willing to trade liberty for security deserve neither.

[krapp]

>Those willing to trade liberty for security deserve neither.

That's a thought terminating cliche, not a response, as well as a complete misinterpretation of Ben Franklin's intent[0], thus not even a valid argument from authority.

[0]https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...

[koolba]

Both the right of assembly and the right to bear arms have been repeatedly infringed.

For example in CA: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-24/l-a-coun...

[ThePowerOfFuet]

No rights are absolute. Your right of free speech famously has limits; "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" is prohibited.

Temporarily closing gun shops, like shops for anything else not required for daily life, is absolutely reasonable.

If you claim that guns are required for daily life, that says more about your country than any other point here (and not in a good way).

[koolba]

> No rights are absolute. Your right of free speech famously has limits; "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" is prohibited.

Thats a terrible analogy as it’s not a partial limit that’s being applied here. It is an absolute removal. If a citizen is not allowed to create their own firearms or order them by mail, closing local stores is a total elimination of that right.

> Temporarily closing gun shops, like shops for anything else not required for daily life, is absolutely reasonable.

Says you. Your personal opinion of which constitutional rights are required for daily life does not dictate which ones others enjoy.

> If you claim that guns are required for daily life, that says more about your country than any other point here (and not in a good way).

You could make the same facetious statements about the 1st, 4th or 8th amendments as well.

[dang]

Please don't go into nationalistic flamebait. It just leads to worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

> maybe there's a way to solve this without eliminating civil liberties

Maybe, but I've yet to see any plausible proposals. Do you have one?

[whatshisface]

I can't demonstrate that I have the right proposal, but I can demonstrate that one's imagination can run beyond what's presently being considered. Since we're talking about liberty, let's start with he Libertarian canned talking point: "liability and torts." Making individual people liable for spreading the virus would only really work with our imperfect court system for knowing super-spreaders and corporations with unsafe practices, but it might help. Instead of shutting down offices, you could make them liable for any damage cause by disease spread on-site. It's possible that if you pursued corporations and a small number of individual defectors with the liability system and asked normal people nicely, you would be able to handle it.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

> It's possible that if you pursued corporations and a small number of individual defectors with the liability system and asked normal people nicely, you would be able to handle it.

So, this doesn't seem like an approach that has a materially different desired effect from what we're already doing. The policy's goal is to achieve temporary shutdown of businesses and prevent transmission of the virus. You're just using a more convoluted, less effective route to get there. As an added drawback, limited liability almost guarantees that many companies would cease respecting the rules (since their value will be zero if they respect the rules, due to bankruptcy, it costs nothing to go about business as usual and just shut down if you get unlucky).

I guess what I was asking was whether you have any ideas that have any likelihood of being more effective than current approaches. I can think of dozens of things that would be less effective than what we are currently doing. That doesn't really help us very much, though.

[whatshisface]

>I guess what I was asking was whether you have any ideas that have any likelihood of being more effective than current approaches.

Well, what we're talking about is how to keep civil liberties while also effecting a quarantine. I think if we came up with a solution that was as good as the current solution but that had less risk of giving the government abusable and sticky power, that would satisfy the goal of the discussion.

I could offer some changes to the idea I proposed that would address some of your concerns (as well as argue that there are some effectiveness benefits over the current policy to balance out the downsides), and we could have an insightful discussion going over it, but that would distract from the broader point of "if we put our heads to it we might be able to avoid an expansion in government power while not making any unacceptable sacrifices."

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

> the broader point of "if we put our heads to it we might be able to avoid an expansion in government power while not making any unacceptable sacrifices."

And I guess my point is that I admit that possibility, but I consider the likelihood very low.

[whatshisface]

>but I consider the likelihood very low.

But you just said that the tort scheme would do the same thing in a more inconvenient way! Surely inconvenience is not an unacceptable sacrifice.

[krapp]

I know it's common for Americans to assume everything their government does is a false-flag pretext for a fascist power grab, but to assume the government never has a good reason for drastic measures even in the midst of a global pandemic seems more cynical than necessary.

That's the kind of thinking that leads people to believe in FEMA death camps.

[whatshisface]

>I know it's common for Americans to assume everything their government does is a false-flag pretext for a fascist power grab

History does not support the most hyperbolic speculations, but it does support the idea that the USG files away at the base of lady liberty every time the public's back is turned. Remember the Patriot Act and 9-11?

[krapp]

It can be true for some cases, but not all cases. Closing businesses, stay at home orders and quarantines are good ideas and, I believe, necessary for the public good. I'm also willing to believe they're temporary measures, if for no other reason than a permanent state of police-enforced quarantine would destroy the country and do no one any good, least of all the government.

[whatshisface]

Nobody (serious) is suggesting that everything will be permanent. What's being suggested is that several smaller changes made during the crisis, especially the ones involving legislation, will never be un-done.