Athlete. Soldier. Police. Python wrangler.
People choose these roles voluntarily. They risk the harm that may accompany their actions even with the possibility of death. Our society supports and applauds their actions and the risks they take. Yet, government and neighbors and even family do not want the average person to make such voluntary choices with their own lives or healthcare or choice of job or even choices of entertainment or investments.
Risk is an individual choice. Different people have different sensitivities to risk. Govt is a blunt instrument that treats nearly all people the same and deprives individuals of their own risk decision making. In the year of this book, the Covid-19 virus has impacted nations around the world. Governments everywhere have sought to control the spread by making risk decisions for the people through mandatory mask wearing, social distancing, closing businesses and limiting gatherings. This is hostile to liberty. No amount of harm can justify the unilateral theft of individual liberty. Depriving individuals of their own choice of risk tolerance elevates safety above risk. Such actions are authoritarian even leading to tyranny.
Of course, there are so many petty authoritarians embedded in society who support authoritarian actions by government. They can be found in families, neighbors, schools, churches, businesses, etc.They are seeking to enforce a conformity to a single standard of risk, their own. No society can call itself free under such authoritarian standard.
Some will say that the risk sensitivity of the most sensitive should be applied to everyone. Instead, each individual in a free society should make their own risk tolerance decisions and allow everyone to do likewise. This may lead some to self-quarantine while others may go about under their own standards of risk.
Some people will support government restrictions on individual liberty, depriving them of the risk to harm to themselves through random drug use or to their income through gambling.
Liberty is the highest of values. All other considerations are secondary including safety. No one must serve another’s liberty except to leave them alone to pursue life as they choose to. The only limit to liberty is where another person’s life and liberty are actually harmed, not guessed to be harmful in the future.