Topic: Crisis

Needed: Millions of Individual Experiments

– May 14, 2020

We must embrace individual freedom as the answer to this crisis. End the lockdowns, and end the collectivist approach to solving this crisis.

Crisis, Regulation

To Make Banks Strong, Do Away with the Regulator

– May 14, 2020

As the UK economy enters the COVID-19 downturn, the Bank of England (BoE) continues to maintain that the UK banks are strongly capitalised. The BoE’s claims are not to be believed.

Crisis

A Fate Worse than Death

– May 14, 2020

Freedom is non-negotiable, human rights are inalienable, and human beings cannot and will not live in cages, however familiar or comfortably appointed. The emergence of a novel virus changes nothing about the principles.

Crisis, Economic Theory

The Struggle for Science in Demented Times

– May 13, 2020

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.

Crisis, Economic Education

We Are All Going To Die, and There’s Insurance for That

– May 12, 2020

All that prevents the formation of life-affirming private institutions like that described herein are regulations and taxes. Remove those impediments and watch free human beings flourish, even when faced by novel viruses, murder hornets, and much worse, until death inevitably overtakes them.

Crisis, Free Trade, International

Don’t Blame Globalism for COVID-19

– May 12, 2020

They were against trade, immigration, technology, and markets before and they are now opportunistically using this pandemic as a convenient, almost heaven-sent, opportunity to push for the same pro-government interventions and the same semi-authoritarian regimes they advocated earlier.

Crisis, Economic Trends

The Coronavirus and the Attack on Liberty and Privacy

– May 12, 2020

The “individualism” that Dr. Coyle scornfully criticizes is really the liberty of each one of us to more fully design and direct our own lives in peaceful and mutually productive associations inside and outside of the marketplace, rather than turning that freedom over to the political paternalists desiring to tell us how to live, think and act, and, of course, all for our own good.

Crisis

Herd Immunity Is Misleading

– May 11, 2020

If the right people—not elderly, not ailing—get the disease and adjust behavior suitably while contagious, it is good that they get it behind them. That will enable them to resume their important roles in the health and well-being of society.

Crisis

A Tribute to the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Page

– May 11, 2020

After all this is ended and we are left with the wreckage, and huge questions about why the U.S. followed the path of lockdown rather than allowing the medical system and individuals primary responsibility for disease mitigation, the Journal will be seen as a heroic voice in the midst of disaster.

Central Banking, Crisis

The Fed Wants to Become a Financial Central Planner

– May 11, 2020

To everyone as outraged by this process as I am: it’s time we shouted far and wide what the Fed is up to. If we let them get away with it, politicians and macroeconomic policy experts will be able to control financial markets, and hence our lives, to a degree never before obtained in a free society.

Crisis, Economic Education

The Economic Fundamentals of Jobs

– May 11, 2020

The only answer, as always, is to end the lockdowns as soon as possible so that businesses can resume with market-disciplined investors and the marketplace itself guiding their decisions.

Crisis, Economic Theory

The Magnitude of the Economic Challenge Even in Normal Times

– May 11, 2020

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.