As vaccines against the corona virus near wide-spread distribution, a growing number of people are vocally opposing vaccination and restrictions against people who refuse to be vaccinated. Would these opponents feel the same way if the restrictions were driven by private enterprise rather than governments?
Having traveled throughout most of Latin America in my younger days, my vaccination certificate looks a lot like a snippet from Walter Reed's diary. To this day I still keep it tucked away in my passport wallet, just in case I happen to land somewhere I might need it. Nothing worse than getting your flight redirected to Bolivia and not having proof that you've suffered through a yellow fever shot (the worst by the way) is how my thinking goes with regard to travel and inoculation.
That said, it amazes me that over the past week, I have seen so many people up in arms on social media over reports that airlines are considering inoculation as a requirement for flight. Whereas I can (on some level) understand this with regard to governmental restrictions to travel as an infringement on the right of assembly, airlines in the United States are private enterprises, and, as such, should have the right to refuse whomever they like for whatever reasons they like. What's more perplexing is the conundrum that many of these same folks would otherwise proclaim the rights of free enterprise to make their own decisions regarding their own internal affairs.
In a point of disclosure, my own personal beliefs are that every business has a right to serve whomever they want on their own terms. Government interference in any private business, unless it poisons things within the purview of the general welfare like an aquifer or the air, is its own business. I see no difference in an airline refusing to seat a non-vaccinated passenger than I do in an Orthodox Jewish baker not choosing to make a gay wedding cake; their capital, their labor, their choice; they are only limiting themselves, their client-base and (by logical extension) their pool of gross income.
But somewhere along the way, folks who would normally consider themselves "conservatives" have decided to take umbrage when private companies choose to limit their liability and risk to both themselves and their employees. What happened to the rallying cry of "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" as being, in itself, an inalienable right? I am no supporter of governmental apartheid on any level, but likewise, I have considered it ridiculous my entire life that any government should be involved in such a concept in the first place, especially when it comes to private property. I might add, our incoming president once felt the same way. But that's a discussion for another day.
Today's discussion however, is civil liberty hypocrisy. For this argument I will concede that it is your right as an individual to not to wear a mask. I will further concede that it is your right as an individual, to not get vaccinated. Likewise, I hope you will concede that it is my right as a business owner, to not rent you a room, let you shop in my store, eat in my restaurant, sit in my car, or fly on my airplane. Consumers and customers cannot have it both ways. If you want to cry civil liberty, then you must do so from a level soapbox.
I have already written at length about the governmental side of this argument and its justification from a civil liberties standpoint,* but here I am going to lay that entire argument aside. Here we are going to explore an entirely different idea: what rights do private businesses have with regard to limiting their accessibility to services, and what rights do governments have in overriding those rights?
Two pieces of federal legislation have muddied this question: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. In both cases, the federal government seized broad powers over the concept of free association and private enterprise by making certain exclusions or discrimination illegal. In both cases, the initial legislation was relatively weak however (as is often the case with social legislation) subsequent legislation and legal interpretation from various courts, strengthened it, and moved in into the swirling realm of unintended consequences.
Personally, I left the Republican Party over the American's with Disabilities Act, not because I loath disabled people and wanted them to suffer, but because the law was too broad, too invasive and actually, in many ways, made the plight of the disabled worse; at least in the area of public transportation. It was a law that killed gnats with a canon and put an onerous cost and responsibility on American businesses. As a side note, as of this writing, New York City's transit system is still not 100% compliant to the ADA and it has been thirty-years in the making. That's a generation and a half folks!
Now perplexingly enough, I am seeing folks who supposedly support the rights of free enterprise citing these very acts as justification for their opposing positions. So I ask this question rhetorically: If you are against the government mandating shut-downs and mask wearing, but at the same time you are advocating that the same government guarantee your right to enter a private business on your terms but not on the terms of the business owner; how are these not a mutually incompatible positions?
So why would a private company (like an airline) wish to limit their potential market by making vaccination a requirement? From a business standpoint, there are several reasons. One, it limits liability. Airlines have all kinds of rules designed to limit liability; like not allowing you to smoke on a plane; or cutting you off when you've had too much to drink, and basically keeping order for the quiet enjoyment of all. Another is the right of carriage. An airline is responsible for getting you from point "a" to point "b." I don't think airlines want to stare down the civil suit barrel that could be aimed at them if some court down the line found them negligent (and thus liable) for someone's illness, death, or disability because contact tracers pinned an infection as occurring during a flight. True; it could have happened in the cab on the way to the airport, in the newsstand, in the cafe, at TSA, or at any point during that day, but if you're an airline executive, do you want that possibility hanging over your head? I didn't think so.
Then there is just plain marketing considerations. What better way to ensure the credibility and safety of your product or service than salubrity during a pandemic? If you look closely at advertising in 2020, two themes stick out; coping with isolation, and the pursuit of healthfulness. There is not much an airline can do to effectively market isolation with their current equipment and business models; planes over the last thirty-years have all been designed to maximize the highest numbers of possible carriage and revenue projections are based on those numbers. The only effective strategy for meeting that business model is healthfulness, and that's where they are going to take it.
Beyond airlines, all businesses will have to make this value judgement, not just from the perspective of potential clients, but from the perspective of recruiting, hiring, and maintaining staffs to service those clients. As infection numbers rise, and people are out of the workforce from seven to fourteen days recovering, private businesses, with or without government intervention, will have to weigh the imponderables of who is going to spend money in their business and who is going to service them while they spend it. The companies who proactively devise methods for curbside service and delivery will fare better than those who cling to"business as usual" as we trudge into our second year of uncertainty. And as we do, I have no doubt many will demand more rigorous standards from their clientele to include proof of vaccination.
So, will we see a time in the near future, that to sit in a restaurant will require us to show a vaccination certificate like we show an ID to order a beer? Very likely. And not because governments will mandate it, but because consumers will eventually demand it. And will this stop this pandemic or future ones? Probably not; this virus will be around for a very long time; it is too universally distributed not be; but such action will mitigate it, and it will boost consumer confidence. And if we want market-based economies and free-enterprise, the only way we can maintain that is to promote consumer confidence. That is unless we decide to change-over to communism. In that case, consumer confidence will be dictated by supply rather than demand, and there will be no private enterprise to contend with at all. If that's your aim, please disregard the above.
You see. A conundrum.
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