Charles,

You must first remind people that because the state is pervasive on every level — local, state, and federal — it’s all but impossible for the average person to imagine life without it, their tendency being to scoff at the notion. But as bad as the state is at handling pandemic’s (or anything else), it is difficult to imagine that society would fair worse without it. In any case, it would be in the interests of private health insurance companies to pool their resources regarding disease prevention and outbreak, such that their trade association, say, funded the necessary research and planning, respectively.

Would there be a free-rider problem? Probably. But as healthcare costs would be significantly lower in a free society — there being no state licensing, for instance, to keep incomes artificially high (e.g., http://mises.org/daily/1547) — many more people would be able to afford health insurance, especially since they wouldn’t have taxes to pay, only fees for services rendered in a competitive marketplace. Indeed, in a truly free society, incomes would likely be both higher and more balanced than they are in statist society, where the many are plundered by the few on an ongoing basis (look at the affect of 70 years of welfarism on New Orleans). There would also be vastly greater awareness of one’s responsibilities to one’s fellows. For while a free rider is not an outright thief, he is obviously taking advantage of others, who would not appreciate this fact. Thus, to be known by one’s fellow citizens as a free rider would tend to stigmatize that person accordingly.

One last point: Whenever I’m confronted with situations like this, I always remind people that while we can debate such issues until the cows come home, the plain fact is that we are like a bunch of physicists endlessly debating the theory of relativity because we aren’t allowed to conduct the necessary experimentation. That is, we can’t give free society a try because the state holds us at gunpoint, in abject defiance of the principle upon which THIS state was founded.

Get people to acknowledge that fact, and you will have already done the cause of freedom a world of good. For you will have gotten them to take the first step toward libertarianism, which to question the existence not of this or that state but of the state itself — what it is, where it came from, and how it perpetuates itself.

Then hand them a copy of Franz Oppenheimer’s “The State.”

Maybe Charles Sterling will clarify this himself, but I think he might be wondering how his scenario would be handled in comparison to how the US government handled/is handling New Orleans and Biloxi after Katrina, i.e. the National Guard, FEMA, Army Corps of Engineers, using taxpayers to fund the rebuilding and relief efforts, etc.

“Imagine this scenario: New York City, assuming it becomes a free society, is struck with a pandemic of influenza because a scientist of a private medical company accidently broke the tube or someone is a carrier and brought the disease to the city. How would the city or/and individuals deal with the diseases.”