Russell Roberts's Blog, page 357
November 2, 2020
Covid Collectivism, Or the Derangement of Homo Avoidcovidus
Near the end of my latest column for AIER I identify the deranged creature driving and cheering Covid-19 lockdowns. Worse even than homo economicus, this creature – homo avoidcovidus – is pathologically single-minded and real. A slice:
While economists often use homo economicus as a simplifying assumption when theorizing, no serious economist has ever insisted that real-world individuals actually fit the description of homo economicus – a dreary fictional sociopath who obsessively aims to maximize his narrow material well-being. Much less have serious thinkers ever recommended that real-world individuals transform themselves into homo economici. Covid collectivists, in contrast, believe that homo avoidcovidus is actually descriptive of many individuals and, when not descriptive, prescriptive.
Homo avoidcovidus seeks to maximize one narrow thing and that thing only: avoidance of Covid-19. Just as the caricature homo economicus is willing, say, to risk disintegration of his family in order to earn a few extra dollars by working excessively, homo avoidcovidus is willing to sacrifice family connections, friendships, the quality of his children’s education and of his own work, the simple pleasure of being at restaurants and theaters with other persons; everything, for even slight reductions in his prospect of catching Covid. For homo avoidcovidus, nothing is ever as important, on any margin, as is avoiding Covid. As long as the prospect of catching Covid is greater than zero, all steps to avoid it are justified in the puny mind of homo avoidcovidus.
Such are the gruesome monsters hatched by Covid collectivism. This deeply illiberal collectivist ideology thrives on irrational fear brought on by unusually poor information. And it refuses to acknowledge that Covid-19’s dangers, while indeed real, are not as great as suggested by daily screaming headlines, and are heavily confined to infirm groups on whom preventive attention should be, but isn’t, focused.
It’s time for a revolt against Covid collectivism.
More on Paid Leave
Here’s a letter to a high-school senior who is writing a paper on mandated paid leave:
Mr. Morrison:
Thanks for your e-mail.
You write that it’s “hard to get [your] head around why government shouldn’t require employers to give all workers paid leave.”
Here are a few items that I and some other economists wrote on this topic. But let me try yet another version of the explanation.
Begin by noticing your language: You describe employers being required “to give all workers paid leave.” If offering paid leave were costless to employers, there’d be no reason any would fail to do so. Therefore, what you describe is employers being required to give something to workers that is costly. The danger is that, once compelled to include paid leave in the compensation package for each worker, employers will offset this higher cost by reducing the value of other parts of the compensation packages for workers – for example, by lowering workers’ take-home pay. Workers who’d prefer more take home pay to paid leave are thereby harmed.
Think of the matter this way: Suppose that government required auto producers to give annually to each of their workers a new car worth at least $20,000. I’m confident that such a requirement would result in each auto-worker’s take-home pay falling by about $20,000. The fact that, in and of itself, a new car is good to own clearly doesn’t mean that this government requirement would be good for auto workers. Effectively, such a requirement would compel anyone who chooses to work for an auto producer to buy from his or her employer $20,000 worth of product every year.
By the same logic, mandating paid leave would require all workers to buy from their employers a specific product – namely, paid leave. How are workers made better off by government telling workers what they must buy from their employers? Asked differently, how are workers made better off by government telling employers what they must force their workers to buy from them?
Good luck with your paper!
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 Links
Thomas Sowell believes that Donald Trump is a lesser evil than is Joe Biden.
Ilya Somin believes that Joe Biden is a lesser evil than is Donald Trump.
John Cochrane offers a detailed analysis of a report on Biden’s economic plan.
Raymond Niles rightly bemoans the sloppy use of the word “monopoly.”
David Henderson rightly applauds the great J.B. Say.
Nick Gillespie talks with Jonathan Rauch.
Juliette Sellgren talks with Greg Lukianoff.
Tom Firey celebrates M*A*S*H. A slice:
An academic thesis has argued that the show’s success came in part from its following changing public values and outlooks as the United States moved from leftish libertinism of the early 1970s, to malaise-induced cynicism of the late ‘70s, to the conservative Reagan Revolution of the early 1980s. Yet, libertarians and other classical liberals — who often find political similarities where others see left–right differences — may perceive something else: that throughout its run, M*A*S*H consistently promoted the ideals of classical liberalism.
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 267 of Richard W. Duesenberg’s insightful 1962 article “Individualism and Corporations” (available without charge on-line here) as it appears in Liberty Fund’s 1981 single-volume collection of New Individualist Review:
The pragmatism of deciding each issue or case “on its merits” as an ad hoc proposition fails for want of a necessary ingredient of any good law, predictability. The alleged judiciousness of a society which does not feel itself bound to fixed principles is, in fact, not judiciousness, but simply a lack of principle, a drifting toward the point of not more, but less free will.
November 1, 2020
More Ivor Cummins on Covid
This short, new video by Ivor Cummins is highly informative. How anyone can watch this video and remain a pro-lockdowner is, to me, a mystery. Such a person must either have a mind impossibly closed, or believe that Cummins’s data are fake. If the latter, please inform me – with substance rather than with ad hominem. If the former, I pity you – but pity more those whose lives might be affected by your beliefs.
(For your convenience, using the browser Chrome, you can access here some of the links that Mr. Cummins mentions in his video.)
Four Covid-19 Links
Soho Forum debate director and former Barron’s writer Gene Epstein e-mailed to a group of friends (which includes me) a link to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s “Covid-19: Data” page. Gene – a New Yorker – clicked on “Underlying conditions” (in the “Confirmed Deaths” section) and was struck by how so few healthy New Yorkers, even old ones, have so far died of Covid. Here’s the note that accompanied Gene’s e-mail (original emphasis):
Under “Confirmed Deaths” from COVID listed by age and “Underlying conditions,” NYC data estimate 10 deaths so far by folks 65 and over with no underlying illness: “lung disease, asthma, heart disease, a weakened immune system, obesity, diabetes, kidney disease, liver disease and cancer.”
There are an estimated 1.2 million NYC residents 65 and over. On that basis, NYC residents like me over 65 with no underlying illness have one chance in 120 thousand of a COVID death.
That’s probably a lot less than my combined risk of dying from accidents (auto, fire, lightening, food poisoning…) & from getting murdered.
The single most important fact about the COVID pandemic—in terms of deciding how to respond to it on both an individual and a governmental basis—is that it is not equally dangerous for everybody. This became clear very early on, but for some reason our public health messaging failed to get this fact out to the public.
It still seems to be a common perception that COVID is equally dangerous to everybody, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. There is a thousand-fold difference between the mortality rate in older people, 70 and up, and the mortality rate in children. In some sense, this is a great blessing. If it was a disease that killed children preferentially, I for one would react very differently. But the fact is that for young children, this disease is less dangerous than the seasonal flu. This year, in the United States, more children have died from the seasonal flu than from COVID by a factor of two or three.
Alberto Mingardi reflects on Italy’s second lockdown. A slice:
“There are no libertarians in a pandemic;” but somehow that is a problem. One of the key insights of modern libertarianism is that a complex society is a tangle of knowledge problems, which central authorities are not very good at unraveling. This has been lost on decision-makers, who think they can win the “war against the virus” with top-down decisions, irrespective of continuous and abrupt change. They are always lagging a step behind.
We are told as a matter of certain fact that the whole of the NHS is in danger of being overwhelmed. Our data suggest that there have indeed been hotspots – in Liverpool, for example – but that the situation is stabilising even in some of these places.
In the past 48 hours, we have been told there are 96,000 new infections a day. But we have also been told by respectable analysts that there are 36,000 cases and 55,000 cases a day. Take your pick. The track record of predictions – once checked against the facts – is abysmal.
…..
Finally, we must change the tone and scope of the debate.
There has to be a measured discussion that includes the consequences of lockdown as well as the supposed benefits.
Otherwise, there can be no clear way forward. People are confused, fatigued and starting to understand that crude restrictions targeting the whole of society – irrespective of risk – are counterproductive.
Indeed, they kill people just as surely as Covid-19. There have been 23,619 excess deaths in England in people’s homes since the start of April.
Yet only ten per cent of these are directly related to Covid. The rest, we might assume, are the result of restricting national life and access to usual healthcare. These deaths have largely been ignored.
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 25 of the 1985 Liberty Fund edition of Adam Smith’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres; specifically, it’s from Smith’s November 29th, 1762, lecture “Of what is called the tropes and figures of speech”:
When the sentiment of the speaker is expressed in a neat, clear, plain, and clever manner, and the passion or affection he is possessed of and intends, by sympathy, to communicate to his hearer, is plainly and cleverly hit off, then and then only the expression has all the force and beauty that language can give it.
October 31, 2020
Bonus Quotation of the Day…
… is from Oxford University theoretical epidemiologist – and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration – Sunetra Gupta’s October 30th, 2020, Daily Mail op-ed, “A contagion of hatred and hysteria”:
For the simple truth is that Covid-19 will not just go away if we continue to impose enough meaningless restrictions on ourselves. And the longer we fail to recognise this, the worse will be the permanent economic damage — the brunt of which, again, will be borne by the disadvantaged and the young.
Some Links
The great Bob Chitester is the subject of this week’s “Weekend Interview” in the Wall Street Journal. A slice:
Mr. Chitester says his “absolute favorite” moment in the series [“Free To Choose,” which Chitester brilliantly conceived and produced] is at the end of episode five, “Created Equal.” Friedman is at Monticello, talking about the challenge of judging Thomas Jefferson, a man who wrote one of history’s greatest documents for liberty even as he owned slaves.
“Milton concluded the episode with the following quote: The society that puts equality before freedom will get little of either. The society that puts freedom before equality will get a great measure of both.”
“Free to Choose” drew an average three million viewers an episode and was later broadcast all over the world. The companion book, reworked from the transcripts by Milton and Rose, was eventually translated into 17 languages and became the bestseller for nonfiction in the U.S. that year.
I love Art Carden’s latest essay for AIER, and especially its opening paragraph:
Economic pessimism, sadly, is always in fashion. I suspect that if Deirdre McCloskey and I had titled our book Let Us Run Your Lives Or Everybody Dies: How the Bolshevik and Bureaucratic Deals Will Keep You Safe and Secure in the Age of Pandemics and Terrorism and Environmental Catastrophe rather than Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich: How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World, we’d probably sell more copies.
In this video from the Fraser Institute, my GMU Econ colleague Dan Klein discusses “What is Liberalism? Past and Future” with Helena Rosenblatt.
In her podcast, The Great Antidote, Juliette Sellgren discusses government debt with John Cogan.
Scott Lincicome points us to yet one more piece of evidence against the case for industrial policy.
Let’s hope that the courts prevent the appalling tyranny of Gavin Newsom’s Covid-19 lockdown diktats.
Jeffrey Tucker decries the new caste system imposed by the response to Covid-19.
A realistic picture would suggest tens of millions of Americans have encountered the virus without fuss. It would suggest the death risk for any individual is flu-like—as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, and many other experts have been telling us since February.
The bigger numbers might suggest we are grappling with a natural phenomenon over which we exercise little control.
Let’s recap. Unlike the flu, 160 million of us of aren’t vaccinated against the new virus. None of us, school age and up, have resistance from previous encounters. Local hospitals face a Covid challenge two or three times bigger than their annual flu challenge simply because so many more of us are susceptible. Plus there’s the non-negligible risk of a severe reaction when our immune system encounters a virus it hasn’t encountered before.
All of us would rather not get the disease. All of us benefit from putting it off until hospitals learn how to treat it—even though the risk for each of us is flu-like.
But the reality principle doesn’t ignore us even if we ignore it. The test-and-trace silver bullet, which epidemiologists once promoted, Dr. Fauci now admits is impractical because of a large number of asymptomatic cases. Germany, once a role model, admits it has been able to trace only 25% of confirmed cases, which probably means 5% of true cases.
…..
We battle the virus, though, while being fed a colossally distorted picture of the epidemic and its progress by an incompetent and sociopathic press.
Anti-Science?
Here’s a letter to a young woman who accuses me (and other lockdown opponents) of being “anti-science”:
Ms. Hasanov:
Thanks for your e-mail.
I did indeed read Alan Alda’s Washington Post op-ed. Of course he’s correct that, in the formation of policy responses to Covid-19, science should be consulted. But if your interpretation of his op-ed is accurate – as it seems to be – I cannot agree with, as you approvingly describe it, “his demand that science determine the policy.”
Science is an indispensable source of knowledge. While it can help us to better achieve the goals to which our values point us, it itself does not and cannot determine those values and goals. Nor can science tell any individual, and much less any group of individuals, how to trade-off one desirable outcome against other such outcomes. In short, policy is not something that can be “determined” by science.
Therefore, even if (contrary to reality) science offered a clear answer to the question ‘What number of lives would be saved by tighter lockdowns?’ – and even if this answer is positive and large – science would not settle the matter in favor of tighter lockdowns. Such a policy has costs. It disrupts lives in many ways. The value of what is lost as a result of this disruption must be weighed against the value of whatever might be the net gains to health. And science can’t possibly tell us how such a trade-off should be struck.
If it seems heartless to accept policies that result in premature deaths, note that each year in the U.S. approximately 7,000 people drown in swimming pools. That’s an average of more than 19 such drownings daily, and a disproportionate number of these deaths are of young children. And so as a matter of scientific fact, government could prevent this number of tragic drownings by locking down all swimming pools.
Should government adopt this lockdown policy? Your answer likely is no. You recognize that there’s positive value to the exercise and enjoyment that people get from swimming, and that this value is sufficiently high to justify the risk of drowning. Importantly, your opposition to swimming-pool lockdowns isn’t “anti-science.”
And so it is with Covid lockdowns. While consideration of such lockdowns should take account of scientific information, no amount of such information settles the case scientifically in favor of (or against) lockdowns. We, like you, necessarily are guided by our values and preferences in coming to our position regarding lockdowns. Those of us who oppose lockdowns are not, as you accuse us, “anti-science.”
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
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