Russell Roberts's Blog, page 284

Bonus Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 86 of the Second Edition (1999) of R.W. Grant’s The Incredible Bread Machine:

Only upon the premise of individualism can a free society be built. In fact, individualism was the implicit philosophical principle underlying the American concept of government as servant rather than master. The real significance of the American Revolution lay not in a military triumph (for other nations have won independence only to lapse back into tyranny), but in the partial triumph of the philosophy of individualism.

DBx: Today is the 246th anniversary of “the shot heard ’round the world” – the start in earnest of the American Revolution. I fear that the liberalism, however imperfectly it was practiced, that motivated the American revolutionaries’ cause is now in its death throes.

By the way, I cannot recommend highly enough Rick Atkinson’s 2019 volume, The British Are Coming.

Some Non-Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Andrew Gutmann explains – in this brilliant letter shared by Bari Weiss – why he’s pulling his daughter from one of New York City’s elite private schools. A slice:

I object to a definition of systemic racism, apparently supported by Brearley, that any educational, professional, or societal outcome where Blacks are underrepresented is prima facie evidence of the aforementioned systemic racism, or of white supremacy and oppression. Facile and unsupported beliefs such as these are the polar opposite to the intellectual and scientific truth for which Brearley claims to stand. Furthermore, I call bullshit on Brearley’s oft-stated assertion that the school welcomes and encourages the truly difficult and uncomfortable conversations regarding race and the roots of racial discrepancies.

I object to the idea that Blacks are unable to succeed in this country without aid from government or from whites. Brearley, by adopting critical race theory, is advocating the abhorrent viewpoint that Blacks should forever be regarded as helpless victims, and are incapable of success regardless of their skills, talents, or hard work. What Brearley is teaching our children is precisely the true and correct definition of racism.

I object to mandatory anti-racism training for parents, especially when presented by the rent-seeking charlatans of Pollyanna. These sessions, in both their content and delivery, are so sophomoric and simplistic, so unsophisticated and inane, that I would be embarrassed if they were taught to Brearley kindergarteners. They are an insult to parents and unbecoming of any educational institution, let alone one of Brearley’s caliber.

Also shared by Bari Weiss is this powerful essay by Paul Rossi, a teacher at Manhattan’s Grace Church High School. A slice:

Every student at the school must also sign a “Student Life Agreement,” which requires them to aver that “the world as we understand it can be hard and extremely biased,” that they commit to “recognize and acknowledge their biases when we come to school, and interrupt those biases,” and accept that they will be “held accountable should they fall short of the agreement.” A recent faculty email chain received enthusiastic support for recommending that we “‘officially’ flag students” who appear “resistant” to the “culture we are trying to establish.”

When I questioned what form this resistance takes, examples presented by a colleague included “persisting with a colorblind ideology,” “suggesting that we treat everyone with respect,” “a belief in meritocracy,” and “just silence.” In a special assembly in February 2019, our head of school said that the impact of words and images perceived as racist — regardless of intent — is akin to “using a gun or a knife to kill or injure someone.”

Imagine being a young person in this environment. Would you risk voicing your doubts, especially if you had never heard a single teacher question it?

While I disagree with some of what Georgetown University law professor Lama Abu Odeh writes here, much of it is correct and important. A slice:

The progressoriat are unable to talk about their impending demise because they have already used their own institutional power over decades to drive away conservatives. They turned their academic institution into a partisan echo chamber. Residing in an echo chamber only increases your moral certitude. Now they are being given a taste of their own brutal medicine. Meantime, the new elite is acting ruthlessly and impatiently and is only happy with declarations of complete submission. Any sign of hesitation on the part of a signatory—”Maybe we should talk about free speech too?”—is met with expressions of exasperation by the all-powerful members of the victim minority faculty. No hesitation or nuance is allowed: nothing but unequivocal loyalty oaths. The progressoriat can only repeat, “I believe in the cause. I believe. I believe. Believe me I believe.”

If this echoes a Maoist take-over, that’s because it is. It passes the sniff test.

John Cochrane writes a letter to Janet Yellen.

Also from John Cochrane is this post on inflation expectations.

Pierre Lemieux reports on Hitler’s version of MMT.

GMU Econ alum Alex Salter, writing in the Wall Street Journal, explains that “Keynesians have it backward: Growth is driven by production, not consumption.” Another slice:

Mr. Biden’s plan also largely directs resources away from uses that would increase productivity. Improvements in roads and bridges may boost how much companies can produce, and hence growth, by making it easier to move labor and goods across the nation. But that’s a minority of the bill’s spending; other expenditures will have the opposite effect. Take the proposal to invest in expanding clean energy and electric-vehicle charging stations. This is a rather elastic interpretation of infrastructure, and a wealth-wasting one besides.

The government is not good at picking investments. President Obama promised smart green projects. What we got was the Solyndra debacle, which consumed hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars while producing little of value. Those dollars are resources that could have been invested elsewhere. What Mr. Biden proposes amounts to a great many Solyndras. That’s an enormous amount of productive capital to squander.

In affirming his support for the protectionist Jones Act, Joe Biden polishes his Trumpian credentials as he harms the environment about which he, apparently falsely, claims to care.

Here’s David Henderson on Canadian banking compared to U.S. banking.

Peter Earle predicts the demise of woke capital.

“The Harmful Consequences Are … Grotesquely Disproportionate to Any of the Purported Benefits”

(Don Boudreaux)

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Dr. Roger Hodkinson delivers a powerful case against the hysterical overreaction to Covid-19.

Some Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Jay Bhattacharya was a recent guest on the Tom Woods Show.

Jeffrey Tucker is impressed with Sunetra Gupta’s 2013 book, Pandemics: Our Fears and the Facts. A slice from Tucker’s essay:

Dr. Gupta, I suspect, wrote this book to familiarize readers with the normalcy of pathogens, and to explain why it is not likely that an entirely new and deadly disease will arrive to wipe out large swaths of the human race. She had solid reasons to doubt that there was a case for panic. In all human experience, taking on germs and minimizing their threat took place with marginal steps toward better therapeutics, medical attention, better sanitation, vaccines, and, above all else, exposure. Much of this text is about exposure – not as a bad thing but as a hack to protect the human body against severe outcomes.

With computer viruses, the way to deal with them is to block them. Our operating systems must remain perfectly clean and free of all pathogens. For the machine to work properly, its memory must be pure and unexposed. One exposure could mean data loss, identity theft, and even machine death.

Despite what Bill Gates seems to believe, our bodies are not the same. Exposure to milder forms of germs works to protect us against more severe forms. The cell memory of our body is trained through experience, not by blocking all bugs but by incorporating the capacity to fight them off into our biology. This is the essence of how vaccines work, but more than that, it is how our whole immune system works. Pursuing an agenda of zero-pathogenic exposure is the road to disaster and death. We did not evolve that way and we cannot live this way. Indeed we will die if we take the route.

Writing in the Telegraph, Charles Walker, MP, applies the logic of supporters of vaccine passports to obesity. A slice:

The Government’s own research shows that 63 per cent of adults in England are overweight and 27 per cent of all adults are obese, with a BMI above 30. The cost of this fat epidemic to the NHS and wider economy is put at £27 billion a year. How many lives could be saved and improved with this £27 billion? It is clear that by sucking resource away from deserving illnesses and social causes, the obese kill those of a healthy weight.

But at last change might be possible. In the same way that people will soon have to prove their Covid status, we could also be at the stage where technology could be deployed to monitor people’s obesity status. Such a breakthrough would finally allow the state to restrict the overweight’s access to certain dining facilities and high-calorie foods.

Think of it. Upon entering a restaurant, the business could scan a mobile phone app that showed your BMI. Those within the healthy range could order what they wished off the menu, while the overweight could be restricted to ordering size-limited portions. As for the obese, they could be asked to settle for a salad or simply invited to leave.

“Cancer research ‘could be delayed by two years’ due to coronavirus pandemic.” (TANSTAFPC – There Ain’t No Such Thing As Free Protection From Covid.)

Covidocrats love their power. A slice:

As states around the country lift COVID-19 restrictions, Oregon is poised to go the opposite direction — and many residents are fuming about it.

A top health official is considering indefinitely extending rules requiring masks and social distancing in all businesses in the state.

The proposal would keep the rules in place until they are “no longer necessary to address the effects of the pandemic in the workplace.”

Michael Wood, administrator of the state’s department of Occupational Safety and Health, said the move is necessary to address a technicality in state law that requires a “permanent” rule to keep current restrictions from expiring.

Sinead Murphy reveals the horrors of ‘public-health’ policy grounded in the sweet-sounding but evil notion that “Nobody is safe until everyone is safe.” A slice:

As we embark on our second Covid year, the sentiment is chilling.

‘Nobody is safe until everyone is safe’ is the latest phase in the capture of virtue that has been the most profound effect of Covid.

At first, we were asked to keep our distance. Other people, for whose sake we do most of the good things we do, were put beyond our reach. We no longer held the door for the next person to pass through. We no longer offered to carry an old lady’s shopping. We stopped shaking one another’s hand and patting each other on the back. We no longer hugged.

Almost all of the ways in which we knew how to be good to each other were paused; the bonds of mutual support were severed.

Then, for the first time uncertain about how to do good, we were asked to mask up. Not for our own sake. For the sake of the other person – I mask for you, you mask for me. Being good to other people was returned to us. But it was not quite like it had been before. Other people, still at a distance, were now also without faces, and faces are so important in arousing our pity, requesting our assistance, eliciting our smile. Virtue had been readmitted, but for the sake of anonymous beings.

Great Barrington Declaration co-author Martin Kulldorff, writing in The Hill, warns of the dangers of pausing the J&J vaccine. A slice:

With more than six million J&J doses administered, CVST is a very rare adverse reaction at around one per 1 million doses, but that number is misleading. The risk is higher for those under 50, who are better off receiving the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Even though many more patients have received those vaccines, no CVST safety problems have been linked to them.

The policy should be different for the older population, for which there were no reported cases of CVST. To deny the J&J vaccine to older people is neither desirable nor necessary. With a pause for all ages, the total vaccine supply will decrease, delaying vaccinations and increasing COVID-19 mortality.

While anyone can get infected, there is more than a thousand-fold difference in the risk of COVID-19 mortality between the old and the young. The older population – for whom this disease is particularly deadly – needs this vaccine. We need to vaccinate them as quickly as possible, not only in the United States but worldwide.

It may seem strange to have different vaccine recommendations for different ages, but that is common.

(DBx: By the way, among the ad hominem arguments blasted against the GBD is that it’s associated with anti-vaxxing. How does one square this piece by Prof. Kulldorff with the implication that the GBD is either opposed to vaccines or, at least, insufficiently enthusiastic about them?)

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 101 of Thomas Sowell’s 2009 volume, Intellectuals and Society:

More generally, it is doubtful whether there are many – if any – individuals in a free society who are completely satisfied with all the policies and institutions of their society. In short, virtually everybody is in favor of some changes. Any accurate and rational discussion of differences among them would address which particular changes are favored by which people, based on what reasons, followed by analysis and evidence for or against those particular reasons for those particular changes. All of this is by-passed by those who simply proclaim themselves to be in favor of “change” and label those who disagree with them as defenders of the status quo. It is yet another of the many arguments without arguments.

How Deadly in the United Kingdom Was the Dread Year 2020?

(Don Boudreaux)

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Wanna know just how deadly 2020 was in the United Kingdom, what with Covid-19 and all? Unprecedented, right?! Off-the-charts, don’tchaknow?! And you’d be correct! I mean, to encounter in the U.K. a year with as many deaths per 100,000 as was experienced during the dread year 2020 you have – drumroll – To. Go. Back. All. The. Way. In. Deep. History. To (wait for it)…. 2003. Yes! Truly so! 2003 – the Dark Ages. There are people still alive today who don’t remember 2003! That’s how very long ago was that very long-ago year!

It’s a damn good thing that civilization in 2020-2021 was ground to a halt – that Christmas and Easter were cancelled – that public protests were prohibited – that pubs were closed, churches shuttered, private gatherings limited by the force of law, and school children caged in plastic bubbles. Otherwise, the number of Brits per 100,000 who would have died in 2020 might have been what it was during the even Darker Ages of the 1990s. Whew!

Thank you, Saints Boris, Chris, and Matt!

Robert Higgs on WWII and the U.S. Economy

(Don Boudreaux)

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Here’s a letter to an undergraduate student who is writing a paper on the U.S. economy during WWII:

Mr. W___:

Thanks for your e-mail and for reading Cafe Hayek.

You likely did encounter on my blog the argument that, contrary to popular belief, the American economy was not rescued from the Great Depression by World War II. This argument, however, isn’t mine. While I fully accept it, this argument was developed and refined by the great economic historian Robert Higgs.

And so research for your paper will be greatly enhanced by listening to this 2008 EconTalk episode in which Russ Roberts talks with Higgs about the many reasons for dismissing the notion that the Depression was ended by the war. I strongly encourage you also to read, on the same topic, at least chapters 2, 3, and 4 of Higgs’s 2006 book, Depression, War, and Cold War.

Here’s a bonus: Unlike most economists, Bob Higgs writes with remarkable clarity and concision. You need not, therefore, let your past experiences with slogging through impenetrable academic prose deter you from reading Higgs’s important work.

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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Reason‘s Robby Soave reports yet further evidence of the reality and severity of Covid Derangement Syndrome, and of the menace to humanity that is Anthony Fauci. A slice:

Fauci responded by largely echoing her [Joy Reid’s] concerns. He eventually conceded that people who were vaccinated could have unmasked gatherings in their own homes under some limited conditions, but stressed continued mask wearing outside the home.

“I don’t understand why that freaks people out,” said Reid. “Get a cute mask and make it fashion. Just put a mask on.”

She has it exactly backward: It is Reid and Fauci who are being irrationally paranoid, not the people they are criticizing.

In Britain, too, the benefit of Covid-19 vaccination is now being downplayed. Covid Derangement Syndrome simply will not allow people to escape being deranged with fear of Covid.

Janet Daley, writing in the formerly free country of Britain, wonders why Boris Johnson’s government is sounding increasingly Faucian about vaccines. A slice:

The most charitable explanation of Mr Johnson’s comment, and presumably the advice that drove it, is that some of the people in charge believed there was a real risk that the optimism would get out of hand and the whole apparatus of regulation would collapse. In their panic, they urged him to say something that was misleading, illogical and self-defeating: in effect, encouraging vaccine scepticism and undermining the Government’s own “get the jab” campaign.

Dan Wootton offers a snapshot of a singularly sad day in the life even of royalty under the reign of the inhuman Covidocracy. (This photo alone, of the widowed queen seated masked and alone, at the funeral of her husband of 73 years, should be sufficient to expose the Covidocracy’s deranged tyranny.)

Here’s some good news from Canada:

Police in cities across Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, on Saturday refused to make random stops greenlighted by the provincial government seeking to impose a stay-at-home order amid a surge in COVID-19 cases.

Toronto, the country’s largest city, Ottawa, Hamilton, Windsor and at least 19 other municipal police forces said they would not conduct random vehicle or individual stops though they had been given the power to do so.

“The Toronto Police Service will continue to engage, educate and enforce, but we will not be doing random stops of people or cars,” the force said on Twitter. Mayor John Tory supported the move.

Ontario, home to 38% of Canada’s population, had 4,362 new infections on Saturday after a record of 4,812 cases on Friday, and projections indicate the virus could spike to 10,000 per day in June without more strict health restrictions.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, increasingly under fire for mishandling the province’s pandemic response, on Friday gave police the authority to stop anyone driving or walking to ask them to explain their reason for leaving home, and ticket them if in breach of the rules.

Nicole Russell engages in understatement when she argues that “lockdowns are a farce.” Lockdowns are also cruel and intolerable tyranny. A slice:

At this point, it’s worth observing that in places where states have reopened faster, cases seem to go down as a general whole. Whether this is because fresh air is helpful or herd immunity is being reached faster because people are out and about remains to be seen. But at the very least, it’s absurd to suggest strict lockdowns should remain anywhere.

Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel celebrates federalism’s check on lockdown powers. A slice:

If ever there was a reason to celebrate federalism, look to the continued incarceration of the cruise industry. Even living in California lockdown would be preferable to living under the Covid tyranny of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Most businesses are subject to state laws. Not so the cruise business, one of the few industries subject to near-total federal control and the only one that has remained in complete lockdown since March 2020. Want to imagine life if the public-health oligarchy had free rein? This is your case study.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from pages 264-265 of Matt Ridley’s excellent 2020 book, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom:

One of the peculiar features of history is that empires are bad at innovating. Though they have wealthy and educated elites, imperial regimes tend to preside over gradual declines in inventiveness, which contribute to their eventual undoing. The Egyptian, Persian, Roman, Byzantine, Han, Aztec, Inca, Hapsburg, Ming, Ottoman, Russian and British empires all bear this out. As time goes by and the central power ossifies, technology tends to stagnate, elites tend to resist novelty and funds get diverted into luxury, war or corruption, rather than enterprise. This despite empires being effectively giant ‘single markets’ for ideas to spread within. Italy’s most fertile inventive period was in the Renaissance, when it was the small city states, run by merchants, that drove innovation: in Genoa, Florence, Venice, Luca, Siena and Milan. Fragmented politics proved better than united ones.

DBx: Or put somewhat differently: Innovation that raises the living standards of the masses is not a function of the state’s wealth, reach, power, or glory. Nor is such innovation the result of conscious planning by the state.

Instead, innovation that raises the living standards of the masses requires respect for bourgeois virtues, a socio-legal system that prevents the state from being used to predate too harshly on the fruits of innovation, and the resulting competitive market system in which innovations can be introduced without the permission of elites and then tested in the market according to consumers’ willingness to buy.

Bill Maher Speaks Truth to Power

(Don Boudreaux)

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A transcript is available here.