Russell Roberts's Blog, page 368
October 3, 2020
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “Failed fed”
In my column for the November 26th, 2010, edition of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review I reported on then-recent (and still-relevant) research done by George Selgin, Larry White, and Bill Lastrapes on the record of the Federal Reserve. You can read my column beneath the fold (links added).
Some Links
It didn’t surprise me at all that Melloan was an anti-lockdowner. He was an old-school liberal who believed “markets are like Mother Nature, not to be messed with.” He was a solid free trader (remember those?), a proponent of tax cuts and fiscal restraint, an advocate of sound money, and a genuine humanitarian who believed that wealth creation through free enterprise is the best path forward for all societies.
His views shaped the editorial direction of the Wall Street Journal for half a century, and his spirit there has been evident in the lockdowns, which the Journal has marvelously and consistently opposed from March onward. Indeed, so far as I know, the Journal is the only mainstream news outlet that has been speaking sense on this topic from the beginning.
(A boast: A few years ago Mary O’Grady told me that George Melloan read Cafe Hayek. Naturally, I was pleased to hear this news, and am pleased now to recall it.)
Mr. Trump, at 74, is at higher risk for a bad outcome than a 30-year-old would be. But most 74-year-olds survive Covid and many never have debilitating symptoms. Our media are prone to hysteria, oversimplification and fetishizing random things—case-fatality rates, masks, etc. Reporters and editors have a distorted single-variable mentality. Covid is deadly in a small percentage of cases, currently estimated at between 0.1% and 0.41%, especially among older people in ill health.
In yesterday’s employment figures, David Henderson finds “somewhat good news.”
Alberto Mingardi rightly decries the cancelling of David Hume.
Also from Scott Lincicome is this (unsurprising) report on the cronyism is inseparable from protectionism. Here’s Scott’s conclusion:
When skeptics criticize “free markets,” the markets at issue are usually not very free at all. Indeed, the conclusions above are utterly unsurprising to free traders who have for years watched large, well‐connected corporations capture the administrative state and use regulation to restrict foreign competition and maintain power. If the markets were free (or, at least, freer), and large companies were forced to compete without the government’s thumb on the scale, Big Business’ market power could be significantly checked. You’d think such a result would be welcomed by the populist right and left, but progress (especially these days) is often thwarted by emotional antipathy to markets and “globalism” more broadly. As a result, un-free markets proliferate, and corporate power increases—ironically fueling populist calls for the very government action that increased it in the first place.
Quotation of the Day…
… is from pages 82-83 of Vol. 19 (Ideas, Persons, and Events [2001]) of The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan; specifically, it’s from Jim’s 1991 paper “Frank H. Knight,” a remembrance of his great mentor at the University of Chicago:
As economists came to be captured both by the fascination of mathematical manipulation and by the technology of computational possibilities, they had less time for serious consideration of the issues address by Knight, who objected, and strenuously, to the “scientification” of his disciplinary base. Analytical rigor was not to be equated with conversion into symbolic language, and the reality of human interaction was far too complex for much to be learned from the empirical testing of hypotheses analogous to the procedures that describe the activities of the physical scientists.
DBx: Buchanan, who fully shared Knight’s correct understanding that scientism is false science, was born 101 years ago today, October 3rd.
October 2, 2020
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 79 of Deirdre McCloskey’s important 2019 book, Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All:
The communist, fascist, and national socialist régimes dating from 1917, 1922, and 1933, all of them versions of socialism inspired by nationalism, left upwards of one hundred million people dead in their pursuit of planning rationality and national honor.
DBx: Quite a legacy.
Fortunately for us Americans, we would never resort to such brutality and murderousness. We are, after all, a peaceful people tolerant of diverse political and ideological views. Even when we disagree, we respect each other’s views and never attempt to change those views with any means other than calm, rational, and intelligent discussion.
And, at any rate, our traditional love of liberty and unyielding suspicion of the exercise of discretionary power by the state would save us from such a terrible fate.
October 1, 2020
If You Support Lockdowns…
… or other unprecedented uses of government power to obstruct masses of human beings from going about their (once-)normal ways of living, working, learning, and playing, you are obliged to tell the rest of us how you justify or excuse what is being done in the name of the lockdowns.
Here’s an e-mail sent, to a listserv of which I am a participant, by my Canadian friend Jon Fortier:
Quebec has recently implemented a colour-coded alert system for Covid. People who reside in areas coded “red” (the current rating for Montreal and Quebec City) are prohibited from hosting any individuals (in one’s home) who reside elsewhere. Police are legally fast-tracked to acquire on-the-fly warrants to enter homes to verify that visitors are not present. All restaurants, bars, cafés in those regions are closed. Public demonstrations (with masks) are permitted. People are encouraged to contact police to report suspicious activity. If you wish to leave Quebec it must be through Check-point Charlie.
Quebec has a population of 8.4 million and there have been 5,834 deaths (0.07% as a percentage of population). As in most regions, 92.6% of all deaths have occurred amongst the population over 70 years old.
And here’s a link that Jon sent to accompany his note.
…..
Nothing is easier than imagining kindly government officials using the vast powers at their discretion in well-informed ways to increase our safety. Yet even if there is some greater-than-zero probability that ideal use of the lockdown power will ‘work’ according to some reasonable criterion, we do not live in a world remotely close to ideal. The power to lockdown and to otherwise obstruct human behavior will inevitably be exercised by imperfect and ill-informed human beings, many of whom enjoy lording it over others. Any case for lockdown must take this reality as a given.
And as Jon’s e-mail suggests, the evidence is accumulating that this power is being used unwisely, even tyrannically.
Lockdownism
I wrote this earlier post before reading Jeffrey Tucker’s AIER essay on the same topic. Jeff says much of what I sought to say, only he says it better and more fully.
Compared to Jeff, I remain more in the camp of those who believe that the
covid-19 lockdowns are mostly a gargantuan, tragic error – one that, should humanity ever regain some semblance of sanity, will one day be ranked with many wars and pogroms as a ghastly spasm of human stupidity, superstition, and cruelty. Our descendants in 2350 are likely to look upon the official actions taken in 2020 in the same way that we look upon the Salem witch trials.
But regardless of the details of the motives of Anthony Fauci, M.D., of the Hon. Andrew Cuomo, of Dr. Neil Ferguson, or of you-name-the-lockdowner, Jeff Tucker is perhaps on to something in identifying a new and tyrannical ideology on the loose: lockdownism.
Here are some slices from Jeff’s essay:
This year has given us a new ideology with totalitarian tendencies. It has a vision of hell, of heaven, and a means of transition. It has a unique language apparatus. It has a mental focus. It has signalling systems to reveal and recruit adherents.
That ideology is called lockdown. We might as well add the ism to the word: lockdownism.
Its vision of hell is a society in which pathogens run freely. Its heaven is a society managed entirely by medical technocrats whose main job is the suppression of all disease. The mental focus is the viruses and other bugs. The anthropology is to regard all human beings as little more than sacks of deadly pathogens. The people susceptible to the ideology are the people with various degrees of mysophobia, once regarded as a mental problem now elevated to the status of social awareness.
This year has been the first test of lockdownism. It included the most intrusive, comprehensive, and near-global controls of human beings and their movements in recorded history. Even in countries where the rule of law and liberties are sources of national pride, people were put under house arrest. Their churches and businesses were closed. The police have been unleashed to enforce it all and arrest open dissent. The devastation compares with wartime except that it was a government-imposed war on people’s right to move and exchange freely. We still cannot travel.
…..
Early on, most people went along, thinking that it was somehow necessary and short term. Two weeks stretched to 30 days which stretched to 7 months, and now we are told there will never be a time when we don’t practice this new public-policy faith. It’s a new totalitarianism. And with all such regimes, there is one set of rules for the rulers and another for the ruled.
The language apparatus is now incredibly familiar: curve flattening, spread slowing, social distancing, targeted layered containment, non-pharmaceutical intervention. The enemy is the virus and anyone who isn’t living their life solely to avoid contamination. Because you can’t see the virus, that usually means generating a paranoia of The Other: someone unlike you has the virus.
…..
Fauci’s entire essay reads like an attempted lockdown manifesto, complete with the fully expected longings for the state of nature and an imagined purification of life. Reading this utopian plan for a society without pathogens helps explain one of the strangest features of lockdownism: its puritanism. Notice that the lockdown particularly attacked anything that resembles fun: Broadway, movies, sports, travel, bowling, bars, restaurants, hotels, gyms, and clubs. Still now there are curfews in place to stop people from staying out too late — with absolutely no medical rationale. Pets are on the list too.
If an activity is fun, it is a target.
Expert Failure to Know
Phil Magness reports on a new paper co-authored by Anthony Fauci, M.D. In this paper, Dr. Fauci and his co-author (Dr. David Morens) write:
It is a useful ‘‘thought experiment’’ to note that until recent decades and centuries, many deadly pandemic diseases either did not exist or were not significant problems. Cholera, for example, was not known in the West until the late 1700s and became pandemic only because of human crowding and international travel, which allowed new access of the bacteria in regional Asian ecosystems to the unsanitary water and sewer systems that characterized cities throughout the Western world. This realization leads us to suspect that some, and probably very many, of the living improvements achieved over recent centuries come at a high cost that we pay in deadly disease emergences. Since we cannot return to ancient times, can we at least use lessons from those times to bend modernity in a safer direction? These are questions to be answered by all societies and their leaders, philosophers, builders, and thinkers and those involved in appreciating and influencing the environmental determinants of human health.
Is Dr. Fauci unaware of the enormous increase, over the past 250 or so years, in life expectancy? Is he unaware that a disproportionate share of this improvement was reaped by poor people? (Dr. Fauci should spend some time on this site.)
Imagine a time traveler from the mid-18th century or earlier spending a few months trekking forward in time to 2020 (or well, to 2019, before humanity went collectively insane). This time traveler is seeking knowledge about how to improve the health of the masses.
On her journey, this time traveler studies what’s going on at different times along the way – in 1800, in 1810, in 1820, and up to the present day. Surely by the time this time traveler reaches 2020, she is happily stunned by humanity’s long life expectancy, by the cleanliness and safety of modern society, and by the vigor of people many of whom in her day would have been long decayed in their graves. (I have in mind here people around my age – 62 – and older.)
What would this time traveler think were she to stumble upon and read this paper by Dr. Fauci? I cannot believe that she’d think anything other than that this man is appallingly ignorant of history.
So, my friends, keep in mind the above claim made by Dr. Fauci if and when you’re tempted to trust government officials to lock us down as they have done. Their restrictions, mandates, orders, commands, prohibitions, and proscriptions will almost certainly be conceived of, and ‘justified,’ by officials with all the historical knowledge and appreciation for context as is evidenced above by Dr. Fauci.
I do not question Dr. Fauci’s knowledge of medicine and of the biology and physics of infectious diseases. For all I know he’s the Einstein of his speciality. Nor do I doubt that the knowledge that such specialists as he offer humanity is very useful. And I don’t question Dr. Fauci’s intentions. But neither he nor anyone else should be trusted with the power to do what he advised governments to do to humanity.
Dr. Fauci and his co-author look past the astonishing improvements in the human condition – including human health – and focus on the “high cost that we pay [today] in deadly disease emergences.” Where’s the perspective? Where’s the context? Nowhere to be seen. This lack of context and perspective – along with ignorance of economics and naiveté about government – prompt them to wish to “bend modernity in a safer direction.”
Trusting the likes of Dr. Fauci with the power to obstruct human interaction is to trust a person who not only is ignorant of what he ought not be ignorant, but who has no qualms about proposing that modernity – meaning: people – be ‘bent,’ presumably by strong governments obediently following advice offered by people such as himself.
Some Links
J.D. Tuccille wisely warns of the dangers of the covid lockdowns. Here’s his conclusion:
Given what we know now after months of unpleasant experience, it should be obvious that restrictions intended to preserve our health are making us poorer and angrier. Further disrupting people’s social connections and economic activity would be worse than pouring salt on open wounds. It would amount to throwing a lit match on a pile of oil-soaked rags.
My GMU Econ colleague Bryan Caplan correctly protests against the popular denial of human agency. A slice (original emphasis):
Self-help is like a vaccine: When used, it works wonders. The fact that many people refuse to do what works is a flimsy reason to humor them. And it is a terrible reason to endorse clear-cut errors like, “They just can’t do it.” Anyone can get vaccinated; just roll up your sleeve and let the doctor stick you with the needle. Anyone can be thin; just eat moderately and exercise regularly. And anyone can improve his own life; just stop making excuses and follow the path of prudence.
(Please: No nit-picking about Bryan’s use of the word “thin”; the context indicates that he means ‘not overweight, and certainly not obese.’)
Joakim Book celebrates the bumblebeeness of his native Sweden. A slice:
Throughout the pandemic Sweden has followed its own decentralized public health governance and its politicians have mostly stepped out of the way, dealing with the pandemic calmly and prudently. Despite an avalanche of foreign criticism of its pandemic response, it has held its ground, mostly immune to foreign rumblings, denunciations, and indignant judgments.
Pierre Lemieux laments impoverishing – and sometimes lethal – economic illiteracy.
Presidential debates test next to nothing that is germane to the performance of presidential duties. Biden’s ungraceful scrum with someone unhinged and uninformed was an event with no analogue in a well-managed presidency.
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “Idealism vs. cynicism”
My column for the November 10th, 2010, edition of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is a faithful transcript of a conversation that the idealist within me had with the cynic (realist?) within me following the mid-term U.S. election of 2010. You can read my conversation beneath the fold.
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 137 of Richard Epstein’s insight-filled 2006 book, How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution:
[Progressives of the 1930s] were determined that their vision of the managed economy should take precedence in all areas of life. Although they purported to have great sophistication on economic and social matters, their understanding of those matters was primitive, and their disdain for the evident signs of social improvement colored their vision of the success of the older order…. The Progressives and their modern defenders have to live with the stark truth that the noblest innovations of the Progressive Era were its greatest failures.
DBx: Yes – as any careful student of American history must conclude. Yet the fantasy that society in general, and the economy specifically, can be consciously engineered through coercion to produce outcomes fancied by Progressives lives on. Nothing can destroy this belief in miracles. Not reason. Not facts. Nothing. This belief is an article of faith, nothing more or less.
Making matters worse is this sorry reality: Progressives today are increasingly being joined by conservatives in their mad belief in the miraculous powers of coercion to improve economic outcomes.
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