by George J. Dance
As regular blog readers have no doubt noticed, since April I have given increasing space to the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented government interventions (the lockdowns and business shutdowns) that accompanied it. I hope readers have enjoyed that because, whether you have or not, I expect it to continue. As I see it, we are living through another one of those pivotal crises – like the two World Wars, the Depression, and the War on Terrorism – that have defined modern history.
As a libertarian, I bring my ideological bias to the table. In this case, I have been informed by the work of economist Robert Higgs, whose masterwork Crisis and Leviathan documented well how governments (1) have a systemic bias towards increasing power; (2) use crises to vastly expand their power; and (3) retain much of their new power after a crisis is past. (Dr. Higgs explains his thesis at greater length in the accompanying video.) My bias obviously affects what material I forward, and I cannot pretend that it is non-existent. What I can and will do is admit that my bias can be wrong, and let it be challenged by empirical evidence.
At the same time, I can evaluate others' ideological biases the same way. In the mainstream media, I continually encounter a statist or pro-government bias: that "When public safety is threatened, whether by war or disease, our dependence on government becomes immediately and viscerally obvious"; that ""government has the power and resources to internalize the externalities of contagion and coordinate a rational response;" and that in March "a large and activist government was all that stood between us and mass privation and suffering on a mind-boggling scale" (as a Niskanen Center article recently summed up).
In early March, when no one knew much about the novel coronavirus, it was easy to believe that millions of us were going to die, and that only unprecedented, massive government intervention could save us from untold death and suffering. It was a mass panic reaction, but panic in a crisis is understandable and excusable. However, governance should not be informed by panic alone. Not only libertarian ideological biases, but the prevailing statist ones as well, should be challengeable by the evidence.
How dangerous the virus is, is an empirical question, one that depends on objective facts about the attack rate (how many people in a population are at risk) and the infection fatality rate (how many people who catch it will die). We had no way of knowing either in March, but there has been a surfeit of data in the succeeding three months. There is good reason to think that the "millions of deaths" claim was hyperbole. Nor can we rely on models that simply assume that lethality: we need at least a reasonable, fact-based estimate of the worst possible case, of how many people could possibly have been in danger.
Whether government interventions averted this mass death, or any death (on net), is also an empirical claim. It requires accurate death counts, and comparing them to the policies in place. It also requires causally linking specific deaths to specific interventions. (For instance, did stay-at-home orders increase infections within households more or less than they lowered them in the workplace?)
Finally, we need to measure the effects of voluntary social distancing. Hitherto, government's scientific advisers have often assumed the effect of voluntary social distancing to be zero. However, some of those advisers have begun noticing the phenomenon, if only to blame it for the recession that followed the lockdown.
I would like to discover that voluntary social distancing (combined with a use of government's police power consistent with libertarian principles) would have been enough to reduce most of the disease's harm, while avoiding the long-term harms that the government interventions have caused. That is my null hypothesis, which I think is supportable iff it cannot be overthrown. Hence my preoccupation with the subject in future months. While conclusions reached may be too late for this pandemic, I cling to the hope that what we learn this time will inform our response to the next one.
As regular blog readers have no doubt noticed, since April I have given increasing space to the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented government interventions (the lockdowns and business shutdowns) that accompanied it. I hope readers have enjoyed that because, whether you have or not, I expect it to continue. As I see it, we are living through another one of those pivotal crises – like the two World Wars, the Depression, and the War on Terrorism – that have defined modern history.
As a libertarian, I bring my ideological bias to the table. In this case, I have been informed by the work of economist Robert Higgs, whose masterwork Crisis and Leviathan documented well how governments (1) have a systemic bias towards increasing power; (2) use crises to vastly expand their power; and (3) retain much of their new power after a crisis is past. (Dr. Higgs explains his thesis at greater length in the accompanying video.) My bias obviously affects what material I forward, and I cannot pretend that it is non-existent. What I can and will do is admit that my bias can be wrong, and let it be challenged by empirical evidence.
At the same time, I can evaluate others' ideological biases the same way. In the mainstream media, I continually encounter a statist or pro-government bias: that "When public safety is threatened, whether by war or disease, our dependence on government becomes immediately and viscerally obvious"; that ""government has the power and resources to internalize the externalities of contagion and coordinate a rational response;" and that in March "a large and activist government was all that stood between us and mass privation and suffering on a mind-boggling scale" (as a Niskanen Center article recently summed up).
In early March, when no one knew much about the novel coronavirus, it was easy to believe that millions of us were going to die, and that only unprecedented, massive government intervention could save us from untold death and suffering. It was a mass panic reaction, but panic in a crisis is understandable and excusable. However, governance should not be informed by panic alone. Not only libertarian ideological biases, but the prevailing statist ones as well, should be challengeable by the evidence.
How dangerous the virus is, is an empirical question, one that depends on objective facts about the attack rate (how many people in a population are at risk) and the infection fatality rate (how many people who catch it will die). We had no way of knowing either in March, but there has been a surfeit of data in the succeeding three months. There is good reason to think that the "millions of deaths" claim was hyperbole. Nor can we rely on models that simply assume that lethality: we need at least a reasonable, fact-based estimate of the worst possible case, of how many people could possibly have been in danger.
Whether government interventions averted this mass death, or any death (on net), is also an empirical claim. It requires accurate death counts, and comparing them to the policies in place. It also requires causally linking specific deaths to specific interventions. (For instance, did stay-at-home orders increase infections within households more or less than they lowered them in the workplace?)
Finally, we need to measure the effects of voluntary social distancing. Hitherto, government's scientific advisers have often assumed the effect of voluntary social distancing to be zero. However, some of those advisers have begun noticing the phenomenon, if only to blame it for the recession that followed the lockdown.
I would like to discover that voluntary social distancing (combined with a use of government's police power consistent with libertarian principles) would have been enough to reduce most of the disease's harm, while avoiding the long-term harms that the government interventions have caused. That is my null hypothesis, which I think is supportable iff it cannot be overthrown. Hence my preoccupation with the subject in future months. While conclusions reached may be too late for this pandemic, I cling to the hope that what we learn this time will inform our response to the next one.
Also read: Lockdowns and libertarianism (1)
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