Public Health Protects Individuals

     In an attempt to save the colony from its own self-indulgences, the stern governor of the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam in 1648 ended the common practices of allowing hogs and other animals to free-range across both public and private property, throwing household garbage into the streets, and allowing private outhouses to overflow.  The alleged tyrant was the colorful Petrus Stuyvesant and the nascent colony survived and prospered to become New York City.
     Dutch libertarians in 1648 might have protested that nothing was more private than a privy.  They might have decried regulatory intrusions into personal matters.  The governor, however, would not tolerate libertarian excrement.  He took the stand that no individual enjoyed the freedom to do things that infringed upon the freedoms of other individuals or compromised the well-being of the entire community.  Stuyvesant did not understand public sanitation and the biology of human feces carrying viruses and bacteria dangerous to other people, but he did understand that an overflowing privy “not only creates a great stench and therefore great inconvenience to the passers-by, but also makes the streets foul and unfit for use.”
     For nearly 370 years the city fathers of New York have regulated human sanitation, water quality, and garbage collection; they have even mandated that you have to clean up poop left on the sidewalks by your dog.  The regulations of New York have been widely adopted by cities and states across the country through public health regulations and services.  Communities have gone beyond just sanitation and garbage to enforce ordinances and laws concerning restaurants, restrooms, land zoning, and building codes to protect individual health, lives, and property along with maintaining public order. 
     As I explained in my book, the Federal government is the institution of the national community.  Few people would dispute today the authority of cities and states to regulate public health, but does the Federal government also have the power to regulate it?  As early as 1798, Congress, based on its war powers, created a network of public hospitals for seamen that evolved into the office of the Surgeon General of the U.S., the U.S. Public Health Service, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  In 1906 Congress, based on its interstate commerce powers, passed the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act to protect the health and safety of consumers.  As transportation, communication, and business networks expanded from coast to coast, the Federal government has exerted more national regulatory powers over increasingly national health problems for all Americans that cannot be adequately addressed by just local and state governments.  After all, the water quality of many major lakes and rivers and the air quality that we breathe transcend municipal and state boundaries.
     Does the evolution of the United States as a fully blended national community justify increasing Federal powers to regulate even global climate change and individual healthcare insurance?  Let’s explore this question more fully in future blog posts.

       

© 2017 Stephen M. Millett (All rights reserved)