Ross Douthat has a column on the way ideology influenced pundits’ reactions to the virus crisis.
Along with infectious-disease specialists, the people who seemed most alarmed by the virus included the inhabitants of Weird Right-Wing Twitter (a collection of mordant, mostly anonymous accounts interested in civilizational decline), various Silicon Valley eccentrics, plus original-MAGA figures like Mike Cernovich and Steve Bannon. . .
Meanwhile, liberal officialdom and its media appendages were more likely to play down the threat, out of fear of giving aid and comfort to sinophobia or populism. This period was the high-water mark of “it’s just the flu” reassurances in liberal outlets, of pious critiques of Donald Trump’s travel restrictions, of deceptive public-health propaganda about how masks don’t work, of lectures from the head of the World Health Organization about how “the greatest enemy we face is not the virus itself; it’s the stigma that turns us against each other.”
. . .The fact that the virus seemed poised to help Democrats and hurt the Trump administration, the fact that it was being hyped by CNN and played down by Hannity, the fact that Trump himself declined to take it seriously — all of this mattered more to many Republicans than the fear of foreign contamination that the virus theoretically should have activated
As you might remember, my wife and I started our stay-at-home policy on March 12. So I was hardly the first person to take the virus seriously, but I was ahead of many people, especially elected officials. At that point, I did not have an ideological axe to grind.
On March 21, when I wrote my virus economics FAQ, I was trying to explain why the virus crisis posed a problem for individualism. That is, many people would tend to want to go out and not take into account the risk that they could infect others.
In the last several days, I have become less receptive to what government is doing. I remain committed to taking the virus seriously. But I have very low confidence in the health “experts.” Instead, of carefully experimenting and learning, they are flailing–“tampering,” as quality control guru W. Edwards Deming used to refer to it. And my confidence in mainstream macroeconomists and their remedies, which was never high before the crisis, is even lower now.
I would like to see an effective libertarian opposition to current policies. But that is difficult for me to jump-start, in part because some libertarians seem committed to a version of virus denialism that I do not share. Meanwhile, others on the right (I hesitate to call them libertarians) seem to be driven primarily by pro-Trump (or anti-Democrat) partisanship. Rather than fight the “stimulus,” they spent their energy denouncing Speaker Pelosi for temporarily obstructing it.
The number of mouths trying to get attention exceeds the capacity of available ears. As another libertarian pointed out to me, even the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee has trouble getting noticed these days.
Dear Prof.,
Thanks for your blog.
I commented a few days ago something to reiterate here. The COVID-19 panic may have destabilized your standard writing procedures so that you lost some of your typical reserve and have become increasingly reactive to short term breaking news.
Your writing and thinking may improve if you cultivate a greater reserve, stepping back from the news cycle.
A work-around solution might be to split your posts into two sorts.
1. “Posts which are written and so designated to prompt immediate action” such as “ARNOLD SUGGESTS: Start wearing a homemade mask”
and
2. “Old School” posts that demonstrate that you remain out of sync with the the news cycle by staying at least 72 hours behind what everyone else is talking about.
Point here is Ross Douthat was simplifying economic libertarians here. Ron Paul website and Glenn Beck (Jon Galts types) were calling it hoax after March 15th and we need to open up earlier a lot through the crisis. And he was trying to ensure people knew the small c libertarians (Laura Wilder types) were the first group like yourself playing this seriously. (We have seen a few Republican Governors, Ohio DeWine, act quicker than Democratic ones but it is most Republican Governors moving the slowest here.)
And isn’t the biggest struggle for small c social conservatives to convince average voters that conservatives care about society in general?
Here is a libertarian idea.
Price gouging, absolutely necessary in an pandemic.
Price gouging on short goods reduces congestion reduces R0, we are calling it. It has the effect of keeping large congested masses of people rushing the toilet paper, for example; like large masses in the Walmarts across the nation make it much worse.
Price gouging is a way to slow down the transactions on the margin, only move goods where the price of social distance justifies the transaction. Then the economy can come up with a rational priority.
Consider Walmart, they need to reduce the spread rate. What is the spread rate? About one day in the factory or store will spread to 15%. Walmart can reduce that to 3%, maybe with a bunch of policy moves, mainly keep customers moving, clerkes masked with disinfectant wipes running short shift, moving air mass out, etc etc etc. Run the store a bit more like an emergency room.
Pay the cost with price gouging, then folks who have essential needs in theeconomy can get ack up and running soon enough, iks the 3$ spread rate at Walmart since they will be in and out in 15 minutes, not one day.
I think a core problem is that there’s little agreement anymore about what libertarian means as a core political theory, and thus it becomes the accepted nom de plume of people with very disparate views.
Like, I consider myself a libertarian, and I can’t fathom calling myself that and arguing for a Warren or Sanders presidency as some other self-described libertarians have.
At the same time, I’m probably quite a bit more “pro-Trump” than many. I don’t think he’s a libertarian at all, but I’ve always found the Never-Trump arguments that he’s some kind of dictator to be who is going to crush our rights as remotely plausible.
This all comes back to what I think it means to be a libertarian at a basic, practical level. I’m not an anarchist, so I understand that while I don’t want it, government is legitimate and our rights are best determined by mutual agreement and government is a way to codify and protect those rights and impose the corresponding responsibilities.
I accept that, but within that framework, I think the lessons of economics and of human history are that we are best off when we are as free as possible to make our own choices.
Thus, the big concern for me is to steer society in a way that reduces the threat from ossified, bureaucratic approaches to things. That’s why, to me, someone like Warren or Sanders is complete anathema. And someone like Trump, while not a libertarian, is basically my friend because he’s the enemy of my enemy. The bureaucracy, the establishment, the “deep state”, the elite… all of these things are basically the biggest practical threats to our freedoms and, as we are seeing now, often some of the biggest impediments to the true dangers we face.
From that perspective, I think the true libertarian goal is to fight a continuous fight to reduce specific rules and rigidity (especially permanent ones), the role of status and influence, and the general scope and powers of government. At the same time, we should be pushing for the equal enforcement of simple, generally applicable rules.
Libertarian betting.
Bet the covid trials, they are listed and classified. Libertarians have the best and most immediate pendemic solutions.
Price gouging reduces congestion, allows the economy to remain functional.
Betting the drug track allocates resources to winning cocktails.
Both are immediate reducers of R0 and R1 and ri,…i < 4.
To apply my thoughts to the specifics:
1. The libertarian response shouldn’t be to go down the various libertarian rabbit holes about price gouging, betting markets, etc. These are arguments that the larger society we have to work with aren’t going to accept and forcing them is going to make it look like we’re on a hobby horse.
2. I accept that the basic response of a temporary shut down is both legitimate and appropriate. It’s a matter of basic public health and order, and libertarians (as opposed to anarchists) identify these as legitimate functions of government. This is exactly the sort of occasion we need governments for.
Thus, the high-level response shouldn’t be opposed. It should be aided.
3. Opposition should be to continued restrictions beyond the point at which better, less restrictive alternatives become available. And to restrictions that don’t actually improve the problem (like, I don’t think arresting people who go for more than one walk a day or other nonsense like that serves any end). This can be further pushed to address specific issues:
3.1. Putting as many resources as possible into gathering and disseminating accurate information:
* Work towards a situation where, in a month or two, anyone and everyone can be tested, and has been tested for prior exposure.
* Clearly identify and understand the risks of infection, the possibility of reinfection, etc.
* Establish individuals and community protocols based on these facts. Everyone wear a mask. What areas and people are safe and who needs to quarantine. Is the supply chain truly safe. Etc.
3.2 Act on this information. To the extent we can begin to roll back restrictions without letting the risk of spread get out of hand and potentially overwhelming the health system, we do it.
3.3 Reduce every conceivable regulatory barrier to production and dissemination of accurate testing, treatment, and prevention (vaccines) and do everyone feasible to produce it.
+1
1) To the extent available and cultural possible, use masks + track and trace to reduce lockdown time. I have my own doubts about getting everyone to wear masks, but support the effort. I think this needs to be solved culturally.
2) It’s counterproductive to use the stick during lockdown, but some particular behaviors are brazen enough to deserve it (large religious gatherings or partying).
3) The part of the fiscal response that should be criticized is the larger corporate slush fund part (a majority of the stimulus) and not the checks to people. If you’ve previously written about how the UBI is a great libertarian idea, this isn’t the time to waste political capital on a one off UBI.
I like you Arnold but the fact you spent the last couple weeks arguing for anti-liberty positions undermines any credibility you think you might have as a libertarian period, much less a Messiah. Revealed preferences and it’s basically been revealed you are a cypto-collectivist
One of keeping a libertarian focus is to insist on a property-rights approach to these coronavirus shutdowns. See, for example, https://priorprobability.com/2020/03/24/my-natural-rights-critique-of-the-economic-shutdown/
Here is an extended excerpt of my libertarian analysis: “If an economic shutdown is, indeed, the most effective method of saving lives during a pandemic (by requiring most people to stay at home and most businesses to shut down), then everyone who is inconvenienced by the shutdown (rich or poor; small business or large) must be compensated for this inconvenience as soon as possible by the governmental entities ordering the shutdown. The beauty of the natural rights approach is that it recognizes the reciprocal nature of the pandemic problem. In other words: not shutting down the economy makes it easier for the pandemic to spread, but at the same time, the decision to order an economic shutdown also imposes significant costs on most of us. In brief, I will sum up my natural rights approach to the pandemic as follows: at some point you have to pay me to stay at home; that is, if you (the government) are going to order me to stay home for the greater good, then you are also morally required to pay me “just compensation” (including lost wages) in exchange for my cooperation.”
Well, they did pass a $2 trillion stimulus including checks for people. If you have pragmatic problems with what’s in it, one can lobby for change, but its not like they haven’t tried to compensate people.
Another issue is “if we don’t do the lockdown, can business carry on as normal.”
It’s not like if they didn’t do the lockdown and the plague raged out of control that people would be going to bars and restaurants and concerts. Most data indicate that no lockdown scenarios create MORE economic damage because being free to do something in the midst of a deadly chaotic plague is no freedom at all.
I think all that happened here is they accelerated the free decisions most people would have made a month later at higher levels of contagion and did them earlier when they would matter more and generate a better long run economic situation.
Lastly, there are no natural rights. Natural rights are a shortcut we use to achieve utilitarian ends because they work most of the time and its not utilitarian to constantly be arguing over and rehashing such rights. But they don’t actually EXIST. In radical circumstances which differ from the normal ones in which we find them useful, they can be temporarily bent or broken. No libertarians in foxholes of plagues.
In a public good scenario, everybody pays costs, because everybody benefits. There is often no way to ensure that the burden and benefit are distributed with perfect fairness.
But at any rate, the logic of property rights as applicable in normal times doesn’t apply very well in highly abnormal times, such as during a pandemic.
In particular, we would have to figure out tort liabilities for negative externalities such as reckless endangerment from knowingly spreading a deadly illness, and that calculation is hopeless, and even if it weren’t, the damages are astronomical and, in most cases, irretrievable from the huge number of defendants who would be judgment-proof.
Let’s say the government found the first person to contract the new virus, before it had spread to anyone else, and with some kind of magic, knew exactly what would happen if it started to spread around.
To involuntarily confine that one individual produces a clear and small private cost and enormous public benefit. In that case, it would be appropriate for the state to compensate the man out of general taxes for his lost wages and other related costs for the duration of his contagious period, and we wouldn’t have to worry about discounting that amount by the offsets of private gain and avoided liability.
But note that even in this extreme case, we cannot say that some of that public benefit is not captured by the individual, who would probably face significant harm to his interests in the counterfactual epidemic-distressed economy, even if he was immune from the sickness. And we cannot say he deserves anything but massive fines (at the very least) if his own course of action were anything other than equivalent to involuntary quarantine, as he would be liable to those he harmed, and he has not insured himself in a way that can pay for all that liability.
In our system, in general, the way the government often tries to deter people from causing tort-like harms which they can’t pay compensation for is to make that behavior punishable by criminal sentences, and natural rights logic doesn’t require payment to people for not committing crimes.
As the number of people quarantined rises, the questions of their private gains and avoided liabilities become increasingly important, and at the point of general rules applying to the whole public as innocent victims of a natural calamity, it’s reasonable to consider it all a wash for everybody.