President Biden’s vaccine mandate not only demonstrates a lack of statesmanship in a time of uncertainty, but also misunderstanding of the economic role and function of American businesses, entrepreneurs, and employees.
The president’s mandate is both cynical and divisive. Had his advisors thought it within the letter of the law, he likely would have forced every American to be vaccinated. But even if a president had such power, “may” does not imply “should.” Much like the draft, having power over people doesn’t necessitate exercising it – especially on an issue as important and contentious as this one. Biden’s mandate is more like the draft in the Vietnam War – a war he opposed and received deferral from – not World War II. Statesmen act when they have an unequivocal moral mandate or broad popular support. If the president, or any governor, has this much confidence in a mandate, they should go through the legislatures and avoid mistrustful bureaucratic “workarounds.”
Biden’s mandate declares war on America’s powerful engine of innovation and wealth: its private sector. The mandate treats businesses and their employees not as persons acting in good faith during a time of economic uncertainty but as one might treat vassals under the heel of a sovereign regulatory state. Here again, while it is true that the market has struck a compromise with OSHA since 1970 to regulate safety and exposure to hazards, much of this regulation is redundant insofar as businesses already want to avoid lawsuits, bad publicity, and attract the best talent. Current class action lawsuits against drug or pesticide companies demonstrate that neither businesses nor regulators are perfect. But where does accountability really lie? In economic markets, or in Washington DC? As Thomas Sowell said, it is stupid to put decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
A mandate also obliterates any hope that employers and their employees can prudently and reasonably negotiate the trade-offs desired for the safety in their workplace. Without such negotiations, the rights of neither workers nor employers are respected. What’s more, the president treats working people not as heroes who overcome incredible obstacles to grow an economy for which he presumes credit, but as de facto unpaid federal employees enabling his goals. While the president will claim credit for any victories over Covid, regardless of the science, they will bear the costs for lost wages and employee turnover.
This leaves the public sector: federal employees. While one could argue that President Biden is not tampering with the private sector here, it is nevertheless true that he is tampering with the taxpayers, present and future, who bear the economic burden of employee turnover forced by the mandate. This now includes military servicepeople who will be lost to a similar order. And while a federal employee could say no to their boss, and quit to evade the mandate, here we must again appeal to the virtues of statesmanship. Is it prudent or just to make a person relinquish their livelihood with a paternalistic demand ignoring both the science of natural antibodies or the individual risk calculations allowed in a free society?
While the president claims to value economic growth as his motivation for the mandate, one can’t help but recall the words of Yogi Berra: “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” Lockdowns, masks, and vaccines were all promised as necessary but temporary measures to save the economy. In the wake of these “temporary measures,” coupled with near-wartime spending on economic relief – much of it sent to people never in any economic danger – are shuttered businesses, disrupted supply chains, wage and price inflation, and staffing shortages. On the horizon is more masking and a potentially endless series of booster shots, the medical necessity and global equity of which are highly suspect according to both the president’s own advisors and global health experts. Like Afghanistan, the president seems not to have a trustworthy exit strategy.
If the president wants employment conditional on vaccination, why not force this same treatment for those receiving federal benefits? Why privilege beneficiaries of federal money rather than those whose work and risk-taking fund those beneficiaries? Again, the president seems to presume on the efforts of others to achieve ends for which he himself has never labored, treating them as mere means to his ends regardless of the negative consequences likely to follow.
These are indeed challenging times, and one does not want to treat the risks of Covid lightly. But there is a legion of risks that have accompanied our Covid policy thus far – all equal or greater in their ability to harm life as we know it. James Madison was right to argue that liberty may be endangered as much by abuses of liberty as it is endangered by abuses of power. But in a free society, we always fear power more than liberty. In the case of this mandate, there is much to fear.
Dr. Glenn A. Moots is a Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Northwood University and a Research Fellow at Northwood University’s McNair Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship.