Russell Roberts's Blog, page 58
January 17, 2023
Some Links
Different countries had different lockdown policies, and within federal republics like the U.S. and Australia, different states and regions also had different lockdown policies. UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh revealed that a recent U.K. Office of National Statistics report says that “Sweden and Norway were essentially tied for the lowest all-cause excess-mortality scores.”
Using more recent OECD data (March 2020 to October 2022), Mr. Volokh then calculated that Sweden had the lowest aggregate excess mortality percentages (2.79) — even below Norway (4.28) — and the U.S., the highest (20.90), or approximately seven times higher than Sweden. Other OECD countries were far worse than Sweden but much better than the U.S. (e.g., Australia — 8.0; Germany — 8.86; France — 9.99; U.K. – 10.6; Canada 12.12; Israel — 13.14; and Poland — 20.13).
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The big mistake the CDC people (Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Francis Collins, etc.) made was to single-mindedly focus on potential deaths directly from COVID-19 while largely ignoring the potential deaths indirectly induced by the lockdowns. Presidents Trump and Biden were also mistaken to basically listen to single-source “experts” from the government health care establishment rather than also listening to others from places like Johns Hopkins and Stanford universities, who had the expertise but did not have the vested interests of the CDC/Big Pharma cabal.
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If the above-described mistakes had not been made, it is no overstatement to say that hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars could have been saved, and basic constitutional rights would not have been trampled. Those who pretended they had knowledge that they didn’t have and then, based on their misrepresentations, made recommendations or, worse yet, imposed destructive mandates on the American people have much to atone for.
Let’s hope that Eli Klein is correct: (HT Jay Bhattacharya)
It’s hard to exaggerate how big of an L Duke University took on mask mandates. They announced that they’ll likely mandate masks in classrooms on January 9, then were forced to walk that back a week later. People are fed up with Covid mandates and won’t take it anymore. A big win!
A new twitter files drop by @lhfang confirms that Pfizer and Moderna pressured twitter to suppress tweets advocating for low cost generic vaccines. It seems certain the pharma propaganda campaign did not limit itself to twitter and only to this issue.
That charge of inconsistency has been overturned by several generations of scholars. Smith understood man as naturally benevolent towards kith and kin, and to operate from reciprocal considerations of self-regard with strangers. His two books might be understood as treating different spheres — the personal (TMS) and the impersonal (WN). There is no inconsistency. But “the Adam Smith problem” is like the heads of the Hydra: Cut one down and two take its place.
Rich Vedder asks: Who should own the University of North Carolina? (HT George Leef)
Antony Davies points to evidence that outcomes are improved by economic freedom.
Michael Shellenberger debunks Paul Ehrlich’s latest hysterical prediction. A slice:
In fact, in rich nations around the world, wild areas are coming back, thanks to the more efficient use of land for producing food in general and meat in particular. Humans use about half of the ice-free land surface of the Earth. Of that half, we use about half for meat production, which is one the greatest threats to endangered species. But the amount of land humans use for meat has declined massively in recent decades, nearly an area the size of Alaska.
Pierre Lemieux offers at least four good reasons to learn economics.
Quotation of the Day…
… is the closing line of an e-mail that my friend Jonathan Fortier sent yesterday to Todd Zywicki and me; I here share Jonathan’s words with his kind permission:
I think the WEF [World Economic Forum] envisions a world where most people “have everything they need” in the same way that animals in a zoo have “everything they need”. Everything except freedom.
DBx: Pictured here is WEF founder, Klaus Schwab – who, helpfully, sometimes dresses as if he’s a villain in a Bond movie.
January 16, 2023
Bonus Quotation of the Day…
… is from pages 291-292 Thomas Sowell’s July 2nd, 1999, letter to UCLA economist William R. Allen, as this letter appears on pages 290-292 of Sowell’s 2007 collection, A Man of Letters (link added):
After the death of Julian Simon, I went to my bookshelf to take another look at one of his books before writing an obituary. As I opened the book, out fell a letter from Simon that I had never seen before. In it, he said that [Nobel-laureate economist Simon] Kuznets had told him that he (Kuznets) believed that a larger world population might be a plus economically, but that voicing such a view would risk undermining his own credibility. Julian Simon said that he understood such prudence, but that he also understood the larger negative implications of such prudence. Perhaps for that reason, I especially value those who are not so prudent….
DBx: Pictured here is the late, great Julian Simon.
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page xiii of Michael Shellenberger’s superb 2020 book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All:
Much of what people are being told about the environment, including the climate, is wrong, and we desperately need to get it right. I decided to write Apocalypse Never after getting fed up with the exaggeration, alarmism, and extremism that are the enemy of positive, humanistic, and rational environmentalism.
January 15, 2023
More on Leonard Read’s “I, Pencil”
I thank my treasured colleague Pete Boettke for joining in, at his Facebook page, to defend Leonard Read against the ridiculous charge of believing that the economic process of producing pencils is the product of divine intervention. This charge is so over-the-top absurd that it serves only as evidence of the pathetically poor reading skills of those who make it.
In addition to my earlier essay, it occurs to me to make one other point on this front. I first read “I, Pencil” in 1977. Since then, I’ve seen it referenced thousands of times by dozens of different writers and speakers. Not once did any of these writers or speakers suggest that in writing “I, Pencil” Read was describing the work of god.
Also, I was president from July 1997 through July 2001 of the organization founded in 1946 by Read, the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). For those four years I worked literally in the same office in which Read sat to write “I, Pencil.” In my capacity as FEE’s president, I met many people who knew Read personally, and a few of whom worked for him. Unsurprisingly, the topic of “I, Pencil” came up in discussion frequently. Not once did I encounter anyone who interpreted that essay in the bizarre way that it is interpreted by the two intellectuals to whom I refer in this earlier post.
As FEE’s president I also gave countless talks in which “I, Pencil” was named and played a prominent role. Often in attendance at these talks were people such as Bettina Bien Greaves, the Rev. Ed Opitz, and Read’s long-time secretary Jeanette Brown, all of whom worked for FEE during Read’s time at the helm. Other individuals who I distinctly remember being in the audience for at least one of my talks include former FEE trustees Ethelmae Humphreys, Israel Kirzner, Manuel Ayau, Bill Law, Don Foote, Andrea Rich, Pete Peters, Harry Langenberg, Bill Speakman, Bob Love, and Stu Pritchard – each of whom knew Leonard Read personally and revered his memory. Relevantly here, several of these individuals were devoutly religious. Had I or any other FEE speaker (or writer) falsely portrayed the message of “I, Pencil” I’m certain that I would have heard of this offense.
Yet having from the start understood “I, Pencil” to be a celebration of the fact that multitudes of strangers are directed, not by god, but by market prices to cooperate with each other not only productively, but also in a manner so complex that no human mind can possibly understand in full the details of this cooperation, I always spoke about “I, Pencil” as being an essay about the marvels of the market price system. Never did it remotely occur to me to suggest that this essay is about the handiwork of god. Had I ever so mis-portrayed this essay, I would have been swiftly corrected by many of those persons who knew Leonard Read. And had I resisted being so corrected, I likely would have been fired – deservedly so – by FEE’s board for utter incompetence.
Intellectuals Who Can’t Read
On his Facebook page, Phil Magness rightly criticizes two intellectuals whose interpretation of Leonard Read’s famous 1958 essay “I, Pencil” is hilariously mistaken. To assert or even to suggest that Read’s argument is that pencils (or pencil-making processes) are made by god is to display a level of reading comprehension that would embarrass a pre-schooler. I’ll not be surprised if these ‘scholars’ soon accuse Milton Friedman – who in his documentary (see below), and book, Free To Choose, famously used Read’s account of the production of pencils – of also believing that pencils are produced by god. I’m led to say about these intellectuals essentially what I said in this earlier post about Jacob Soll and his whackadoodle interpretation of Adam Smith:
The only three possible explanations for these intellectuals’ bizarre interpretation of Leonard Read’s “I, Pencil” is that (1) these intellectuals are illiterate; (2) these intellectuals intentionally mischaracterized Read’s argument; or (3) despite posing to the contrary, these intellectuals didn’t actually read Leonard Read’s essay in full or with even the minimum of attention required of individuals who choose to write about Read’s essay. Because both (2) and (3) imply a moral failing while (1) implies only an intellectual failing – and because, without evidence to the contrary, it’s always best to attribute error to a failure of the intellect rather than to unethical intent – I conclude that these intellectuals really can’t read all that well.
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These intellectuals likely also believe that Adam Smith – who wrote “By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention” – believed that a literal invisible hand is at work directing people’s economic affairs. After all, Smith wrote about the investor that he is “led by an invisible hand.” Smith didn’t qualify “invisible hand.” Nor did Smith bother to tell his readers “Hey, by the way, I’m here using what is called ‘a metaphor.'” Smith understandably addressed his writings to people with reading comprehension. So, too, did Leonard Read.
The Utter Illogic of Mercantilism
Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal:
Editor:
Your report “Biden Administration’s Big Manufacturing Push Could Transform Global Trade” (Jan. 12) reveals that politicians’ understanding of trade is utterly perverse.
Upset that foreigners sell to Americans lots of goods at low prices, the Biden administration announces that it will force American taxpayers to subsidize the production of more microchips, many of which will be exported. This American gift of artificially low-cost microchips to foreigners so infuriates officials in the E.U., Japan, and South Korea that they hatch schemes to compel their citizens to subsidize the production of microchips, many of which will be exported and made available at artificially low costs to Americans.
Governments, in effect, hurl at each other the following threat: “How dare you force your citizens to give gifts to our citizens! If you don’t stop this gift-giving, we’ll force our citizens to give gifts to yours!”
In the crossfire of this battle of dimwits are each country’s ordinary citizens whose spending power is artificially lowered by their governments’ quest to artificially raise the spending power of foreigners.
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
Emphasizing the fact that “the COVID-19 shots do not prevent transmission,” the New York Supreme Court on Friday struck down that state’s covid-vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. [DBx: Note that the New York Supreme Court is a trial court of general jurisdiction; it is not that state’s highest judicial tribunal. Still, this ruling is welcome.]
Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the U.S. FDA’s vaccine advisory committee, has written in the New England Journal of Medicine, the world’s top medical journal, calling for an end to the mass vaccination of anyone at low risk from the virus. In an op-ed titled “Bivalent COVID-19 Vaccines – A Cautionary Tale”, Dr. Offit writes that Covid boosters are “probably best reserved for the people most likely to need protection against severe disease.
Euphoric Recall explains “how the authoritarian Left and wokeism corrupted science.” (HT Jay Bhattacharya) A slice:
Science itself is a process of careful observation, record keeping, logical and mathematical reasoning, experimentation, and submitting conclusions to the scrutiny of others. It requires that we agree upon objective truths, and that we believe in our own capacity to explore the unknown to uncover those truths.
The Science™, however, is an entirely different matter. It amounts to a call for silence, not investigation. Purveyors of the oft-repeated slogan “Follow the science!” don’t mean that we ought to acknowledge the reality of scientific findings, but rather that we accept their preferred solutions and look the other way when they ignore and twist science for their own ideological ends. The Science™ is never invoked to convince, but to bludgeon. It is, as conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro put it, “politics dressed in a white coat.”
Over and over again throughout the course of the pandemic we watched as The Science™ prevailed to the detriment of society.
Eric Boehm decries “the utterly unserious fiscal policy discourse in Washington.” A slice:
The idea of shrinking the discretionary portion of the government back to the size that it was literally just a month ago is “impossible,” according to Politico reporters Caitlin Emma and Connor O’Brien (and their congressional sources), who describe the Republican plan to hold discretionary funding level as relying on “severe cuts” and say the futility of the exercise would “put Don Quixote to shame.”
Theirs is perhaps the most outlandish example of the deeply unserious world of fiscal policy discourse, but it hardly stands alone. The budget rules adopted earlier this week by the new Republican majority in the House lay a foundation for “massive spending cuts,” according to Roll Call. The Washington Post describes the budget plan with similar language, before noting a few paragraphs later that Republicans are merely seeking a return to the status quo of 2022.
Eric Bazail-Eimil reports that Cubans and Haitians are fleeing to the U.S. in staggering numbers.” [DBx: Let’s here note what shouldn’t, but does for too many people, need noting: These immigrants’ actions are powerful evidence against the woke assertion that the United States is today is a racist hell. Racism does still sadly exists in the U.S., and some of it is indeed institutionalized, such as in minimum-wage legislation and the organized opposition to school choice. But at least compared to life in the communist paradise of Cuba and in many other countries, the advantages for poor people of color to live in the U.S. apparently far outweigh the costs.]
George Leef reviews Paul Moreno’s book on the history of the United States Supreme Court.
Ralph Schoellhammer talks with Brendan O’Neill about “the road to eco-serfdom.”
Quotation of the Day…
… is from pages 123-124 of Steven Pinker’s superb 2018 volume, Enlightenment Now (footnote and references deleted):
[I]ndusrialization has been good for humanity. It has fed billions, doubled life spans, slashed extreme poverty, and, by replacing muscle with machinery, made it easier to end slavery, emancipate women, and educate children. It has allowed people to read at night, live where they want, stay warm in winter, see the world, and multiply human contact. Any costs in pollution and habitat loss have to be weighed against these gifts.
January 14, 2023
A Bot Is Better Than ‘Education’ Bureaucrats
After reading, at Cafe Hayek, passages from George Will’s superb column on the extreme wokism at what was once an excellent government school – wokism that calls for “equal outcomes for every student, without exception” – David Mohler sent to me the following e-mail. I share Mr. Mohler’s e-mail here with his kind permission.
Hi Don,
I put your writing prompt about the Fairfax school district’s equal outcome policy into Chat GPT. The output:
A school policy that guarantees equal outcomes for every student, without exception, would have wide-ranging practical implications. This type of policy would fundamentally change the way that school activities are run and could have a significant impact on the educational experience of students.
Academically, this policy would mean that all students would be guaranteed the same grades, regardless of their abilities or efforts. This would eliminate the traditional concept of merit, where students are rewarded for their hard work and achievement. Instead, every student would be given the same outcome, regardless of their performance. This could lead to a decrease in motivation among students and could also create challenges for teachers who would have to find new ways to engage and motivate students.
In extracurricular activities, this policy would mean that all students would be guaranteed the same level of participation and success. For example, in a track meet, all students would be guaranteed the same time or distance, regardless of their abilities or efforts. This would eliminate the traditional concept of competition and would likely decrease motivation and engagement among students. Additionally, coaches would have to find new ways to motivate and engage students, while also ensuring that all students are guaranteed the same outcome.
In summary, a school policy that guarantees equal outcomes for every student, without exception, would have wide-ranging practical implications. It would fundamentally change the way that school activities are run, could decrease motivation and engagement among students, and create challenges for teachers and coaches. It is important for school officials to consider these implications before implementing such a policy.
Even a bot has more sense than the Fairfax admin.
Cheers,
David Mohler
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