Quarantine Theory

Quarantine is politically unpopular. By the time the population feels quarantine is justified, the spread of disease will proceed far past the point where quarantine would be effective. How could quarantine be effective? Less government, of course!

Large governments regulate businesses, which in turn tend to grow larger in order to maximize the number of transactions versus cost. If you remember any economics classes, you might remember the phrase 'economies of scale.' Unfortunately, what many don't tell us is that one of those economies is the economy of hiring lawyers, tax professionals, harassment professionals, etc... Walmart can spread this sort of cost over millions of transactions, meanwhile the Mom and Pop stores can't even afford to play.

Anyway, a similar thing is true in the travel business. They grow larger than they would without government regulation. Now government regulation represents a cost, but over time, corporations win benefits too. Airline companies enjoy less competition, they have abdicated the entire responsibility for their client's personal safety to the government, and their relationships with their employees are obviously well mediated via regulation too.

So what we have right now are extremely large companies, with leaders who live very far away from, and probably have no communication with, their employees who have to go into potentially dangerous areas. In addition, the business leaders have an incentive to ignore the company's own information gathering and rely on the government's call. Following the government's play tends to mean less trouble in court and in public opinion- if a decision turns out to be unpopular.

Meanwhile, the government is run by a bunch of people who are elected by a strange form of popularity contest every few years, so nobody will ban travel until it becomes a popular idea, and by that time it will be too late.

So what?

The travel companies would have been smaller, more responsive, and more likely to stop serving areas of high infection in a world with smaller governments. The decision makers would be people crewing the planes, who would weigh potential profits against coming into contact with the disease- and no doubt they'd find they could sell their services elsewhere. This would be chaotic, asynchronous, and decentralized, but ultimately far more effective in terms of limiting the spread of disease.

In contrast, at this point it is really obvious that our ponderous government, complete with the impressive sounding C.D.C. couldn't manage anything approaching a travel ban. The swine flu is well spread, but thankfully it doesn't seem as deadly as it may have been. They are as helpless as the rest of us- perhaps more so due to their institutionalized mindset- but they are essentially glorified janitors following the flu around as it makes it's way through the population.

I think we can get a cheaper clean up crew elsewhere.