When a contagion hits, non-violent actions of the individual can cause harm to others. Going to the store to buy one roll of toilet paper could conceivably kill, in worst case. Conversely, a false rumor of contagion — and the resulting response to it — could too.

We all know that thoughts and individuals do not fit on a single axis, but to avoid complexity outside of my intended scope, let’s think of Libertarianism in terms of Randian Objectivism with spectrum toward Constitutional Conservatism.

To get illusions out of the way, I’ll ignore modern form Constitutional Conservative Tie-Wearer that redistricts for lobbies and defines a more perfect union as one in which he is re-elected, and ignore modern form objectivist who is selling his newsletter to people who under-appreciate his intellectual dominance.

I’ll also ignore the complaints of readers who may picture Ayn as a toilet paper hoarder high-fiving in the streets with wild abandon, employing secret backchannel auction wars to bribe doctors to ensure her personal immunity to the contagion. We know the truth, Ayn is motivated to limit her toilet paper purchase to the minimum that she needs by her acute intellectual understanding of the long term consequences of doing so (that she will have to explain to idiots in future interviews).

Similarly, I’ll ignore the complaints of readers who picture Tie-Wearer as an Ivory Tower Racist who favors guns from conception and privatized prisons for millennials. We know the truth, that Tie-Wearer is more concerned with the health and safety of babies than spotted owls, and his gun range is not occupying land that would otherwise be used for drum circles or tent cities.

Tie-Wearer tells Ayn that Objectivism works in a world full of Rands but falls apart in a world full of humans that cannot write 1,000 page novels full of $1,000 words. Ayn tells Tie-Wearer that Constitutional Conservatism falls apart when his constituents care more for the pleasure centers of their brain and what effect the color of his ties might have on it.

Ayn rejects state’s power to deny free people to engage in hug parties during a contagion, provided the curve is flat enough, fatality low enough, future contact with the immuno-compromised unlikely enough, and that Ayn has not neglected to groom while performing such on the fly calculations.

Tie-Wearer allows your state to be a localized experiment of hugparty efficacy, and to choose new rules and procedures for doing so (and it certainly will – because what elected official would not jump at the opportunity to flex?).

Each could be accused of being largely anti-hug in general, but that’s not the point here.

Neither Tie-Wearer nor Ayn can adhere to their philosophies without facts that are not available when actions are to be considered. There is no privacy protecting app that tells the individual when they are infected or near infection, there is no state entity that is transparent and open source. In our current condition, there is only a way forward from what is, shall I say, less than ideal. Ayn and Tie-Wearer are left fluttering in the wind – as those who watch Idol over News have their lives largely uninterrupted.

Long form intellectual discussions on independent media platforms, the Intellectual Dark Web, Qanon, and Donald Trump’s presidency, are currently the greatest driving forces toward a transparent system where rational discussion between honest and authentic individuals can be informed by truth.

For the good of all philosophies, for the good of any combination of ideas within an individual, the priority is truthful information and widespread access to it. No reasonable informed action can be taken without it. The greatest threats to clear truth are the Fake News and Hostile Influence, which undermine our ability to see, hamper our ability to teach, and systematically distort our means to heal.