Russell Roberts's Blog, page 349

Some Covid-19 Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board rightly applauds the U.S. Supreme Court’s temporary injunction against some Covid-19-inspired restrictions imposed by Andrew Cuomo. A slice:

While the 5-4 order is welcome, it is disappointing that the ruling wasn’t 9-0. New York’s restrictions on religious worship are so overbroad, and so arbitrary, that their violation of the Free Exercise Clause should be an easy call. Americans have tolerated extraordinary restraints on their freedom in the pandemic, but it’s increasingly clear as we learn more about the virus that too many Governors have needlessly infringed on basic rights.

And too many judges have acquiesced. Americans should welcome the Supreme Court back at the ramparts as a defender of liberty.

Hey, lockdown proponents: You are literally causing some elderly people to prefer to be dead rather than be alive yet isolated and lonely.

Hey, Covid-restrictionists: Behold yet more bitter fruit of your inhumanity.

Jeffrey Tucker documents the Thanksgiving rebellion of 2020. Too bad that it wasn’t even stronger. Here’s his conclusion:

The battle over lockdowns and public health is the struggle of our lives, the greatest crisis in generations. But the problems and solutions are not different from the ones that have consumed intellectuals for centuries. What institutions better manage society in good times and in bad: governments (run by experts, with power and resources) or free people acting with intelligence and creativity as best they can? One might have supposed we had the answer to this question already. But human beings forget. Then the tragic lessons have to be learned all over again.

Alberto Mingardi hopes that time will get the Covid narrative right.

Jacob Sullum reports on, and rightly decries, many of the extraordinarily senseless – and tyrannical – Covid restrictions. A slice:

Last week, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz banned “social gatherings” that include people from different households. “This prohibition includes indoor and outdoor gatherings, planned and spontaneous gatherings, and public and private gatherings,” he said. It applies to groups of any size, “even if social distancing can be maintained.”

Even The New York Times, usually a big fan of COVID-19 restrictions, was taken aback. Walz “took the extraordinary step of banning people from different households from meeting indoors or outdoors, even though evidence has consistently shown the outdoors to be relatively safe,” the paper reported.

“If people are going to meet up, doing so outdoors is probably the lowest-risk way to do it,” Ashleigh Tuite, an infectious disease modeler at the University of Toronto, told the Times. “Telling people they can’t spend time safely outdoors isn’t a rational approach. People are going to recognize that and push back.”

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from pages 65-66 of University of Glasgow Senior Lecturer Craig Smith’s 2020 book, Adam Smith (footnotes deleted; links added):

He [Adam Smith] argues that people’s natural moral responses can be warped by wrong systems developed by philosophers. His particular concern here is religious and political demagogues who, driven by a commitment to their  philosophical system, seek to make reality fit their model. These ‘ignorant quacks and imposters, both civil and religious’, seek to move the multitude to serve their own moral system. Such a man of system is an enemy to every other person who would choose how to act for themselves. Moreover, he will inevitably fail as his systems are only partial and cannot capture the rich diversity of human sentiments. The man of system is a partial spectator on behalf of his own faction and his judgement is not to be trusted.

DBx: True liberalism – the liberalism of Adam Smith – differs from all other political philosophies in this core way: Its proponents have no specific vision for society or the economy. The true liberal understands that the merit of a society is not to be measured by whatever particular ruler, scale, or map he or she – or any other person – has in his or her head. The true liberal accords equal dignity to every individual, and notes that the maximum possible prospect for each person to contribute to whatever details emerge in society is achieved when each and every individual has maximum possible scope to act as he or she chooses. To give to each individual maximum possible scope to act implies that each individual’s scope to act is equal to that of every other individual.

Only in a liberal society is no one compelled by fellow human beings to sacrifice his or her welfare, as he or she judges it, in order to promote the welfare of others. This feature of liberalism is its finest. That liberalism results in degrees of material prosperity impossible under any other system is wonderful. But this material benefit is – in my view, at any rate – icing on the cake.

And so even if, say – and contrary to fact – this or that proposed industrial-policy scheme is guaranteed to make every person in the nation materially wealthier, I would oppose it. And I know that many, and perhaps most, other liberals would join in this opposition. The reason for this opposition is that any industrial-policy scheme necessarily empowers some individuals to arbitrarily override the choices of other individuals. Robert Reich gets to impose his preferences on Deirdre McCloskey – but not vice-versa. Oren Cass and Brink Lindsey have the power to restrict the range of peaceful actions open to Mike Munger and Arnold Kling – but not vice-versa. Julius Krein, Daniel McCarthy, and Elizabeth Warren get to tell Russ Roberts, Bryan Caplan, and Walter Williams what to do – but not vice-versa.

To be clear: Arranging for it to be vice-versa – even if it were possible to conceive what it means for Jones and Smith each simultaneously to have the power to impose his or her preferences on the other – would not solve the problem. No one should have the power to impose his or preferences on anyone else.

Industrial-policy proponents deny the above-stated reality. They’re able to satisfy themselves that the above-stated reality is not reality by lazily assuming that if industrial policy is approved by majority vote, then somehow everyone agrees with it and, thus, no one is imposing his or her preferences on others. This post is not the place to rehearse Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem and public-choice economics, but it is appropriate to point out that all proponents of industrial policy either completely ignore the realities of collective decision-making or brush them aside as minor considerations.

Bonus Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from Brandon Reiter, who is heroically resisting efforts by government officials in Minnesota to arbitrarily shutter his gym, in the name of combatting Covid-19, until December 19th:

It is my choice to remain open. I don’t force anyone to come into my gym. They’re doing it for their health, or well-being, or their mental health. There are going to be thousands of people going to the big box stores over the holidays, but I can’t have 10-15 people in here?

If I’m going to go bankrupt, I’m going to go down swinging.

DBx: You go, excellent sir! Much good luck to you in your struggle against this tyranny – this tyranny that is fueled by a truly horrific and virulent disease, CDS-20 (Covid Derangement Syndrome-20).

Every self-respecting American should be thankful for people such as Mr. Reiter.

…..

I thank Harry Blanek for alerting me to this instance of resistance to tyranny.

Thankful for Ivor Cummins

(Don Boudreaux)

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On this Thanksgiving Day I raise a glass also to Ivor Cummins for his tireless production of clear, data-rich videos that are meant to cure Covid Derangement Syndrome. Unfortunately, this terrible disease – CDS-20 – continues to surge in many places around the world, including in the United States.

Here’s Cummins’s latest.

Some Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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On this Thanksgiving Day I’m thankful to awaken to news that the United States Supreme Court, by a vote of 5 to 4, has at least temporarily prohibited New York State from imposing, in the name of combatting Covid-19, certain restrictions on religious services.

“Why Is All COVID-19 News Bad News?” Bruce Sacerdote, Ranjan Sehgal & Molly Cook document the enormous negative bias, in the U.S., of Covid coverage. (I applaud my colleague Tyler Cowen for sharing a link to this paper on his and Alex Tabarrok’s blog, which is where I discovered it.) Here’s the paper’s abstract:

We analyze the tone of COVID-19 related English-language news articles written since January 1, 2020. Ninety one percent of stories by U.S. major media outlets are negative in tone versus fifty four percent for non-U.S. major sources and sixty five percent for scientific journals. The negativity of the U.S. major media is notable even in areas with positive scientific developments including school re-openings and vaccine trials. Media negativity is unresponsive to changing trends in new COVID-19 cases or the political leanings of the audience. U.S. major media readers strongly prefer negative stories about COVID-19, and negative stories in general. Stories of increasing COVID-19 cases outnumber stories of decreasing cases by a factor of 5.5 even during periods when new cases are declining. Among U.S. major media outlets, stories discussing President Donald Trump and hydroxychloroquine are more numerous than all stories combined that cover companies and individual researchers working on COVID-19 vaccines.

Another victim of Covid Derangement Syndrome is Santa – and, of course, countless children.

Christian Britschgi reports on yet another politician-tyrant-hypocrite, this time Denver Mayor Michael Hancock. A slice:

Hancock’s travels put him in the company of other politicians who’ve skirted the very pandemic precautions they have urged, and often required, ordinary people and businesses to comply with.

Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser traveled to Delaware to attend a celebration of President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory, despite issuing health orders requiring D.C. residents to travel only for essential business, and to quarantine for 14 days when returning from high-risk states (which would include Delaware.)

Bowser has defended her Delaware trip by arguing that it involved government business and therefore counted as essential travel.

Perhaps the worst COVID-19 hypocrite is California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who attended a birthday party at a swanky Napa Valley restaurant in violation of his own COVID-19 limits on gatherings. Rising case numbers in California are prompting the closure of indoor dining in most of the state under the four-tiered reopening schedule crafted by Newsom and state public health officials.

This kind of hypocrisy on the part of politicians isn’t just infuriating. It also does damage to public health, as Reason‘s Jacob Sullum argued last week.

“Arbitrary, ill-conceived COVID-19 restrictions are bound to provoke resistance and resentment, compounding the fatigue that undermines compliance with more sensible safeguards,” wrote Sullum in a column about Newsom’s night out. “That problem can only be magnified when the people telling us what to do follow a different set of rules.”

I’m always honored to be a guest on Dan Proft’s show. The discussion, unsurprisingly, was about Covid and the deranged response to it.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 177 of Deirdre McCloskey’s and Art Carden’s splendid new (2020) book, Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich: How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World (all but the first bracketed entry original to McCloskey and Carden; emphasis added):

True, [Adam] Smith in a famous but routinely misunderstood passage in 1776 spoke of appealing to the self-love of others, rather than appealing to their lordly charity or their slavish obedience: “It is not from the benevolence [or the compelled obedience] of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner [and from your mother, dear Adam, with whom you lived, and who cooked it], but from their regard [as free people] to their own interest.” He is saying that you should be properly democratic in the theater of the marketplace – not expecting by lordly right to take without recompense, or by a beggarly lack of dignity to receive without recompense. You and the baker and butcher are equal in Smith’s view. To pay your way is to respect their equal dignity.

DBx: McCloskey’s and Carden’s explanation of the true meaning of this famous passage from Smith’s Wealth of Nations is spot-on. Anyone who reads Smith and comes away with the conclusion that Smith was an apologist for narrow, grasping, materialist greed has a serious problem with reading comprehension.

Yet notice also that this quotation from Smith is contrary to a frequent, mistaken rendition of it. Often it is rendered as this: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.”

Smith did not, in this passage, prefix “interest” with “self.” While he would not have denied that part of the the baker’s interest is the material care and comfort of himself and his immediate family, Smith understood that the typical person in commercial society has also as part of his interest concerns that extend beyond the narrow, material “self.”

The baker, perhaps, is a devoted parishioner to his church; part of the income he earns from selling bread and muffins he donates weekly to the Providence Presbyterian Church. The baker also is a patron of the arts and contributes annually to his town’s community children’s theater. And the baker serves as a volunteer firefighter – using time that he could not afford to spend in this way were he unable to make a good living baking bread and desserts for paying customers. In addition, the baker sends a generous sum of money each year to his sister to help with the medical care of his nephew who was crippled as a young child in a playground accident.

Oh – let’s observe one other use of the baker’s profits: He uses a portion of these to expand and improve the operation of his bakery, thus improving consumers’ access to delicious baked goods.

These uses of the baker’s profits are, of course, all in his interest, as the agent who chooses to put a portion of the profits toward each of these uses is indeed him. But not all of these uses are narrowly self interested, at least not in the manner in which the term “self-interest” is commonly understood.

While the baker would commit no ethical or legal offense against anyone if he used every cent of his profits, voluntarily earned, merely to gratify his own material and sensual cravings, I submit – as did Adam Smith, and as do McCloskey and Carden – that such a baker would be an oddity. Such a baker would not remotely be representative of the typical person in commercial society. And such a person would be pathetic. Such a person would fail to be fully human – he would fail to engage with full satisfaction with others, including strangers. His life would be unhappy, and he’d die unfulfilled regardless of how many gleaming new Mercedeses he has parked in the garages of his many houses.

Almost all real-world bakers in commercial society – as with almost all butchers, brewers, barbers, bricklayers, bus drivers, and bankers – each has an interest that, necessarily, is his or her own. (How could it possibly be otherwise?) But these real-world producers in commercial society, in pursuing their own interests, do so not only in ways that promote the interests of those with whom they engage commercially, but promote also the interests of many others with whom they engage, not commercially, but with love, compassion, concern, care, friendship, and fellow-feeling.

…..

On this Thanksgiving Day I am thankful for open, commercial society that alone gives to each of us the ability to attend well – and with dignity for all – not only to our own narrow interests, but to interests beyond our narrow selfs.

Some Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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My GMU Econ colleague Bryan Caplan powerfully argues that the benefits of the Covid lockdowns and other reactions fall far short of their costs. A slice:

At this point, you could protest, “Hey Bryan, I thought you weren’t a utilitarian.”  So what if the cost of COVID prevention greatly exceeds the value of life saved?  My answer, to repeat, is that I have a strong moral presumption in favor of human liberty.  So while I respect individuals’ rights to overreact to moderate risks, I oppose any act of government that does not pass a cost-benefit test with flying colors.

And no, I don’t think that an asymptomatic person who walks down the street unmasked is “aggressing” against passersby in any meaningful way.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, UCLA medical professor Dr. Joseph Ladapo argues that too much caution is killing Covid-19 patients. A slice:

Too many doctors have interpreted the term “evidence-based medicine” to mean that the evidence for a treatment must be certain and definitive before it can be given to patients. Because accusing a physician of not being “evidence based” can be a career-damaging allegation, fear of straying from the pack has prevailed, favoring inertia and inaction amid uncertainty about Covid-19 treatments.

For diseases with established treatment options, holding out for certainty may be prudent. But when options are limited and there are safe treatments with evidence for effectiveness, holding out for certainty can be catastrophic. Requiring a high degree of certainty during a crisis may elevate the augustness of medical organizations and appease the sensibilities of medical professionals, but it does nothing for patients who need help.

The penchant for certainty is visible in the frequently updated treatment guidelines for Covid-19 from the National Institutes of Health. These guidelines were developed by scientists around the country, but because of a mentality that is biased toward virtually irrefutable evidence, no distinction is made for treatments with evidence for effectiveness that falls below the mark of certainty. This framework almost certainly has contributed to many avoidable deaths during this pandemic.

Writing about Britain, Matt Ridley asks if Covid was beginning to peak before the second lockdown there. A slice:

Far from increasing, let alone exponentially, the data showed that the wave was faltering if not cresting already. The lockdown came in on a Thursday. The very next day data from three reliable sources – the Office for National Statistics, the government and the Covid Symptom Study – showed slight falls of the number of positive cases or some levelling off. The fall was steep in some places such as Liverpool. The cynic in me wondered whether the haste with which the government had rushed to bring in the national lockdown, at the urging of its questionably sage advisors, was so that lockdown could be credited with the fall that was coming.

Ah, said the government at the time, but hospital admissions are still increasing and so are deaths. Well, sure. Hospital admissions lag cases by two weeks, and deaths lag admissions by two weeks. We now have two more weeks of data and the evidence looks clear. The faltering of the wave in late October and early November was not just a pause but a peak. Hospital admissions appear to have peaked on 11 November and began to fall, implying a peak of infections in late October, well before lockdown began. Even deaths seem to have now stabilised, unexpectedly, with the seven-day average also steady since 11 November.

The same thing happened in April, when in retrospect it became clear that infections peaked before lockdown began, with deaths peaking around 8 April – too soon to credit the lockdown.

Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley is correct: The hypocrisy of the ruling class pre-dates Covid-19. A slice:

People in reliably blue states (California, New York, Oregon) as well as in the states that made Donald Trump a one-term president (Wisconsin, Michigan)—have been standing in line for three and four hours to get a Covid-19 test before traveling this week. These people are perfectly aware that infection rates are rising and that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention strongly cautions against celebrating the holiday with people outside your household. Alas, many of them don’t seem to care anymore. According to the American Automobile Association, there could be as many as 50 million Thanksgiving travelers this year, only 10% less than in 2019.

This is a form of mass civil disobedience like nothing the country has seen since the 1960s. Some of it is born of Covid fatigue, to be sure. But the endless parade of politicians flouting their own rules surely has also played a role. It began shortly after the spring lockdowns and if anything has become more commonplace, even farcical.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi violated lockdown orders to get their hair done, which sounds like something a Kardashian would do. Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney sneaked out of state to dine at a restaurant in neighboring Maryland because eateries back home were closed to indoor customers. When Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser and members of her staff traveled to Delaware to celebrate Joe Biden’s presidential victory, they violated Covid quarantine requirements. And Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who tweeted in July that “wearing masks in public should be mandatory,” has been spotted several times in public not wearing a mask while she was indoors and chatting face to face with others.

Nick Gillespie talks with Charles Koch and Brian Hooks.

Richard Ebeling reminds us of the connection between Thanksgiving and free enterprise.

Also writing on Thanksgiving and the market economy is John Stossel.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 268 of Kristian Niemietz’s important 2019 book, Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies (link added):

According to [Bryan] Caplan, there is a huge difference between holding (or rather, acting upon) irrational beliefs in our personal lives and holding irrational beliefs in political life. We bear the full cost of the former, but there is no cost associated with the latter.

DBx: No personal cost, that is, associated with the latter. The burdens suffered by society as a result of irrational government policies are monstrous.

Because the outcome of any election will be whatever it will be regardless of how you vote, or whether or not you vote, you can believe that government officials possess supernatural powers and yet you pay no personal cost for being in the grip of, and acting on, this wacky superstition. And this superstition is widespread, not least among intellectuals.

Tyranny Unmasked

(Don Boudreaux)

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We, my fellow Americans, are today living under tyranny. There is no other way to describe it. That this tyranny is masked (!) in lovely motives is irrelevant; it is tyranny. And remember that all tyranny masquerades as beneficence. Were it to do otherwise, it would never be tolerated.

We, my fellow Americans, are prisoners of a healthocracy. I call it that not because the healthocratic tyrants put our health above all, which would be bad enough even if there were, contrary to fact, good reason to suppose that this tyranny is making us healthier. I call our current political system a healthocracy because protecting our health is merely an excuse – a pretense – for the unreasoned exercise of raw, fanged, poison power.

Consider as just one example this report today from DC-based WTOP news radio. Here’s a part:

Just ahead of Thanksgiving, the health officer in Montgomery County, Maryland, is putting in place new coronavirus safety restrictions, including a reduced cap on the size of gatherings.

Dr. Travis Gayles said in a statement that indoor gatherings of more than 10 people are prohibited effective 5 p.m. Tuesday. Masks are required outdoors at all times, and inside all public facilities.

The government is restricting the number of people who can gather together consensually even in private homes. Do your nieces and nephews, when added to your brothers and sisters and immediate family members, reach a sum greater than ten? Too bad. You may not socialize together under the same roof! So saith the state!

Or how about this report, from the same news-radio station:

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced Monday that “compliance units” led by Maryland State Police would be sent out to businesses before and during the Thanksgiving holiday to make sure business owners are following coronavirus restrictions.

“Additional troopers will be focused on this enforcement,” said Maryland State Police spokesman Greg Shipley. “Our first goal is voluntary compliance.”

Get it? The State of Maryland is sending out its police officers to ensure “voluntary compliance.”

When a uniformed cop, packing a sidearm, shows up at your door to ask how many people are under your commercial roof, how “voluntary” do you feel the ‘request’ to be?

Why are we putting up with this despotic oppression? Forget that Covid-19 is a risk overwhelmingly only to very old and infirm people. Why, under any circumstances, do we sheepishly obey these self-important, ignorant, power-mad maniacs who are so greedy for power and publicity that they do all that must be done these days to win high political office? I literally wouldn’t trust any of these people to shine my shoes – not Virginia Gov. Northam, not DC Mayor Bowser, not NY Gov. Cuomo, not CA Gov. Newsom, not Herr Dr. Anthony Fauci. The list of these tyrannical scoundrels is as long as it is nauseating.

I call for resistance. Serious resistance. Strong resistance. Meaningful resistance. Tell the governors, the mayors, the health officials, the cops, all to go to hell and to remain there until they are reduced to ashes. Don’t tread on me! Let individuals, each one, decide on his or her own how much, if any, precaution to take against the coronavirus. The idiotic hysteria stirred up by the media will guarantee that a large number of people over-protect themselves. That’s their business, although I pity them for their gullibility.

But for the few of us who want to live free, civilized lives – lives unobstructed by the awful officiousness of the healthocrats – I think I can speak: Leave. Us. Alone. For heaven’s sake, leave us alone. Please. Mind your own business. Cower in fear and live, if you wish, in your antiseptic and lonely closets. You’ll perhaps arrange for your hearts to keep beating for an extra year or two, but the ‘lives’ that you’ll lead will be pathetic, imbecilic, and unworthy of anyone worthy of life.

As for me, I stand with Patrick Henry: Give me liberty or give me death. I would prefer to be dead than to live as a prisoner in this healthocracy.

No More Lockdown

(Don Boudreaux)

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Whether or not you’re into dancing in the October moonlight with your brown-eyed girl, you should be appalled – as is Van Morrison – by the deranged Covid-19 lockdowns. (HT my dear friends Betsy and Lyle Albaugh)