Topic: Crisis

We Can’t Trust Governments to Manage a Pandemic

– April 26, 2020

It is unconscionable—indeed, criminally irresponsible—to predicate policies as extreme and draconian as these lockdowns on such poor models and incomplete data—particularly when the very first serious seroprevalence survey we have in the country explodes the foundation of these policies.

Crisis, Economic Education

How Fanatics Hack Our Minds (And Why We Let Them)

– April 25, 2020

When we choose to see beyond the “we have no choice” mindset, limitless solutions will begin to come into view. The future of America depends, not upon bailouts or a fast-tracked vaccine, but upon individuals choosing to recover their senses.

Crisis, Regulation

Open Up and Let Free People Choose

– April 25, 2020

If states are the laboratories of ideas in good times, why limit the experimentation in bad times with one-size-fits-all lockdowns?

Crisis, Economic Theory

Reflections on the Economic Value of Life

– April 25, 2020

When New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said any efforts were worth it to save just one life, it likely came from a place of human decency, but it revealed an old moral compass that in a post-industrial, post-modern medicine world no longer makes sense.

Crisis

An Egregious Statistical Horror Story

– April 24, 2020

With the latest reports of plummeting death rates from all causes, this crisis is over. The pandemic of doom erupted as a panic of pols and is now a comedy of Mash-minded med admins and stooges, covering their ifs ands and butts with ever more morbid and distorted statistics.

Crisis, Video

Seminar with Edward Stringham, Knut Wittkowski, David Henderson, and Bill Luddy (Video)

– April 24, 2020

The American Institute for Economic Research held a live seminar with Knut Wittkowski, David Henderson, and Bill Luddy. The topic: whether we have to choose between health and wealth. https://youtu.be/rV8W3yIDkoA

Crisis, Economic Theory

The Urgent Need for Intellectual Change

– April 24, 2020

The rebuilding of a free society after this chaos is over will require a great deal of work in the above four areas: mathematics, moral philosophy, history, and economics. In my darker moments I think that in fact we have gone back to ground zero in all these areas.

Crisis, Economic Trends

There Will Be Blowback, In Mostly Good Ways

– April 24, 2020

Our lives in the coming years will be defined by forms of backlash, as a much needed corrective. You can’t take away everyone’s rights, put a whole people under house arrest, and abolish the rule of law without generating a response to that in the future.

Crisis

A Locked-Down Country Is Vulnerable to Attack

– April 23, 2020

In a state of lockdown, we are more vulnerable than ever. People are prisoners in their homes, with private firms shuttered and inert. America is in a recession, and perhaps in a depression. Government resources are depleted, and a sizable portion of the population is wandering around their home demoralized, confused, and depressed. Straight talk: now would be just the right time for an enemy of America to go for the kill.

Crisis, Economic Theory

How Wrong Were the Models and Why?

– April 23, 2020

Epidemiological expertise may convey specialized knowledge about the nature of disease transmission that is specifically suited to forecasting a pandemic’s spread. But it does not exempt the modelers from social scientific best practices for testing the robustness of their claims. Nor does it obviate basic rules of statistical analysis.

Crisis, Harwood Economic Review

COVID-19 Issue

– April 22, 2020

Harwood Economic Review Spring 2020 – COVID-19 Issue

Crisis, Economic Trends, International

Why No Shortages in Canada as Compared with the U.S.?

– April 22, 2020

In contrast to Canada, which has no national restrictions against price gouging, 39 American states now have stringent laws or executive orders against raising prices during emergencies.