"Will some people be affected badly [in other words, will they die]? Yes, but we have to get our country open" -Trump

“If we are willing to trade risk to human life for expected economic benefit, it requires us to engage in a sort of analysis employed by utilitarians – moral philosophers who believe in promoting the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people – and also to put a price on human health. This may sound shocking, but people do this every day: Insurance actuaries, military strategists and traffic planners routinely face difficult questions on how much a human life will ‘cost.’

“But if we consider it moral to keep cars on the roads, while also understanding that approximately 40,000 people die in traffic accidents in the U.S. every year, we had better be confident in our calculations. According to the utilitarian, if the numbers change, the moral calculus could flip.

“With the coronavirus, however, we are dealing with massive uncertainties. If we reopen the economy, will the death toll surge again? Will employees even come back to work? Moreover, the economic and human costs seem linked during this pandemic. If we reopen the economy too soon, we might face both a worse health outcome and further economic downturn.

“With such uncertainty, how can we possibly know whether the ‘cure will be worse than the disease?’ But there is another ethical consideration here: Precisely whose lives are we talking about? And whose economic benefit?

“People may have a choice whether or not to drive. But if forced to go to work every day, they may not be able to avoid the risk of being exposed to a life-threatening illness. And not all work is the same: Does a transit worker face the same risk as a tax planner?

“Twentieth-century philosopher John Rawls embraced the idea of ‘justice as fairness’ – the idea that judgments about morality are inextricably tied up with questions of equality. Rawls described how a ‘veil of ignorance’ could help guide a person’s moral judgment by asking them what distribution of rights they would choose for an ideal society, without telling them the place they would hold in that society once the veil was lifted.

“If you knew you’d be a king, you might not worry so much about the rights of the peasants. But what if you yourself might end up being a peasant? In the real world, of course, we know full well whether we will be the one delivering the packages or staying home for a Zoom conference. To risk someone else’s life where you would not risk your own – for your own economic benefit or otherwise – seems deeply immoral” (Everyday ethics: When should we lift the lockdown? by LeeMcIntyre, Research Fellow, Center for Philosophy and History of Science, Boston University).

Commentary:

John Rawls states in A Theory of Justice that "in arriving at the favored interpretation of the initial situation there is no point at which an appeal is made to self-evidence in the traditional sense either of general conceptions or particular convictions... A conception of justice cannot be deduced from self-evident premises or conditions on principles; instead, its justification is a matter of the mutual support of many considerations, of everything fitting together into one coherent view... We need a conception that enables us to envision our objective from afar..." (21-22). 

For Rawls, "Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all. Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are... to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged..." (302).

This “coherent view” of “justice as fairness” is based upon reason, humility, compassion, empathy, integrity and egalitarianism. Though the notion of utilitarianism is based on the idea or principle of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number,” 19^th Utilitarian Philosopher John Stuart Mill once stated: “When we call anything a person’s right, we mean that he [or she] has a valid claim on society to protect him [or her] in the possession of it, either by the force of law or by that of education and opinion” (293).

Thus, if one believes our “rights” are dependent upon what might lead to the “greatest possible good” consequences and what might maximize the most “good” for the majority of people, then one’s concern for the “greatest good” directed toward the “greatest number of individuals” is morally challenged in time of a pandemic.

If we insist that we distinguish the “rights” of the majority from the “rights” of the minority (or most vulnerable among us), then we falsely justify overruling the minority's  “rights.”

What “right” would be fundamental or a necessary condition of all other “rights”? Is “dignity” a “right” of an individual? Is “equality” a “right” of an individual? Are “life, liberty and security” “rights” of an individual?

The principle of utility is without moral concern for individuals. The principle of utility, generally stated in quantitative terms with its emphasis on cost-benefit analysis and indifference to morality, presupposes that good/ “right” and evil/ “wrong” can be justifiably measured through a dispassionate, expediency. This viewpoint is immoral and unjust. 

-Glen Brown

P.S.
Of course, we know pathological narcissist Trump is both immoral and unjust...

Sources:

Mill, John Stuart. Selected Writings of John Stuart Mill. Ed. Maurice Cowling. New York: The New American Library, 1968.

Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Boston: Harvard University Press, 1971.

United Nations. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/