Ask the Gulch!

Objectivism does recognize that a government is necessary as the last resort for the use of force. Force could be used to keep those who are contagious from infecting others. It could take the form of house arrest or quarantine. But the use of force is justified if you are exposing others to a deadly disease.

I like Friedman's Involuntary Servitude example with respect to pollution, noise, pollution, communicable disease, etc. for such issues.

If the actions of one person, compel another in some way, some remedy should be supported.

I do not see how a set of interwoven interactions and a group (Societal) remedy is inconsistent with Objectivism's individuality as some have asserted here. Objectivism and Libertarianism are not anarchy.

I think the question contains a contradiction. It implies "society" has a responsibility to respond, which would be non-objectivist.
Each individual responds to the threat of flu. A pandemic just means more individuals are having to deal with flu at the same time.

Given an Objectivist future, there would be no such thing as a pandemic.

Individuals would perforce isolate themselves and invent new ways of communicating that did not involve face-to-face unless absolutely necessary. (That's easier done today than nearly a hundred years ago, as I'm sure we all appreciate.)

But the argument assumes the Spanish 'Flu would necessarily be as bad as it was. I suspect other individuals would realize what was wrong with commonly accepted dietary practices and amend these to strengthen natural immunity. With the result that nothing like the 1918 event need ever happen again--or if it did, Galt's Gulch would be immune.

Does an "Objectivist Society" actually "respond" to things? In other words, Objectivism is all about the individual, so each objectivist would do what he deems necessary to protect himself and his family/friends. Interesting topic.

Interesting question - taking the baseline OF the Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918 (and the years thereafter), looking at the then responses, I am not certain that the nature of the society would make much difference. You are talking about a major epidemiological event that, in some cases, wiped small communities and families from the map - My grandmother and aunt were the only survivors of the disaster from her family (the rest had either perished a decade before in a major earthquake in southern Italy, those that survived that (and WW1) got hit by the pandemic. My inlaws family had 1 (yes, one) survivor.

You also have to remember the histological timeline of the era - we had just come our of a major war where the government DID, in fact, control most aspects of life with a heavy hand, and were loathe to renounce the immense power it held after the war, we had not yet regained a lot of the freedoms we once held and it was unknown if we ever would; the dollar had been Fedded in 1913, all in all -

I'm not sure if a purely Objectivist society would have made a difference, looking at what we were just coming out of, and the scope of what we were going thru. A lot of troops were coming back to a workd they barely recognized - mechanization had taken hold during the war, they had been places and seen things that otherwise would have not been possible (until then most people lived their entire lives within a radius of less than 50 miles), people were in a surprising number of cases returning from the war and finding a more urban (and cosmopolitan) life rather than return to the farm... part of which help spread the pandemic...

How would they respond? My guess - and that's the best I could do - is it would collapse a little deeper than it did until it eventually recovered. The few social nets such as they were (and back then there WERE few social nets - it's what was the reason for the big draw to the reds) wouldn't have existed, and more would have perished, either from the disease itself, or from the corresponding lack of goods and services as the population shrunk, inhibiting the market and production of said goods and services. Just like the population decimators during the plague eras, Less survivors = less production = less food = more starvation = higher mortality. Very likely, we would not have the technological advances we do now, simply because people would be working too hard to survive to put into innovation.

An objectivist society or group or "gulch" is bound to have enemies that want to destroy it. The conventional approach is to have a standing military that is prepared to ward off such attacks. Is a military consistent with the objectivist philosophy and if not how can objectivists protect themselves from assault?

I think the underlying question has to do with when one person's actions affect another. We are all happy to say things like "your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins",

But what about communicable diseases? Does your right to avoid vaccination end at the point where you increase my risk? Since vaccines, especially flu vaccines are far from 100% effective it is not sufficient that I vaccinate myself. Having the people around me also vaccinated significantly lowers my personal risk.

When dealing with a flu as deadly as the 1918 variant (10-20% mortality) this is a troubling issue,

The impossible miracle of a completely objectivist society would quarantine the sick, wear masks and use a lot of soap and water.
A sizable portion of our present society, the ones who think open borders is a good thing, would blame Trump and riot.

In a completely Objectivist society, all members would be fully rational and ethical and sharing that society by mutual consent, collaborating through division of labor and trading their individual production for mutual benefit. That would include medical research and methods of prevention. A pandemic would be detected at its inception and counteracted. Where such a society existed, it would have inspired all other social groupings to take on their values, so no wars and no force would exist. Rational people do not require force. Of course, such a society is an ideal long dreamed of, relationships based on the golden mean of mutual respect and individual sovereignty.

Microbes and bacteria outnumber us. Some are useful. If they were rational, they would not kill their host. The good ones don't. Human science may yet find a way to develop a modus vivendi between us and the earliest lifeforms on earth.

A completely objectivist society would have no government in my world. People would be responsible for themselves and there would be of course doctors and hospitals that one could go to if the individual thought that it was in his/her best interests. Why is it that we still look to government to provide the answer?

Stay away from people and be in your airconditioned and filtered house...

profchuck,

don't you know that an objectivist society does not exist and probably never will at the rate or growth of stupidity taking over the country. so why do you think such an action is even possible?

I don't have a clue.............

Is what you mean a religious society with no one having ideas contrary to Rand's version of a society? If you mean a society in which citizens are fully rational to objective reality at all times, then the local priests will have their hands full excommunicating those who move a toe from the line, though a pandemic could be handled but not nicely.
The human animal is the product of accidental selections over millions of years with a tendency for consciously and subconsciously acting toward a society of trust and not necessarily toward rational thought and action, thus only small communities might exist with fully agreeable members and most of that agreement would be toward one being able trust one's neighbors to have similar ideas.
In any case, any pandemic, even in an objective leaning society, will end up using force against some for the protection of others with quarantines and forced treatment and removing some permanently from the group. Do not expect any kindness from any group of people when disease is rampant and humans revert to trying to avoid sick neighbors as the main purpose for daily life.