Russell Roberts's Blog, page 341
December 12, 2020
Bonus Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 241 of the late, great Henry Manne’s 1997 article “The Judiciary and Free Markets,” as it is reprinted in Liberty and Freedom in the Economic Ordering of Society (2009), which is volume 3 of The Collected Works of Henry G. Manne (footnote excluded):
There are some aspects of the notion of the rule of law that are obvious and essential to a well-functioning market economy. First among these is the basic idea that laws will apply equally to all people under the same set of relevant circumstances. That is, government officials will not have authority to discriminate in the application or interpretation of substantive rules of law on the basis of favoritism, prejudice, belief, or politics; and judges must adhere to and enforce this same mandate.
DBx: Governors and mayors across the United States in 2020 blatantly violate this most fundamental feature of the rule of law. California strongman Gavin Newsom infamously did so not only by dining at the French Laundry in violation of his own diktat, but also by granting an exemption from one of his diktats to Hollywood movie-makers. And yet the man still holds power.
Other dictators impose tight attendance restrictions on churches while inflicting less-onerous ones on other organizations.
The rule of law today in the U.S. is violated with impunity at state and local levels by tyrants.
Sadly, too few Americans – debilitated as they are with Covid Derangement Syndrome – resist or even protest this despotism. This state of affairs is as appalling as it is dangerous.
More 2020 Insanity
Below is a letter to WTOP radio. (Every cent that Karol and I spent to keep our son out of Fairfax County’s government schools by sending him to a private school was worth it.)
Sir or Madam:
With its teachers resisting the in-person reopening of schools, the Fairfax County Public School system – unsurprisingly – discovered, as described by the FCPS’s chief academic officer, “really, really large increases in [the] percent of students earning ‘F’ grades.”
Springing into action, the school board is addressing this problem!
Is the board speeding-up school reopenings? No. Are new teaching methods or materials being introduced in the hope of improving student instruction? Uh-uh. Will teachers be held more strictly accountable for failing to teach their students? Not on your life.
The school board instead, among other steps, is boldly putting a floor on the numerical grades that teachers are allowed to mark on student assignments. Specifically, as you report:
A 50 out of 100 will become the lowest score a student can get on an assignment, turning in work for major assignments late will only come with minimum penalties and no single assignment can be worth more than 20% of a student’s final grade.
The school system will also reduce the minimum number of assignments per quarter from nine to six.
In other words, the school board, rather than aiming to improve student instruction, is reducing the demands on students (and, hence, on teachers) as it rigs the grading system to mask the results of any failure by teachers to adequately do their job.
Student learning will further deteriorate as it is falsely made to appear to improve. How appalling.
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
The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board rightly decries the tyranny of the latest lockdowns. A slice:
New York’s Andrew Cuomo on Friday joined the stampede of Democratic governors shutting down restaurants despite scant evidence that they are driving a surge in Covid cases. Their shutdowns are hitting minorities the hardest and increasing economic inequality.
Democratic governors in Michigan, Illinois, Oregon and Washington in recent weeks have closed indoor dining. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has banned outdoor patios in most areas too. Mr. Cuomo said Friday that he’s shutting down indoor dining in New York City as of Monday.
According to state contact tracing data, restaurants and bars account for 1.4% of the virus spread in the state while household gatherings make up nearly 74%. That’s not surprising. In New York City, restaurants were limited to 25% capacity. Who limits capacity in their living rooms during football watch parties or Thanksgiving?
Ethan Yang applauds judges who rule against dictators such as Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo.
Jacob Sullum documents yet more dissent from the diktats issued by California strongman Gavin Newsom.
J.D. Tuccille reports on punitive federalism. Here’s his dire conclusion:
Even worse, government in our country claims near-absolute authority to intervene in almost all matters, as we’ve seen during the pandemic. That leaves little in life immune to dictates, revolt, and retaliation.
So, get accustomed to orders issued from on high that are then ignored by dissenting individuals and localities. And prepare for the resulting battles and attempted punishments. That sort of punitive federalism is likely to be a common sight in the years to come.
Eric Clapton is teaming up with Van Morrison for a new anti-lockdown song.
PCR Tests and Rapid Antigen Tests
In this highly informative short video, Ivor Cummins compares PCR tests for the coronavirus to rapid antigen tests.
Tyranny Storms In
Here’s a letter to the New York Times:
Editor:
So it has come to this: a contributing opinion writer – Dr. Richard Friedman – for the New York Times now advocates suppressing the speech of those who dissent from the current consensus of “experts.” It’s terrifying… and predictable.
The historian of political thought David Hart calls governments’ responses to Covid-19 “hygiene socialism.” This description is apt. All genuinely socialist regimes, which require for their ‘success’ everyone’s obedience to The Plan, stamp out freedom of expression and dissent. After all, because The Plan is said to offer the only hope of saving the masses from the chaos and depredations that allegedly would persist if individuals are left free, all opponents of The Plan are enemies of The People. And so in the name of The People, dissenters must be silenced – just as Dr. Friedman demands.
And thus does tyranny descend upon us all.
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
Much Sad Truth In this Humor
This video is a brilliant exposé of many of the causes and consequences of Covid Derangement Syndrome. (HT GMU law professor Todd Zywicki)
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 142 of the late Hans Rosling’s insightful 2018 book, Factfulness:
When I see a lonely number in a news report, it always triggers an alarm: What should this lonely number be compared to? What was that number a year ago? Ten years ago? What is it in a comparable country or region? And what should it be divided by? What is the total of which this is a part? What would this be per person? I compare the rates, and only then do I decide whether it really is an important number.
DBx: The heightened relevance today of this bit of wisdom is obvious.
December 11, 2020
Bonus Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 251 of Matt Ridley’s enlightening 2020 book, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom (link added):
Innovation happens, as I put it a decade ago, when ideas have sex. It occurs where people meet and exchange goods, services and thoughts. This explains why innovation happens in places where trade and exchange are frequent and not in isolated or underpopulated places: California rather than North Korea, Renaissance Italy rather than Tierra del Fuego. It explains why China lost its innovative edge when it turned its back on trade under the Ming emperors. It explains the bursts of innovation that coincide with increases in trade, in Amsterdam in the 1600s or Phoenicia 3,000 years earlier.
Some Links
My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy assesses Trump’s destructive trade policies. A slice:
Finally, the president inflicted serious damage to the World Trade Organization — the great arbitrator of all international trade disputes — on the specious claim that the organization wasn’t sufficiently deferential to the United States. Here’s how [Scott] Lincicome sums it up: The administration chose “to shut down the organization’s appellate body (basically the supreme court of trade dispute settlement) instead of negotiating new and necessary reforms in good faith (e.g., by teaming up with like?minded countries while offering actual concessions on longtime irritants like U.S. agricultural subsidies and ‘trade remedy’ rules).”
Here’s a gem from this past June written by Kevin Williamson.
GMU Econ alum Ryan Young writes sensibly about the dangers of antitrust.
Jeffrey Tucker reminds us of the “experts” who advised that alcohol be made illegal.
Jenin Younes rightly decries the dysfunctional mindset of pursuing one goal – in this case, virus avoidance – over others. (2020 has been the year of the anti-marginalist counterrevolution – and the counterrevolutionaries, sadly, have so far been victorious.) A slice:
This is a dogma that should be resoundingly rejected. As I (and many others) have written before, there is no reason to assign SARS-CoV-2 a special status as a killer virus, or to view it as significantly worse than many other of the world’s problems that typically go largely unnoticed by educated professionals in the developed world. Over the past year, around 1.5 million deaths worldwide have been attributed to SARS-Cov-2. On average, 1.35 million people die in traffic accidents, 1.7 million people die of AIDS, and 1.4 million of tuberculosis, each year (We know that the counter to this — that if we did not take extreme mitigation measures, the virus would spiral out of control and bodies would be falling in the streets — is not borne out by the reality).
Bonnie Kristian’s plea is to stop saying that “lockdown is not that hard.” A slice:
It’s hard because people need people. We are made to be in relationships with each other. Our brains, hearts, souls, spirits—whatever you want to call that core of our being—that thing need parties. It needs human contact. It needs community. It needs beers on the couch. It needs board games late into the night. It needs play dates. It needs not to die alone. It needs not to give birth alone. It needs love. And the internet, blessed and cursed as it is, can transmit love only so well.
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