Ayn Rand, big government and Pandemics
Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2020 6:43 am
Paul Ryan's hero, Ayn Rand began the philosophy of Objectivism and the idea of the virtue of selfishness.
It strikes me that Donald Trump would be a great hero in a Ayn Rand novel about a pandemic. The Individualist Great Leader fights the bureaucrats, socialists and the self-styled 'public health' experts who want the country to run scared and destroy all that he has accomplished.
In all seriousness, how can anyone now say that a decentralized, non-federal response to a pandemic is the best was to preserve and protect the health and safety of Americans? I can understand and appreciate the idea that 'the government that governs best governs least', but I think it is dangerous to turn the idea on its head and say the government that governs least governs best. I don't think there are any Anarchists on the board. We all want a certain amount of government. I think it is better to say that we want the least amount of government that governs best.
And Public Health is an area where we should be thinking 'best' before we think 'least'.
As our world becomes more crowded and integrated, with trans-national economic dependencies and lines of production stretching across the globe, governments need to recognize that our economies are both intra-national and international. Simply put, the world economy is an increasingly diverse and complex machine, and history tells us again and again that human hubris expects complex machines NOT to break down.
Seemingly every few years we seem to need be reminded that, man keeps pushing back the frontiers of wild animals, we are going to be having diseases cross into the human genome. And when they do, they bring the possibility of a pandemic.
Governments need to prepare for the inevitability of environmental, economic and biological disruptions and their effects.
It strikes me that Donald Trump would be a great hero in a Ayn Rand novel about a pandemic. The Individualist Great Leader fights the bureaucrats, socialists and the self-styled 'public health' experts who want the country to run scared and destroy all that he has accomplished.
In all seriousness, how can anyone now say that a decentralized, non-federal response to a pandemic is the best was to preserve and protect the health and safety of Americans? I can understand and appreciate the idea that 'the government that governs best governs least', but I think it is dangerous to turn the idea on its head and say the government that governs least governs best. I don't think there are any Anarchists on the board. We all want a certain amount of government. I think it is better to say that we want the least amount of government that governs best.
And Public Health is an area where we should be thinking 'best' before we think 'least'.
As our world becomes more crowded and integrated, with trans-national economic dependencies and lines of production stretching across the globe, governments need to recognize that our economies are both intra-national and international. Simply put, the world economy is an increasingly diverse and complex machine, and history tells us again and again that human hubris expects complex machines NOT to break down.
Seemingly every few years we seem to need be reminded that, man keeps pushing back the frontiers of wild animals, we are going to be having diseases cross into the human genome. And when they do, they bring the possibility of a pandemic.
Governments need to prepare for the inevitability of environmental, economic and biological disruptions and their effects.
