Russell Roberts's Blog, page 262

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 141 of Thomas Sowell’s important 1995 book, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy:

To say that particular dangers on one end of a spectrum are intolerable, either absolutely or beyond some specified risk level, is to say that alternative dangers on the other end of the spectrum are acceptable in whatever open-ended ways they work out.

DBx: Yes.

And this insight, of course, is timeless. Covid Derangement Syndrome is the affliction of being so single-mindedly obsessed with avoiding exposure to SARS-CoV-2 that any resulting increase in exposure to any other health hazard, or to any other downside more generally, is ignored or irrationally discounted.

Covid Derangement Syndrome is a truly horrendous disease.

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

(Don Boudreaux)

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In my latest column for AIER, I explain why it’s very often appropriate to ask intellectuals who assert that this or that ‘problem’ should be ‘solved’ by government interference to put their own money where their mouths are. Two slices:

A common response to my “put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is” challenge is that the persons to whom I direct it are almost always intellectuals rather than experienced business people. Being an intellectual myself – and aware of my accompanying incompetence in practical affairs – I sympathize with fellow intellectuals who realize that they personally have no talent to launch and operate businesses. I have no such talent. So I certainly don’t fault Aaron Klein for continuing to be a salaried employee at a think tank. I don’t fault Emily Stewart for earning her living by sticking to writing.

…..

Obviously, if an intellectual does indeed identify an actual market imperfection, the opportunity that likely lurks in that imperfection can be seized by someone other than the intellectual who identifies it. And fortunately our world has no shortage of entrepreneurs hungry for profit. The deeper point of my challenge to intellectuals such as Klein and Stewart to put their money where their mouths are is to draw attention to the fact that, if the intellectuals’ claims are correct, we can rely upon market forces to correct the problem. There’s no need for government intervention.

Being intellectuals, Klein and Stewart undoubtedly are too incompetent actually to launch a retail store. But by publicly sharing their claim about this alleged market imperfection, they thus make this ‘information’ available to be acted on by countless competent entrepreneurs. The fact that Klein and Stewart’s public declarations incite no entrepreneurs to seize the profits that are available if these declarations are correct is compelling evidence that cash-paying retail consumers are, in reality, not being unjustly exploited for the benefit of credit-card-using retail consumers.

Perhaps not all asserted market imperfections can be profitably exploited – and, in the process, ‘corrected’ – by entrepreneurs acting in free markets. But a surprisingly large number of such alleged market imperfections would indeed be easily ‘corrected’ by private entrepreneurial actions if these allegations were accurate. Any and all allegations to have discovered that businesses in free markets are underpaying some groups of workers, or that businesses in free markets are overcharging some groups of consumers, are claims to have discovered profit opportunities that can be relatively easily exploited by entrepreneurs. (That the intellectuals who issue such claims don’t realize that their claims are really of profit opportunities speaks only to these intellectuals’ economic illiteracy.)

Some Non-Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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David Henderson defends the legacy of Milton Friedman against the scurrilous, detached-from-reality attack on that legacy by Zachary Carter. A slice:

His claim about lack of sophistication caused me to reread the article/pamphlet. I recommend that you do too. You can download it here. It turns out to be quite sophisticated. I think Carter conflates clear writing with lack of sophistication.

And in rereading it after all these years, I concluded that it really is about housing. If Carter meant to say that once one accepts their reasoning, one can easily conclude that absence of price controls more generally is a good idea, then he would be right. But Carter doesn’t make clear whether he means that or something else.

It’s also interesting that Carter would highlight this article. If you ask an economist who doesn’t live in a rent-controlled apartment whether he favors rent controls, the probability that he will say no and that he will make arguments very similar to those of Friedman and Stigler exceeds 0.9. That’s why I say that I’m not sure Carter understands how economists think.

He certainly doesn’t understand how Friedman thought.

(DBx: David, characteristically, bends over backwards to be gentle and generous with Carter. David’s character is admirable. It’s the direct opposite of what seems to be Carter’s character. Carter strikes me as being quite like Nancy MacLean, the Duke “historian” who, in writing about James Buchanan, either had no earthly idea about Buchanan and his works, or she intentionally misrepresented Buchanan and his works. Such is the case with Carter on Friedman.)

Jonah Goldberg writes insightfully about antiracism.

Glenn Hubbard explains, in the Wall Street Journal, that Biden’s budget arithmetic is deeply flawed. A slice:

But the Biden budget doesn’t follow this advice. It spends more money on social causes and makes government larger without coming up with enough new revenue to pay for it. The budget proposes to spend 24.5% of gross domestic product on average over the next 10 years. The post-World War II record before the pandemic was 24.4% in 2009, and the 50-year average is closer to 20%. Meantime, revenues are projected to rise only to 19.7% of GDP by the end of the 10-year budget period, just below the record share of 20% in 2000 during the dot-com boom. The gap reflects additional pressure on deficits and debt even as rising deficits from the Social Security and Medicare programs pose a significant challenge.

Also unhappy with Biden’s policies is Richard Rahn.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown explains how ‘equal-pay’ legislation in Colorado is backfiring. A slice:

The situation provides a perfect example of how government meddling can backfire. Measures sold as easy fixes to social problems, economic discrepancies, or other situations where central planners think it would be better if they—not employers—get to call the shots can end up leading to unintended consequences that set back the very folks they sought to help.

Robby Soave documents how “educators” in Vancouver are less and less interested in educating.

Colin Grabow details a former National Security Advisor’s ignorance about the Jones Act.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 253 of Milton & Rose Friedman’s great 1980 book, Free To Choose:

Inflation is a disease, a dangerous and sometimes fatal disease, a disease that if not checked in time can destroy a society.

A Note on Cafe Hayek

(Don Boudreaux)

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Dear Patrons of Cafe Hayek:

You’ll notice that there are no more ads at Cafe Hayek. The annoyance of these ads – to you and to me – grew over time to a height that swamped the value to me of the income these ads generate. Cafe Hayek will remain ad-free for a while, perhaps forever. If I can find a source of ads that serves up ones more tasteful and less disrupting, I will perhaps in the future try again to use ads. But for now and for the indefinite future, whenever you visit this blog you’ll be accosted by no ads.

My elimination of the ads, however, will not stop the pestilential spammers who invade the comments section with their absurd get-rich-quick-and-easy scams. I’m still exploring for the best way to end that plague.

Some Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Earlier this month, Martin Kulldorff explained why he spoke out against lockdowns. Three slices:

I had no choice but to speak out against lockdowns. As a public-health scientist with decades of experience working on infectious-disease outbreaks, I couldn’t stay silent. Not when basic principles of public health are thrown out of the window. Not when the working class is thrown under the bus. Not when lockdown opponents were thrown to the wolves. There was never a scientific consensus for lockdowns. That balloon had to be popped.

…..

Instead of understanding the pandemic, we were encouraged to fear it. Instead of life, we got lockdowns and death. We got delayed cancer diagnoses, worse cardiovascular-disease outcomes, deteriorating mental health, and a lot more collateral public-health damage from lockdown. Children, the elderly and the working class were the hardest hit by what can only be described as the biggest public-health fiasco in history.

…..

With difficulty publishing, I decided to use my mostly dormant Twitter account to get the word out. I searched for tweets about schools and replied with a link to the Swedish study. A few of these replies were retweeted, which gave the Swedish data some attention. It also led to an invitation to write for the Spectator. In August, I finally broke into the US media with a CNN op-ed against school closures. I know Spanish, so I wrote a piece for CNN-Español. CNN-English was not interested.

Something was clearly amiss with the media. Among infectious-disease epidemiology colleagues that I know, most favour focused protection of high-risk groups instead of lockdowns, but the media made it sound like there was a scientific consensus for general lockdowns.

In September, I met Jeffrey Tucker at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), an organisation I had never heard of before the pandemic. To help the media gain a better understanding of the pandemic, we decided to invite journalists to meet with infectious-disease epidemiologists in Great Barrington, New England, to conduct more in-depth interviews. I invited two scientists to join me, Sunetra Gupta from the University of Oxford, one of the world’s pre-eminent infectious-disease epidemiologists, and Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford University, an expert on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations. To the surprise of AIER, the three of us also decided to write a declaration arguing for focused protection instead of lockdowns. We called it the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD).

Opposition to lockdowns had been deemed unscientific. When scientists spoke out against lockdowns, they were ignored, considered a fringe voice, or accused of not having proper credentials. We thought it would be hard to ignore something authored by three senior infectious-disease epidemiologists from what were three respectable universities. We were right. All hell broke loose. That was good.

Some colleagues threw epithets at us like ‘crazy’, ‘exorcist’, ‘mass murderer’ or ‘Trumpian’. Some accused us of taking a stand for money, though nobody paid us a penny. Why such a vicious response? The declaration was in line with the many pandemic preparedness plans produced years earlier, but that was the crux. With no good public-health arguments against focused protection, they had to resort to mischaracterisation and slander, or else admit they had made a terrible, deadly mistake in their support of lockdowns.

Some lockdown proponents accused us of raising a strawman, as lockdowns had worked and were no longer needed. Just a few weeks later, the same critics lauded the reimposition of lockdowns during the very predictable second wave. We were told that we had not specified how to protect the old, even though we had described ideas in detail on our website and in op-eds. We were accused of advocating a ‘let it rip’ strategy, even though focused protection is its very opposite. Ironically, lockdowns are a dragged-out form of a let-it-rip strategy, in which each age group is infected in the same proportion as a let-it-rip strategy.

When writing the declaration, we knew we were exposing ourselves to attacks. That can be scary, but as Rosa Parks said: ‘I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.’ Also, I did not take the journalistic and academic attacks personally, however vile – and most came from people I had never even heard of before. The attacks were not primarily addressed at us anyhow. We had already spoken out and would continue to do so. Their main purpose was to discourage other scientists from speaking out.

Wall Street Journal columnist Andy Kessler proudly goes maskless among the mindless. A slice:

What bizarro world had I entered? Mask mandates were over, and yet here I was in some weird anxiety zone for the masked who continue to feel they are in perpetual danger. It was as if I were sullying some sacred pure-living temple by breathing freely. Were these 49 shoppers simply Linuses unwilling to let go of their security blankets? Or were they more like robotic Stepford wives, preprogrammed and obedient? I will admit to mumbling “sheep” and “lemmings” and other things under my breath.

Ross Clark decries the tyrannical influence of Covid ‘modelers.‘

The Covidocracy did not much damage the Zoomers – but devastated many of the others.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 145 of Douglas Irwin’s excellent 2011 volume, Peddling Protectionism: Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression:

In enacting the Smoot-Hawley tariff, members of Congress considered only its immediate impact on their producer constituents. The well-being of the overall economy or the potential retribution by foreign countries rarely entered the discussion.

DBx: Thus it always has been, is, and always will be.

Politicians are not gods able and willing to engineer the national economy closer to earthly paradise. Politicians (and their appointees) are, like all human beings, poorly informed and self-interested creatures. Invariably. The fact that so many people continue sincerely to believe that holders of government power can be something higher than ordinary human beings is a fact that I will never, ever be able to understand.

Some Non-Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Jeff Jacoby rightly calls for an end to the requirement that any Americans register to be conscripted. Here’s his conclusion:

The creation of the all-volunteer force has been one of the most successful policy shifts in US history. Short of some catastrophically existential threat to the homeland, mandatory conscription is never coming back. That being the case, what justification remains for making young people register?

Selective Service has outlived its usefulness. It ought to be consigned to history. Let my son’s cohort be the last one required to sign up for a draft that will not be needed again. Congress shouldn’t just end male-only draft registration. It should end draft registration, period.

In one simple chart, Scott Lincicome shows how American manufacturers are harmed by U.S.-government-imposed tariffs on steel punitive taxes on Americans who purchase steel.

Here’s news on the trade front worth celebrating.

Ethan Yang warns of the dangers lurking in the increasing influence on antitrust policy of the “neo-Braneisians.”

Randy Holcombe and I thank Timothy Taylor for his coverage of our new book, The Essential James Buchanan.

Not that more such evidence is needed, but Eric Boehm nevertheless supplies further evidence of the venality and incompetence of our rulers.

Mark Perry reports some of the sordid history of Richard Nixon’s escalation of the so-called “war on drugs.”

Juliette Sellgren talks again with Randy Barnett, this time about the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 279 of the 1996 Johns Hopkins University Press edition of H.L. Mencken’s immensely enjoyable 1941 autobiographical volume, Heathen Days; here, Mencken recalls when he, upon entering journalism, first encountered politicians:

They shocked me a little at my first intimate contact with them, for I had never suspected, up to then, that frauds so bold and shameless could flourish in a society presumably Christian, and under the eye of a putatively watchful God. But as I came to know them better and better I began to develop a growing admiration, if not for their virtue, then at least for their professional virtuosity….

Bonus Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is this recent tweet by Jeffrey Tucker:

You know what is a greater scandal than the possibility of a lab leak? Lockdowns.