Tweet

My GMU Econ colleague Bryan Caplan refreshingly applies sound Coasean thinking to Covid-19.

John Tamny imagines if the virus had never been detected. A slice:

As this column has long stated, the coronavirus is a rich man’s virus. It’s not just that the rich and generally well-to-do had portable jobs that mostly survived the mindless lockdowns, it’s not just that the break from reality we were forced to endure could have only happened in a rich country, it’s also the case that only in a country and world in which the elderly are truly old would the virus have any notable association with death. People live longer today, and they do because major healthcare advances born of wealth creation made living longer possible. We wouldn’t have noticed this virus 100 years ago. We weren’t rich enough.

Toby Young responds to Christopher Snowdon’s critique of lockdown skeptics. A slice:

Sure, there are some peer-reviewed studies published in reputable journals seeming to show that these measures reduce COVID-19 infections, hospital admissions, and deaths. (See here, for instance.) But most of these rely on epidemiological models that make unfalsifiable claims about how many people would have died if governments had just sat on their hands—and some of these models have been widely criticised. The evidence that lockdowns don’t work, by contrast, is not based on conjecture but on observing the effects of lockdowns in different countries. (You can review 30 of these studies here.) What these data seem to show is that the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in each country rises and falls—and then rises and falls again, although less steeply as the virus moves towards endemic equilibrium—according to a similar pattern regardless of what NPIs governments impose.

Parker Crutchfield and Scott Scheall reveal the limitations of expertise. A slice:

When the phenomena of multiple scientific fields interact, such as when it is necessary to trade off the health costs of a virus against the economic and other costs of a lockdown, policymakers can turn to experts about isolated phenomena. But there are no experts about the interaction of different kinds of phenomena or about the proper weighting of some against others. Policymakers can ask epidemiologists to weigh in on epidemiology, infectious disease specialists to weigh in on infectious disease, and economists to weigh in on economics. But there are no experts about how these subjects interact or how to balance them.

Spot the pandemic year in Scotland.

From Reason: “What Disney Can Teach Us About Covid-19: Lockdowns Fail“.

Tweet

My great classical-liberal Australian friend David Hart – now living back in his native country – sent to me an e-mail yesterday decrying the collapse of the liberty movement in the face of Covid hysteria. I thank David for his kind permission to share his e-mail.

I have been grappling with what I think has been the catastrophic collapse and failure of the liberty movement in Australia in the face of the Covid hysteria and panic, and the lockdown socialism which has been the result (or in the case of the state of Victoria “lockdown stalinism”). We haven’t seen anything like such an expansion of government power and intervention in the economy since the mid-1970s in this country, and I fear 2021 will continue down this path with barely a squeak of protest.

In 1972 the social democratic Labor Party came to power and in the space of three years completely transformed the Australian economy, including the introduction of a country-wide single payer health care system, huge increases in taxation, and in government debt. That is the reason why I first became active in libertarian politics and I joined many thousands of people who were appalled and outraged at what was happening. Last year, a conservative government did more in 10 months to expand the power of the state, increase debt, and drastically cut private economic activity than three years of a “socialist” government back in the 1970s.

Yet where are all those who once could be relied on to speak out and stand up for liberty? They are all lying low and saying and doing nothing.

It is hard to know what to do in the face of this. Is it “betrayal” of our ideals? cowardice? the failure of their critical faculties, on many levels, to question the dictates of politicians and the so-called advice of technocrats? Have they forgotten all the economics they once knew? Have they stopped loving liberty? Who knows.

…..

DBx: Arriving in my e-mailbox very soon after I read this appalling op-ed in the Washington Post, David’s e-mail struck me with special strength. The op-ed’s headline alone would thrill a Stalinist – “My city in Australia locked down for a single covid-19 case. We welcome the restrictions” – with the first sentence of the op-ed sending the Stalinist into raptures: “Government officials from Western Australia announced on Sunday that millions of people in the southwest part of our state would plunge into a strict, five-day lockdown after the first case of community transmission in 10 months was detected in a hotel quarantine security guard.”

One case of a disease that isn’t especially lethal to people under the age of 50, and that kills mostly the very old and ill, prompts the government to put millions of healthy people under house arrest. One. Single. Case. Not even one single death. One case.

The great collectivist dream is to have every individual sacrifice willingly and without limit for the greater good of the whole, with the details of the nature of this good being specified by the state. The puny individuals are assured by those in power that evil will darken the land if the puny individuals do not stand together, as one, regimented by the state into uniformity of purpose and action.

Collectivist ideology celebrates the embrace of this uniformity. It applauds acceptance of the state’s authority and leadership. It cheers those who refuse to question the state’s commands; it condemns those who dare to so question, and will silence those who do not respond appropriately to the condemnations.

I’m no expert on Soviet or Maoist or Pol-Pottian propaganda, but I have – as, surely, you have – encountered over the years examples of such propaganda in which smiling comrades are shown joyfully marching together – as one, and led by a loving leader – toward some glorious goal. Just as the brainwashed victims depicted in this propaganda happily submit to their enslavement, so too, apparently, do millions of Australians submit to theirs. And the Washington Post publishes an op-ed written by one of them bragging of her comrades’ willingness to behave like well-trained dogs – some eager for snacks as rewards for good behavior, and others fearful of the master’s whip for bad behavior.

Simply disgusting.

Tweet

… is from my late Nobel-laureate colleague James Buchanan’s important January 1st, 2000, Wall Street Journal essay titled “Saving the Soul of Classical Liberalism”:

Classical political economy, as taught in the early decades of the nineteenth century, and in England particularly, did capture the minds of the masses. The advocates of classical liberalism were able to present a vision so compelling, so soulful, that it motivated political support for major reform Think of the repeal of England’s Corn Laws, surely a difficult step. Why, after all, ought England to give up protection of its farmers? Only by presenting the larger vision of a free-trade England could the Corn Laws’ opponents prevail with lawmakers. When the reformers succeeded, the repeal’s passage changed the world.

DBx: Nine days ago – January 27th – marked the 175th anniversary of Prime Minister Robert Peel’s presentation to Parliament of his party’s plan to repeal Britain’s corn laws – that is, to repeal Britain’s protective tariffs on grains. These tariffs enriched British landowners at the expense of ordinary people.

Peel’s efforts succeeded. Five months later, on June 25th, 1846, the Duke of Wellington persuaded the House of Lords to enact the repeal. The repeal of the corn laws was driven largely by the ideas of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and other economists, and that were brought to life for the public by the Anti-Corn Law League, headed by the heroic Richard Cobden and John Bright.

Ideas do indeed matter.

On June 25th, 2021, my Mercatus Center colleagues and I will celebrate the 175th anniversary of the repeal of the corn laws. Details to follow in the coming weeks.

…..

This short MRU video, narrated by Tyler Cowen, is an excellent overview of the corn laws and their repeal. (As Tyler reminds viewers, the word “corn” as used then in Britain meant, not maize, but wheat and other grains. The repeal of the corn laws thus resulted in lower prices of bread for the masses.)

Tweet

British MP Andrew Rosindell spoke out calmly yet powerfully on January 6th against the U.K.’s lockdowns.

Tweet

… is from page 52 of Frank Knight’s essay “Liberal Ethics,” which is Chapter 4 of the original edition of Frank H. Knight’s and Thornton W. Merriam’s 1945 volume, The Economic Order and Religion (original emphasis):

The great moral tragedy of life is not that people fail to act in accord with their ideals, or with right ideals, but that “love is blind,” that goodness, good intentions and good people so commonly do harm instead of good because of failure to understand social and other conditions and the consequences of actions. In particular, they do not see and face the limitations of life, choose between possible alternatives and find satisfaction in attainable progress at a speed consonant with a reasonable degree of order and security.

DBx: By the way, this year is the 100th anniversary of the publication of Knight’s landmark 1921 study, Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit.

Tweet

Register to attend a February 9th debate between Phil Magness and Jeremy Horpedahl on “Lockdowns and Liberty: How Should Government Respond to COVID-19?” Sponsored by the University of San Diego’s Center for Ethics, Economics and Public Policy, this debate will begin at 7:00pm Eastern Standard Time.

Christian Britschgi reports that California’s tyrannical lockdowns were a costly failure.

Ben Hawkins rightly decries the gambling by lockdown tyrants with the lives of innocent people. A slice:

But do we know that lockdowns actually have the effect that their proponents claim that they have? No, we do not. In fact, the American Institute for Economic Affairs has compiled a list of 29 scientific studies claiming to show lockdowns to be ineffective in reducing the Covid mortality rate. Whilst there may be other studies claiming that lockdowns do work, it is far from certain that they are in fact preventing deaths on the scale predicted.

Will Jones reveals the incongruence between reality and the doomsday predictions of many Covid-19 modelers, including the reckless modelers at Imperial College.

As in the U.S., the goalposts are changing for easing the lockdowns in the U.K., a country cursed by very un-sage advice.

Freddie Sayers reports on the Zero Covid campaign. A slice:

But even though this increasingly popular school of thought — which holds that we must not return to normal until the virus is completely eliminated within a country — wasn’t explicitly on the billing, its presence was made clear from the outset. In her introductory remarks, the moderator confirmed to the more than 600 registrants and speakers from across the world that “we are here to end Covid through ZeroCovid and CovidZero policies”. More often at the event, held over Zoom and organised by American scientist Yaneer Bar-Yam, speakers preferred to refer to ZeroCovid as an “elimination strategy”.

Yet the purpose of the event was clear: to share evidence and political advice to help campaigners lobby Western governments to abandon any notion of living alongside the virus, and instead to follow the lead of Asia-Pacific nations in aiming to eliminate the disease entirely within their borders. This group is crucially distinct from people who support ongoing lockdown measures to suppress the virus to a level where it is safe to reopen — for ZeroCovid believers, we cannot rest until that level is zero.

On paper, this approach may sound rather sensible. After all, surely we’d all rather live in a world without Covid? Yet having attended last week’s conference, I keep returning to a question that didn’t seem to particularly trouble the speakers: at what cost?

Tweet

… is from page 288 of Jonah Goldberg’s 2008 book, Liberal Fascism:

The National Socialist German Worker’s Party was in every respect a grassroots populist party. Party leaders spouted all sorts of socialist prattle about seizing the wealth of the rich. Mein Kampf is replete with attacks on “dividend-hungry businessmen” whose “greed,” “ruthlessness,” and “short-sighted narrow-mindedness” were ruining the country. Hitler adamantly took the side of the trade union movement over “dishonorable employers.” In 1941 he was still calling big-business men “rogues” and “cold-blooded money-grubbers” who were constantly complaining about not getting their way.

DBx: Hitler was truly an evil monster. But he did not rise to power in Germany by portraying himself as an evil monster. He portrayed himself as a well-meaning man who would protect the people from the evil, greed, and negligence of others. And he might even have believed that he was such a man. Many ordinary Germans believed this about him. These ordinary Germans, surely, were nearly all not evil individuals. They were ordinary men and women gripped by the sorts of regrettable but common prejudices and superstitions that have gripped ordinary men and women throughout the millennia.

These prejudices and superstitions, when mixed with simple economic ignorance (itself also the norm), make ordinary people easy prey of those who seek power by promising secular salvation. And if these power-seekers use great charisma to promise to bring that salvation in the form of direct attacks on demons, and on what seem to be the overt consequences of the demons’ action, ordinary people will often be intrigued.

Left or right – it doesn’t much matter. Demonize entrepreneurs who succeed in the market. Demonize big corporations simply because they’re big. (As in “Big Oil,” prefacing an industry name with “Big” is usually sufficient to achieve the demonization.) Demonize differences in monetary incomes and wealth. Demonize foreigners. Demonize imports. Demonize technology.

And for “solutions,” always aim low (when measured by the thoughtfulness of the proposals) while seeming to aim high (when measured by the proposals’ ostensible goals). Demand that incomes of the poor be increased by hiking the minimum wage and seizing income from the rich. Demand that “Big Industry” be broken up by antitrust interventions or regulated in the details of its activities by government officials. Demand that imports be restricted in order to “protect” whatever is most politically salient at the moment – jobs, national security, our traditional way of life, the so-called “industries of the future.” And as of March 2020, reduce people’s risk of dying from some particular pathogen by forcibly keeping people away from each other – and demonize all persons who object to the simplemindedness, the disproportionateness, and the tyranny of this “solution.”

Never propose “solutions” that would not be thought of by a nine-year old child.

Evil never rises to power revealing itself as evil. It presents itself as good.

Tweet

… British MP Charles Walker:

Tweet

“Who’s Robbin’ Who?” My old buddy Roger Koppl has written a superb explanation of Robinhood, the Redditors, and the regulators. A slice:

No one specifically decided to give the Redditors a smackdown. So everything’s great, then? No! The regulatory environment is not meant to help the little guy. It rigs the system in favor of Big Playerscand incumbent interests. As I have explained elsewhere, “The Dodd–Frank Act creates a regime of discretionary regulation.” It is discretionary because “the regulatory requirements on a nominally private institution vary from firm to firm in ways that are difficult to rationalise or anticipate.” Thus, the regulators are discriminating among individual market participants and applying different rules to different parties even when they have the same legal charter. (That’s how NSCC got classified as “systemically important.”) Not all is for the best in the best of all possible regulatory worlds.

I think we need reform in the regulation of financial markets. But we should reject the error that the problem is “free markets.” When Elizabeth Warren says “It’s a rigged game,” she’s not wrong! But her call for “the SEC to get off their duffs and do their jobs” is asking the fox to do a better job guarding the henhouse. We don’t need moreregulation; we need better regulation. We need the rule of law not only in monetary institutions but in financial markets too. We need to replace the “regulatory leviathan” in financial markets with “a regulatory constitution.”

Inspired by Phil Gramm’s and Mike Solon’s recent Wall Street Journal essay on the dangers of overdoing the (so-called) “stimulus,” my intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy warns against being fooled by claims about stimulus “multipliers.” A slice:

At this point, I still think zero dollars is the correct amount of stimulus. Based on past experiences, we close the gap by encouraging growth in the private economy, not encouraging growth of government.

Also from the ever-intrepid Vero is this call on Biden to rein in that great geyser of cronyism, the U.S. Export-Import Bank.

Hans Bader also warns against more so-called “stimulus.”

George Will sees with eyes clear and opened wide the true, vile nature of so-called “teachers” unions. A slice:

But United Teachers Los Angeles, a union adept at ideological opportunism, says: First things first. Among the preconditions for its members’ returning to classroom teaching, for which they are being paid, the UTLA wants a moratorium on authorizing charter schools (these are public schools, emancipated from micromanagement under collective bargaining agreements that unions negotiate with school districts), a state wealth tax, defunding the police and Medicare-for-all.

Richard Ebeling rightly decries Joe Biden’s spasm of executive orders.

Chris Edwards ponders Biden and labor unions.

GMU Econ alum Shruti Rajagopalan explains that there is no political freedom without economic liberty.

Matt Welch rightly tears into the authoritarian proposal – advocated in the pages of the New York Times – for a “reality czar.”

John Stossel understands socialism’s ugly reality.