We Don’t Need One Big Plan to End the Lockdown
The transition back to normal life involves the coordination of the disparate and often-incompatible plans of billions of minds–and if we wish for that coordination to make the best use of knowledge in society, we are making a mistake if we are looking for a plan.
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The Struggle for Science in Demented Times
During a crisis, fate appears to hang in the balance, and mental and material resources must be coordinated and that requires a commander who is in control of the process. But that will not work if curiosity is squashed in the effort to courageously command.
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The Magnitude of the Economic Challenge Even in Normal Times
To rely only on select and officially approved researchers, or to ignore ideas from all or even some foreigners, is to unnecessarily reduce the number of human beings working to discover from among an incalculably vast number of possible chemical arrangements the one or a few that might render the coronavirus harmless.
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Governments Don’t Have Magic Wands To Ward off Asymmetric Information
With the “asymmetric information” argument, the left got a seemingly bulletproof theory with which to whack markets and subject them to government regulation: capitalists prey on the uninformed consumer and extract unfair rents from them in the informational version of haves that take advantage of have-nots. If not remedied, beneficial exchange disappears.
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Public Choice and the Lockdowns
Public Choice seeks to apply our assumptions about human beings and their behavior to the state in the same way we apply those assumptions to other human institutions. It asks us not to be romantic about political power and the way it operates.
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Science and the Pandemic
I can think of no greater offense against a genuinely scientific attitude than to support policies – especially ones adopted in haste and in a panic, and which diminish the amount of information that is uncovered and put to good use throughout society – simply because these policies are recommended by some epidemiologists.
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