It is critically important to bear in mind that the single most important reason for our improved position today, whatever we may say about specific governments and their specific policies, has been all of that previously normal free commercial and social activitythat generated the wealth of the present world economy.
All of that wealth arose from the normal and daily serving of the subjective valuations of each of us. As each person navigates the complex set of interrelations that comprise our various associations, we make choices based on knowledge that only we can have of those with whom we interact. To this store of knowledge, we add our personal valuations of what is right and good. We take council from others, and learn from their examples, but our choices derive from our personal set of subjective valuations.
Art Carden beautifully busts one of the most commonplace and dangerous myths about markets – and about the case that sound economists make in favor of markets. (Government policy would be vastly less destructive if many more people understood that social order is not only possible without being the result of human design, but that such order is typically better when it is not so designed.)
Pierre Lemieux is rightly fearful of the danger to the public of public-health officials.
My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy and I recently wrote an op-ed (which is now under consideration at a major newspaper) on the folly of banning exports of medical supplies. Simon Lester reports on such a step that the Trump administration took yesterday. (Simon is less worried about this step than I am.)
Richard Rahn makes the case against government taking equity stakes in airlines.
Arnold Kling believes that the CARES Act is “the worst piece of legislation in U.S. history.”
Arnold, of course, isn’t alone in lamenting the CARES Act; so too does John Stossel.
