Consistency of Beliefs: Turning Away Unvaccinated Customers

A while back I wrote a post titled “In Praise of Consistency,” which argues that a powerful way to examine one’s beliefs is to check their internal consistency. An example that’s currently on my mind is the right of private companies to turn away unvaccinated customers. On the right there are a lot of people who seem to think that shouldn’t be allowed, but at the same time belief that a baker should be able to refuse making a wedding cake for a gay couple.

This strikes me as highly inconsistent, which should set off alarm bells that something is wrong. If you support a business turning away customers based on taking moral offense, then it would appear that turning away customers for the potential of infecting your staff and other customers should be well within the rights of the business (it would in fact be quite easy to simply frame this as a moral offense also).

But the inconsistency exists to a degree on the left also. There, a lot of people think nothing of compelling a baker to serve a gay couple, but would loudly object to a governor forcing businesses to allow unvaccinated customers. A proposed resolution for this inconsistency, however, is maybe more readily possible: the vaccination case revolves around the potential of physical harm not just to the proprietor, but also to other customers. 

Still, I happen to think that we should be setting the bar for this type of government intervention very high and it has appropriately taken us a long time to build consensus that certain categories, such as race, should not be permitted as a basis for refusing service. It is important to point out also that de facto implementation of such decisions, operates as much through social consensus at through government regulation.