A Limited Defense of Vaccine Passports

There’s a growing controversy about whether the various coronavirus-lockdown rules should be relaxed for people who have been vaccinated (as opposed to being relaxed for hypocritical politicians).

And if those restrictions are relaxed, vaccinated people presumably will need some sort of proof, like a “vaccine passport.”

Many people understandably are hesitant about this concept, particularly if government is involved. After all, we have many examples of seemingly innocuous ideas becoming nightmarish mistakes (such as adopting the income tax).

And the last thing any of us would want (I hope!) is something that could devolve into an authoritarian, Chinese-style system for monitoring and controlling private life.

But what if government isn’t involved? What if private businesses decide that customers are only allowed if they prove they’ve been vaccinated?

From a libertarian perspective, guided by core principles such as property rights and freedom of association, that should be totally acceptable.

And that’s true even if we think the owners of the businesses are making silly choices. After all, it’s their property.

Some conservatives, however, either don’t understand libertarian principles or they’re willing to abandon those principles for political convenience.

For instance, Will Wilkinson observes that many Republicans are forgetting the libertarian principle of freedom of association.

Conservatives have been freaking out about the mere possibility of vaccine passports… The idea is that the ability to credibly prove vaccination status will speed the restoration of normal social and economic life. This works by allowing businesses, schools, sports leagues, etc. to discriminate against those who haven’t been vaccinated. …one of the bright lines dividing American liberals and conservatives concerns the limits of freedom of association. Conservatives, and especially those with a libertarian streak, are far more likely to be absolutists about the right to exclude anyone from your property, business, or private club or association for any reason. …If the Civil Rights Act is problematic because it infringes on freedom of association, the permissibility of discriminating against customers who might carry a fatal infection is a total no-brainer. Right? Ha! …there is no actual principle at work here. Conservatives are consistent only in their opportunistic incoherence.

Moreover, in his column for the Atlantic, David Frum notes that the GOP is hypocritically abandoning its support for property rights.

Whether vaccine passports ever will exist remains highly uncertain. A lot of questions remain about the technology required—and about whether the concept makes any business sense. …For now, then, the discussion about vaccine passports remains theoretical—which makes the discussion all the more impassioned and embittered. DeSantis and others are loudly advertising that with COVID-19, …their version of freedom puts greater priority on right-wing cultural folkways than on rights of property and ownership. …To appease those cultural blocs, Republican politicians must be willing to sacrifice everything, including what used to be the party’s foundational principles. …to avoid contradicting the delusions of anti-vaccine paranoiacs, property rights must give way, freedom to operate a business must yield. …with COVID-19, …the new post-Trump message from the post-Trump GOP is: Private property is socialism; state expropriation is freedom. It’s a strange doctrine for a party supposedly committed to liberty and the Constitution, but here we are.

I think it’s fair to say that neither Wilkinson nor Frum are libertarians, or even conservatives, but I also think they are correct in pointing out that there is a lot of hypocrisy and incoherence.

That being said, I am glad that there’s lots of resistance to the idea of vaccine passports. Why? Because if businesses impose such rules and there’s no pushback, that probably increases the likelihood that politicians will try something similar.

And that’s where libertarians should be drawing the line, as Professor Don Boudreaux has noted.

After all, if a business does something we don’t like, we are free to patronize competitors. But if government does something we don’t like, there’s the horrible choice of obey or go to jail (or get a fake passport on the black market).

For what it’s worth, I hope this becomes a moot point. After all, once everybody who wants to get vaccinated has been vaccinated, there’s no plausible argument for maintaining any more restrictions on normal life.

P.S. But if it does become a real issue, it will probably generate new jokes, cartoons, and memes, all of which will require me to expand my collection of coronavirus-themed humor.