Topic: Crisis

A Conversation on Covid and Lockdowns: Drs. Prasad and Kulldorff

– April 5, 2021

“This wide-ranging discussion covers cell biology, virus mitigation, public health, lockdowns, and the choice between focused projection vs compulsory shutdowns and stay-at-home orders.” ~ AIER

Authoritarianism, Crisis, Government

Why Have the Courts Been Deferential to Lockdowns?

– April 5, 2021

“Anti-lockdown proponents and advocates of traditional public health policy as it was practiced a little bit over a year ago must compete in the realm of popular opinion. In order to reclaim and preserve our freedom, there must be victories not only in politics and the courts but also in the arena of public discourse.” ~ Ethan Yang

Authoritarianism, Crisis, Government

Why the Silence in the Face of Covid Tyranny?

– April 5, 2021

“When one weighs whatever is the quantum of tyranny that might realistically be ascribed to Trump against the quanta of tyranny that infest and fuel Covid lockdowns, mask mandates, school closures, and the Covid hysteria still being stirred up by government officials, the tyranny of the Covidocracy is far, far greater than was the tyranny of Trump.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

Crisis, Environmentalism, Free Markets

Inside the Church of Climate

– April 2, 2021

“Philosophy, not only economics and political economy, matters in the global warming/climate change debate. Start by checking your premises—and those of your intellectual opponents.” ~ Robert L. Bradley Jr.

Crisis, Video

Professor Gupta: Lockdowners Should Hang their Heads in Shame

– April 2, 2021

“AIER is pleased to offer the full transcript of this important interview with Professor Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University.” ~ AIER

Authoritarianism, Crisis, Government

Pandemic Policy Has Not Improved Our Lifestyles

– April 2, 2021

“We almost never know the full bundle of what we are giving up. Individual, social, and professional structures are evolving processes, trial-and-error, where we only find out what works over time. ‘The only effective judge of things is time,’ writes Nassim Taleb energetically in his excellent essay on the Lindy Effect – the tendency of things that have been around for long to stay around even longer. There’s wisdom in what works, what’s been time-tested, and what has been around.” ~ Joakim Book

Crisis, Media, Public Choice and Public Policy, Science

The Lockdowners Have Their Own Conspiracy Theories

– April 2, 2021

“With Gurdasani stressing that she was keen to avoid future lockdowns – a ‘strawman’ in her own words – as late as October 26th, one begins to wonder how she could have supported the very same ‘strawman’ over a month earlier on September 20th, the date on which the dissenting scientists allegedly wrested control of the UK’s pandemic response. Perhaps the lockdowners’ latest conspiracy theory has another as of yet undisclosed twist to it, this one involving a time machine.” ~ Phillip W. Magness

Authoritarianism, Crisis, Healthcare

The Doom Is Impending, From Lockdowns but Not the Virus

– April 1, 2021

“Medical science and targeted help versus a blunderbuss non-science-based political power grab is what the so-called Covid crisis has been about since the very beginning. Yet the apparatchiks who falsely seized power are not about to give it up—vaccinations, herd immunity and plunging cases notwithstanding. That’s the real impending doom.” ~ David Stockman

Authoritarianism, Crisis, Government

Biden and the Lockdown Governors Need Canute thinking

– April 1, 2021

“No wonder the Central Planners are angry and scared. Benjamin Franklin warned, ‘They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.’ Heaven help us if we prove him right, accepting government mask mandates and personal restrictions ironically for ‘feelings of empowerment.'” ~ Jon Sanders

Authoritarianism, Crisis, Government

The Day that Trump Panicked, and Wrecked His Presidency

– April 1, 2021

“Trump didn’t act like Trump. Positioned to be himself, and in the process scoring monumental victories of the political, economic, and statesmen variety, Trump lost his nerve. We suffer to varying degrees his inability to be true to himself last March to this very day. The problem was that Trump panicked.” ~ John Tamny

Authoritarianism, Crisis, History

Cancel Culture Is Just the Beginning

– April 1, 2021

“In fact, the current arrangement defies the revolutionary credo that there should be no taxation without representation. The notion was that instead of taxing the people directly, large, distant governments, like those in London and later Washington, should tax only indirectly, like with tariffs or imposts, lest the harpies feared by Jefferson, Parker, and the other Founders multiply and eat out the people’s substance.” ~ Robert E. Wright

Crisis, Economic Education, Healthcare

Just Because There’s No Price Doesn’t Mean There’s No Cost: Covid-19 Vaccine Edition

– April 1, 2021

“The policy response to the Covid pandemic has been a master class in government failure: governments around the world have messed up their responses time and time again. It isn’t because they are bad people, necessarily, nor is it because they are incompetent. It is because ‘The Problem’ is a set of innumerable smaller problems for which, as Friedrich Hayek pointed out, the relevant knowledge of ‘the particular circumstances of time and place’ cannot confront political decision-makers as data. It emerges from action, exchange, and the prices they produce.” ~ Art Carden