Particularly with regard to COVID, there’s been a huge debate over “freedom.” As I pointed out earlier, a society that is densely populated or one that has densely populated urban areas that make up the majority of its population will, by necessity, need to restrict the freedoms of its citizens, if it doesn’t want its society to drown in chaos, anarchy, and violence.

I’m scarcely the first person to note this. Theodore Roosevelt observed, “Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.”

The historian Will Durant put it another way, “When liberty destroys order, the hunger for order will destroy liberty.”

The United States has a unique demographic problem. It contains vast areas of land with extremely low population density, but most of its population [86%, according to the 2020 Census] lives in urban or suburban areas with much denser population. Yet the 14% of the population that lives in non-urban/non-suburban areas occupies 72% of the land area of the U.S.

In Utah, where I live, 82% of the population lives in five counties, which hold only 15% of the land in the state, for a rough population density of roughly 203 people per square mile in those five counties. The population density in the rest of the state averages 8 people per square mile, but many counties have far less dense populations. On average, Daggett County has 1.4 people per square mile. And Utah is a low-density state.

New York City averages 26,403 people per square mile, while San Francisco has 26,403 people per square mile and Los Angeles 8,485 people per square mile. Yet even in states with densely populated cities, there are often large areas with low population densities.

What does this have to do with “freedom’? Damned near everything. People in rural Utah, or rural anywhere, don’t think they need as much government and regulation because not everything they do impacts thousands of people.

But there are two problems with that. First, those people in the more densely populated areas do need such regulation to keep order and maintain a reasonable level of safety. Admittedly, there are urban areas suffering excessive and unnecessary regulation, i.e., California, but some of California’s bigger problems, like the explosion of homelessness, might well be tied to not only the lack of affordable housing, but also to the lack of regulation of where people can live and under what conditions. Perhaps their “freedom” to squat or erect tent cities in public parks and thoroughfares is a bit excessive, but talking about that is has become political suicide.

Second, like it or not, lack of regulation and order in rural areas has adverse impacts not only on those areas, but on everyone, because everything is connected to everything else.

COVID, for example, while often late in coming, still hit rural counties and almost always had a more devastating effect because those counties don’t usually have strong health care infrastructure. In addition, most of those who have died disproportionately of COVID in rural counties were people who didn’t get vaccinated, largely because they didn’t want the federal government infringing on their freedoms. But now they’re demanding far more federal and state health care and support than they’re paying for.

While rural counties tend to be conservative and anti-government, they also benefit disproportionately from a wide range of federal government programs, even while their inhabitants complain about the government that provides those services. Counties like Daggett County would have difficulty even maintaining roads without financial aid from the state and federal government.

The other associated problem is that too often under-regulated companies operating in rural locales not only ruin the local environment, but far more. For example, in 1972, in Buffalo Creek, West Virginia, Pittston Coal’s sludge dams collapsed,sending hundreds of millions of gallons of black polluted water down the valley, killing 125, injuring 1,100, destroying 16 communities, 1000 homes, and in the end, the company paid little more than a million dollars, despite all that, as well as polluting all the drinking water for years in a large section of West Virginia for years.

PG&E in California has been found legally responsible for massive groundwater pollution, fatal natural gas pipe explosions, and, most lately, for massive wildfires, almost all of which have occurred in rural areas where the company faced less intense regulatory scrutiny.

The bottom line is pretty simple. The less populated areas get a disproportionate share of federal resources, but they don’t want to operate under any laws that they see as unnecessary, even when those laws are for everyone’s benefit. Yet they want the funding from those higher density areas to fund services they want and can’t afford without outside government assistance. What’s worse is that all too many of the local politicians in such areas either don’t know or won’t admit that they receive such subsidies.

The vast majority of fast food restaurants here in Cedar City have gone to drive-by service because they can’t hire enough people. I see “now hiring” signs where I never saw them before. It took almost two months to get my snow blower repaired, partly because of COVID and partly because the power equipment dealership couldn’t find qualified mechanics.

Record numbers of people are quitting their jobs, especially in hospitality, retail, and healthcare. There have been articles in several periodicals lately about people quitting jobs or not wanting to work at “shit jobs.” I have to wonder what world they’re living in. All jobs have shit components – even writing – and historically most jobs haven’t been all that easy. There’s a reason why the term “job” is synonymous with “work.”

People want others to do unpleasant jobs, but there aren’t enough American citizens who want to do the jobs for the wages offered. Yet far too many of those who want the goods and services provided by low-paying jobs don’t want to pay for what it would cost to hire people. Nor do they want to allow immigrants who would do those jobs at current pay rates into the United States.

We have housing shortages and rapidly rising housing prices in the U.S. In nearby St. George, the price of a median-priced home has almost doubled to $500,000 over the last six years, with almost a 30% increase in the past year alone. In all too many cities, Americans with median incomes can’t afford rent, let alone mortgage payments. Yet it gets harder and harder to build a house every year, and harder and harder for builders to find qualified workers.

Students complain about the high cost of college, yet, at the same time, every year, my wife the professor has students who complain about not having enough money, but who don’t do assignments and papers and don’t show up for classes – and end up losing full-tuition scholarships because they flunk out.

Republicans complain about government ignoring the average person, but they continue to elect predominantly politicians who either graduated from expensive elite colleges or who are rich, if not both. And even though the Republicans are against everything except barring immigrants and lowering taxes at a time of massive deficits, their supporters still think they’re good for the working man, especially white males with limited skills and education.

Democrats say they’re for the working people, but they’re having a hard time reaching agreement among themselves because of the so-called progressives who are pushing so many policies with regulations and price tags even most Democrats find excessive. And a likely result is that they’ll get too little done before the mid-term elections and will wonder why they lost seats in Congress.

The first basic point about freedom is that absolute freedom does not exist and never has. Every object and/or entity is constrained by its environment and by other entities.

The second point is that, above the forager/near subsistence level of human culture, material improvement is linked to population density and the production of an agricultural/food surplus, i.e., those producing food need to produce more than they consume to feed others who design and produce tools that make life above the subsistence level possible. All technological improvements come from communities, not isolated individuals. Virtually all major advances in human technology have been developed and been implemented in urban centers and cultures, or financially and technically supported by those centers.

Third, increasingly urban areas and areas with high population density cannot continue to exist without restrictions on human behavior, either through manners and custom, through laws, or through some combination of both. Moreover, the greater the density, the greater the need for more restrictions on the excesses of human behavior.

At least so far, every advancement of human technology has created more toxic waste products, and the need to manage such wastes requires enforceable rules. If such wastes aren’t managed, then substantial segments of the population have their freedom to a healthy life restricted by the freedom of those benefitting from the sale and use of those goods.

The bottom line is very simple. Functioning societies need restrictions on “freedom.” To remain functional over time, a high-tech, high consuming society needs more restrictions than a decentralized low-tech society.

Who enacts such restrictions and upon whom? In an autocratic state the ruler does. In a state that has some form of popular government, those elected to govern do.

The greatest problem for either form of government is understanding that everything affects everything else and that simplistic maxims don’t work well in practice. In essence, the struggle over the direction of U.S. government has been the conflict between two “principles.”

That government is best that governs least.

The government is best that strives for the maximum good for the maximum number.

The first is, at best, in effect a defense of the status quo, and at worst a maximization the power of those with power, wealth, and skills that can be easily monetized or turned into wealth and/or power.

The second, at best, puts the determination of “good” totally in the hands of government, and at its extreme, becomes a socialism that disproportionately rewards those of lesser ability and determination.

A government that governs least is highly unlikely to restrict the abuse of personal freedoms. A government determined to obtain maximum good for the maximum number is just as likely to crush innovation and excellence, and in doing so, bring about its own eventual downfall.

Neither extreme position works, or not for long, yet the Americans who control the two political parties, at least lately, are polarizing to the extremes, while the majority of Americans in the middle bemoan the lack of middle ground even as they largely vote for the most extreme politician on “their” side, and then attack the few in the middle who try to work out compromises.

As many pundits and non-pundits have pointed out, freedom isn’t free. And most people would agree. But what is seldom discussed are the costs of various freedoms.

Freedom of speech, for example, means that I get deluged with unwanted and unordered advertising mail. It means that political demagogues can assert that falsehoods are true. It means I have to spend money in court to stop someone from falsely libeling me, or at the least pay an attorney.

But there’s a new form of “freedom” being extolled that’s also far more costly, especially on others. And that’s the so-called freedom not to obey public health mandates, currently being pushed by anti-vaxxers, particularly COVID-anti-vaxxers. Since vaccinations reduce the chance of being hospitalized for COVID by close to 90%, those who don’t get vaccinated place enormous costs and strain on the health care system and those who staff it, as well as additional costs on their own families and neighbors.

A study by the Peterson-KFF Health System calculated that the additional hospital health care costs created by unvaccinated individuals being treated for COVID, just for the period from July 1, 2021 to November 30, 2021, was almost $14 billion. The cost for hospital treatment of COVID patients can range from around $11,000 to well over $300,000, but comes out to average between $20,000 to $25,000 per patient, according to various studies. Other reputable studies peg the average costs more in the $40,000 per patient range. These figures don’t include follow-up visits or the costs associated with long COVID. In addition, unvaccinated individuals hospitalized with COVID had a 10% higher rate of complications, which increased their costs of treatment.

And these costs don’t just fall on the unvaccinated individuals. Some costs fall on insurers, who will cover those costs by raising premiums on everyone. Other costs will fall on family members because insurance and government programs don’t cover all COVID medical expenses. The costs of treating uninsured or underinsured unvaccinated individuals will require increased fees on others or funding from government sources… or in some cases, closure of the health facility.

Then, when hospitals are filled with largely unvaccinated COVID patients, those hospitals won’t have enough space or staff to treat urgent non-COVID patients, or not to treat them as quickly or effectively.

The increasing number of unvaccinated COVID patients is also taking a toll on doctors and skilled nursing staff, with a workload and stress level that makes them more vulnerable to breakthrough COVID and other opportunistic infections. In turn, over time, that reduces the level of care for all patients, which means that those comparative few vaccinated COVID patients, usually older people or immune-compromised individuals have to suffer more as a result of the “freedom” of the unvaccinated not to be vaccinated.

So…for those of you “freedom-loving” anti-vaxxers, your so-called freedom isn’t free. You’re just imposing the costs on everyone else… and, in my book, that’s called “freeloading,” not freedom.

I’ve lived in Cedar City for close to thirty years, but I’ve almost been hit by drivers blatantly running red lights three times in the last month, compared to once in all the years before. Red lights, not yellow lights that turned red. I’ve also seen four drivers running stop signs, not slowing instead of stopping and then speeding up, but running them full speed… and not in the middle of the night when no one was around. I know of at least two recent accidents where a driver ignored a red light and caused an accident, one of which resulted in the death of a motorcyclist.

The Utah State Highway patrol has also reported that highway speeds, accidents, and deaths are up dramatically in the past year – the average speeds appearing to the fastest ever, even though speed limits haven’t changed. I’ve been passed on Main Street, when driving the speed limit [25-45 mph, depending on locale] by drivers who had to be going close to sixty, and frequently, not just occasionally. On the interstate, while going 82 mph in an 80 mph area, I found that to avoid causing a traffic back-up I had to move up to 85 mph, and people were still passing me, going at least 90 mph.

But this isn’t confined to Utah, either. Neighboring Colorado registered the highest number highway deaths in twenty years in 2021. And late in 2021, the federal government reported that road fatalities spiked the first half of 2021, the largest increase ever recorded in its reporting system’s history during a six-month period, nearly a twenty percent increase from the same period in 2020. Incidents of speeding and not using seatbelts were also found to be higher than before the pandemic.

Then there’s this pandemic, where statistics demonstrate rather conclusively that being vaccinated and wearing a mask reduces your chance of being hospitalized and/or dying. Data from New York shows that of those recently hospitalized for COVID, the unvaccinated were more than 32 times likely to be hospitalized than those who were vaccinated and even more likely than that to die and/or suffer long-term complications.

I just wonder if all those people speeding and running red lights are the same ones who aren’t getting vaccinated, especially here in Cedar City, where only 47% of the eligible population is vaccinated.