Argentina is at a turning point, says Milei

"We have governed these first six months of the year uphill, managing the worst inheritance in history and without the legislative power or instruments that all governments before ours have had," says Javier  Milei.... "And they put sticks in our wheel every single day that we try to govern.... But you know what? All this is proving that the ideas of freedom are stronger."

Javier Milei at Cato Conference: “I’m a Liberal Libertarian … I Don’t Believe Politicians Are Gods” | Cato at Liberty | Michael Chapman:

September 27, 2024 - "During a conference in Buenos Aries sponsored by the Cato Institute and Libertad y Progreso, Argentine President Javier Milei explained why socialism always fails, why big government (the 'State') is criminal ... and why he is a libertarian.... 'My friends, I'm a liberal libertarian' ... said Milei.... The two-day conference (June 11–12), attended by up to 1,000 people, was entitled 'The Rebirth of Liberty in Argentina and Beyond.'

Javier Milei, May 2024.

 Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

"Milei, the most outspoken and orthodox libertarian elected to the presidency of a major country, took office in December 2023. Although his critics and much of the mainstream media have tried to characterize him as an impractical zealot — El Loco, the madman — so far Milei has implemented a good portion of his agenda.... For instance, since taking office, Milei has slashed government spending up to 30%, fired more than 25,000 federal workers, reduced federal agencies, frozen public works projects, lowered a major import tariff, maintained budget surpluses every month, reduced monthly inflation to 4.2% (August 2024) from 25% (December 2023), and is pushing for currency competition.... 

"It is not all roses, however, as he explained in his speech because his administration is fighting against 100 years of government intervention. This soft socialism has corrupted the government, the courts, the economy, the
culture, the schools, and the people.

“'We have governed these first six months of the year uphill, managing the worst inheritance in history and without the legislative power or instruments that all governments before ours have had,' said Milei. 'Politics, since before we took power, has put sticks in our wheels. They put sticks in our wheel by tearing up the balance sheet of the central bank. And they put sticks in our wheel every single day that we try to govern.... But you know what?' he said. 'All this is proving that the ideas of freedom are stronger because, despite the foul political caste, we’re doing right. We’re beating inflation.'

“There is no doubt that Argentina is facing a turning point,' he added. '[W]e can return to the path of freedom that we should never have wandered from and return to the values and ideas that once made Argentina a global power, resume the defense of life, freedom, and private property, and aspire to be a country at the level of our identity and our history once again.'

"Between 1860 and 1930, Argentina 'grew more rapidly than the United States, Canada, Australia, or Brazil' ... according to Agriculture and Economic Growth in Argentina, 1913–84. By 1913, Argentina was among 'the 10 wealthiest countries in the world,' with a per capita income similar to Switzerland, the Latin American Economic Review reported. That changed with a military takeover in 1930, which introduced statist, big government policies tainted by socialist thinking. Government intervention and economic malaise have characterized Argentina for the last 100 years. Milei is trying to reintroduce the libertarian policies that once made Argentina great.

"'[I]n Argentina we are rediscovering ideas that made the modern Western world the greatest civilizing and economic development achievement in human history,' said Milei. 'We want to be a haven for those who defend and live these ideas throughout the entire planet.' Today, 'Argentina is on the private sector side, not the state,” he said. “On the side of those who work, those who trade, those who strive; on the side of those who take risks, those who invest, who innovate.'

"'As developed countries become bogged down in unnecessary regulations and obligations, we remove the regulations that have bound our people for decades,' said Milei, 'and we invite capital from around the world to cooperate with Argentina because we understand free economic activity as the most natural act of cooperation of the human race.'

"Milei also explained how big-government bureaucrats in Argentina and other countries corrupt the economy with socialist policies. 'As Hayek said, every time the state intervenes, it generates a worse result than if it hadn’t intruded,' said Milei. 'Why? Because state intervention causes distortions in the pricing system. It prevents correct economic calculation and consequently nullifies what Hayek called the correct functioning of the market as a discovery process.' With capitalism and free pricing you have better 'information about quantities of goods or services that are wanted and at what price,' said Milei. Collectivism, however, inhibits the discovery process and 'binds the entrepreneur’s hands and impedes them from producing better goods and offering better services at a better price'....

"Where economic freedom is allowed, there is more political freedom, said Milei. '[F]reer countries have a GDP per capita 12 times larger than oppressed countries. Even the inhabitants of the lowest decile of the free system live better than 90% of the population in the repressed countries. That is, free enterprise capitalism is superior to socialism even on the main task that socialism supposedly does better, which is to help the less fortunate.'

"Social justice, charity for 'those who have the least,” said Milei, 'it is good, but if you do it with your own pocket [money]' and not with money that belongs to someone else. When the state intervenes in the name of social welfare, it confiscates 'assets from a private person, which are theirs by natural right, which means that the state is a criminal and violent organization, as it is funded with a coercive source of income called taxes.' Echoing Hayek, Milei said the more the state intervenes 'the less free the markets are and the worse they work, producing misery instead of wealth.'

"In closing, he said, 'If we manage to remove the state enough for society to flourish, we will have succeeded because free economic activity will lead to benefits for all of society. If we achieve this, it won’t be a triumph of ours but of society as a whole, which will have left behind 100 years of statism and decadence. Therefore, as we travel the road to that new Argentina, I thank you all for being here. God bless the Argentines and may the force of Heaven be with us. Long live freedom, damn it! Long live freedom, damn it! Long live freedom, damn it! Thank you.'"

Read more: https://www.cato.org/blog/javier-milei-cato-conference-im-liberal-libertarian-i-dont-believe-politicians-are-gods

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Argentine President Javier Milei at conference, Cato Institute, Libertad y Progreso (Abridged Video) | Max Videos | September 12, 2024:

To watch the entire video, click here. https://www.cato.org/multimedia/events/rebirth-liberty-argentina-beyond-closing-remarks-javier-milei

David Boaz (1953-2024)

David Boaz (1953-2024) RIP

David Boaz | Wikipedia:

June 7, 2024 - "David Boaz (/ˈboʊ.æz/; born August 29, 1953 - June 7, 2024, Mayfield, Kentucky) was Distinguished Senior Fellow and the former executive vice president of the Cato Institute, an American libertarian think tank. He is the author of Libertarianism: A Primer, published in 1997 by the Free Press and described in the Los Angeles Times as 'a well-researched manifesto of libertarian ideas.' He is also the editor of The Libertarian Reader and co-editor of the Cato Handbook for Congress (2003) and the Cato Handbook on Policy (2005). 

"He frequently discusse[d] such topics as education choice, the growth of government, the ownership society, his support of drug legalization as a consequence of the individual right to self-determination, a non-interventionist foreign policy, and the rise of libertarianism on national television and radio shows.... Boaz, a graduate of Vanderbilt University, is the former editor of The New Guard magazine and was executive director of the Council for a Competitive Economy prior to joining Cato in 1981."

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Boaz
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0; additional terms may apply.

David Boaz at Young Americans for Liberty conference, 2019. Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Remembering David Boaz | Cato at Liberty { Peter Goettler: 

June 7, 2024 - "Our inestimable colleague, David Boaz, passed away on June 7, after a year‐​long battle with cancer. It’s impossible to express how deeply his friends, colleagues, and all libertarians will miss him. David was the longest‐​tenured staff member in the history of the Cato Institute, serving the organization and its mission for forty‐​three‐​and‐​a‐​half years. He was the executive vice president of the Institute for decades until 2022, when he ascended to the title of distinguished senior fellow of Cato....

"David made an incalculable contribution to building Cato into the respected institution and voice it is today, as well as to the “mainstreaming” of libertarianism as a legitimate political philosophy worthy of a seat at the table in all of the nation’s policy debates. Few did more than he did to earn it that seat.

"David was the first person from Cato whom I ever met. I was a new contributor in 2001 when he visited my office in New York to thank me.... I learned from David during that 2001 meeting and would never stop learning from him over the next 23 years. The visit took place about two weeks after the terrorist attack of 9/11. The building was across the street from Ground Zero.... We went up to the top‐​floor cafeteria to look over the devastation of what used to be the World Trade Center. David remarked, 'After this, I’m very concerned about terrorism. But I’m equally concerned about what this will mean for our civil liberties.'

"This was a lesson. Because at that time, I only shared David’s first concern — of terrorism. Barely a month later the PATRIOT Act was passed into law, and we would soon see the national security surveillance state mushroom in ways few might have imagined. Later came revelations of extralegal and unconstitutional spying programs. This confirmed that, in the wake of the World Trade Center tragedy, authorities’ respect for civil liberties were at a low ebb and these rights indeed had been degraded. David’s fears back in September 2001 were well‐​founded and prescient.

"I recall this story because it epitomizes the most important thing I learned from David: all our liberties matter. In defending individual rights we can’t pick and choose, or somehow prioritize the ones that are most important to us. First, because they are interconnected. If we allow some to be threatened or diluted, others will soon be. Second, the ones we deem 'less important' may be crucial to us in ways we can’t foresee. And even if not, they are undoubtedly critical to other fellow citizens.

"David did much to imbue Cato with a similarly holistic view of individual liberty. He also never ceased to stress the Institute’s need to be truly independent, to be truly nonpartisan, and to adhere faithfully to libertarian principles. It’s now the duty of the Cato staff of today, and of the future, to honor David by upholding all of these values as faithfully and as capably as he did."

Read more: https://www.cato.org/blog/remembering-david-boaz
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

David Boaz | The Reason Interview | ReasonTV | March 20, 2024:

Cato CEO says Libertarian Party isn't libertarian

The President and CEO of the Cato Institute has declared the Libertarian Party "outside the bounds of libertarianism," in a Washington Post  op-ed that contains disinformation. 

by George J. Dance 

A day before the Libertarian Party (L) National Convention opens in Washington DC, Cato president and CEO Peter Goettler has launched a blistering attack on the LP. In an article in the Wathington Post, Goettler has declared that the LP is "hardly libertarian anymore" According to Goettler, the Libertarian  "party leadership has been taken over by a faction that places it well outside the bounds of libertarianism altogether". Serious charges indeed, which really should be looked into.  

For Goettler, the "bonds of libertarianism" – his criteria of what all professed "libertarians believe in" (or else) – are, or at least include: 

• individual freedom, 
• equality under the law, 
• pluralism, 
• toleration, 
• free speech, 
• freedom of religion, 
• government by consent of the governed, 
• the rule of law, 
• private property, 
• free markets and 
• limited constitutional government.

Some items on that list can be questioned. For instance, the LP membership has always included anarcho-capitalists – who are not true believers in "limited constitutional government" – which would mean that the Libertarian Party has always been "outside the bounds of libertarianism" for Goettler. But let us not put words into his mouth. The proper thing would be to let him outline which LP policy positions he objects to, and let him explain just how they run afoul of his list. 

Perhaps he will do so in a follow-up article; he does not do that here. Instead, he uses his criteria to criticize the policies of former (Republican) president Donald Trump: 

Trump ... allowed government spending and debt to continue to spiral upward, increasing the national debt by $8.4 trillion. Federal outlays soared from $4 trillion his first year (2017) to $6.8 trillion in his last year. He persists in railing against immigration and free trade, supports further expansion of presidential power and seeks to crack down on political enemies. The Libertarian Party itself said it best in a 2018 statement: “Whatever libertarian impulses Trump the candidate seemed to have … his actual performance as president stands in stark contrast."

As logicians often say on social media, WTF (Why The Fallacy)? If Goettler were arguing only that Donald Trump has done things "ouside the bounds of libertarianism," that would be all well and good: but Trump is not, and never has been or even claimed to be a libertarian (though he claims to like libertarians), much less part of its "leadership". What do facts about his policies and beliefs imply about the LP leadership's beliefs? You may (or may not) be surprised at the answer. 

As those who follow LP news know, this year's convention committee came up with a novel idea to generate some free media; with Biden, Trump, and Kennedy sucking up all the political oxygen, they would invite those three to speak and answer questions at their convention. [Update, May 24 - This morning I read an unconfirmed story that the Trump and Kennedy campaigns independently came up with the idea and took it to the LP]. Biden declined, or at least never replied; Trump and Kennedy accepted; and the free media has followed.  

Hence Mr. Goettler's article. Yet his account of the incident (the invitations) that provoked it is somewhat different, as it omits a couple of details: 

We know by now that Donald Trump likes nothing better than stepping onto a stage, hearing his name chanted by an adoring crowd, and flashing his familiar thumbs-up sign. This week, the former president will do just that under the bright lights at the Libertarian National Convention in D.C.

It will be the first time in U.S. history that a presidential candidate of a rival party will address the convention of a party that is presumably gathering to nominate its own candidate. And this strange turn of events has many libertarians scratching their heads.

As noted, both Biden and Kennedy were also invited, and Kennedy also accepted (and will be speaking). By omitting those facts, and telling his readers only that Trump was invited and will be speaking, Goettler is telling a misleadeing half-truth – he is telling "the truth" but not "the whole truth." His account is misinformation. 

By doing so, Goettler strengthens his argument; he can imply that the LP "leadership" faction invited Trump because the "leadership" faction believes the same things as Trump. So all those nasty, unlibertarian things that Trump is responsible for can now be attributed to the LP as well. Since some at least some Trump policies have clearly been "outside the bounds of libertarianism", that puts the LP "outside the bounds of libertarianism" as well. 

But given that Kennedy will also be speaking, such an implication is clearly absurd: Trump and Kennedy have different, sometimes contradictory, beliefs about policy. It is absurd to think that the LP "leadership" faction, or anyone for that matter, believes the same things as Trump and the same things as Kennedy. (Not to mention simultaneously believing the same things as Biden, who was also invited).

So obviously Goettler had a reason to not tell the whole truth, since to do so would reveal his argument as the absurdity it is. Since that misinformation is crucial to his argument, I have to conclude that it was deliberate. His omission of facts was not merely misleading (misinformation, but deliberately misleading (disinformation). 

To be sure, I was not a fan of the convention committee's idea. As I posted on social media at the time, I thought that inviting Trump to speak was like deliberately getting oneself sprayed by a skunk: it would take a long time to get the stink off. At the time, though, I was imagining the stink coming from the usual sources – the New Republic, Mother Jones, the SPLC, MSNBC, the Niskanen Institute, and the like – not from a libertarian group like the Cato Institute. 

I have always been annoyed at libertarian individuals or groups who try to read other individuals or groups out of the libertarian movement. I am especially annoyed when one of those tries it on the Libertarian Party or its presidential campaign during an election year (as was too often tried by some during the Bob Barr and Gary Johnson campaigns). I do not dispute that those doing that are libertarian themselves, as I believe in giving other avowed libertarians a courtesy that Mr. Goettler obviously does not. But that's just my own view. Libertarians do not require my permission to criticize other libertarians. 

However, those who criticize others should not be immune from criticism themselves. And when one of them relies on misinformation and disinformation, such a criticism is most needed. 

Goettler's article can be read here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/05/23/trump-libertarian-party-convention/

New book on libertarianism's founding mothers

Timothy Sandofur's new book on the founding mothers of libertarianism: Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Paterson, and Ayn Rand.

The Founding Mothers of Libertarianism | Reason magazine - Marcus Witcher: 

Freedom's Furies: How Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Ayn Rand Found Liberty in an Age of Darkness, by Timothy Sandefur, Cato Institute, 500 pages, $19.95

March 2023 - "With Freedom's Furies, Timothy Sandefur shows how Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Ayn Rand defended individualism and free markets while America was in the grips of Depression and war. Although these three furies have long been identified as the founders of modern American libertarianism, Sandefur treads new ground by exploring their relationships with each other and by tracing the evolution of their thought. All three women offered their own unique defenses of individual liberty, and their disagreements anticipated the differences among libertarians and classical liberals today.

"Sandefur, the vice president for legal affairs at the Goldwater Institute, begins with the trio's literary influences, particularly the novelist Sinclair Lewis. All three, he writes, appreciated how Lewis' books 'expressed the way modern mass culture penalized originality and integrity, and rewarded obedience and cravenness.' Each joined Lewis in rejecting conformity, but they resisted his dismissal of all bourgeois virtue—and Rand also rejected his pessimism.

"The New Deal and World War II had a tremendous influence on the three thinkers. Sandefur describes the historical context well, with particular attention to the authoritarian side of President Franklin Roosevelt's administration. Indeed, professors looking for a book to assign classes studying American history from 1920 to 1950 should seriously consider Freedom's Furies. It masterfully details the causes of the Great Depression, the federal government's overreach during the New Deal, and the wartime attacks on political, economic, and civil liberties. Not only was individual freedom under assault, Sandefur notes, but it was 'almost impossible to find any published material that made a strong, intellectual case for free markets.' The furies realized they would have to produce their own.

"And so Paterson's The God of the Machine (a philosophical treatise), Lane's The Discovery of Freedom (a pop history crossed with a manifesto), and Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead (a didactic novel) were published in 1943. All three writers believed that the morality of self-sacrifice should be rejected. Rand and Paterson both argued for a form of ethical egoism, and they would long debate who influenced whom. But the two differed greatly in their style: Rand was deeply influenced by 19th-century Romanticism while Paterson was committed to naturalism. For her part, Lane argued that human energy produced human flourishing and that 'every human being, by his nature, is free.' Humanity simply needed to discover this truth; hence her book's title.

"All three authors independently developed some of the most important insights of classical liberal academics. Paterson's criticism of the New Deal, for instance, included the argument that central planning was impossible because bureaucrats 'would have to know "absolutely all the factors of present and past out of which the future must proceed, and to anticipate inerrantly all the possible new discoveries which may be made."' These arguments capture some of the insights of Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek, who were not well-known in the U.S. at the time. Likewise, The God of the Machine anticipated Karl Popper's critique of 'the arrested society,' which he wrote two years later. Paterson recognized that all utopias 'are final…they are static societies'; as such, she suggested, they could not adapt, because 'creative processes do not function to order.' In short, 'To live, people must think, and to think, they must be free.'

"Lane anticipated Hayek's critique of government planning in a short 1936 book titled Give Me Liberty. She argued, in Sandefur's words, that 'to truly organize an economy…government bureaucrats would, in principle, need infinite knowledge.' Lane also hit on some important insights later associated with the economics of public choice. The idea that bureaucrats could better manage the economy than individuals was, she wrote, the 'dominant fallacy' of the 1930s. Instead, Lane insisted that 'there was no reason to think government officials would be exempt from the shortsightedness, corruption, or ignorance that plagued the decisions of private citizens.'

"Sandefur also details the trio's views on religion and how those related to their defense of liberty. While all three believed that natural rights existed independently of government, they arrived at this conclusion in different ways. Lane and Paterson both argued that the existence of a deity was necessary. Rand, an atheist, disagreed; she believed that human beings could reason our way to a justification of natural rights.

"Lane irritated the other two women with her insistence that Christian ethics could be reconciled with a robust defense of individual liberty. Her argument that people have a moral sense that leads us, by nature, to care for our neighbor annoyed Rand and Paterson, who felt that man should look after his own happiness and had no moral obligation to others. Paterson took umbrage at the vagueness of Lane's 'all men are brothers' thesis and retorted, 'Stalin is no brother of mine.' This helped end Lane and Paterson's friendship. Lane's religious views and Rand's atheism likewise made any deep friendship between the two women difficult, and they met in person just once....

"Although this is an exceptional book, it is not flawless. The most striking shortcoming is the lack of attention to the ways the furies applied their individualism to minorities. Sandefur does note that 'on matters of race relations, freedom of speech, and sexual autonomy, they were decades ahead of their time in embracing views later classified as "liberal"' [but] ... it is frustrating that the book doesn't delve into that point in more detail. Sandefur mentions, for instance, that Lane was hired by the Pittsburgh Courier (one of the largest black newspapers in the country) in 1942, but he doesn't detail any of the arguments she made in her essays there.... For more than two years at the Courier, Lane applied the ideals of individual liberty and her unique conception of human energy to black Americans and their struggle....

"Still, this book's flaws are small compared to its contributions. Freedom's Furies offers hope to a new generation of classical liberals and libertarians living through the threat of authoritarianism abroad and illiberalism at home. Compared with the domestic overreach of the 1930s and '40s and the rise of fascism and communism abroad, our own troubles don't seem quite as bad.... Individual liberty and self-reliance are still the keystones, and the furies' successors will surely continue to promote liberty in the face of the darkness today.'

Read more: https://reason.com/2023/02/11/the-founding-mothers-of-libertarianism/

Timothy Sandofur on Freedom’s Furies: Three Women Who Sparked a Revolution, Goldwater Institute, March 9, 2023:

Order Freedom's Furies at Amazon.com.

Canada falls out of Human Freedom Index top 10

According to the 2022 Human Freedom Index published by Canada's Fraser Institute and the USA's Cato Institute, Canada dropped out of the world\s top 10 freest countries in 2020, falling from seventh-freest nation to 13th.   

Canada drops out of top 10 ‘freest’ countries | Western Standard - Christopher Oldcorn:

Jan 26, 2023 - "Canada dropped out of the top 10 freest countries in the world, according to a new study released by Canada’s Fraser Institute and America’s Cato Institute. The last time Canada did not rank in the top 10 of the Human Freedom Index (HFI) was back in 2012. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government limited Canadians' movements, freedom of expression and assembly, and other freedoms, according to Fraser Institute Fellow and co-author of this year’s HFI Fred McMahon ... 

"The HFI measures personal freedom across several factors, including 'the rule of law, safety and security, identity and relationships (i.e. the freedom to choose your relationship partner), freedom of movement, speech, assembly, and religion … alongside economic freedom, the ability of individuals to make their own economic decisions.' Canada rank[ed] the 13th freest country in the world based on 2020 data, which was the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions, dropping from sixth in 2019. Switzerland maintained its top spot, followed by New Zealand, Estonia, Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Egypt, Iran, Venezuela, Yemen, and Syria are the five least-freest countries."

Read more: https://www.westernstandard.news/business/canada-drops-out-of-top-10-freest-countries/article_d6ee1ffc-9d87-11ed-9fca-b742955ccf4c.html

Human Freedom Index 2022: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/human-freedom-index-2022

Chart courtesy Reddit

Lockdowns should be rejected as public policy, meta-analysis concludes

Lockdowns only reduced COVID deaths by 0.2 per cent, Johns Hopkins study finds | National Post - Tristan Hopper: 

Februrary 2, 2022 - "A new study out of Johns Hopkins University is claiming that worldwide pandemic lockdowns only prevented 0.2 per cent of COVID-19 deaths and were 'not an effective way of reducing mortality rates during a pandemic.' 'We find no evidence that lockdowns, school closures, border closures, and limiting gatherings have had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality,' reads the paper, which is based on a review of 34 pre-existing COVID-19 studies. Given the 'devastating effects' that lockdowns have caused, the authors recommended they be 'rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument.'

"In both Europe and the United States, researchers found that a lockdown could only be expected to bring down mortality rates by 0.2 per cent 'as compared to a COVID-19 policy based solely on recommendations.' For context, 0.2 per cent of total Canadian COVID-19 fatalities thus far is equal to about 70 people. The impact of border closures was found to be even less effective, with death rates only going down about 0.1 per cent. The study did give partial credit to policies that shut down 'non-essential' businesses — which they concluded could bring down COVID death rates by as much as 10 per cent. The study noted that this was 'likely to be related to the closure of bars.'

"The meta-analysis drew on studies where researchers felt they had enough data to draw a link between lockdown policies and their subsequent effect on COVID-19 fatalities. One cited paper is a November study published in the Review of Financial Studies. Researchers comprehensively broke down the COVID strictures in every single U.S. county throughout 2020 and then compared them against the county’s subsequent COVID fatality rates. That particular study found that restaurant closures and mask mandates saved lives, but that spa closures basically did nothing. Another cited study is a July 2020 paper from The Lancet that tallied up COVID-19 outcomes in the world’s 50 hardest hit countries and then compared it to factors ranging from border closures to obesity rates. That study found that 'full lockdowns' and 'rapid border closures' could measurably bring down a country’s case rate, but didn’t have all that much effect on death rates.

"Researchers excluded nearly 83 studies for consideration — including some that supported the efficacy of lockdowns. The most notable of which is a 2020 study published in the journal Nature that concluded that European lockdowns helped avert between 2.8 and 3.5 million deaths in the first months of the pandemic.... The Johns Hopkins researchers only wanted to study death rates: They discarded any study that examined the effect of lockdowns on hospitalizations or case rates.... [and] also threw out any study that evaluated lockdowns based solely on 'forecasts' of anticipated deaths. In the case of the Nature study, the Johns Hopkins researchers rejected it because it didn’t control for other factors (such as 'season' or 'behaviour') that could have explained how European death rates ultimately did not hit the levels predicted by virologists.

"Unlike much of the media-cited research on COVID-19 thus far, the new Johns Hopkins paper is by economists rather than by epidemiologists. Lead author Steve Hanke is a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and a contributor to the right-leaning National Review. Nevertheless, it’s not the first study to pour cold water on the notion that lockdowns were a significant factor in saving lives during the pandemic. An April study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, for instance, determined that U.S. 'shelter-in-place' orders 'had no detectable health benefits.' ... mostly because Americans had already begun to follow social distancing protocols on their own. Similarly, Johns Hopkins researchers concluded that policymakers may be underestimating how much of COVID’s spread was mitigated simply by the private actions of citizens. If lockdowns were ineffective, they write, 'this should draw our focus to the role of voluntary behavioural changes.'

"It will be years until researchers have a complete picture of the harms caused by lockdown policies, including damage to mental health and corresponding spikes in cancer and overdose fatalities. What is known, however, is the cost: Government-imposed lockdowns spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic have proved to be one of the most expensive single events in human history. In Canada alone, the first year of the pandemic yielded a $343 billion federal deficit driven largely by payments to workers unemployed by government-mandated closures of gyms, restaurants and other public spaces."

Read more: https://nationalpost.com/news/world/johns-hopkins-university-study-covid-19-lockdowns

Read study: https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2022/01/A-Literature-Review-and-Meta-Analysis-of-the-Effects-of-Lockdowns-on-COVID-19-Mortality.pdf or https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2022-01/hanke-sae-jan-2022.pdf

Cato fellow sues employer over vaccine mandate

Why I’m Suing Over My Employer’s Vaccine Mandate | Wall Street Journal - Todd Zywicki:

August 6, 2021 - "In a few weeks I will begin my 24th year as a law professor at George Mason University. Last year I volunteered to teach in person, even though I’m in my 50s. Teaching law is my job and I owe my students my best. I also knew I could do it safely. During the spring of 2020 I contracted and recovered from Covid-19, which I later confirmed through a positive antibody test. Multiple positive antibody tests have since confirmed that I continue to have a robust level of immune protection.

"But now my employer, a state institution, is requiring Covid vaccines. In my case, vaccination is unnecessary and potentially risky. My only other options are to teach remotely or to seek a medical exemption that would require me to wear a mask, remain socially distanced from faculty or students during, say, office hours, and submit to weekly testing. It would be impossible for me to perform my duties to the best of my ability under such conditions. 

"The administration has threatened those who don’t submit with disciplinary action, including termination of employment. This week the public-interest lawyers at the New Civil Liberties Alliance filed suit on my behalf, challenging the university’s mandatory vaccination requirement for those with naturally acquired immunity. This coercive mandate violates my constitutional right to bodily integrity for no compelling reason.

"Clinical studies from Israel, the Cleveland Clinic, England and elsewhere have demonstrated beyond a doubt that natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2 provides robust and durable protection against reinfection comparable to or better than that provided by the most effective vaccines. Examining the evidence this May, the World Health Organization concluded: 'Current evidence points to most individuals developing strong protective immune responses following natural infection with SARS-CoV-2.' Protection from natural immunity may even exceed that of the less effective Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which according to the CDC demonstrated only 66.3% effectiveness at preventing infection in clinical trials.

"But GMU’s policy is even more bizarre than that. It allows employees to comply by receiving any vaccine approved by the World Health Organization, including low-quality Chinese vaccines such as the Sinovac vaccine, which the WHO concluded was only 51% effective at preventing symptomatic disease, and the Sinopharm vaccine, which has performed so poorly that some countries are systematically revaccinating their populations with higher-quality options. Even China is considering the same. Whatever the university’s reasoning for endorsing these low-quality vaccines while slighting natural immunity, it clearly doesn’t stand up on public-health grounds.

"It isn’t merely unnecessary for me to get the shot. It’s potentially dangerous. Covid-recovered individuals have been mostly excluded from the vaccine clinical trials, rendering any claims about the purported safety for this group largely speculative. Moreover, clinical evidence has suggested that Covid survivors suffer more-frequent and more-serious side effects from vaccination than those who have never been infected....

"If I were not already naturally immune to Covid, I would have long ago gotten vaccinated at the first opportunity. But for those of us who have acquired natural immunity, vaccination provides none of the benefits of vaccination with all of the costs."

Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/vaccine-mandate-natural-immunity-lawsuit-covid-19-coronavirus-11628281507

Mr. Zywicki is professor at Antonin Scalia Law School and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

A libertarian pandemic response

Libertarianism and the Coronavirus Pandemic | Cato @ Liberty - Andy Craig:

March 25, 2020 - In recent days, there has been snark from some quarters about the current crisis somehow catching libertarians flat‐​footed. The argument goes that the need for a big government response disproves a political ideology that is often, though in somewhat oversimplified fashion, summarized as favoring 'small government." A better description would be a government limited in scope but sufficient to meet that scope.

Libertarianism, properly understood, encompasses certain core functions as the proper role of government. It is not the libertarian view that government should be ineffective at protecting individual rights or dysfunctionally paralyzed in the face of a massive threat to people’s lives. Government has a role to play in responding to the pandemic in much the same way it is the government’s job to prosecute murderers or defend the country from invasion.

At the same time, libertarian principles and insights can provide some guideposts for how to respond in this unprecedented global emergency.

One thing to keep in mind is that some limits on government power are even more crucial now. Emergency powers should be limited in duration and limited to directly addressing the present situation based on the facts as best we know them. Such policy responses shouldn’t be larded up with a pre‐​existing wish list of unrelated concerns. It is essential to preserve constitutional liberal democracy and resist excessive long‐​term concentration of power in the executive.

Social distancing measures should rely on voluntary compliance to the greatest degree possible, and most people have been voluntarily complying. Even when enforcement is necessary, simply breaking up gatherings without citation or prosecution is possible and preferable in many cases. A heavy‐​handed reliance on coercive enforcement might not only be unnecessary in some regards, it can also backfire by sparking protest non‐​compliance, and it might also be redundant to all the other measures already in place.... For that reason, some states have so far rejected compulsory "stay at home" or "shelter in place" orders. There is no need to fuel further panic or distract police from their more important duties to worry about safe and benign activities like taking the family dog for a walk.

At the same time, many jurisdictions have moved to suspend petty arrests altogether, mostly for victimless crimes, in an effort to reduce jail populations. Also under consideration are proposals to release many of those individuals currently in jail awaiting trial for minor offenses. This is a welcome shift that should prompt us to reconsider the necessity of some of these laws, many of which have long been the target of libertarian ire.

Another insight comes from Nobel laureate, libertarian icon, and Cato Distinguished Senior Fellow, the late F.A. Hayek. In works such as The Constitution of Liberty, he wrote that good laws should be general, equal, and certain. That is a principle that is relevant even in something as far removed from the libertarian ideal as the emergency economic responses currently under consideration. Rather than targeted industry bailouts and micro‐​managed interventions, policy responses should be clear, simple, system‐​wide, and with a defined end date as soon as possible. Simple universal payments to individuals are also preferable to corporate bailouts. It is not feasible for the government to abruptly order massive shutdowns of so much economic activity without some kind of compensation, in much the same way we require just compensation for eminent domain. It is proper for the government to own the consequences of its orders and to soften the shock of this sudden disruption....

Libertarian criticisms of bad regulations have proven especially prescient. A crucial government failure has been the FDA’s [Food and Drug Administration's] inflexible and heavy‐​handed bureaucracy, which has held up tests and prevented thousands of private and academic labs from quickly increasing testing capacity. For most of February, the FDA required everybody to rely solely on tests produced by the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and refused to grant permission to other labs. This proved to be catastrophically flawed when the first round of tests produced by the CDC didn’t work and had to be replaced. This failure is a large part of why America’s coronavirus testing response to date compares so unfavorably with South Korea’s.

Another example of a libertarian response to the pandemic has been the quick need to suspend many occupational licensing restrictions, such as by letting doctors practice interstate and upgrading the permissions of nurse practitioners and doctors’ assistants. Even mundane and trivial regulations of the sort that only libertarians would have worried about before have suddenly been cast aside. Two months ago, who would have thought it an urgent concern to suspend alcohol regulations so that restaurants can serve beverages to go for home delivery by rideshare drivers?

While we can welcome these wins, there is no doubt that we have also seen extreme impositions on personal freedom. Libertarians can find that loss especially painful. Even when these new rules are sadly necessary and justified by the facts, it is a cost we should carefully weigh as we eventually move to unwind restrictions and return to some kind of normalcy. In the name of saving lives from the immediate threat, governments around the world have suspended most international travel and heavily curtailed consumer freedoms and freedom of association. The acute loss of freedoms we’ve long taken for granted underscores how valuable they truly are. And some freedoms, like freedom of speech and the right to privacy, should remain sacrosanct and defended tenaciously even in the face of an emergency.

While much of the policy response so far has been in good faith (if often inept), the propensity for power grabs by authoritarian populists should not be discounted. Preserving the rule of law, checks and balances, and constitutional liberal democracy is essential. Elections should proceed on time and with whatever accommodations prove necessary. Legislatures and courts should be kept open for essential business, including by remote participation if necessary, and foundational constitutional structures should remain in place. We have no need of a dictator in the United States nor in other countries around the world.

And perhaps most importantly: emergency rules and powers should extend only for the duration of the emergency, and be repealed at the earliest feasible opportunity. We should be wary of the ratchet effect, where governments tend to retain powers and keep open programs long after their original justification has disappeared.

Freedom is precious, and in the grand sweep of human history it has often been fleeting and tenuous. Right now we are facing the greatest threat to a free and open society that most of us have ever witnessed, at least in the United States, if not in many other nations that have been through worse scourges of totalitarianism and major wars. So libertarians will continue as they always have, ready to defend the principles of human freedom at every turn."

https://www.cato.org/blog/libertarianism-coronavirus-pandemic

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Walter E. Williams (1936-2020)

 'I Just Do My Own Thing': Walter Williams, RIP | Reason - Nick Gillespie:

December 2, 2020 - "I'm saddened to write of the death of libertarian economist Walter E. Williams. He passed away Wednesday morning at the age of 84, less than a day after teaching a class at George Mason University, where he worked for 40 years and helped transform his department into a highly respected center of free market scholars. A popular syndicated columnist whose work appeared in over a hundred newspapers on a weekly basis, he was a long-time contributor to Reason and served as an emeritus trustee of Reason Foundation....

"Born in Philadelphia in 1936, Williams grew up as a neighbor to Bill Cosby in the city's racially segregated housing projects and was drafted into the peacetime Army during the Cold War. A self-described 'crazy-ass man who insisted on talking about liberty in America' long before he was a public intellectual, the racist violence and abuse he suffered at the hands of police, military officers, and other authorities informed much of his work. In his powerful, evocative 2010 memoir, Up From the Projects, he recounts the time when, as a cab driver in the City of Brotherly Love, he was ordered out of his cab by a white officer, beaten up, and then charged with disorderly conduct."

Read more: https://reason.com/2020/12/02/i-just-do-my-own-thing-walter-williams-rip/

Walter Williams, RIP | Cato@Liberty - David Boaz:

"After early stints as a cab driver, a soldier in Korea, and a probation officer, Walter focused on education and got a Ph.D. in economics from UCLA in 1972. From 1973 to 1980 he taught at Temple University in Philadelphia before moving to George Mason University for the rest of his career.

"In 1982 he published a book of original research and provocative ideas, The State Against Blacks, which Don Boudreaux describes in today’s Wall Street Journal as 'an eloquent, data‐​rich broadside against occupational licensing, taxicab regulations, labor‐​union privileges and other fine‐​sounding government measures that inflict disproportionate harm on blacks by restricting the employment options and by driving up the costs of goods and services'. His work in these areas and his outgoing, engaging, effective style of communications brought him broader public attention. He appeared in Milton Friedman’s PBS series “Free to Choose” in 1980. He became a frequent guest host on the Rush Limbaugh Show.... 

"In 1989 the Cato Institute and Praeger published Walter’s book South Africa’s War against Capitalism. In it he showed, with detailed economic and historical analysis, that ... 'South Africa’s apartheid is not the corollary of free‐​market or capitalist forces. Apartheid is the result of anticapitalistic or socialistic efforts to subvert the operation of market (capitalistic) forces.'"

Read more: https://www.cato.org/blog/walter-williams-rip

In Memoriam: Walter E. Williams, 1936-2020 | Forbes - Art Carden: 

December 3, 2020 - "Williams’s work and commentary was informed by a deep understanding of how free people in free markets find ways to help one another. Howard Baetjer explains the 'Invisible Hand Principle' in his short book Economics and Free Markets. He quotes Williams, who said 'In a free market, you get more for yourself by serving your fellow man. You don’t have to care about him! Just serve him.'

"We get, as Adam Smith explained, what we want by helping other people get what they want. Importantly, this requires us to respect their right to say 'no.' Free markets rest on a profound respect for others’ dignity. A free market is possible and productive when we recognize that other people are not merely means to our ends, created to serve us or created to live as we want them to. If we want to secure their cooperation, we have to give them what they want rather than what we think is best for them. Few people understood this better than Walter Williams."

Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/artcarden/2020/12/03/in-memoriam-walter-e-williams-1936-2020/?sh=5fbe44b18fe4

DHS agents 'disappearing' protesters in Portland

Conservatives, libertarians push back on Portland crackdown | Washington Times - David Sherfinski:

July 21, 2020 - "President Trump’s deployment of federal officers to quell rioting in Portland, Oregon, and possibly elsewhere is seeing pushback not only from Democrats but also from conservatives and libertarians who say the federal government can’t indiscriminately throw its weight around and trample on constitutional rights. The White House insists the federal forces are necessary to stop the marauding mobs in Portland, but civil libertarians object to reports that unidentified officers are sweeping people up and detaining them.

"'It’s pretty straight-up unconstitutional,' said Nicholas Sarwark, a former chairman of the Libertarian National Committee. 'I wish I could nuance this one.... There’s nothing good there.'

"The White House said the law that created the Department of Homeland Security after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks gives the agency authority to protect federal property, which is the administration’s reason for the deployment in Portland to protect a federal courthouse. Mr. Trump has [also] said he might send federal agents into Chicago and other big cities wracked by violent crime in the wake of the racial justice upheaval and calls to defund police departments.

"The federal government does have 'disturbingly broad authorities' to send law enforcers anywhere in the country if it chooses, said Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian Washington think tank. 'That doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be a political fight about it,' he said....

"Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, objected to the Trump administration’s sending 'unidentified' federal agents to Portland. 'We cannot give up liberty for security,' Mr. Paul said on Twitter. 'Local law enforcement can and should be handling these situations in our cities, but there is no place for federal troops or unidentified federal agents rounding people up at will.'

"Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, a Libertarian who quit the Republican Party last year, said on Twitter: 'Donald Trump is deploying unmarked federal police, decked out like a paramilitary force, to grab Americans off the streets. He’s not protecting liberty; he’s practicing tyranny'....

"U.S. Customs and Border Protection has jurisdiction of areas in the U.S. that are within 100 miles of an external boundary. 'That gives broader authority for Customs and Border [Protection] in particular to operate than folks may realize,' said Jonathan Adler, a professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law. But there is no 'generic federal police authority,' he said. 'Nor should there be.... That’s the sort of power that was reserved to the states'....

"Sarwark said that people backing the president’s actions can’t seriously defend the situation from a constitutional perspective. 'This will separate the sheep from the goats,” he said. “If you don’t oppose secret police disappearing people off of American streets because they’re leftists, then you’re not really opposed to secret police — you’re just opposed to it being used against people you like.'"

Read more: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jul/21/federal-agents-portland-opposed-some-conservatives/

The flawed model behind the shutdowns

How One Model Simulated 2.2 Million U.S. Deaths from COVID-19 | Cato @ Liberty - Alan Reynolds:

April 21, 2020 - When it came to dealing with an unexpected surge in infections and deaths from SARS-CoV-2 (the virus causing COVID-19 symptoms), federal and state policymakers understandably sought guidance from competing epidemiological computer models. On March 16, a 20-page report from Neil Ferguson's team at Imperial College London quickly gathered enormous attention by producing enormous death estimates. Dr. Ferguson had previously publicized almost equally sensational death estimates from mad cow disease, bird flu and swine flu.

The New York Times quickly ran the hot news about this new COVID-19 estimate: 'The report, which warned that an uncontrolled spread of the disease could cause as many as 510,000 deaths in Britain, triggered a sudden shift in the government’s comparatively relaxed response to the virus. American officials said the report, which projected up to 2.2 million deaths in the United States from such a spread, also influenced the White House to strengthen its measures to isolate members of the public.'

A month later that 2.2 million estimate was still being used (without revealing the source) by President Trump and Doctors Fauci and Birx to imply that up to two million lives had been saved by state lockdowns and business closings and/or by federal travel bans....

[Dr. Ferguson's model] came up with 2.2 million deaths by simply assuming that 81% of the population gets infected* – ­268 million people – and that 0.9% of them die.... Neither the high infection rate nor the high fatality rate holds up under scrutiny.

To project that nearly everyone becomes infected the report had to assume that each person infects 2.4 others and those people, in turn, infect 2.4 others and so on, with the result that the number infected doubles roughly every four days. This 2.4 'reproduction number' (R0) was 'based on ... the early growth-rate of the epidemic in Wuhan.' But the reproduction number always appears highest during the early phase of an epidemic (partly due to increased testing) and has now fallen to nearly zero in China....

The worst-case Imperial College estimate of 2.2 million deaths if everyone does 'nothing' did not simply mean no government lockdowns, as a March 31 White House graph with two curves implied. It meant nobody avoids crowded elevators, or wears face masks, washes their hands more often, or buys gloves or hand sanitizer. Everyone does literally nothing to avoid danger. The Ferguson team knew that was unrealistic, yet their phantasmal 2.2 million estimate depended on it.... The obvious reality of voluntary self-protective actions makes it incorrect to allude to the extreme Ferguson death estimate, consciously or not, as evidence that heavy-handed government interventions prevented 'hundreds of thousands' of deaths....

The key premise of 81% of the population being infected should have raised more alarms than it did. Even the deadly 'Spanish Flu' (H1N1) pandemic of 1918-19 infected no more than 28% of the U.S. population. The next H1N1 'Swine Flu' pandemic, in 2009-10, infected 20-24% of Americans.

To push the percentage infected up from 20-28% to an unprecedented 81% for COVID-19 required assuming the number of cases and/or deaths keeps doubling every three or four days for months (deaths were predicted to peak July 20). And that means assuming the estimated reproduction number (R0) of 2.4 remains high, and people keep mingling with different groups....  Long before 8 out of 10 people became infected, however, a larger and larger percentage of the population would have recovered from the disease and become immune, so a smaller and smaller share would still remain susceptible....

In short, the Imperial College projection that 81% of the U.S. population could be infected if everyone just did literally nothing to protect themselves or others is inconsistent with rational risk avoidance, history and recent experience. Even with a much smaller percentage infected, however, deaths could still end up extremely high if nearly 1% of those infected died, as the Ferguson team assumed.

The assumed 0.9% death rate (within a range of 0.4% to 1.4%) was tweaked from a smaller estimate in a study of deaths in China by Robert Verrity and others, which found a 'case fatality rate' (CFR) of 1.38% among known and tested cases. By assuming that such confirmed cases underestimated actual infections by only about half, they inferred an 'infection fatality rate' (IFR) of 0.66%.

Epidemiologists have since found growing evidence that the number of undetected cases with few symptoms or none is much larger than merely doubling the small number of known and tested cases. A review of such research by the Oxford University Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine finds 'a presumed estimate for the COVID-19 IFR somewhere between 0.1% and 0.36%.' A middling estimate of 0.22% would by itself reduce the infamous 2.2 million death estimate to half a million even if 81% were somehow infected....

The trouble with being too easily led by models is we can too easily be misled by models. Epidemic models may seem entirely different from economic models or climate models, but they all make terrible forecasts if filled with wrong assumptions and parameters.

Read more: https://www.cato.org/blog/how-one-model-simulated-22-million-us-deaths-covid-19


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

*Prof. Ferguson's foundation for the 81%  figure was his estimation of the initial reproduction number (Ro, or 'r-nought'): "In such scenarios, given an estimated R0 of 2.4, we predict 81% of the G.B. and U.S. populations would be infected over the course of the epidemic." However, the herd immunity threshhold for the disease is a standard function of Ro: (Ro-1)/Ro ; if Ro=2.4, herd immunity would be reached at 58.33% of the population. -gd

Libertarians speak out on coronavirus

What libertarians would do in response to coronavirus | The Week - Bonnie Kristian:

March 13, 2020 - "The novel coronavirus is a novel situation for modern libertarianism:... COVID-19 is forecast to be a unique situation in the last century. Realistically, there won't be a single libertarian view on the state's role in a pandemic. What we call 'libertarianism' is a big tent with significant division on issues including immigration, abortion, and whether the state should exist at all. (There are anarchists in the tent.) Nevertheless, pandemic-era libertarianism is emerging, and it remains distinctly libertarian. Here are the trends I'm seeing.

1. "Praise for the free market's role.... 'That gallon jug of hand sanitizer delivered to your front door less than 48 hours after you ordered it online? It didn't show up because Trump tweeted it into existence'... Reason's Eric Boehm wrote.... Libertarian author Jeffrey Tucker likewise explained how in 'a disease panic, the market is your friend,' and some libertarians have proposed tariff relief as a response to the pandemic's economic damage.

2. "Advice of personal responsibility. Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.) has encouraged voluntary social distancing. Reason's coverage has done the same, emphasizing the seriousness of the illness and offering tips for continuing education at home while school is canceled. A piece at the Libertarian Institute promoted conservative personal finance decisions to limit COVID-19's disruption.

3. "Condemnation of counterproductive regulations and lack of transparency.... For weeks, the FDA and CDC wouldn't let medical workers and academics move forward with COVID-19 tests they'd developed without lengthy processes of federal approval. In fact, these agencies actively discouraged independent testing until the end of February while offering a faulty test kit and too-strict guidelines for who could be tested.... While the testing situation is beginning to improve, the Trump administration has classified its coronavirus meetings.... Amash complained lawmakers weren't given enough time to read last week's coronavirus relief bill before it passed, and the Foundation for Economic Education slammed Beijing for repressing the message of heroic coronavirus whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang.

4. "Rejection of corporate bailouts and price controls. Trump is exploring plans for corporate bailout loans and other economic stimuli which libertarians generally oppose. The Cato Institute has argued against 'big bailouts and ... throwing money at businesses that will not be viable in the new post‐​epidemic world'.... The libertarian take on targeted tax breaks like Trump wants for energy and travel-related industries will be more mixed: We disagree on whether tax cuts like this should be opposed as favoritism amounting to corporate welfare or supported because any tax break is a good thing. Not mixed is the opposition to price controls, as higher prices are a useful signal of growing demand that discourages hoarding and encourages increased production.

5. "Mixed feelings on emergency social welfare. Libertarians have a reputation for universal opposition to all social safety net spending, and many do take that position. But perhaps the most famous libertarian economist — Nobel Prize winner F.A. Hayek — supported a limited welfare state, including a universal basic income. This fault line will extend into libertarian stances on pandemic responses like state-provided testing, treatment, and income subsidies. (In my experience, most thoughtful libertarians get less worked up about real needs being filled in a way we consider non-ideal than about more egregious state overreaches like unjust wars or police violence.)...

6. "Skepticism of mandatory lockdowns, travel bans, and the like.... Some libertarians have categorically rejected forced quarantines, arguing the risk of infection is not a direct enough threat to justify impeding people's rights. Most have not taken that view, instead expressing skepticism of the effectiveness of broad quarantines and travel bans — a skepticism public health experts share, by the way — while conceding there could be circumstances where these measures are appropriate for a time. The legal uncertainty around state and federal powers to require quarantines and limit public gatherings has libertarians predictably worried about due process rights.

7. "Insistence on temporary changes. Fierce opposition to expansions of the surveillance state to fight the novel coronavirus is likely widespread among libertarians in no small part because privacy rights, once lost, are very rarely recovered. But the risk of this pandemic permanently expanding the power of the state will shape the libertarian view on every proposed solution.... For many libertarians, our worries about robust government responses to COVID-19 are less about the responses proper than the possibility that the changes they bring will never end, even after the disease is under control. There are libertarians in a pandemic, and we're as preoccupied by coronavirus as everyone else. We're just preoccupied by liberty, too."

Read more; https://theweek.com/articles/901738/what-libertarians-response-coronavirus

55% of Americans want to decriminalize all drugs

Majority Of Americans Support Decriminalizing All Drugs, Poll Finds | Marijuana Moment - Kyle Jaeger:

October 2, 2019 - "A majority of Americans are in favor of decriminalizing all drugs, according to a survey by the libertarian think tank Cato Institute.

"The poll, which involved phone interviews with 1,700 adults, showed that 55 percent of Americans want to treat drug offenses like civil infractions that don’t carry jail time, as opposed to the current criminalization model. While numerous surveys have found majority support for marijuana legalization, few if any polls have previously shown such strong support for a wholesale overhaul of American drug policy.

"Participants were asked to answer whether they’d 'favor or oppose re-categorizing drug offenses from felonies to civil offenses, meaning they would be treated like minor traffic violations rather than crimes.'

"Democrats were the most likely to support drug decriminalization, with 69 percent in favor and 30 percent opposed. A majority of those who identified as independent also embraced the policy, at 54 percent. Forty percent of Republicans said they want to lower criminal penalties for drug offenses, while 59 percent in the GOP said they opposed the proposed change.

"Interestingly, people who self-identify as libertarian were ten percentage points less likely to support decriminalization (59 percent) than Democrats, despite the hands-off policy fitting squarely within a libertarian ideology. Those most aligned with Cato Institute’s libertarian perspective are even less embracive of lifting criminal penalties for drug offenses than are respondents who identified themselves as very liberal, with 75 percent of that group in favor.

"There was majority support for drug decriminalization among men (55 percent) and women (53 percent) in the poll, which was conducted from March 5-8 and released last week. A majority of people from all age groups and racial backgrounds, except Latinos, back the policy.

"Drug decriminalization is gaining traction as more people view addiction as a public health, rather than criminal justice, issue.... Twenty U.S. prosecutors visited Portugal to learn about the country’s drug decriminalization model in July.... Also this summer, a Canadian House Committee recommended that the country decriminalize all drugs, and shortly thereafter a lawmaker filed a bill to do so, though it didn’t receive a vote."

Read more: https://www.marijuanamoment.net/majority-of-americans-support-decriminalizing-all-drugs-poll-finds/
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Koch legacy alive and thriving: The Guardian

The Kochtopus: sprawling network keeps David Koch's legacy thriving | US news | The Guardian - Ed Pilkington:

August 23, 2019 - "In September 2010, David and Charles Koch, the fabulously rich brothers who turned an oil and manufacturing empire inherited from their father into a cash cow for rightwing causes that would change American politics, sent out a letter to conservative power brokers inviting them to ... an event that was to become known as 'Freedom Partners': a twice-yearly gathering, convened in utmost secrecy, of some of the most wealthy and powerful rightwing players in the country. To attract their guests they included a brochure from a previous Koch gathering in Aspen, where the elite attendees had sat around in mountainous splendor discussing, among other issues: 'Is America on the Road to Serfdom?'

"The most intriguing part of the brochure was a roll-call of names of those lured to previous 'Freedom Partner' gatherings. It included the current vice-president, Mike Pence; the Wisconsin politician Paul Ryan, who would go on to become speaker of the House of Representatives; super-donors such as the hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, and most intriguingly of all two conservative justices of the US supreme court, Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia. That the brothers could bring under one roof top politicians, billionaire donors and senior judges to plot the future of America on a free-market, anti-government course illustrated the scale of their ambitions and the influence they wielded....

"Many date the rise of the Kochs to 2010, the year in which the highly contentious landmark supreme court ruling Citizens United (approved by both Scalia and Thomas) opened the floodgates to corporate money in elections. The Kochs leveraged their affiliated organizations to raise well over $100m in the 2012 presidential election alone....

"Koch’s ... self-interested desire to drive government out of the US economy by undermining regulations and slashing corporate taxes started to firm up in 1980, when he stood as the Libertarian party’s vice-presidential candidate.... In 1977 he supported Charles in founding and funding the libertarian Cato Institute. But it was not until 2004 that the true embodiment of the brothers’ desire to reshape the country was born: Americans for Prosperity.... Through AFP, the Kochs spawned a nationwide web of impassioned conservative volunteers, empowered by the new voter technology they supported through the political data firm i360. Among the key targets of their campaigning: the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare... But it also took on climate crisis regulations, public education and taxes and championed the nascent 2010 Tea Party movement.

"In the past couple of years, David Koch, and his arguably even more ideologically driven brother Charles, have perhaps been less prevalent on the right as their political pulling power has appeared to wane a little. That might be in part due to David’s deteriorating health.... It is also in large part due to the advent of Trump. There has been much discussion in recent months about the very public spat between the president and the Koch brothers, with the Kochs calling Trump’s trade tariffs 'detrimental' and Trump lashing back that the billionaires were 'a total joke'.... [T]he truth about Trump, though, is that he has adopted many of the rightwing postures the Kochs have long espoused....

"In David Koch’s passing on Friday America has lost a lion of conservatism whose backing for ultra-rightwing causes was cherished by fellow billionaires, corporations, polluters – even some supreme court justices. But members of that elite club of 'Freedom Partners' should find solace in the thought that – though David Koch will no longer be there to greet them at their secretive retreats – his influence is still very present, right there in the White House."
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/23/david-koch-death-kochtopus-legacy-right-wing
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Joe Biden takes libertarian line on licensing

Biden Echoes Libertarians' Call on Occupational Licensing | RealClearPolitics - Philip Wegman:

May 9 2019 - "Speaking before the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers before declaring his third bid for the presidency, Biden settled on one example in particular: occupational licensing reform. 'You know if you are a hair braider, you braid people’s hair, you have to get a license to do something like 400 hours of training,' he said before ... concluding that licensing requirements were part of a greater unseen effort 'not to help the worker.'

"The union crowd in Washington, D.C., gave the gaffe-prone politician a laugh, and three weeks later at his presidential campaign kickoff, Biden recycled the talking point. 'Why should someone who braids hair have to get 600 hours of training? It makes no sense,' he told another labor crowd, this one packed into a union hall in Pittsburgh. 'They’re making it harder and harder in a whole range of professions, all to keep competition down.'

"The union members in the crowd and the workers standing behind the candidate applauded again -- reliably Democratic voters all cheering the kind of government deregulation that has been the pet project of libertarian billionaires like Charles and David Koch for half a decade....

"Well known to limited-government types, occupational licensing reform is the sort of thing discussed by wonks at libertarian think tanks. Until now, the issue hasn’t been fodder for presidential politics. This could change, thanks to Biden, and it could begin a larger national discussion about state and local licensing rules that govern everything from hair braiding to pet walking.

"According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly half of U.S. workers hold an occupational license, a dramatic increase since 1950 when just 5% of the workforce held such permits. Attorneys, construction contractors, and surgeons are all expected to obtain legal certification to ensure quality and public safety. But critics complain that licensing requirements have gone too far when hairdressers and interior decorators have to obtain permission from the government to do their jobs....

"Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf ... Democrat and close Biden ally ... eliminated licensing requirements for more than a dozen jobs.... Pennsylvania barbers were required to train for 1,250 hours, pass written exams, and spend thousands of dollars just to legally give a buzz cut. And anyone who want[ed] to auction off antiques, manage a campground, or even sell cemetery plots in his state had to obtain legal certification to do so. Critics like Wolf argue that those hoops do more to harm workers looking for opportunity than they do to protect consumers.

"Biden agrees and the longtime liberal is getting rare accolades from an unusual source for making the argument: the conservative Koch network.... Erica Jedynak, director of employment initiatives at the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, told RealClearPolitics that Biden’s comments show the 'issue is now coming to the forefront'....

"Clark Neily, a vice president at the libertarian CATO Institute, is normally no fan of the former vice president ... Neily told RCP, but Biden is a persuasive politician who has grasped onto 'something that is fundamentally true, namely that occupational licensing is destroying the engine of American prosperity.... If he is prepared to translate that into terms his constituency can understand and respond to, it’s going to be a winning message,' Neily said. If Biden [also] backed the libertarian case for further criminal justice reform, the CATO scholar added, 'heck, I might even vote for him.'”

Read more: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/09/biden_echoes_libertarians_call_on_occupational_licensing_140280.html
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The Cato Institute's "libertarian success story"

The Academy Is Unstable and Degrading. Historians Should Take Over the Government, Instead. - The Chronicle of Higher Education - Daniel Bessner:

February 27, 2019 - "What does it mean to be a public intellectual? When scholars discuss this question, they generally assume that the primary path to publicness is to engage with a mass audience.... But there is a second way that scholars, particularly those who identify with the social-democratic left, should contribute to public life: by engaging with state institutions through participation in the intellectual technostructure — think tanks, policy schools, university centers — that since World War II has shaped U.S. policy....

"The history of libertarianism, the most influential radical movement in modern U.S. history, ... indicates that intellectuals can effect significant change by working within the strictures of the American political system.... Just 70 years ago, libertarians stood on the fringes of American politics; in the last two decades, however, they have exerted a profound impact on public policy....

"The history of libertarianism’s ascent begins with Murray Rothbard, an economist who ... is today largely forgotten.... Rothbard encountered the radical free-market ideas of the Austrian exile Ludwig von Mises. Specifically, Mises’s influential Human Action (1949) inspired Rothbard to develop a political theory he dubbed 'anarcho-capitalism,' which combined anarchist philosophy with a capitalist faith in free markets.

"Rothbard spent his life spreading the libertarian gospel and organizing the budding libertarian movement. One of his most clever moves was to frame libertarianism as a fundamentally American ideology. As Rothbard argued in his For a New Liberty (1973), the American Revolution was "explicitly libertarian'... The tragedy of American history was that various events, from the Louisiana Purchase to the Civil War to the New Deal, betrayed the revolution.... For Rothbard, the goal of libertarianism was to return the nation to its supposedly anti-statist roots.

"In 1977 Rothbard helped found the Cato Institute with the aid of Edward Crane, a libertarian operative, and Charles Koch, a right-wing billionaire. Cato quickly developed the two-pronged strategy that still guides it today. First, per Rothbard’s vision, Cato seeks ... 'to identify and develop the future leaders, thinkers, advocates, and supporters of the libertarian movement, thereby promoting the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace'.... Second, Cato embraces the perspective of Crane and Koch, who wanted the think tank to affect public policy directly by producing expert reports and lobbying congresspeople and other politicians. By combining Rothbardian notions of public education with Cranian ideas of policy advocacy, Cato has brought libertarianism to the center of American politics and, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s Think Tanks and Civil Societies program, has become one of the United States’ most influential think tanks, particularly in the areas of economic, education, and social policy.

"Cato’s success has a lot to teach socialist intellectuals. At the most general level, it demonstrates the importance of not limiting intellectuals’ activities to any one sphere.... Specifically, Cato’s history and present influence suggest that think tanks are critical means to develop, promote, and spread ideas that currently stand outside the mainstream. It might therefore be useful for left-wing intellectuals to create avowedly socialist think tanks."

Read more: https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Academy-Is-Unstable-and/245778
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David Boaz remembers Andrea Millen Rich

RIP Andrea Rich | Cato @ Liberty - David Boaz:

August 1, 2018 - "I am saddened to report that my dear friend Andrea Millen Rich died this morning at her home in Philadelphia at the age of 79 after a 19-year battle with lung cancer....For more than 40 years Andrea was at the center of the libertarian movement, a mentor, counselor, friend, supporter, facilitator, networker, and gracious hostess....

"She was the first chair of the New York Libertarian Party in 1973-74. The vice chair was Howard S. Rich, whom she soon married. From 1974 to 1977 she was vice chair of the national Libertarian Party, and in 1980 she played a key role in developing television advertising for the campaign of Ed Clark, the Libertarian presidential nominee.

"From 1982 to 2005 she was the president of Laissez-Faire Books, which billed itself as 'the world’s largest collection of books on liberty.' It had a retail location on Mercer Street in Greenwich Village.... But in those pre-Amazon days, it was far better known for its monthly catalog that reached libertarians around the world. Through its Fox & Wilkes publishing imprint it brought many classic libertarian books back into print.....

"Andrea often negotiated with publishers to make books more affordable, and some books only found publishers because Laissez-Faire could guarantee an audience beyond the small academic market.

"Through her work with Laissez-Faire she became friendly with leading libertarian writers including Milton and Rose Friedman, Robert Nozick, Thomas Sowell, Nathaniel Branden, Thomas Szasz, Charles Murray, Richard Epstein, David Kelley, and Margit von Mises, widow of economist Ludwig von Mises.

"As president of the Center for Independent Thought [CIT], the parent organization of Laissez-Faire Books, she also launched and managed the Thomas S. Szasz Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Cause of Civil Liberties and the Roy A. Childs Fund for Independent Scholars.

"CIT’s biggest project was Stossel in the Classroom, which repackaged ABC News and Fox Business videos on economics and public policy by John Stossel for classroom use. The videos have been viewed by tens of millions of high school students – according to Stossel, reaching more people than ABC News and Fox News."

Read more: https://www.cato.org/blog/rip-andrea-rich
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Niskanen Center abandons libertarian label

The libertarian think tank Niskanen Center is abandoning libertarianism — Quartz - Michael J. Coren:

October 31, 2018 - "For millions of people, ideology is the lighthouse in a dark sea of politics. An uncompromising vision of how the world is supposed to work, and how to fix it, is just too alluring for partisans to ignore. Political parties’ most frenzied supporters are demanding ideological purity from their candidates as they push out moderates [and] ever fewer temperate souls are left to hold the middle ground in politics.

"Yet the libertarian think tank Niskanen Center in Washington, DC, argues the moderate middle is the future. Niskanen president Jerry Taylor wrote in an Oct. 29 essay that he is dropping the libertarian banner.... In a 3,595-word farewell to the libertarian world, he says libertarianism, and ideology itself, is a dead end. 'I have abandoned that libertarian project…because I have come to abandon ideology,' writes Taylor.... The future of American politics, he argues, is principled compromise....

"Trump’s authoritarian takeover of the Republican Party was Taylor’s breaking point ('I would have thought libertarians would have been on the ramparts, and they are not,' he said), but his disillusionment began years ago after working as a paid climate skeptic for the Cato Institute. He eventually came to see opposing action on climate change as both scientifically misguided, and wrong. After failing to get his libertarian colleagues to even engage with the argument, he slowly began to see how ideological fervor had engulfed a range of political issues, no matter what evidence pointed to the contrary.

"Taylor argues Americans need to give up on perfection in politics, the logical endpoint of which is fanaticism. As the head of a think tank aimed at lawmakers, not the US public, Taylor’s move is a politically opportunistic bet as much as a principled stand in defense of a pluralistic society.....

"The libertarian vision of 'night-watchman state' with a society dominated by the market is as distant a dream as ever. But a few libertarian causes have flourished in national politics of late.

"From legalizing marijuana to deregulating telecom to striking down sodomy laws, libertarian policy wins have come after being co-opted by the major political parties (and even by winning a few local elections). Taylor’s rejection of the libertarian label may be a gift to his (former) fellow travelers. Libertarians’ greatest impact may be felt most when they aren’t espousing an ideology at all."

Read more: https://qz.com/1443787/a-libertarian-think-tank-just-gave-up-on-libertarianism/
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