Liberty, they say, when they mean licence. A microcosm of the libertarianism of recent decades. The anarchy of the rich and powerful disables government as an agency of common good and social welfare and subjects all to the collective constraint of systemic economic force and its socio-environmental consequences. The cardinal virtues come to be considered sins against the GNP. Instead of cultivating the virtues, the mentality that we, discrete, self-possessing, pre-social beings, are 'free to choose' to do as we please trickles down and breeds sufficient numbers of jackasses to put the social, economic, and physical health of all in danger.
Even now, people need to be warned about social distancing. The worst thing I can say is that I am not surprised. Selfish and stupidity has been bred into the social fabric by libertarian politics. Thankfully, that is far from being most people. Most people, being social beings, and not the pre-possessing, self-owning discrete 'individuals' of liberal fiction, remain in touch with their sociality, and do not 'contract in' and 'contract out' of social intercourse according to calculations of self-interest. But it does indicate how the natural sociable and cooperative instincts of people is either hijacked by the jackasses or undermined by them, the rich and powerful who predate on society from without, and the idiots who erode society from within.
I'll desist from delivering another lecture on 'rational freedom.' The idea is all over my work. Simply stated, the 'rational' idea proceeds from the sociability and the rationality of all human beings to hold that the freedom/happiness of each individual is conditional upon and co-existent with the freedom/happiness of all individuals, and that no-one person is truly free unless all are free, and that all are free only in communal relation with others. Against this is a libertarian freedom in which there is no overarching social good, only individuals who are free to choose the good as they see fit. In that libertarian context, an individual rational generates a collective irrationality, an individual freedom generates a collective unfreedom, in the form of long-range global consequences that exert an external constraint on each and all.
I could give many examples from the weekend. Brockwell Park shuts after 3,000 people visit during lockdown, 'many sunbathing or in large groups.'
Brockwell Park in south London is staying closed on Sunday because so many people flouted the Government's social distancing advice, Lambeth Council said.
"This wouldn't need to happen if people followed the clear instructions from the government. We are doing this for the wider safety of the public. A minority of people have not followed the guidance - regrettably we have to act."