Russell Roberts's Blog, page 302

The Question Wasn’t Even Asked

(Don Boudreaux)

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Here’s a letter to someone who pesters me with accusations that I’m a terrible economist because I (allegedly) ignore externalities:

Mr. W___:

Inspired by the twitter thread from Jeremy Horpedahl found at my post “Ad Hominem Is Not a Valid Argument,” you write again to accuse me of “ignor[ing] that the harm principle justifies government acting to stop innocent third parties being harmed by others.”

I plead innocent and stand by what I wrote to you in January. To it, I add here only one point.

I’ve yet to encounter from anyone who supports the likes of lockdowns and mask mandates even an attempt to explain when the consequences of Smith’s ordinary peaceful activities become so dangerous to Jones and Jackson that the state gains a warrant to coercively obstruct Smith’s activities. Every time one person is in the proximity of another person or persons, there’s a risk of third-party harm. Smith might pass on the flu to Jones; Jones might negligently trip Jackson, causing her to break a leg; Jackson might negligently kill Smith with his automobile.

So intoning “harm principle” or “externality” is wholly insufficient to justify harsh government-imposed restrictions on routine activities. At what point does the risk of harm from encountering a pathogen become so great as to call forth additional government interventions? I have serious doubts that a reasonable person acquainted with the facts would conclude that Covid-19 is so dangerous to the general public as to justify the likes of lockdowns, vaccine passports, and mask mandates.

But my point here is more fundamental. It’s that there appears to have been no asking of the question in the first place. As soon as Covid’s danger was revealed to be above normal, humanity began treating it as an existential threat the avoidance of which is worth any cost. This reaction is what I call Covid Derangement Syndrome.

By (mistakenly) accusing me of ignoring the harm principle, you insinuate that I fail to properly apply to reality lessons that I ought to have learned as an economist. For reasons explained above and in my previous letter, I again plead innocent to the charge. But further, I level a charge of my own – namely, those who do fail to properly apply economic lessons to reality are those who tolerate the grossly disproportionate government reaction to Covid. Pigouvian taxes, after all, are supposed to be proportional to the damage caused.

As you know, economic theory shows that it is harmful to impose excessively high Pigouvian taxes on factories whose emissions cause external costs. And so just as it would be wrong to accuse someone who complains of such a tax’s excessive height as being someone who ignores the harm principle, it is wrong of you to accuse me and other economists who oppose draconian Covid restrictions as ignoring the harm principle. Indeed, we opponents of lockdowns take the harm principle more seriously than you seem to do, for we recognize that greater harm can be caused by hysterical attempts to prevent harm.

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 Non-Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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George Will writes about the folly of the minimum wage. A slice:

The Manhattan Institute’s Charles Fain Lehman reports: “A surprising body of research links increases in the minimum wage to increases in criminal offending by those most likely to lose jobs as a result of the wage hike.” The Congressional Budget Office concludes that a phased increase to $15 in 2025 could raise the pay of 27 million workers (17 percent of the workforce) but would result in the elimination of about 1.3 million jobs. The CBO estimates that half of those losing jobs would be ages 16 to 19. Lehman says researchers estimate that job losses resulting from a $15 minimum wage “would lead to an additional 423,000 property crimes” and $2.5 billion in damages.

The Heritage Foundation’s Rachel Greszler reports that the median hourly wage of those performing child care is $11.65, and mandating $15 would increase the cost of such care by an average of 21 percent, or $3,728 per year for a family with two children, from $20,152 to $23,880. This could cause some parents to withdraw from the workforce.

If you really want to help Amazon’s employees, Art Carden has some sound advice.

Scott Winship makes the case against child allowances.

Ross Douthat is rightly alarmed by the woke cancelling of Dr. Seuss. And here’s Robby Soave on the same.

Phil Magness explains why he’s not a neoliberal.

Peter Suderman exposes Josh Hawley’s toxic populism.

Eric Peterson is correct to argue that the biggest threat to free speech is not ‘big tech’ but, rather, government.

Pierre Lemieux asks a good question: “How can somebody like Krugman, who is, after all, an economist and obviously an intelligent man, defend such simplistic ideas?”

Here’s basic economic wisdom from John Cochrane.

The Kindle version of Thomas Sowell’s 1995 book The Vision of the Anointed is temporarily unavailable on Amazon: “Item Under Review.” Appalling. Disgusting. Deeply dismaying.

Ad Homimen Is Not a Valid Argument

(Don Boudreaux)

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A friend sent me this Twitter post by Jeremy Horpedahl. (I’m not, and never have been, on Twitter.) Dr. Horpedahl criticizes me for sharing a video of a young woman being arrested recently at an anti-lockdown protest in London’s Bishops Park. My alleged offense springs from the fact that the video was uploaded to YouTube by an organization called “Subject Access.”

Having never before heard of “Subject Access,” I know nothing about this organization and, honestly, did not notice – until Dr. Horpedahl’s tweet drew my attention to it – the source of the video. Because Dr. Horpedahl, in his tweet, described “Subject Access” as a “disinformation” group, I naturally wondered if I’d been duped by a video that’s fake or inaccurate.

Nope. It’s accurate. This arrest seems very much to have occurred just as the video presents it. The Telegraph has a photo of the woman being dragged away by police – a photo that is consistent with the video that I shared.

Because The Telegraph is gated, here’s a screen shot of the Telegraph page, taken by me at 6:27am EST, on Monday, March 8th, 2021:

I’m prepared to believe that “Subject Access” is a shady source. Again, I’d never before heard of it. But whether “Subject Access” is shady, shoddy, or sterling is here irrelevant. The arrest took place, apparently as the video shows.

Dr. Horpedahl’s criticism of my sharing the video – and, by implication, of the video itself – is ad hominem. If I err – as, no doubt, I often do – I’m happy to be corrected. But I do not accept ad hominem arguments or assertions as valid. It’s not for nothing that we describe ad hominem argumentation as fallacious.

If substantive information about this arrest comes to light that casts legitimate doubt on its presentation as an instance of Covid tyranny, I’ll listen and revise my estimation of the reported event. But, again, the arrest seems to be real and to have occurred as shown in the video. The fact that the video was uploaded to YouTube by an organization that Dr. Horpedahl alleges, perhaps correctly, is shady changes nothing about the underlying reality. And what matters for my purposes is only the underlying reality.

Some Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Ethan Yang wonders if Americans have the will to remain free. A slice:

Look no further than the common narrative that selfish Americans won’t wear their masks and that’s why the virus is spreading. Not only are masks ineffective at stopping Covid-19 in the way they are advertised, but the United States actually has some of the highest reported mask wearing rates in North America and Europe. An article published by Forbes warned against “doing your own research” when it comes to Covid-19 and parroted the tired “listen to the experts line.” Not only is this an attack on the very notion of the scientific method as well as an informed citizenry, but such a strategy would have clearly led us down the road to technocracy, and a misinformed one at that.

Such uninformed hysteria around Covid sounds less like a concern for stopping the virus and more of a cultural wedge against traditional American ideas of individual liberty. Sadly, it seems that many members of the public are either afraid or apathetic when it comes to preserving and reclaiming the free society that is our birthright.

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

The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board reports on more collateral damage from Covid hysteria and the lockdowns. A slice:

Congress is still working on its $1.9 trillion spending bill, and Democrats are already floating a sequel. “Our No. 1 lodestar is going to be helping the American people and if they need more help, we’ll do another bill,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Saturday after Democrats passed the bill 50-49.

Only a small part of what Democrats passed is for pandemic or economic relief. It’s mainly a way station on their high-speed train to a cradle-to-grave welfare-entitlement state. Most of the $1.9 trillion will flow to government unions or supposedly temporary income transfers that Democrats intend to make permanent later this year.

Patrick McGinnity decries the passport to slavery. A slice:

It is extraordinary how easily people in the West embraced authoritarian lockdown measures. Governments must have been shocked how little resistance there was to their new laws. In his infamous interview in the Times, Professor Neil Ferguson said they didn’t think they could implement a lockdown in the democratic West. Referring to China, he said: ‘It’s a communist one-party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought . . . And then Italy did it. And we realised we could.’ 

If the democratic West would accept a Chinese-style lockdown, why would they not accept health passports? Obviously the makers of such passports think they will, otherwise they wouldn’t pour so much money into the idea. They are not doing this as a temporary measure; they’re in it for the long haul. ‘Digital certificates’ may be introduced, but that will be the foot in the door.

In this podcast, Tom Woods calls for resistance to the Fauci administration.

Phil Magness asks an important question:

Why do none of the studies claiming the effectiveness of mask mandates consider data from the fall+winter second wave?

Every single one I’ve seen relies on data from the spring (when covid was still highly regionalized) or from the summer (when we were in a seasonality-induced trough), but nothing from the fall onward.

This is not for want of data, which are abundant and better than the spring due to improved testing. Nor is it for want of research design, since it woulr only require updating the spring and summer studies. And neither is it for want of a counterfacual to use as a baseline, since the fall provided numerous examples of locales that eschewed a mask mandate or that had subtle differences in mask adoption patterns (see: South Dakota and Sweden). And yet we have no empirical studies of what should be an obvious question.

The cynic in me would suggest that this is because they know the results won’t support the political case for mask mandates.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 183 of an excerpt from Robert G. Ingersoll’s 1879 The Gods and Other Lectures, as this excerpt appears in the excellent 2015 reader, Individualism, edited by George H. Smith and Marilyn Moore:

Whoever believes at the command of power, tramples his own individuality beneath his feet and voluntarily robs himself of all that renders man superior to the brute.

More from Coleman Hughes

(Don Boudreaux)

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Back in July 2020, UnHerd TV‘s Freddie Sayers spoke for just over a half-hour with the very insightful Coleman Hughes. (HT Dan Klein)

Bonus Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is another intentional repeat. On January 19th, 2014, I chose as the “Quotation of the Day” a passage from Daniel Webster’s 1818 argument before the U.S. Supreme Court during a hearing preceding the Court issuing its famous decision in Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) (popularly known as “the Dartmouth College case”); here’s Webster (emphasis added):

But this argument from necessity [which the state government raised as part of its rationale for taking over Dartmouth College] would equally apply in other cases. If it be well founded, it would prove, that, whenever any inconvenience or evil is experienced from the restrictions imposed on the legislature by the Constitution, these restrictions ought to be disregarded. It is enough to say, that the people have thought otherwise. They have, most wisely, chosen to take the risk of occasional inconvenience from the want of power, in order that there might be a settled limit to its exercise, and a permanent security against its abuse.

DBx: Where, today, is this constitutional wisdom?

Coleman Hughes Is Justly Very Critical of Ibram X. Kendi

(Don Boudreaux)

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(HT Dan Klein)

Some Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Jeffrey Tucker celebrates Texas’s emancipation from Covid tyranny.

Martin Kulldorff defends Ontario physician Kulvinder Kaur Gill against attempts by Canadian medical authorities to intimidate her into quieting her protest against lockdowns.

Wall Street Journal columnist Allysia Finley writes of vindication for Florida governor Ron DeSantis. A slice:

A year after the virus hit the U.S., Mr. Cuomo’s luster has faded, and Mr. DeSantis can claim vindication. The Sunshine State appears to have weathered the pandemic better than others like New York and California, which stayed locked down harder and longer.

Mortality data bear out this conclusion. The Covid death risk increases enormously with each decade of age. More than 80% of Covid deaths in the U.S. have occurred among seniors over 65. They make up a larger share of Florida’s population than any other state except Maine. Based on demographics, Florida’s per-capita Covid death rate would be expected to be one of the highest in the country.

Nope. Florida’s death rate is in the middle of the pack and only slightly higher than in California, which has a much younger population. Florida’s death rate among seniors is about 20% lower than California’s and 50% lower than New York’s, based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Here’s a recent interview with the heroic British MP Charles Walker.

Yonoson Rosenblum reminds us that science can (and should) inform our choices, but it does not (and cannot) supply correct answers for how we should choose. Failure to grasp this truth leads to tyranny – including Covid tyranny. Two slices:

The mindset of “eradication of disease” often causes us to charge ahead, oblivious to the attendant consequences. Prolonged lockdowns are one example. Supporters of indefinite lockdowns, almost all employed and working from home, acknowledge the “inconvenience.” A bit of an understatement for the destruction of 60 percent of small businesses and the employment that went with them. Or for 50 percent of chemo sessions missed; 40 percent of treatable strokes undiagnosed; cancer screenings put off; the loss of an entire school year in many cases; skyrocketing rates of alcoholism, drug overdoses, abuse; and the doubling of youth suicides.

…..

WE LIVE in a science-driven society, and all educated people profess to “believe” in science. The most reassuring four words in English are, “Science says, ‘Do this.’ ” But what happens when scientists are contradicting themselves or other scientists? Since the beginning of the pandemic, WHO first told us the fatality rate was 3.4 percent, which turned out to be 0.4 percent. It advised against shutting off air travel from Wuhan, even as China had done so internally. It proclaimed masks to be pointless, even as it was contradicting itself by saying that they must be saved for emergency medical personnel. It strongly advocated for lockdowns, until changing course, upon recognizing that they might well lead to a doubling of world poverty and child malnutrition.

At the outset of the pandemic, Governor Andrew Cuomo encouraged New Yorkers to go on mingling without panic because “we have the best health care system in the world.” Five days later, he announced the first lockdown.

When “science says” is so rapidly fluctuating, our core identity as people of science is threatened. And we feel that we have reverted to the situation of our distant ancestors at the mercy of nature. Unable to live with ambiguity, we act in ways that are antithetical to science itself, including trying to shut down dissident voices. Google and Google-owned YouTube removed from the platforms voices questioning whether lockdowns were the best long-term strategy, on the grounds that they contradicted the WHO, which, as we have seen, is hardly the definitive word on our state of knowledge.

When Stanford’s John Ioannidis, one of the 100 most cited scientists in the world, published preliminary studies undermining WHO’s claimed fatality rate, his research was not merely critiqued; he was greeted with intense anger, and he was morally vilified for betraying “everything you stood for.”

Starting around the 16-minute and 30-second mark, the Ricochet Podcast talks with Laurence Fox, the actor who’s now running, in opposition to lockdowns, to be Mayor of London. And around the 38-minute and 30-second mark, the show is joined by Jay Bhattacharya. (Dr. Bhattacharya declares that “A vaccine passport is also immoral.” Hear, hear!)

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 190 of Deirdre McCloskey’s and Alberto Mingardi’s excellent 2020 book, The Myth of the Entrepreneurial State:

In planning the program of the economy – or the program of art or science or architecture or craft work or social customs – the one mind even of a genius does not usually do as good a job as does the artificial intelligence machine known as commercially tested betterment, millions of minds having a go in markets. Imagine a central planning of fine-art painting only as fresh attempts at Picasso’s program, or architecture only as fresh attempts at Mies van der Rohe’s program, forever, by State order, with if necessary a boot on the face.

DBx: Indeed.

Market competition – with each seller having the right to say ‘no’ to offers to buy, and each buyer having the right to say ‘no’ to offers to sell – is a procedure for discovering information about relative consumer values and about relative values of inputs. It is indeed this. But market competition is also a procedure of creation.

Consumers’ quest for getting the most out of their incomes, and producers’ quest for earning as much profit as possible, drives the latter to search for novel outputs to produce and for novel means to produce and distribute existing, ‘known’ goods and services. The quest of the former – of consumers – drives them to channel resources only to those outputs that they believe are worth the costs.

It is literally impossible for a government planning authority to know in advance – in advance, that is, of actual experimentation in actual markets powered by actual individuals spending their own money – not only what new ideas might arise, but also to know which of the new ideas that do arise are worthwhile and which aren’t.

Nothing is easier than writing words similar to the following: ‘With properly structured industrial policy, government will do a better job than does the market at directing resources to those industries that are best for the country.’ Sounds wonderful. Who doesn’t want resources directed in ways that are better for the country? Yet such a statement is an aspirational one that’s passed off as an operational one.

When pressed for details on how industrial-policy officials will obtain the knowledge necessary for them to direct resources on ways that are better for the country, no substantive answer is given. (Well, no substantive answer is given by any one who actually understands just what the question is asking.)