A Sensible Center-Right Will Recognize Externalities

 

My body, my choice

One thing that I realize is not in the cards any time soon, but will be absolutely necessary to any sort of sensible center-right is recognizing the reality of externalities.  In other words, what one individual does has effects on others, even if it is not purposefully directed a others.

The American right has basically imbibed an oversimplified libertarian view that so long as you refrain from using force or fraud, your duty to society has been met, and nothing more can be demanded.

But there are plenty of actions that do not involve force or fraud, that nonetheless harm others. If a factory dumps its toxic wastes in the river because that is the cheapest way to dispose of them, it is not exactly engaging in force or fraud, but it is clearly harming others.  A hog farm that creates such a stench that it becomes unbearable to live next door and makes houses impossible to sell, and that threatens to pollute the water table is not using force or fraud, but it is harming others.  

Ordinary people can also cause harm without committing force or fraud.  Consider smoking in a crowded room, loud music and loud parties, not cleaning the dog's poop, drunk driving, careless behavior that starts a fire, etc, etc.  

Speaking as a lawyer, there are two longstanding claims for damage to one's property.  One is trespass -- intrusion by a solid object. The other is nuisance.  There is no intrusion by a solid object, but there is intrusion by more subtle means -- noise, smell, flies, etc.  And it is a longstanding rule of common law that you can bring a suit to shut down someone's use of property if it is a sufficient nuisance.  Nuisance suits are painful, since they are decisions which innocent party will get the shaft.  But they drive home a longstanding recognition that acts not involving force or fraud -- some quite innocent -- can cause serious harm to others.

The same rule, of course, applies to contagious disease.  People who increase their own risk of exposure to a contagious disease also raise the risk for everyone around them.  Collective action problems are very real.  The advantage to any one person from wearing a mask is minimal.  The advantage to society from everyone wearing a mask is immense.  Libertarians may not like to acknowledge that collective action problems can even exist, but collective action problems exist whether libertarians like it or not.