Russell Roberts's Blog, page 265

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 302 of Kristian Niemietz’s great 2019 book, Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies:

If we judge market economies primarily by their shortcomings, while judging socialism primarily as an idea, and by the intentions of its proponents, then the market economy can never win.

Britain Is No Longer a Free Country

(Don Boudreaux)

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The vile iron-fisted and steel-booted straw man continues to pummel Britain. So sad. So horrifying. (Thank you Gen. Washington for winning for us Americans independence from that now-deranged nation.)

Junk the Jones Act

(Don Boudreaux)

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Andrew Heaton makes the case for junking the cronyist Jones Act.

Bonus Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 589 of the 2006 Liberty Fund edition of Adam Smith’s student and friend John Millar’s posthumously published 1803 treatise, An Historical View of the English Government (original emphasis, footnote deleted):

The authority of every government is founded in opinion; and no system, be it ever so perfect in itself, can be expected to acquire stability, or to produce good order and submission, unless it coincides with the general voice of the community. He who frames a political constitution upon a model of ideal perfection, and attempts to introduce it into any country, without consulting the inclinations of the inhabitants, is a most pernicious projector, who, instead of being applauded as a Lycurgus, ought to be chained and confined as a madman.

A Major Turn of the Higgsian Ratchet

(Don Boudreaux)

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Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal:

Editor:

Writing about the off-the-charts fraud and abuse of Covid “relief” programs, James Freeman homes in nicely on a key point (“The Great American Rip-Off,” June 12):

For that matter perhaps the people who endorsed the idea of shuttering much of the U.S. economy in response to Covid-19, expanding the Federal Reserve balance sheet by nearly $4 trillion and adding more than $4 trillion to the nation’s publicly held debt can explain if their strategy depends on whether the recipients of cash are lawful or law-abiding. When one is dumping money out of a helicopter it’s not so easy to dictate who catches it.

That Bernie Bros, New York Times staffers, CNN reporters, and other Progressives – along with power-drunk government officials of diverse persuasions – urged that Covid be fought with unprecedented, act-now-ask-questions-later expansions of government power isn’t surprising. What is surprising is the silence over the past 18 months – your pages being an admirable exception – of so many wise voices upon which we usually depend to check the presumptions and dangerous schemes of those who treat government as able to act with the benevolence, knowledge, and abilities of God.

With so many otherwise dependable voices rendered mute by fear of Covid, we lost a far more justified and productive fear – to wit, fear of unchecked government power. We’ll live for years with the economic and fiscal carnage. Worse, we’ll live for generations with the terrible precedent that treats an encounter with any unusually high risk as justification for disproportionate – indeed, unrestrained – assaults on human freedom.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

Some Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Despite the protests of some, the man of straw looks increasingly as if he’ll extend his tyrannical stay in Britain…. And Janet Daley is understandably fed up. Two slices from Daley:

Every statement by a government official – from the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary on down – over the past month has given hope and assurance on the one hand only to contradict it with the other. (“Nothing in the data suggests that we need to delay lifting restrictions” but “growth of the new variant is cause for concern”, etc etc.) Presumably these self-cancelling non-judgements were specifically designed to cover all contingencies and, possibly more important, to create so much confusion that none of the obvious criticisms of proposed policies needed to be addressed.

The broadcast media have apparently been so befuddled by the avalanche of expert opinion mongers queueing up for their fifteen minutes of fame that they forgot to ask the most fundamental questions. For example, doesn’t the fact that the discrepancy between the number of cases and the number of deaths is becoming greater (cases rising, deaths falling) mean that the risk of serious illness from Covid has been enormously reduced? And therefore, shouldn’t the increase in cases of mild illness be seen as good news since large numbers of people will now become naturally immune to the virus through infection without becoming dangerously sick?

…..

The Government is not “following the science” so much as using the scientists in a mass mind-bending initiative which could preclude the need for legal enforcement (and therefore not require the permission of parliament) because it achieves its ends through psychological manipulation and moral coercion. Perhaps ministers are only pretending to be scientific illiterates who believe that The Science is a body of theological absolutes rather than a means of inquiry to which disputation and debate are essential and the understanding of evidence must always be provisional. Maybe this is all part of the plan – which is to maintain the most damaging lockdown restrictions like social distancing (whose very name makes clear how unnatural it is) for the foreseeable future without necessarily having to mobilise the police to enforce them.

Tim Stanley describes Britain today as “Orwellian.” A slice:

I now wonder if I lived in a brief golden age of wealth and freedom, roughly 1989 to 2020, when I could get a good job at a newspaper without any contacts by blogging and turning up day after day looking for work. (Or fly to America, camp out on a mattress on a stranger’s floor and reinvent myself as a foreign correspondent.) Kids trying to make it now have no such physical mobility and diminishing social mobility, too, because rent is high and ownership is impossible, while the culture wars are squeezing the parameters of what one can do or say. The initial, liberating boom of the internet is over; whatever you said then can now be used against you.

The lockdown is the predictable next step, the tangible manifestation of a society that is terrified and of individuals who have given up or given in. Yes, I will wear the mask; yes, I will obey these rules. Not just to save the NHS, which I am keen to do, but because I also have no say in the matter and can see no point pretending otherwise. Like Winston Smith, I shall drink my Victory Gin and submit.

Sensible Brits seek support from Americans.

TANSTAFPFC (There Ain’t No Such Thing As Free Protection From Covid.)

Jordan Lancaster correctly identifies the Big Lie of 2020-2021.

Martin Kulldorff rightly laments one of the many calamitous consequences of lockdowns.

Zachary Yost is correct that “if we truly believe in our liberal convictions then we are obligated to continue to fight for the truth, no matter how terrible the odds may seem.”

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 156 of Thomas Sowell’s important 1990 volume, Preferential Policies: An International Perspective:

Part of the moral aura surrounding preferential policies is due to the belief that such policies benefit the less fortunate. The losers in this presumed redistribution are seldom specified, though the underlying assumption seems to be that they are the more fortunate.

Empirical evidence for such assumptions is largely lacking and the a priori case for believing them is unconvincing.

Bonus Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 3 of Herbert Spencer’s 1891 “Introduction: From Freedom to Bondage,” to A Plea for Liberty (Thomas Mackay, editor, 1891); the page number is to Liberty Fund’s 1981 edition of this collection:

[T]he more things improve the louder become the exclamations about their badness.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 331 of philosopher Jason Brennan’s superb contribution, titled “Moral Pluralism,” to the 2016 collection edited by Aaron Ross Powell and Grant Babcock, Arguments for Liberty (original emphasis):

Still, from a pluralist perspective, the best way to defend liberty is to begin with the observation that day-to-day morality is libertarian. There is a presumption of liberty. By default, we presume people should be free to live as they see best, without having to ask permission or justify themselves to other people. By default, all restrictions on liberty are presumed wrong and unjust, until shown otherwise. Coercive interference with others’ liberty must be justified. Political authority and all laws are assumed unjustified until shown otherwise.

DBx: Yes. Beautifully put.

But I pick one nit. When Brennan writes that “all laws are assumed unjustified until shown otherwise” he ought instead to have written “all legislation [or all statutes] meant to regulate persons’ private affairs are assumed unjustified until shown otherwise.”

Genuine law that governs persons’ private affairs – chiefly, the law of property, contract, and tort – emerges spontaneously in the course of human interactions. When disputes in such affairs arise and are serious enough to warrant formal adjudication, courts discover the applicable law and then apply it to settle the disputes in question. (The applicable law is found not in any “brooding omnipresence in the sky,” but, rather, in ordinary people’s existing expectations – many of which can and do change over time.) This law – what might loosely be called “the common law” – deserves a presumption of legitimacy; it should be assumed to be justified until shown otherwise.

In addition, statutes setting out the organizational structure and operating rules of a government and its agencies arguably also deserve a presumption of legitimacy. Each such statute – for example, one that specifies the method of appointing local postmasters, or a statute that sets the pay scales of judges and of members of the legislature – are not meant to regulate persons’ private affairs.

There is every reason to presume spontaneously evolved law to be legitimate. And there is no necessary reason, even in libertarian philosophy, for a presumption of illegitimacy of organizational and operational statutes.

But as Brennan argues, all legislation that obstructs the peaceful, private affairs of consenting adults ought well be presumed to be illegitimate until and unless shown otherwise. And a successful showing of otherwise requires far more than demonstrating that such legislation won the approval of the majority. Of course, such legislation today – from minimum-wage regulations to protective tariffs to occupational-licensing restrictions to detailed government interference in financial markets to Covid-19 lockdowns – is as voluminous as it is obnoxious and, I believe, illegitimate.

Another Profit Opportunity Mysteriously Going Unseized!

(Don Boudreaux)

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This Vox report (or some variation on it) was sent to me by three different people, each of whom had the good sense to understand that something about it is fishy.

Ms. T__:

Thanks for sending this Vox report on Aaron Klein’s ‘theory’ that credit-card rewards points are a scheme through which poor people are unwittingly lured to subsidize the consumption of rich people. Here’s the key paragraph of the report:

Every time a credit card is swiped, the bank charges a fee. It seems trivial, but those fees add up – enough to help pay for rewards like points-funded hotel rooms and cash back. To compensate, businesses raise prices, and so cash users (who tend to be poorer) are often subsidizing the perks going to credit card users (who tend to be richer). And the higher the rewards, the bigger the cost to the unsuspecting people paying for it.

This alleged problem is phony.

If poor people truly are being overcharged because merchants must raise the prices of goods and services in order to cover credit-card fees, there are profits to be made by running more businesses on a cash-only basis.

Aaron Klein should lead the way. He can quit his job at Brookings and set up shop as a retailer selling items only for cash. If his theory about credit cards is correct, his retail shop, with its lower prices, will attract all the business of poor people. Mr. Klein would make a mint while simultaneously helping the poor.

But the fact that Mr. Klein merely scribbles about the problem rather than personally puts his money where his mouth is to solve it is solid evidence that he either doesn’t understand what he alleges or that he doesn’t really believe it. (I suspect it’s the former.) And the fact that few actual merchants are moving to cash-only operations only further testifies that his ‘theory’ is baloney.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030