“If the page is written but we imagine it is blank, then we will act from ignorance, and live our lives without a knowledge of the truth, although the truth is there for us to know. But worse yet, if the page is blank and we imagine it is written, then we will enslave ourselves to our own fantasies, and live like mad men or lunatic mimes, running into walls which are not really there.”
Read More“Certainty, as we have seen throughout our tale, is a dangerous powerful force. If it proves true, then it can establish necessary limits on human action. But if it proves false, is it so often does, then it can create unnecessary barriers – imaginary cages in which we are needlessly trapped. “
Read MoreEconomist Greg George, PhD, noted in this environment that the problem with the states in the most critical condition before the Covid shock is not that they are too big to fail but that they are too big to save. We are being forced to face limits we have long ignored.
Read MoreNew data indicates that the disease arrived here much earlier than we thought, has already spread to many more people than we thought, and based on the estimated cases as compared to diagnosed cases the mortality is much less than we thought.
Read MoreIf your initial reaction to a post or an article is outrage, pause and ask if you have the whole story. A piece of the truth can be more misleading than all of a lie. I can mislead more by what I leave out than in what I disclose.
Read MoreShuttering large swaths of the economy is a huge unquantifiable cost we would only consider in such a dire health care scenario. It appears that new information reflects a significant overestimation of the mortality. When we referred to the mortality, we compared the number of deaths to the number of DIAGNOSED cases and compared that rate to the last flu which measures the number of deaths to the number of ESTIMATED cases, understanding that many who have the flu that never see a doctor.
Read MoreWhile the Progressives sought to extend the restraints of political power to economic power, Hayek sought to bring political power to recognize economic realities. This new era of conservatism reaffirmed the genius of the founders of our constitution that dispersed power was best suited for the dispersed knowledge that generated our dynamic economy.
Read MoreWhile we need to be concerned about the financial condition of essential industries, we should not lose sight of the need to be concerned with the financial condition of the nation they want to bail them out.
Read MoreWhen CEO bonuses were paid in 2008 after the bailouts America was justifiably outraged and it is reasonable to include conditions to avoid this outcome again. It is equally outrageous and irresponsible to load this bill with unrelated political swag and enforce long term changes in corporate governance and other purely political agendas in order to address a very short-term set of problems.
Read MoreIn the meantime, we will achieve long sought goals of dramatically reducing our carbon footprint, inequality, and even DUI’s and simultaneously realize they were far less important than we thought. We will also hopefully learn to appreciate institutions, forces, and fellow citizens and workers we took for granted and even criticized a few months ago that are now critical to our survival.
Read MoreWe will never know if we overreacted. If the threat turns out to be less than predicted, we will assume our actions were merited and responsible. It could be a dry run for a contagion that is far more lethal. Our agencies and professionals will always error on the side of overestimating an unknown threat to public health. Outrage and fear are hard risks to mitigate.
Read MoreIt seems that this can go on indefinitely because we cannot envision the central banks losing control of interest rates, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Believers in Modern Monetary Theory mistake this trend for a true principle. Central banks will remain active in controlling interest rates because the debt is so large that any spike in interest rates would be disastrous. We are stimulating a zombie economy reliant on low interest rates provided by a central government even more dependent on low interest rates.
Read MoreWe have taken a detour on Hayek’s Road to Serfdom; we have managed to cede more power to the central government while retaining much of the individualism of the Constitution. This is a unique outcome in political evolution attributed to the genius of the Constitution itself combined with a unique American political culture that shrouds it. At its best progressivism expanded the promise of political equality into the economic sphere, assuring equal economic opportunity if not results; at its worst it was seduced by the false confidence of the historicists shared by its technocratic sisters in Europe.
Read MoreThe Corona virus may succeed in realigning the balance of trade better than any of Trump’s tariffs or negotiations. The Chinese market is still so large that it cannot be ignored, but it also can no longer be depended on to be a consistent and secure source of supply of critical components for American manufactured goods.
Read MoreThe voters, however, cannot escape some responsibility for this outcome. The more dependent we become on the government to solve our local and personal problems the more disappointed we will become with the results and the more likely we will be seduced by radical solutions.
Read MoreCapitalism becomes the basket where you place all your gripes about our economy. Capitalism is just a form of political freedom and like all rights and freedoms they’re not unrestricted and unregulated. There are good regulations and bad regulations. Good regulations support the proper functions of liberty and free markets; bad regulations undermine the institutions that support liberty and markets. If much of our problems come from bad regulation and bad government policy, then how is handing more power that source going to help? Progressivism grew to protect us from special interests, but what happens when the special interest we need to fear the most is the one that seeks to protect us?
Read MoreSocialism hinges on a belief in a general or unified will that is a myth. We are a diverse nation with diverse and competing interests and our Constitution is the most advanced political system ever devised for dealing with these competing interests. The belief in a unified interest becomes a justification for imposing one group’s interests on another. This is the essence of Hayek’s noted Road to Serfdom.
Read MoreBernie is the moral supremacist progressive of the first Progressive Era of 1900-1920 that reacted to the Gilded Age and inequality of that period. Bloomberg is the elite technocrat Progressive of the second Progressive Era of 1932-1980; beginning with the New Deal and ending with the Great Society. The irony of a “progressive” reclaiming old and exhausted positions from fifty to a hundred years ago is lost on most who accept progressivism.
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