Do we choose to be free people? Or will we live as slaves to mobs?

All of your life, you have been brainwashed to obey whichever mob holds power where you live.

The brainwashing uses different language in different places. You’re taught to respect authority. You are taught to believe there is something holy about “our democratic system.” In some countries, you are taught to respect and obey the will of a party or of one particular leader. But in all systems, the result is the same.

You must obey the people who give you orders. You must give them your money and other property when they demand it. You must live by the rules they dictate. And you must be willing to kill outsiders if you’re told to do so.

Political groups violently argue about all sorts of things, but they all agree that if they are able to seize power, you and I must obey them. In this way, they are all alike. They are unwilling to let us live as free individuals — making voluntary arrangements among ourselves — because they don’t believe you and I would make the decisions they want us to make.

The real political and social question we face is whether we want to live as free individuals or as obedient slaves to whoever holds power. You are either on the side of the individual or you are part of a mob which wants to enforce its will on everybody.

I stand against the mob. I stand for the individual, even when I disagree with your choices.

Most people see political issues in light of which side they agree with, but this leads to immoral outcomes. I’ll give you an example.

There’s a lot of disagreement right now about whether to take vaccines to defend against the threat of contracting COVID-19. On one side is a large group who are convinced the vaccine is a reasonable risk and that we would all be better off if everyone took it. On another side are people who are convinced — for all sorts of reasons — that the vaccines are dangerous.

The people on the vaccine side are also typically on the side of forcing people to wear masks, banning public gatherings, shutting down businesses and everybody staying six feet away from anyone else. The people on this side are generally in favor of any step which they see as potentially reducing the risk of transmission of the coronavirus which causes COVID-19.

The people against the vaccine are typically opposed to wearing masks. They don’t think such masks make any difference. Some of them are convinced the entire thing is a hoax. Most of them are completely against shutting down businesses or public gatherings. These people are generally in favor of living life as they always have — and simply taking their chances.

These groups are separated by a strong difference of opinion about which risks are acceptable. And most of each side wants a political mob to enforce their beliefs about what everybody else ought to do.

One group wants so-called “public health authorities” to dictate rules by which we must all abide. They want everyone to be forced to accept whatever vaccines those political authorities decide to dictate. They want rules about who must stay home and who is allowed to leave home. They want rules that force everyone to wear masks.

The other group wants political authorities to enforce their views on these issues. They want employers to be banned from making vaccination a condition of employment. They want stores and restaurants to be banned from making masks a requirement for entry. They want to be allowed to live as they please, even when they’re using someone else’s property.

The only valid question is who gets to make these decisions. If you believe in the sovereignty of the individual, you cannot agree with either side entirely. In order to agree with either side entirely, you have to believe that your opinion should be forced on people who don’t agree with you.

Here’s the thing. I think the vaccine makes sense. I think it’s a reasonable choice. I haven’t seen any slightly hard evidence that it’s a bad choice. (The so-called evidence I’ve seen has been weak and unconvincing to me.) I got two doses of the vaccine last spring and I got a booster a few weeks ago. It seems like a smart and reasonable choice — to me.

If you don’t take the vaccine, I believe you’re making a mistake. I think you’re putting yourself and other people at unnecessary risk. But I also believe you have the right to make that choice. It’s not my right to make that choice for you.

On the other hand, if I go into a store or business that asks me to wear a mask while I’m on their property, I’ll do that. I won’t necessarily like it. I won’t choose to wear a mask right now unless someone requires it on their property. But I know it’s a property owner’s right to make up the rules for his own property. (And it’s your right not to patronize such a business if you disagree its rules.)

When we angrily argue about which rules should be forced on others, we’re asking the wrong questions. The real issue isn’t about who is right, because that’s a matter of opinion. I think the tradeoffs I make are the rational tradeoffs, but it’s not my moral right to force others to obey my choices.

Nobody has the right to force others to obey his own rules or choices. We all have the right to make our own voluntary choices and agreements with other people, free from the interference of mobs — even if they call themselves “public healthy authorities” or “governments.”

A dictatorship of the majority is just as offensively wrong as any other dictatorship. In general, if you don’t have the right to make your own decisions with your own life and with your own property, you are not a free individual. You are living as a slave to a mob, whether that mob is a bunch of street rabble or the sophisticated elites of the world.

We all take calculated risks every day. When we drive a car or swim in a pool or ski on a snowy slope or go mountain-climbing, we are making what we believe is a reasonable risk.

For me, driving a car is worth the risk of being killed or maimed, because I gain enough benefit from the travel that the risk is worth it. I get enough pleasure from swimming or playing in a pool that I’m willing to take such a risk, even though many people are killed in pools every year. But I see snow-skiing and mountain-climbing as foolhardy risks. I can’t imagine getting enough benefit from them from taking the risks involved in those. I think you’re crazy if you make those choices.

But you are not required to live according to the choices I would make.

I shouldn’t be forced to accept whatever choices you want to make about risk. And politicians and elites have no business making those decisions for either one of us.

I disagree with a lot of choices that people are making every day related to the current pandemic. I think a lot of people are making very foolish choices, including almost all politicians. But those choices aren’t mine to make — in the moral sense — even when I strongly disagree with what others decide.

If you’re advocating for politicians to force what you believe is right on everyone, you are part of a mob — no matter what it is that you’re demanding they enforce.

Free people are responsible for the choices they make with their own bodies and their own property. Free people have the right to voluntarily interact with other free people concerning their trade and property.

If someone else is dictating your choices to you, that person is ruling in the name of a mob, no matter how good his intentions might be.

It is immoral for me (or anyone else) to force you to make certain choices about your personal safety, even if I’m absolutely certain you’re a blind fool who’s putting all of us in danger. Your individual sovereignty trumps my certainty.