Russell Roberts's Blog, page 303
March 6, 2021
Bonus Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 194 of Deirdre McCloskey’s and Alberto Mingardi’s excellent 2020 book, The Myth of the Entrepreneurial State (footnotes deleted; links added):
The Good Roads movement in the US in the 1920s, for example, was meant, as its motto had it, to “get us out of the mud.” The “us” had recently acquired autos, and were therefore eager to persuade local and state governments to make, for their benefit but often not at their cost, new roads paved with concrete or asphalt. Suppliers of concrete and asphalt also had opinions on the matter, and bribed county commissioners to express their opinions. But paved roads of course can be privately offered. Many roads in the 18th and 19th centuries were in fact private, “turnpike” roads paved with logs or with “macadamized” surfaces. They can now be re-privatized easily, as parking in Chicago has recently been, considering the cheap technology of transponders and the internet. It allows a company to charge for your presence on its road or parking space. In 1924 the economist Frank Knight showed that such a company would be led by self-interest to charge the price that controls congestion to the socially correct degree. No surprise there: it’s the latent function of prices.
Taking It Back
One of my most trusted friends, a person deeply thoughtful and in possession always of impeccable judgment, contacted me about this post of mine from yesterday. My friend – despite being someone who shares my horror at Covid tyranny – believes that my post is unwarranted. My friend convinced me.
The post was written in haste, and in anger over the accompanying video – and not long after I was accosted by a stranger in a supermarket parking lot for not having my mask over my face while outdoors and away by at least 25 feet from any other human being. These reasons are no good excuses.
It was – is – unjustified of me to judge other people’s reactions to Covid-19. Even more unjustified is my judging their choices of how, if at all, to speak out against the lockdowns. Silence on the lockdowns might be justified for any number of good, personal reasons. I was wrong to insinuate that such silence is the product only of unjustified motives. For doing so, I sincerely apologize. Sincerely apologize.
I will continue to speak out against Covid tyranny and the more general hygiene socialism that I fear this tyranny is already morphing into. But it is not my place to accuse others of intellectual or moral shortcomings if they do not assess this situation as I assess it. After all, there’s a chance that the person who is in error – the person whose intellect and ethical compasses are defective – is me.
Again, my apologies for my intemperance and poor judgment.
Some Covid Links
But liberals [that is, “Progressives”] and their public health friends don’t seem to want the pandemic to end—ever. Some lockdown advocates are warning that myriad new gene variants may be more infectious—though it’s unclear if they are—and could render vaccines less effective. They also warn that vaccinated individuals might still transmit the virus if they are asymptomatic (though the probability is low).
Ergo, pandemic restrictions must be maintained until we achieve herd immunity—which the experts also say may never happen because of new more transmissible variants and the potential for reinfection. This eternal public health crisis is unsustainable politically and economically. Washington can’t keep passing trillion-dollar spending bills with jobless benefits, food stamps, cash payments, rent subsidies and other welfare to help unemployed (and many gainfully employed) Americans. Forget the mental health toll on people who have been cooped up for a year.
But Democrats seem pleased they can use the pandemic to expand the welfare state. Some are now demanding recurring stimulus checks and enhanced unemployment benefits tied to economic conditions. “This crisis is far from over, and families deserve certainty that they can put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads,” 10 Democratic Senators wrote to Mr. Biden this week.
Meanwhile, they are preparing a giant climate-infrastructure spending bill that they say is urgently needed to jolt the economy and save the planet. Behold how the Covid crisis bleeds into a climate crisis.
Paul Alexander, et al., are not impressed with the CDC’s study of mask mandates. Here’s their conclusion:
Trusting the science means relying on the scientific process and method and not merely ‘following the leader.’ It is not the same as trusting, without verification, the conclusory statements of human beings simply because they have scientific training or credentials. This is especially so if their views and inquiry have become politicized. Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard’s Medical School has recently commented on the present Covid-19 scientific and research environment by stating, “After 300 years, the Age of Enlightenment has ended.”
Sadly, we must agree, that it’s not just that the age of enlightenment has come to an end, but indeed, that the science itself has been politicized and severely corrupted.
Here’s another victim of Covid Derangement Syndrome.
Philippe Lemoine makes the case against lockdowns. A slice:
Back in spring, I was in favor of lockdowns, but since then I have reached the conclusion that lockdowns and other stringent restrictions do not make sense from a cost-benefit perspective. I now think that, even with the information we had at the time, supporting lockdowns was the wrong call because even though I insisted that it was only a temporary solution and that we should be ready to revise our view as more evidence came in, I should have known that people would not and that lockdowns would quickly become institutionalized. However, in this post, I will not be arguing for this view. I only want to argue that, regardless of what should have been done last spring, the data we have accumulated since then show very clearly that, whatever the precise effect of lockdowns and other stringent restrictions, it is not nearly as large as we might have thought, so their costs far outweigh their benefits and we therefore should avoid them where they are not currently in place and start lifting them immediately where they are.
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 51 of the 2003 Barnes & Noble Collector’s Library edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic 1850 novel, The Scarlet Letter:
Why should he work for his living here, or go to dig gold in California, when he is so soon to be made happy, at monthly intervals, with a little pile of glittering coin out of his Uncle’s pocket? It is sadly curious to observe how slight a taste of office suffices to infect a poor fellow with this singular disease. Uncle Sam’s gold – meaning no disrespect to the worthy old gentleman – has, in this respect, a quality of enchantment like that of the devil’s wages. Whoever touches it should look well to himself, or he may find the bargain to go hard against him, involving, if not his soul, yet many of its better attributes; its sturdy force, its courage and constancy, its truth, its self-reliance, and all that gives the emphasis to manly character.
March 5, 2021
Lockdown Tyranny
Those of you who doubt that Covid Derangement Syndrome doesn’t fuel police-state brutality – those of you who remain silent amidst the tyranny unleashed in the name of “protecting” people from Covid-19 – please watch this video of a young woman being arrested recently in London at an anti-lockdown protest.
I ask again my many classical-liberal and libertarian friends who are still remaining silent in the face of this inhuman and inhumane assault on human freedom: Why? Why are you not speaking out adamantly against this madness?
I am, I must say, so terribly disappointed in so many of you. In the face of this unprecedented type of general battering of human freedom in the western world, so many of you refuse to raise your voices in protest. Why?
Oh, you protest – loudly and in no uncertain terms – restrictions on immigration. I applaud you! Truly I do. You protest minimum wages, tariffs, subsidies, high taxes, deficit financing of government spending, occupational licensing, “green-energy” initiatives, and the so-called “war on drugs.” Again, I applaud you sincerely.
I applaud also your courageous expressions of opposition to the welfare-warfare state – to industrial policy – to the idiocy of wokism – to the folly of government owned and operated ‘schools’ – to loose monetary policy – to the dangers of the likes of “net-neutrality,” antitrust, and universal basic incomes. I raise my glass high to your hostility to the banana-republic practice of civil asset forfeiture, to affirmative action, and to nearly every proposal issued by economic illiterates (and tyrant-wannabes) such as Elizabeth Warren, Marco Rubio, Bernie Sanders, and Josh Hawley. Yay you! You go! Expose these policies and these officious frauds for what and who they are.
But I cannot forgive you for refusing to speak out against a tyranny far more immediate, real, and terrifying – and one that promises to uncork gruesome precedents – than any of the government offenses that you do find the courage to protest.
Why do you – how can you – remain silent in the face of Covid tyranny?
Some Non-Covid Links
One recent investigation, on imported transformers and certain grain-oriented electrical steel parts, is indicative of the problems that Section 232 creates. The investigation began in May 2020, and little movement on the topic was reported throughout the year. Then, in October 2020, Inside U.S. Trade reported that “The Commerce Department has delivered to the White House its report on the national security implications of key electrical transformer input imports,” with sources saying “it has already been submitted to the White House,” but “The White House did not respond to a request for comment; Commerce declined to comment.” Now, the law states that when the Department of Commerce completes its investigation and submits its report to the president, that report (with redactions) must be submitted to the Federal Register. To date, this has not happened.
Then, on November 2, 2020 (days before the presidential election – surely a coincidence!), Ohio-based mining company Cleveland Cliffs issued a press release to “applaud” President Trump for his action on this investigation. There was no public statement made by the president, or the Secretary of Commerce that any action would be taken at this point. In fact, we still don’t know the case details. But a company that would benefit from Trump’s protectionism has applauded his actions? This is political dysfunction in a nutshell.
But if the Constitution is to guide us, we must ask whether Congress should be spending that money at all. I understand that most earmarks are boring, e.g., funding exit-ramp construction on a highway. I even understand how restoring earmarks could promote bipartisanship. Though, considering the size of government, I’d argue there’s plenty of bipartisanship already. In spite of all this, it’s obvious to me that Congress has no place funding such local projects through earmarks or in any other way.
David Boaz reports on the first woman to receive an Electoral College vote.
Those who push for equity have hidden these crucial differences for a reason. They aren’t merely unpopular; they challenge America’s bedrock principle that people should be treated equally and judged as individuals, not as members of groups.
The demand for equal outcomes contradicts a millennium of Anglo-Saxon law and political evolution. It undermines the Enlightenment principle of equal treatment for individuals of different social rank and religion. America’s Founders drew on those roots when they declared independence, saying it was “self-evident” that “all men are created equal.”
That heritage, along with the lack of a hereditary aristocracy, is why claims for equal treatment are so deeply rooted in U.S. history. It is why radical claims for unequal treatment must be carefully buried in word salads praising equity and social justice.
Jonah Goldberg describes today’s Democratic Party as literally the party of government.
Some Covid Links
The central role played by the governor’s top aides reflected the lengths to which Mr. Cuomo has gone in the middle of a deadly pandemic to control data, brush aside public health expertise and bolster his position as a national leader in the fight against the coronavirus.
As the nursing home report was being written, the New York State Health Department’s data — contained in a chart reviewed by The Times that was included in a draft — put the death toll roughly 50 percent higher than the figure then being cited publicly by the Cuomo administration.
The United States will have COVID-19 vaccine doses for every adult in America by late May, President Joe Biden announced Tuesday, moving the timeline up by a glorious two months. It may take some time after that landmark moment to get all those shots into arms, but availability by Memorial Day means we can justifiably hope for normalcy by Independence Day. The end of the pandemic is really, truly nigh.
But you might not know it from the baleful tone of many recent public health recommendations. Even after vaccination, so much of the present messaging says, you must keep wearing a mask. Keep social distancing. Keep not seeing your loved ones. Keep living your strange and difficult half-life.
Ghent University professor Mattias Desmet warns of the emerging totalitarian dystopia. A slice:
Well, sickness and suffering are always bad, but the deleterious effects of the government response are disproportionate to the health risk of the virus. Professionally, I am involved in two research projects on corona. As a result, I have been working fairly intensively with the data. Clearly, the virus mortality rate is quite low. The numbers that the media are announcing are based on, let‘s say, an overly enthusiastic count. Regardless of any pre-existing medical problems, just about every elderly person who died was added to the list of corona deaths. I personally only know one person who was registered as a corona death. He was a terminal cancer patient who died with rather than from corona. Adding these sorts of deaths to corona deaths increases the numbers and increases anxiety in the population.
Several emergency doctors called me during the second wave. Some told me that their ward was absolutely not overrun with corona patients. Others told me that more than half of the patients in the ICU did not have corona or showed such mild symptoms that they would have been sent home to recover, were they diagnosed with influenza. But given the prevailing panic, this turned out to be impossible. Unfortunately, these doctors wished to remain anonymous, so their message did not reach the media and public opinion. Some of them later also told their story to a journalist from the VRT news network, but unfortunately nothing has come of this to date. And I want to mention that there were other doctors who interpreted the apparent facts in a completely different fashion than portrayed in the conventional narrative.
“COVID-19 has taken a disturbing toll on teens’ mental health.” (HT my intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy.)
Molly Kingsley rightly decries the madness of masking school children. A slice:
We are apparently flying blind; and we are doing so in the face of what looks to be potentially serious harm to our children. In Germany a study of over 25,000 children wearing masks throughout the school day reports headaches (53%), difficulty concentrating (50%), malaise (42%), impaired learning (38%) and drowsiness or fatigue (37%); in France social media is awash with reports of parents measuring children’s oxygen levels at the end of the school day and finding them to be dangerously low.
There are lists of studies, many now peer reviewed, identifying other proven harms which are extensive and serious – communication issues, eye issues and difficulty breathing. If these aren’t clear red flags, what are?
(DBx: I agree. This semester I’m teaching my regular seminar at George Mason University on The Wealth of Nations. It’s in-person, but masks and “social distancing” are required. The experience is surreal. I and my eleven students sit, not in a proper seminar room, but in a large classroom distantly from each other. Everyone is masked. I often cannot hear what the students are saying, and I’m sure that they often miss my remarks. Breathing is noticeably less easy, at least for me. The mask causes my reading glasses to fog up when I look down at the book to find a passage. The derangement is palpable.)
If you doubt the reality of Covid Derangement Syndrome, here’s another photo for you to contemplate; it’s of British schoolchildren.
This photo is taken from this essay by Emma Hine. A slice:
So, children, whose age specific IFR (infection fatality rate) has been calculated at 0.002% for under-tens, rising to only 0.01% up to 25 years of age, who have already done so much against their basic human needs, in the interest of “saving granny”, are now being asked to wear a mask for six hours a day (up to eight for many travelling by public transport). For what? To protect the adults teaching them? Their parents? Let’s not forget that the most vulnerable of those will have already earned a degree of protection from their vaccine. Yet certainly, it is not to protect each other, as we have already seen from the incredibly low IFR among this age group.
John Hayward bemoans what he calls “the Church of Covid.” A slice:
Some aren’t even hoping they can assert control over a crisis by converting to its religion. They’ll settle for just having some MEANING, some simplicity, a sense that the righteous will fare better than the unbelievers, that virtue will be rewarded while sin is punished.
That’s a very common impulse with the Church of Covid, since the Beautiful Theories were so very obviously wrong. There isn’t much left of the faith except the visceral communal satisfaction of hoping unbelievers will be punished for their blasphemies with sickness and death.
That sort of thing happens with all of the crisis religions, although not usually as quickly and obviously as with the Church of Covid. Look at the endless stream of movies about how the world became an apocalyptic hellscape because people didn’t believe in global warming.
The last resort of every crisis religion, the last thing that puts asses in the pews, is that addiction to misery porn, the collective hope that unbelievers will suffer someday, and everyone will admit the True Faith was right all along as Judgement Day crashes down upon them.
Julian Tang explains why worry over Covid variants is unwarranted.
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 219 of Frank Chodorov’s May 1955 Freeman article, “Why Teach Freedom?“, as this article is reprinted in Liberty Fund’s superb 1980 collection, Fugitive Essays, of Chodorov’s writings, edited by Chuck Hamilton:
… I have never met an advocate of government intervention who did not admit, inadvertently, his own capacity for commissariat functions. He always has a plan, to which others must submit, and his certainty that the plan will produce the contemplated results does not permit him to brook criticism. Always he is the fanatic. If you disagree with him it is not because you are in error; it is because you are sinful.
DBx: The above Quotation of the Day is one of the very few, in ten years of featuring these posts, that I intentionally repeat. I first used a slightly fuller version of this quotation on July 4th, 2012. Now is an appropriate time to reprise it.
March 4, 2021
Lord Sumption on Covid Derangement Syndrome
Freddie Sayers, of UnHerd TV, talks with the wise and liberal Lord Sumption. Do watch.
Bonus Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 10 of the late Harvard historian Richard Pipes’s marvelous 1999 volume, Property and Freedom:
But men who take pride in their pragmatism often follow trails cleared by idealists.
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