Opinion | Guns, Germs, Bitcoin and the Antisocial Right - The New York Times - 0 views
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What do these examples have in common? As Thomas Hobbes could have told you, human beings can only flourish, can only avoid a state of nature in which lives are “nasty, brutish and short,” if they participate in a “commonwealth” — a society in which government takes on much of the responsibility for making life secure.
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Thus, we have law enforcement precisely so individuals don’t have to go around armed to protect themselves against other people’s violence.
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Public health policy, if you think about it, reflects the same principle. Individuals can and should take responsibility for their own health, when they can; but the nature of infectious disease means that there is an essential role for collective action
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