No, I am not equating wearing masks to systemic racism. No, I am not equating the plight of 1950's blacks to the plight of middle class white people who have to wear masks. What I am doing, is pointing to how civil disobedience is the only viable response for many who are otherwise powerless.
Rosa Parks didn't own a business. She couldn't stand up to the government by letting whites and blacks sit at the same counter or use the same drinking fountain. Business owners who did would be in violation of the government's Jim Crow laws and risked their livelihoods being destroyed. She couldn't make a statement like Elon Musk did when he defied state lockdowns. She probably sat at the blacks-only counter so she wouldn't put businesses at risk of fines or shutdown. What she did do is defy government orders on a government owned bus.
Today, governments have shutdown businesses ruining the lives of millions. Some of that ruination is temporary. But suicides have increased and those lives have ended permanently. Domestic abuse has risen leading to life long trauma. 55,000 excess deaths are attributed to the lockdowns because people delayed care.
The average person has been helpless to do anything. Most are not business owners, and those who are cannot risk fines when revenue has been cut off already.
What the individual has been mandated to do is wear a mask. And so the individual has been given an opportunity to resist. Critics of mask-haters have a case to make that masks can prevent droplets from spreading to others. But these critics miss the point. Regardless of the effectiveness of masks, it's a chance for individuals to symbolically stand up for those hurt by the lockdown and to declare enough is enough
Risk and benefit
COVID is dangerous, but sometimes the medicine is worse than the disease. Defending that statement will have to wait for a different blog post. What can be said is that some people have looked at the data and have decided normal life is worth the risk. This decision making has been taken out of our hands.
"But your decision is irrational." Bungee jumping to me is not worth the risk. I wouldn't tell people who want to participate in bungee jumping they can't; that's their risk/benefit assessment to make. They are not irrational. As Mises put it
'If a man drinks wine and not water I cannot say he is acting irrationally. At most I can say that in his place I would not do so. But his pursuit of happiness is his own business, not mine.' - Ludwig von Mises
That last sentence should be taken literally. Allow businesses to set safety policies. Those with higher restrictions will attract the risk adverse. Those with fewer restriction will attract those less fearful. But we're not given a choice and this is what's causing the overreaction to mask mandates.
Rosa Parks didn't sit in the front of the bus because she liked the view; she did it because of government edicts that restricted freedom. Mask protests aren't motivated by the discomfort; they exist because government edicts have stolen the lives and livelihoods of millions by suspending liberty.
