#auspol #nswpol #covid19aus news from the front lines of ‘living with Covid’, from the UK. Today’s figures…
#auspol #nswpol #covid19aus news from the front lines of ‘living with Covid’, from the UK. Today’s figures standard. 35,623 new infections. Another 180 dead. About 1000 dead per week. That’s just under their average *annual* deaths from a standard flu season, every week. /1
The political libertarians worldwide are succeeding in re-normalising the Covid catastrophe each day, in new ways. Like comparison with a standard flu season. When you’re killing as many people every week as you normally do in a year with flu…/2
…it’s clear this lethal nonsense is utterly dependent upon just total ignorance in many of what is happening. They don’t know how many people flu kills, annually, they don’t know that Covid is an epidemic disease and our normal annual flu isn’t, etc. /3
The NSW Treasurer yesterday openly declared what belief system drives these libertarian fantasies. He spoke of the need to give people ‘freedom’ back again, and that “it’s not the government’s role to provide freedom”. /4
For political libertarians, government is a restriction on individual freedom, which we are ‘born with’ (another phrase he used yesterday, standard libertarian belief). Individuals are born free, and government and regulation needs to be constantly stripped away to restore it. /5
Of course this is all more nonsense. Humans invented governments to free themselves from the constant bickering between individuals, and to delegate vast numbers of tasks to free them up to live better lives. Building roads, providing health care, education, defence etc. /6
Some libertarians genuinely believe all of this, often because they come from privileged backgrounds, where daddy would rail against bureaucracies and taxation and regulation over breakfast each day, getting in the way of his untrammelled pursuit of wealth. /7
It’s the grown up version of a teenager railing against having to do chores like helping with the cleaning and gardening, for the collective benefit of the household. The reality is, there are no individuals, without society. You have zero ‘freedom’ as an individual. /8
Try setting up your own society, as an individual. Your entire day will be swamped by the basics of keeping yourself alive, growing your own food, providing your own water supply, trying to repair any health issues you have, yourself, keeping your dwelling intact etc. etc. /9
No freedom there, didn’t people read Robinson Crusoe? The freedoms these libertarians argue for are *social* freedoms, provided by society. Travel, entertainment, fine dining, even commerce itself. They’re just freeloaders, wanting all of that without doing the collective…/10
…work to bring it about. They want you to do all of that for them. You’re the servants. Remember they represent privilege upstairs, you’re the downstairs people keeping their lives running. We need an end to this political ideology calling the shots in this pandemic. /end