The Latest from Cafe Hayek

(Don Boudreaux)

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Here’s the first of a two-part series, at EconLog, by David Henderson on why he is unfavorably impressed with Tyler Cowen’s reasons for rejecting the Great Barrington Declaration. A slice (coming immediately after David quotes Tyler’s complaint the Declaration “fails to emphasize data”):

We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young.

That’s data, and pretty relevant data.

Cowen points out correctly that the best policies of today are [probably] not the best policies two months from now. But the big advantage of the focus the Declaration proposes is that it allows for that.

Dr. Sunetra Gupta – one of the three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration – defends the reality of herd immunity against those who dismiss it.

Mike Yeadon explains why he believes that Britain’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) vastly overestimates the dangers of covid-19. (HT Lyle Albaugh) It’s a long read but one that, in my opinion, is worthwhile.

I always enjoy being a guest on Dan Proft’s radio program.

Robby Soave reports on the perverse priorities of officials at the San Francisco Unified School District.

John Cochrane is trying to understand the political left.

Juliette Sellgren’s podcast with Jonathan Rauch on cancel culture is superb.

Here’s part 8 of George Selgin’s excellent series on the New Deal.

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 207 of George Will’s great 2019 book, The Conservative Sensibility:

As government has grown bigger in size, scope, and pretensions, it has become more attentive to small factions that do not claim to represent the will of the majority. The most that each faction claims is that a majority would favor what the faction favors if the majority were thinking clearly. Or that it knows better what is best for the majority. Or that it does not give a tinker’s damn what other factions think.

(Don Boudreaux)

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Brink Lindsey and Sam Hammond have a fan in one Rodger Griff:

Mr. Griff:

Thanks for your follow-up e-mail.

You wonder how I “can argue that government officials know too little to succeed at industrial policy and at the same time think that private businessmen and investors know enough to succeed in business.” I am, you say, “contradictory.”

But I’m not contradictory. My argument is that no one knows which products, methods of production, and kinds of businesses are better today for the home economy and which will be better tomorrow for this economy. This ignorance cannot be overcome by econometric studies, committee meetings, thinktank position papers, or democratic elections. The only way to discover what are better uses of resources is market competition. Only competition among producers who are free to enter and leave the market – producers who are allowed to gain customers never through force but only through persuasion – will reveal which uses of resources are worthwhile and which aren’t. Such knowledge is simply unknowable in the abstract and beforehand.

I hesitate to use sports analogies, because they too easily mislead. (Economic competition shares some features with sports competitions, but is in many other ways entirely different.) But here’s one analogy that’s perhaps worthwhile:

Proponents of industrial policy are akin to an Olympics official who, before a foot race is run, declares confidently that his research reveals to him that the fastest runner is Jones – and therefore orders that the race not be run. The official then, with much fanfare and self-satisfaction, hands a gold medal to Jones.

Clearly, this academic method of discovering who is the fastest runner is fraudulent. Equally fraudulent at discovering better uses of resources is industrial policy.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030