From Cafe HayekCafe Hayek – where orders emerge - Article <[email protected]>
Subject The Latest from Cafe Hayek
Date February 1, 2022 3:39 PM
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Some Covid Links

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 05:11 AM PST
[link removed]

(Don Boudreaux)




Tweet
David Harsanyi explains what ought not, but sadly still does, need
explaining: Government has no business rooting out and flagging
‘misinformation’. A slice:

Asked by MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski about the alleged misinformation spread by
the popular “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast and Facebook users, US Surgeon
General Vivek Murthy responded with a homily about how “we” must “root out”
misleading speech.

“We” don’t have to do any such thing. Government officials have no role in
dictating appropriate speech or lecturing us on what we can or can’t say.
In fact, they have a duty not to.

Murthy’s comments wouldn’t be as grating if it weren’t so obvious that the
Biden administration has been pressuring Big Tech companies, who oversee
huge swaths of our daily digital interactions, to limit speech and set
acceptable standards.

You might remember that last summer, Press Secretary Jen Psaki causally
informed the media that the White House was “flagging problematic posts for
Facebook that spread disinformation.” Can you imagine the explosive
reaction from the establishment media if it had learned that the Trump
White House was keeping a list of speech crimes?

Writing in Canadas National Post, Rex Murphy argues that its not Justin
Trudeaus place to decide which views are acceptable and which arent. (HT
Jonathan Fortier) Two slices:

He [Trudeau] described them [the truckers protesting vaccine mandates] as
“a small fringe minority.” A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian, someone
once said. But this “small fringe minority” can’t be Canadians. They have
“unacceptable views.”

“Unacceptable views?” Are we in China now?

Trudeau isn’t Plato. He may even be a few steps down from that high
intellect. But even if he were, I’d hold off on the prime minister of a
democracy ruling on what is or is not acceptable.

That statement of his made me genuinely wonder: have those who rule us
forgotten the basis of their rule? The leaders of a democracy do not have
“excommunicatory” competence. They do not get to declare what is a “fringe
minority.” Nor do they have their vassals — I think of Trudeau’s former
adviser and close personal friend Gerry Butts — sprinkling Twitter with
slurs regarding the integrity and purpose of a large-scale, grassroots
reaction to this government’s extended and flawed response to the COVID
pandemic, pumping vitriol on its behalf.

..

There is a voice within this protest, a voice beyond the owner of the hands
on the wheel, beyond the cheers coming from the side of the road or from
the highway overpasses. A voice coming from the less comfortable in
society, the perennially less seen or regarded. It’s the voice of dutiful,
working citizens whom the past two years of shutdowns, loss of work or
severe reduction of income, all kinds of pressures and anxieties, have worn
them down. The truckers are emblems, stand-ins for these Canadians.

And because they usually make no noise, usually just go about their
business, hardly ever stage even a small demonstration — until now — to the
professional classes, these Canadians are just simply not there. That’s the
real gap here. The political and commentating clerisy really don’t know,
and have made no effort to know or appreciate, the lives and livelihoods of
those on the lower end of the economic scale. How the other, less
fortunate, half lives.

Jim Geraghty, writing at National Review, deplores that global assault on
freedom. A slice:

Perhaps conservatives are rallying around Joe Rogan because they don’t need
a figure to agree with 100 percent of their worldview in order to conclude
that he is worth defending from an angry mob that desires censorship of
differing views.

It’s very clear that the people who are the most determined to “deplatform”
Rogan — to force Spotify to cancel his show, and likely with that, get his
videos off of YouTube as well — are battling a cartoon-like caricature that
they’ve drawn in their heads.

If you listen to Rogan defend his choices in a recently taped video, you’ll
see that he’s not a lunkhead, and seems the opposite of a wide-eyed
extremist ideologue, hungry to hammer a twisted narrative into brainwashed
followers.

Glenn Greenwald weighs in on the dust-up sparked by Joe Rogan. A slice:

American liberals are obsessed with finding ways to silence and censor
their adversaries. Every week, if not every day, they have new targets they
want de-platformed, banned, silenced, and otherwise prevented from speaking
or being heard (by liberals,” I mean the term of self-description used by
the dominant wing of the Democratic Party).

For years, their preferred censorship tactic was to expand and distort the
concept of hate speech” to mean views that make us uncomfortable,” and then
demand that such “hateful” views be prohibited on that basis. For that
reason, it is now common to hear Democrats assert, falsely, that the First
Amendments guarantee of free speech does not protect “hate speech. Their
political culture has long inculcated them to believe that they can
comfortably silence whatever views they arbitrarily place into this
category without being guilty of censorship.

Constitutional illiteracy to the side, the “hate speech” framework for
justifying censorship is now insufficient because liberals are eager to
silence a much broader range of voices than those they can credibly accuse
of being hateful. That is why the newest, and now most popular, censorship
framework is to claim that their targets are guilty of spreading
“misinformation” or “disinformation.” These terms, by design, have no clear
or concise meaning. Like the term “terrorism,” it is their elasticity that
makes them so useful.

Wall Street Journal columnist Gerard Baker speculates that governments
atrocious overreach, incompetence, and cruelty so amply demonstrated over
the past two years to anyone with open eyes might invigorate
libertarianism. A slice:

When a crisis is over, authorities may relinquish some of the powers they
assumed during the emergency, but you can be sure that the government’s
writ will run permanently larger than before. Wars, depressions,
public-health emergencies lead to bigger government, more rules,
more-onerous regulations.

You can see the pattern again as we approach the second anniversary of the
pandemic: officials musing publicly about permanent mask mandates,
blue-state leaders who evidently have no intention of lifting restrictions,
public-health professionals seeking to extend their ambit even as the
crisis wanes. Leading Democratic politicians continue to insist on their
“Build Back Better” proposition—that what we have learned these past two
years has been the essential role of new trillion-dollar government
programs to cushion society from its ills.

Worst of all, the authoritarian instinct this time has reached deeper into
the once-sacred field of free speech, and we have the marginalizing and
even outright ostracizing of heretics who dare challenge the authorities’
narrative. When elderly rockers who once thought of themselves as rebels
believe it’s their responsibility to banish “misinformation” from major
entertainment platforms, you know the controlling impulse has burrowed its
way deeply—perhaps permanently—into the culture.

But let’s indulge a radical thought for a moment. What if the opposite is
true this time? What if the ratchet slips, and rising popular hostility to
arbitrary, petty, overbearing and ineffective rules induces a popular
backlash? Isn’t it possible that the inconsistency, arrogance and mendacity
of the people attempting to order our lives will produce the opposite of
their desired outcome?

Jeffrey Tucker says that its high time that many global leaders (so-called)
resign. Two slices:

If there is a historical precedent for the truckers’ revolt in Canada, and
the populist protests in so many other parts of the world, I would like to
know what it is. It surely sets the record for convoy size, and it is
historic for Canada. But there is much more going on here, something more
fundamental. The two-year imposition of bio-fascist rule by diktat seems
ever less tenable – the consent of the governed is being withdrawn – but
what comes next seems unclear.

We now have two of the most restrictive “leaders” in the developed world
(Justin Trudeau of Canada and Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand) hiding in
undisclosed locations, citing the need to quarantine following Covid
exposure. Streets globally have filled up with people demanding an end to
mandates and lockdowns, calling for accountability, pushing for
resignations, denouncing privileged corporations, and crying out for a
recognition of basic freedoms and rights.

..

Lockdowns and mandates gave them full power, not only over the one or two
sectors they previously ruled but the whole of society and all of its
functioning. They even controlled how many people we could have in our
homes, whether our businesses could be open, whether we could worship with
others, and dictate what precisely we are supposed to do with our own
bodies.

Whatever happened to limits on power? The people who put together the
systems of government in the 18th century that led to the most prosperous
societies in the history of the world knew that restricting government was
the key to a stable social order and growing economy. They gave us
Constitutions and the lists of rights and the courts enforced them.

Reasons Liz Wolfe reports that some school officials in Los Angeles called
the cops on students who showed up unvaccinated. A slice:

When 15-year-old Ellah Nahum and a few other unvaccinated students showed
up at Los Angeles New West Charter School on Tuesday, January 18, after
winter break, they brought lunches, backpacks, and negative COVID-19 tests,
hoping to be allowed in. Theyd been negotiating with school administrators
since early October, when the school had announced that a vaccine mandate
would go into effect in January. Prior to returning to school from winter
break, theyd requested a hearing, attempting to find alternative options to
getting vaccinated.

When they showed up at school around 7:30 a.m., they sailed through the
first checkpoint, run by two newly hired security guards who were satisfied
with the girls proof of negative test conducted in the last 24 hours. It
was the second checkpoint, run by school administrators demanding proof of
vaccination, that created trouble for the teens. Several hours later, after
tense negotiations between administrators, teens, and their parents, the
school called Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) to the scene, and
cordoned the teens off, denying them chairs and bathroom breaks, according
to the girls.

(DBx: I do not understand how anyone can learn of events such as this one
and not realize that Covid Derangement Syndrome is real and horrifying.)

Katie Pavlich reports on John Hopkins School of Medicine professor Dr.
Marty Makary calling for the rehiring of workers who were fired because
they are unvaccinated. (HT Jay Bhattacharya)

Nicholas Giordano rightly criticizes the continuing hypocrisy and cruelty
of California strongman Gavin Newsom. A slice:

“Remember that California children are forced to wear masks in schools all
day and that California extended their indoor mask mandate through
February,” radio host Ari Hoffman tweeted, posting a picture of California
Gov. Gavin Newsom, maskless with Magic Johnson Sunday at the Los Angeles
Rams’ home playoff game.

Newsom, of course, is no stranger to COVID hypocrisy — remember his trip to
the French Laundry? — but, like so many politicians, is seemingly without
shame. So we have AOC dancing maskless with drag queens in Florida, Nancy
Pelosi getting her hair done when shops are closed, UK Prime Minister Boris
Johnson partying during lockdown.

Rules are for little people.

This time, literally. Officials have cruelly forced children to wear masks
for six to eight hours a day, every day, with no regard for short- and
long-term consequences. Parents who voice any concern about masking are
ignored, or worse, slandered as “wanting people to die,” which is willful
ignorance of the scientific facts.

Heres some potentially excellent news out of Finland.

Julien Yvon is correct: The rules themselves were worse than the
rule-breaking. A slice:

If we look back at media coverage during the month of May 2020, we find
that our journalists had become obsessed with ordinary people breaking the
rules. Worse yet, we were being publicly vilified for activities, such as a
day out at the beach, which did fall within the remit of the rules. Any
criticism from the mainstream media towards these absurd measures, however,
were certainly few and far between.

Jacob Howland exposes tyranny masquerading in America as the following of
the science. A slice:

The United States remains a constitutional republic, but technocratic
progressivism threatens its future as a representative democracy. It is
telling that, in the mouths of the governing elites, the word “democracy”
no longer refers to government of, by, and for the people, but to
progressive policies that are endorsed by credentialed experts yet have
little popular support. And now we must contend with a monstrous union of
science and politics that lames and deforms both.

Consider government responses to Covid. At the outset of the pandemic, a
handful of unelected public health officials immediately began to advise
and direct policy decisions of enormous consequence. Our elected officials
in the US, trembling before these scientific experts, have followed their
recommendations with little consideration of the cost that lockdowns,
school closures, vaccine mandates, and the like exact on the economic and
political well-being of the country and the mental and physical health of
its citizens. Similar measures were adopted across the globe.

Americans have from the beginning been told to follow the science, but the
science has mostly followed politics. In June 2020, for example, over 1,200
medical and health professionals signed a letter arguing that, despite the
high risk of viral transmission, prohibitions then in force on small
gatherings like church services should not apply to large (and frequently
destructive and violent) demonstrations protesting what the authors called
“the pervasive lethal force of white supremacy”. And when the science
pointed toward the likely origin of Covid in a Wuhan lab, top health
officials conspired — for political reasons — to smother that news.




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Quotation of the Day

Posted: 01 Feb 2022 01:30 AM PST
[link removed]

(Don Boudreaux)




Tweet
is from page 245 of the late, great UCLA economists Armen A. Alchian’s and
William R. Allen’s Universal Economics (2018; Jerry L. Jordan, ed.); this
volume is an updated version of Alchian’s and Allen’s magnificent and
pioneering earlier textbook, University Economics:

The profits of producers are not transfers of wealth from consumers, and
the losses of producers are not transfers from producers to consumers. The
profits are the economy-wide increases in wealth as a result of more
valuable uses of resources.

Profits are the unpredictable, but now discovered, increases in values of
the responsible resources. The former lower values underestimated the
future use values. No one knew earlier what the value of the resources
would prove to be, else their market value would already have been that
high.




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