Has Europe Really Failed?

Because of the COVID crisis, society today has no choice but to undergo a range of changes. There will be many such changes, but I want to focus on one point: this crisis may come to be remembered as a representative case in which European and American individualism failed while Asian collectivism succeeded. Many people say that the responses of Asian countries, including South Korea, were more successful than those of advanced countries in Europe or the Americas. In fact, in terms of both deaths and infections, Asian countries are in a far better situation than countries in Europe or the Americas.

When the COVID crisis comes to an end, think tanks around the world will undoubtedly review the entire episode from the beginning, and the mainstream assessment will probably be something along the lines of this: at least in circumstances like these, communities that cooperate with state power weather crises better. It is even possible that an explicit frame will emerge claiming that liberal Europe was defeated by communitarian Asia. Taking that conclusion a step further, people may argue for strengthening public healthcare services; extending it further still, they may emphasize the importance of the state for the survival of the community. This COVID crisis may be cited here and there as if it were empirical proof of the need to expand various social security systems and public services.

But as a liberal, when I look at the current situation, I strongly feel that it cannot be directly taken to mean that liberalism or individualism is harmful while collectivism or communitarianism is beneficial. The claim that Europe and the Americas failed while Asia succeeded arises simply from the fact that disease transmission was better controlled in Asia than in Europe or the Americas. Hidden within that claim is the assumption that, above all else, the best outcome is one in which the disease spreads less. But is that really so?

In the early stages of the crisis, there were strong calls around the world to ban entry from abroad. The academic community, of course, said such measures were ineffective, and some countries, in part taking that scholarly view into account, did not actively implement entry bans. Yet one of the grounds for arguing against entry bans was precisely that the economic losses would be enormous. If, in order to cut off the possibility of disease transmission at the source, a country shuts every channel to the outside world so that people can no longer come and go, the domestic economy may suffer a major blow. That is a reasonable point. But if one maintains that view and then asks whether Asia succeeded while Europe failed, it is easy to see that the answer cannot be so clear. If Asia, which successfully prevented the spread of the disease, suffered economic losses far greater than those of Europe or the Americas, could we really say with certainty that Asian collectivism succeeded?

When state power sets a goal such as preventing the spread of disease as the highest priority and compels the people to submit to a particular order, then, of course, if that coercion is based on scientific judgment, it is one efficient way of achieving that goal. There is no doubt about that. But a liberal should first ask whether what each of us truly wants—what can directly lead to happiness for each individual—is really, no matter what, to escape the threat of disease by submitting to such coercion. Naturally, there will be people who, rather than complying with state guidance or coercion to prevent the spread of disease, would pursue something more important to themselves even at the risk of falling ill.

Of course, a potential carrier walking the streets and entering crowded facilities can be a threat, and a source of harm, to many people. But this is not something that can be prevented only if the state steps in and imposes something by force. People can exclude from their own property those likely to spread illness, as well as the actions associated with that risk. For example, a restaurant owner who does not want rumors to spread that an infected person visited the establishment, and who wants to prevent that even at some cost, can allow only those who pass a simple temperature check at the door to enter. If the owner fails to take even this simple measure, the restaurant must bear a substantial risk related to the spread of disease. And when that risk materializes as actual harm, the owner will bear the consequences—for example, sales may drop sharply because of rumors that an infected person visited the restaurant.

If people hate getting sick more than anything else and wish to avoid the disease at all costs, then within a community made up of such people, a spontaneous order capable of preventing the spread of disease will in fact emerge. If, in the earlier example, most restaurants continued as before to allow people to come and go freely, and as a result the disease spread rapidly, then according to conventional thinking that would certainly be a bad outcome. But even that would still be, in its own way, the best order that emerged voluntarily within that community. Such a result would mean that, for the people of that community, there was something they could not give up even at the cost of becoming ill.

Returning to the original point, conventional thinking nevertheless holds that stopping the spread of a virus such as COVID-19 is more important than anything else. The mainstream view will likely be that, in a crisis like this, state power needs to play an active role, even if that means being more wartime-like and coercive than at any other time. As liberals, we should guard against being swept up in this mainstream current and coming to think that, at least this once, liberalism may have been wrong. The stance we should maintain as rational liberals is not to uncritically accept a series of claims that liberalism has failed and then shift to some bizarrely hybrid new position. We should thoroughly examine whether such claims are valid, then take only those parts that are clearly sound and integrate them carefully so that they remain consistent with our existing position.

Nothing—not even great events such as war, pandemics, or natural disasters—can serve as a legitimate justification for the exercise of state power unless the consent of each and every one of us is presupposed. Bearing this in mind, we should look ahead to the changes our society will face after the COVID crisis.

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Original title: 정말 유럽은 실패했을까

Author: Young-jun Kim

Date: 2020-06-05

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=free_opinion&pn=14&idx=22802