What I told Mark about the Mandates
Watch Norman Doidge
“Hi,
I live on [redacted]. Can you please tell me what your views are on mask and vaccine mandates for city staff and facilities?
Thanks,
Mark”
Adam Golding <adamgolding@gmail.com>
14:39 (44 minutes ago)
Mark, thanks for reaching out! I definitely support testing mandates in some situations with the appropriate privacy measures and potentially mask mandates but only if masks that actually work are mandated. I'm surprised you're the first person to ask me about this since my registration went live. Feel free to add me on the social media platforms of your choice via adamgolding.ca -- I respond fastest on email, twitter, and facebook where I was just having this exchange: https://www.facebook.com/groups/weirdtoronto/posts/3372346219673398
Like Climenhaga, I oppose the vaccine mandate in favor of bodily autonomy, but I do not feel this argument prohibits mask or testing mandates. When I travelled to the UK last fall (triple-dosed) to meet my new nephew the emphasis was on government-administered tests the day before large indoor events -- there the private tests are easy to fake because they depend on the honor system for which test code you submit!
As I mentioned in the thread above, government policy increased vaccine hesitancy. I agree completely with everything Doidge says in 'needlepoints' linked to in that thread, and have yet to find a mistake in any of Rusell Brand's past year of videos on the topic -- I watched The Dark Horse Podcast throughout the pandemic and am intimately familiar with the arguments discussed on that show as I am with all of the arguments which were in circulation during lockdown, during which I "watched all of youtube" on accelerated speed ;-)
I have stated many times that I favor a positive cash incentive for vaccination -- simply double the reward until we achieve the desired vaccination target, as we can do with my proposed monthly doubling of vacancy taxes -- we did this with CERB we can do it with vaccine incentives -- this is analogous to cancelling Ukranian debt instead: we can use the authoritary of miltary fiat and fiat currency to focus on the carrot rather than the stick. To me the broad theme is authoritarianism under Tory's administration, from project claudia, to covid measures, to violent encampment evictions in which I and others were arrested and harmed. Another example of how we can get to our goals by increasing 'negative liberty' is by abolishing intellectual property which has been more obviously fatal during COVID in the case of vaccine patents.
I worked on the phones for the NDP and then the ONDP for the recent Singh and Horvath campaigns and, after Horvath was forced to recant her statement that civil liberties take priority, I spoke to many aggrieved women, especially, on the phone, who had voted NDP as pro-choicers their entire lives, only to turn PPC suddenly with no viable route home for them, politically, as the NDP had no plan to win back PPC voters. I recently stated on facebook: Vaccine mandates precipitated Roe v Wade's demise. The best I could tell them at the time was that this issue would recede.. it hasn't really as we look at the broader subject of bodily autonomy.
I am anti-authoritarian first and a leftist second, I believe in big government in the sense of lots of funding for basic needs and market regulations due to the (mathematically proven in 2019) necessary existence of unpriced externalities, not in the sense of lots of rules and uncessary controls on activity outside of markets (and violence, which is all the police should work on while armed.) As an anarchist I believe these rules are not self-justifying and that the burden of proof is on the state for implementing any restrictions.
I want to turn the question back on you when it comes to masks and testing--if we had no vaccine mandate for reasons of bodily autonomy, where do you stand on just having masking and testing mandates? The main counter-point I have received is "with testing you're playing catch-up"? What do you think?
When passes of any kind have been used for admittance they, like Presto, have not maximized privacy: a pass could easily be designed that admits you into a large venue without bystanders learning if you have a) a vaccine exemption, b) a recent vaccine, c) recent natural immunity d) recent test results -- if we worked backwards from privacy we would have had a system like this, and also free transit at the point of use -- paying in your taxes is much more private, and equitable. I can send you more about my #BoycottPRESTO stance...
Btw, our government stalled and ultimately refused to fill my FOIA request asking how bubble numbers were calculated, right after they transparently upped the numbers to accommodate Ford's family size (Also why assume the nuclear family? It's oppressive!) https://www.facebook.com/adamgolding/posts/pfbid02FQ2Hcyeyvo8KQwfzfebASNMsedThTkNrZP1FZYFSzyovTC7H6Enka7ZpUKmtTLJ4l
I would have similar very technical questions of those proposing mask and testing mandates. It's conceivable that the benefits outweigh the loss of negative liberty (the 'freedom' convoy people on the right always focus on negative liberty, not positive liberty -- I always quiz them to see if they know the name "Isaiah Berlin": https://www.facebook.com/adamgolding/posts/pfbid023RECDc2oeDfnXo3BASaQLgTQooWooVxURwQ4Pb2kKCoLNkBxFKu5oDmu3oCALNcpl )
As you may be aware, Rebel News launched a class-action suit against the federal government for not doing a proper cost-benefit analysis on covid measures, and immediately found itself the target of proposed new rules and police actions targeting them, including C-10. I am a free-speech absolutist after Chomsky and abhor this response to a reasonable complaint. So, the devil as they say, is in the details--the appropriateness of such a measure should be evaluated daily based on data and with pre-determined criteria for when the restriction is lifted. Similarly, almost all laws should have expiry dates, to fit the modern model of consent, which is not permanent and must be renewed: this extends to the consent of the governed except in certain cases like a woman's right to an abortion which should not expire, as higher principles of consent are involved in that case.
Please let me know what you think,
Adam Golding
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adamgolding.ca