What the ASI have been up to and what we've got planned next

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Good afternoon,



** In this bulletin
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* The economic lockdown: why we can’t leave our fate to the medics alone.
* Events: our webinars on policy solutions, migration, deregulation and more
* Blog: cultural appropriation is great; academics are off target; Baldrick has the edge on Hancock


** But first…
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I thought prophets of doom and gloom have had enough attention recently. Cambridge profs have pipped them, though, with 275 ideas to help unwind the lockdown. First, they would discourage visits to the shop with a £20 minimum spend . But you’ll need a signed certificate to leave the house anyway, and when you do go out you can only walk round the park clockwise (sounds like they want to make us like the frogs—Ed). Mind you, it’s worse for the cat, who isn’t allowed out at all. And don’t forget, all this is as Public Health England says to all those firms volunteering to produce hospital gowns and virus tests: "don’t call us, and we won’t call you."

I’ve also been enjoying all those emails from the supermarkets, the gym and the rest. (It reinforces my prejudices to discover that the private sector has more comprehensive and thoughtful crisis plans than the government does.) And those televised performances by the National Theatre are a sheer delight. (Now millions of people will be able to see the utter tripe that their tax money is spent on.)

Even the Guardian brightened our lives today by complaining that the health establishment isn’t engaging ([link removed]) with the private sector enough. They even wrote ([link removed]) a nice piece about our new report on the escalating damage the lockdown is doing. (‘More joy shall be in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth…’—Ed.)

What’s amused you over the last three weeks? The world toilet paper crisis, perhaps? (I figure, if any panic buyer really thought they would need six dozen toilet rolls for a three-week hideaway, they should have seen a doctor long before COVID-19 struck.) I’m full of joy, of course, because this is a wonderful time for introverts like me (especially the no small talk and kissing stuff). Plus I’ve been able to have some engaging talks with my son, who’s in the house with us. (In three weeks we’re already up to 14 words and 26 grunts.)

I digress…


** New reports
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Our latest paper, written by me and policy boffin Matthew Lesh, explains why a six-week lockdown is going to be a lot, lot, LOT more than twice as damaging to the economy than a three-week one. Businesses that might survive for three weeks with no income won’t all be able to survive for four weeks, and even fewer for five and six. When the politicians get round to flicking the on switch, they’ll find the machine’s innards have rusted away. That’s why we need plans on unwinding the lockdown to be in public debate NOW!
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Reopening Britain: the economic urgency of a plan for the end of the COVID19 lockdown

Funny I should say that, because I’m just working on another report, looking at how the lockdown might actually be unwound. There won’t be mention of cats or exit papers anywhere, but we’ll be looking at the dozen or so other European countries that have already started to open things up, and saying that the supposed experts in Whitehall should trust the human ingenuity of businesses to find ways to re-open while keeping everyone safe. And emphasising that more state-everything isn’t the answer: if we want to boost the innovation and entrepreneurship that will get us out of this mess, we need to clear away the taxation and regulation that strangles it. There. Rant over.

Actually I’m working a lot harder from home than I ever did in the office. I’ve been working like a dog (well, not like our pooch, whose sole source of exercise is falling off the ottoman). And so is young Matthew (he deserves a raise—Ed. no he doesn’t—Ed’s Ed). His very detailed paper on testing ([link removed]) made it into all the papers. It pointed out the sheer stupidity of Public Health England’s ‘command and control’ strategy that stopped private labs from actually producing the kit. We’re still paying the consequences.
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Our Matthew Lesh explains how the UK failed COVID-19 testing whilst Germany and South Korea succeed for The Sun on YouTube (Views: 791,377)


** Events
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So you thought the crisis meant no more public meetings? Not a bit of it. Again, the private sector has come to our aid in the form of Zoom, and we’ve been doing a whole slew of online webinars during the lockdown, every Tuesday at 6pm UK time. And if you can’t see them live (I know we all have busy social diaries just at the moment), you can catch up with them later on Facebook. (One person in Australia didn’t realise, and got up at 3am to see it live. What loyal fans we have around the world!)

Our first webinar was on different countries’responses to the crisis ([link removed]) , with experts from the UK, US, Hong Kong and Australia, including the great Sam Bowman (of Twitter fame). Then we looked for liberal (in the non-American sense) solutions with another panel of think-tankers ([link removed]) and journalists such as the Telegraph’s Madelaine Grant and R Street Institute’s Shoshana Weissmann. Then, back to ‘other news’ with a panel on immigration after Brexit ([link removed]) , featuring that famous immigrant, Kate Andrews and others.

Next week Daniel Hannan, writer, journalist and ex-MEP features in our webinar on Rebooting the Economy after the lockdown ([link removed]) . He’ll be joined by Johnny Leavesley of the Midlands Industrial Council, John Macdonald from the ASI and myself. We’ll be looking at the role of the state (that bit shouldn’t take too long) and how best to capture the dynamism and ingenuity of the private sector to rebuild things.
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Register for ASI Webinar ([link removed])

And we’ve been producing streams of short videos on other subjects too. My colleague Madsen Pirie has done them on the Zero Sum Game Fallacy ([link removed]) , the Nirvana Fallacy ([link removed]) (well, he did write a book on fallacies), Helicopter Money ([link removed]) and GMOs ([link removed]) . So if you don’t know what those all are, now you know where to look. And I’ve done some on topics including the daft Which? proposal to bring in price controls ([link removed]) , why we should leave the darn clocks alone, why we’ll never trust China again ([link removed]) (If we ever did.—Ed.), innovation
([link removed]) , capitalism ([link removed]) , bail outs ([link removed]) , the media, jobs ([link removed]) , life ([link removed]) …and I’m only just getting started. Oh, and the two of us are both doing video seminars for Students For Liberty ([link removed]) .

Look out for our webinar with the celebrated economic historian Deirdre McCloskey soon. The date will pop up on the ASI website ([link removed]) , so keep your eyes fixed on it.

And look out too for the almost daily update from the front by a real-life but anonymous working medic. ‘Dr Smith’ who really sticks it to the bureaucracy and centralism that is rife in our healthcare system but which stops him doing his job. You can subscribe here. ([link removed])
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** Students
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Young Writer on Liberty 2020: Our education supremo Daniel Pryor is looking through all the entries we’ve received, and the winners will be announced soon on the ASI website. Keep your eyes peeled for a new competition to keep your young relative busy and engaged with ideas (and quiet) during this shutdown.

Freedom Week: We’re still accepting applications for our Freedom Week student summer school in Cambridge. We are working on the basis that it will go ahead. You can find out more and apply here ([link removed]) !
Virtual Schools Visits: We’ve reached hundreds (Thousands!—Ed.) of young people through our school and university visits already this year. Now we’re aiming to reach thousands (Tens of thousands!—Ed.) with our virtual workshops for all those kids at home whose parents are probably finding them unteachable. Watch this space!


** Meeja
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Today’s report by me and Matthew Lesh is reported in, as I say, pretty well everywhere, including the Evening Standard ([link removed]) , PoliticsHome ([link removed]) , the Guardian ([link removed]) , the i Newspaper ([link removed]) , the Daily Mail ([link removed]) , the Times ([link removed]) , Press Association, and hundreds of proper regionals and specialist press like WalesOnline
([link removed]) , Hull Daily Mail ([link removed]) , and CityAM ([link removed]) . I also wrote about the report for ConservativeHome ([link removed]) .

Matthew Lesh is in the Telegraph ([link removed]) today on the economic damage of the lockdown, and was in the Sunday Telegraph ([link removed]) on how and why smaller countries are performing better (Size isn't everything haha!—Ed.)

Our other Matt, Matt Kilcoyne looked at trade and open markets on Reaction ([link removed]) , and the Spectator ([link removed]) . And our government affairs bod John Macdonald (I thought you’d hired the former Shadow Chancellor for a second.—Ed.) explained we'll all be libertarians at the end of this crisis for CapX ([link removed]) .

Matt has criticised the utterly tone deaf announcement that yet more billions will be poured into HS2, in the Times ([link removed]) , BBC ([link removed]) , Sky ([link removed]) , the Week ([link removed]) , and the Sun ([link removed]) .

Our regular blogger Tim Worstall has taken on XR and (bravely) Greta for CapX ([link removed]) . Also Tim and here he is again on why we should be selling council's artworks ([link removed]) . I wrote on price controls for CityAM ([link removed]) .

We joined with Index on Censorship, Big Brother Watch and the Open Rights Group in a letter ([link removed]) , discussed in the Daily Mail ([link removed]) , to condemn the idea that governments should pressure social media groups to censor what they decide is 'false information' — it was only January when they were all repeating the WHO in saying there was no community transmission of this virus after all. It’s kinda difficult for governments to decide what’s true and false information in the first place.
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** On the blog
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Tim Worstall thinks he’s discovered the problem ([link removed]) with the public health response. He quotes a prof at Imperial College who’s modelling the response in terms of how it might ‘amplify existing social inequalities’. And of course Public Health England has spent quite a bit of its £4bn a year budget telling us not to drink pop and eat sausage rolls. “We would,” he concludes, “prefer to know how not to kill people while still preserving civilisation and some semblance of an economy.” But I don’t suppose any academics are working on that one.

Madsen Pirie, sporting his OTT blue and yellow double-dragon kung fu jacket ([link removed]) (or whatever it is) says it’s time to get rid of the idea of cultural appropriation—‘and other Marxist identity claptrap’. (Well, as a double-dragon jacket wearer, he would, wouldn’t he?—Ed.) When we take things from other cultures, it’s usually an appreciation not an appropriation. It’s a daft idea that we can all live in our own cultural boxes, without being moved and changed by other influences that we admire. Being confined at home is bad enough—don’t confine us into a single culture.

ASI Senior Fellow Tim Ambler compares Matt Hancock to TV’s Blackadder Baldrick ([link removed]) , but at least Baldrick knew you actually had to have a plan before you could take action on it. But the Health Secretary seems to be rushing into announcements without any plan at all. Like (bravo!) building lots of new hospital beds but not thinking about the PPE that might be needed. Or setting the goal of 100,000 virus tests a day, without any obvious means of producing them (since the private labs are being rebuffed) or distributing them to where they are most needed (heard the latest? More civil servants are going to get tested, but not shopkeepers and others who are exposed to the virus every day.)

And then there’s me, almost in tears of disbelief about the calls for price controls made by the consumer body Which? ([link removed]) I think I’m qualified—I did co-author a book with the late great Robert Schuettinger called Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls ([link removed]) . The truth in this case is that all the things you think might have gone up in price—pasta, kitchen rolls, tinned soup, long-life milk—actually fell in price last month. And the price of hand wash, toilet rolls and cleaning products hardly rose at all. If you put price caps on things that are in high demand, you make them even scarcer. If you think the shelves are a bit bare now, come back when we have price controls. Why, after 4,000 years of abject failure, do people still clink to this crackpot policy?

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Dr Eamonn Butler dismisses the idiocy of price controls


** Wonder-web
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Elsewhere on the interweb, the ASI has come across some interesting reads.

Future ASI webinar star Johnny Leavesley looks to the post-Wall success of Western Germany for solutions to our post-lockdown puzzle in The Telegraph. ([link removed])

Journalist Olly Wiseman makes the case that this crisis is reminding us all of the social good of free market enterprise in the City Journal ([link removed]) .

CapX ([link removed]) has a great one by John Hulsman on why China will need to feel the consequences of their actions and why the West needs to reject their propaganda—and sooner rather than later.

Similarly, Foreign Affairs ([link removed]) comments on the connections between the WHO and China. They claim that WHO has served as China’s soft power broker in this crisis, tarnishing it’s reputation and perpetuating damage.


** On the shelf
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We’re all getting sick of online videos where the speaker is sitting in front of a bookcase. But what exactly are they reading? Or for that matter, watching and gaming? I thought you might like to know more of how our ASI policy boffins are occupying their lockdown time at home (when they are not freedom-fighting, which is most of the time).

Charlie has been reading (and reviewing) up a storm. His latest, on The Taste of Ashes by Marci Shore can be found here ([link removed]) . A compilation of real stories from survivors of communist regimes, The Taste of Ashes reminds us all of the horrors experienced by millions behind the Iron Curtain.

Morgan can recommend Unorthodox on Netflix. It’s the story of a young woman trying to find a new life for herself in Berlin after dramatically fleeing her Ultra-orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn. It’s a powerful and poignant tale, based on a real-life story, which juxtaposes family and tradition with friendship and freedom.

Matthew Lesh has been dipping into some literature, reading Albert Camus’ The Plague. First it begins with thousands of rats, then the mysterious bouts of ill-health and death in humans. Soon the plague is identified and the townspeople of Oran are forced to quarantine. The book follows how people deal with their new, horrifying reality. Thankfully just fiction.
Matt Kilcoyne has been binge watching Tiger King like the rest of the world, between baking banana bread and setting up his sourdough starter. Far from an expose of the world of big cats, he thinks it’s far more a parable about the state of politics. Weirdos and cranks, who think they’re polar opposites to one another but are actually exactly alike, fighting over scraps while everyone stares wild eyed and unable to look away. (Sadly not fiction enough—Ed.).


** And I quote...
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I’m not sure who said ‘letting lawyers make laws is like letting doctors make diseases’ but letting doctors make laws is certainly asking for trouble, as we now know.

Anyway, here is a mildly topical comment on the subject of governments and infections:

When one gets into bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads.

—Ron Paul, R-TX, US Congress.

Bye…


e

Eamonn Butler, Director
Adam Smith Institute
23 Great Smith St,
London SW1P 3DJ

Web: adamsmith.org
Email: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
Twitter: @eamonnbutler ([link removed])

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