So yesterday I saw that there was a landlord in Florida who will be booting anyone who is not vaccinated from his property and will require proof for any new tenants. His staff are also included in his new policy.
Santiago A. Alvarez and his family own eight apartment complexes, which contain a total of around 1,200 housing units in Broward and Miami-Dade counties. The Sun-Sentinel reported on Sunday that Alvarez enacted a policy on August 15 that will automatically deny applications from potential new tenants if they're not vaccinated. Additionally, if anyone is unvaccinated when their lease comes up for renewal, they will have to move out.
Now, I've long said that these kinds of people are malicious actors. So I'm not writing this in order to point out what should be obvious. No, the point of this post is to show that a lot of people haven't thought through the logical conclusions of a vaccine mandate or passport.
Once you have accepted the "the unvaccinated are a mortal threat to everybody" then the logical conclusion is to remove them. Everywhere. No sane person allows a "mortal threat" to be around them. If you have asbestos in your property you remove it. Pronto. Lead paint? Remove it pronto. Mold? Remove it pronto. People who you think are carrying a deadly disease even though they are not actually doing but *could* because you think anyone who didn't take the shot are the only ones who can? Remove them pronto.
It makes perfectly logical sense IF you accept the premise. The premise is wrong but we have moved to "post-fact" a long time ago.
What is interesting is that I see a number of people who are pro-mandate who think this landlord is "going too far".
Why?
It's the logical conclusion of what you want to be implemented. What you didn't think that far ahead?
Look, I had a discussion about a year ago about lockdowns with a co-worker. She was making an argument about "what is best for society". Rather than argue whether what she thought was best for society I asked this question:
Who gets to make that determination? You? Me? Some random person you don't know?
And what if your vision of "best for society" doesn't go as far as mine? Should I get to impose MY vision on you? See the endpoint of such "best for society" argument is whoever gets the power gets to implement whatever they want to and there is ALWAYS someone who thinks that YOU are not going far enough.
There is always someone who has a more extreme view that may be "beyond the pale" for you. This is why we have a constitution, in America, that constrains government. The founders knew full well that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Hence they explicitly limited the power of the federal and state governments and specifically said that those powers not *delegated* to the various parts of government are *retained* by the people.
So the people are the source of authority and power. Each individual is a source of authority and the government is restrained from acting against them without meeting a high standard which includes high evidentiary standards to be met prior to encroaching on the individual.
This is why this 18 or so month-long "emergency" and the declarations by various agencies is in complete contradiction to the rule of law fundamental to the US polity.
So going back to the landlord. It's his property he can do what he likes right? Well if that's the case then why is the state of Colorado bothering a bakery? Why do we have public accommodation laws? If you want to do "vaccine mandates" then lets go all the way and abolish all laws governing what private companies can and cannot do in regards to who they serve and under what circumstances.
After all, if your employer AND landlord can coerce you to put something into your body, and make no mistake, threats of job loss, wage loss and eviction IS coercion, then you have absolutely ZERO rights.
In the end that's why I came out strongly against this concept months and months and months ago. Vaccine mandates completely upend the fundamental principle of a free society. I don't mistake "free" for "care free". Mandates shifts the paradigm from "you have a fundamental right derived from the fact that you are human" TO "you have whatever rights the government grants you". And if the government exists to secure your rights, as the founders explicitly stated it exists for, then it has the right to dictate to the landlord that he cannot violate the fundamental right of tenants (and employees) to decline a medical intervention without fear of consequence, unless that tenant poses a clear and immediate danger to other tenants (ie: walking around with Ebola, in which case they should be in a hospital or other quarantine anyway).