Sunday, December 13, 2020

Perfect Liberty Is the Proper Response to Covid-19

 

Perfect Liberty Is the Proper Response to Covid-19

or

The Socialist Calculation Problem and Covid-19

 

by Patrick Barron

 

 

 

One hundred years ago Ludwig von Mises wrote the definitive exposure of the impossibility of socialism: Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth. In a recent Mises Wire essay--Socialist Robert Heilbroner's Confession in 1990: "Mises Was Right."--Gary North sums up the socialist problem succinctly (his emphasis).

"But Heilbronner failed to present the central argument that Mises had offered. Mises was not talking about the technical difficulty of setting prices. He was making a far more fundamental point. He argued that no central planning bureau could know the economic value of any scarce resource. Why not? Because there is no price system under socialism that is based on the private ownership of the means of production. There is therefore no way for central planners to know which goods and services are most important for the state to produce. There is no hierarchical scale of value that is based on supply and demand—a world in which property-owning individuals place their monetary bids to buy and sell. The problem of socialism is not the technical problem of allocation facing a planning board. It is also not that planners lack sufficient technical data. Rather, the central problem is this: assessing economic value through prices. The planners do not know what anything is worth."

 

Notice North's point. Socialism is impossible, not just technically difficult. Knowing what to produce requires a price system. A price system requires private ownership of the means of production. Why? Because the price system rests on individually held hierarchical scales of values. And the hierarchical scale of values require private ownership of the means of production. In other words, if you don't own something, you cannot know its worth. This doesn't mean that everyone has the same hierarchical scale of values. But all these individual scales of value do meet in the market place to determine marginal prices at given points of time. Your beanie baby collection may be worth a thousand dollars in today's market and possibly zilch tomorrow. Now, your beanie baby collection may be priceless to you and you don't really care about its value to others. But if you decided to make a business of selling beanie babies or even simply sell your collection, you would be forced to confront the reality of the marketplace.

 

Covid-19 and the Socialist Calculation Problem

 

You may well ask what this has to do with Covid-19. Covid-19 isn't a marketable good. It isn't owned by anyone. No one wants it. Quite the opposite in fact. True. Nevertheless, government's response to Covid-19 assumes that it knows everyone's personal risk hierarchy and can tailor an appropriate public response. This is as impossible as knowing values in a socialist commonwealth. In the place of a hierarchy of wants, we have a hierarchy of risk. And just as everyone's hierarchy of wants is different, everyone's hierarchy of risk is different. No one can deny this. We see it played out everywhere. Young people in college assess their personal health risk from Covid-19 as very low. The aged and those suffering from other illnesses assess their personal health risk as very high. Furthermore, one's response is determined by what one gives up. The elderly living on pensions may be giving up very little in a lockdown or quarantine other than their social life. Certainly they are not giving up their life sustaining income by staying in semi-isolation. But those still of working age have a very different tradeoff. Business owners who are forced to shut down may lose their entire wealth. Salaried and hourly workers may see a slower drain on their wealth, but the longer the lockdowns continue the more accumulated wealth they will see drain away.

 

I have used stereotypical broad categories here for illustrative comparisons only. Of course, those of the same age, health profile, wealth accumulation, etc. may have entirely different personal risk assessments. The old adage applies that no two people are alike. These facts of human existence make universally acceptable public policy responses to Covid-19 not just difficult but impossible. The only acceptable public response is one of perfect liberty; i.e., each individual decides his own response to Covid-19 as long as he does no harm to others.

 

What about Externalities?

 

This brings up a common retort that perfect liberty DOES harm others. A typical government justification for coerced lockdowns and quarantines was that there was a need to conserve hospital beds for the expected onslaught of Covid-19 patients. Sounds reasonable at first, but not upon further examination. This so-called line of reasoning rests upon faulty externality theory; i.e., that everything you do affects others in some degree. By this logic government has a right to regulate everything you do. Forgetting for a moment that government's access to information is no greater than that of thousands of others, there is the ethical problem of government's right to determine to whom a private entity may offer services. For example, a private hospital may refuse patients who wish to have elective surgery in order to preserve beds for what the hospital considers more important patients, but government may not insert its power of coercion into this decision. Like the socialist allocation problem, government has no "skin in the game" and, therefore, it has nothing upon which to make a universally applicable policy except the temporary prejudice of those currently elected to office and/or those currently working for government. Perhaps an even more damning criticism of the externality rationale is that there is no attempt and probably no definitive calculation of the many adverse consequences to lockdowns and quarantines, from delayed medical treatment that leads to worsening health (both physical and mental) or even death to permanent loss of one's ability to feed, house, and clothe one's family adequately.

 

"Perfect Liberty" IS the choice of our political leaders. Why not the rest of us?

 

So, we are left with these conclusions: Since all risk is personal, no one knows the risk tolerance of others. Therefore, one's response to Covid-19 is a personal decision based upon one’s personal risk assessment. In other words, perfect liberty must be respected because it is the only rational option. Impractical? This is the very policy actually followed by many of the authors of the current restrictions. Governor Newsom of California attended a lavish dinner party after issuing new and more onerous restrictions on public and private gatherings. Illinois Governor Pritzker has been unapologetic about visiting his many out-of-state residences after telling his constituents not to do the same. Other politicians have been similarly embarrassed. Are they taking unnecessary risks, both to themselves and others? There is no definitive answer. By the very fact that they violated their own restrictions, we can conclude that they valued their freedom to do so above their personally perceived risk. Why should not that same right be available to all of us?

Sunday, December 6, 2020

Letter from America #1--sent to a UK blog that champions liberty and free markets

 

Letter from America

 by Patrick Barron

December 1, 2020

As I write my first "Letter from America" the US election is still undecided. One would think that this is a topic number one on everyone's mind, but such is not the case. The first topic of any conversation is about Covid restrictions. It's hard to keep track of them in the US, because each state sets its own. I live in southeast Pennsylvania about thirty miles from Philadelphia. But I am actually closer to the states of Delaware and New Jersey than to Pennsylvania's largest city, Philadelphia. The rules are different in each state and they change all the time, making complying difficult if not impossible. But here's the thing: No one seems to care. Oh, sure, everyone wears a mask of some sort indoors and some wear them outdoors, too. But for the ordinary consumer, the rules are about the same. The real challenge is for businesses, especially restaurants, bars, and school districts. The people running these services have a hard time of it. Their rules change often: one day restaurants cannot seat anyone indoors, carryout only or possibly outdoor dining where possible. Later they may be allowed to open one fourth or one half of their tables indoors, only to have that relaxation of the rules and a move toward normalcy rescinded when the Covid case numbers start to increase. We see more and more signs outside long established restaurants and bars thanking the public for their patronage over the years but advising us that their establishment has closed down for good. Some folks who track these things project that over half of America's restaurants may close permanently, a loss of wealth that is staggering in total and a tragedy for those owners.

 

Like the UK, there is little to no scientific evidence put forward that these restrictions work. But everyone knows where these restrictions originated--out of the very opinionated mind of some politician. As a result, slowly but assuredly the public health and political authorities are losing credibility. They are becoming the butt of jokes, the sure indication of eventual irrelevancy.

 

But, we are not there yet.

 

What worries many of us libertarian is that the restrictions on our supposedly sacrosanct liberties have been usurped with hardly a dissent. And where there have been dissents the restrictions on liberties continue. For example, the federal district court in my home state of Pennsylvania ruled that the governor had no power to lock down businesses. Yet the lock downs continue with a temporary stay of the court's ruling. This emboldens the petty tyrants to even greater and more frequent insults to our liberties.

 

On to the election and its yet-to-be-decided winner.

 

The Republicans are attacking the results of several "battleground" states, namely Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and especially Pennsylvania. There were significant voter ID issues and vote counting problems in all these states. At present it looks like the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, will prevail. But President Trump has not conceded, and the result may be decided in the Supreme Court. Again, this is very complicated, due to America's decentralized and indirect system of choosing the president. Each state has its own election certification rules and each state determines how its votes in the Electoral College will be distributed. It's the Electoral College that determines the president, not the popular vote. Each state gets one elector for each Senator and Representative. Therefore, the least populated states get three Electoral College votes--one for each of its two senators and one for its representative in the House. Each state legislature certifies its electoral college distribution, but the US Supreme Court could overturn that certification. Forget that the mainstream media have "given the election to Biden". The mainstream media has no such power. The Electoral College chooses the president and that hasn't happened yet.

 

But here is the crux--no matter which candidate eventually is chosen by the Electoral College, the other party will not accept that decision. Republicans will claim voter fraud and Democrats will claim that a court overruled the people. In other words, America is divided politically, and an election will not change that fact. Therefore, no matter who "wins", expect a continuation of bitter feuding and animosities, maybe even violence. This likely will lead to a "do nothing" government with neither party controlling the White House and both houses of Congress. Many believe a divided government is good for the country, for it cannot enact legislation and make a mischief of itself. But, the president has lots of leeway to use executive orders to rescind current regulations and enact new ones. There is little doubt that a President Biden would reinstate many currently-rescinded Obama administration regulations on the coal, natural gas, and oil industries. This would be bad for America even though the environmentalists would be happy. But, a Biden administration might abandon President Trump's tariffs and undeclared trade war with China. This would be good for America as a whole, even though it would anger favored domestic industries.

 

The elephant in the corner is the out of control federal budget. The annual deficit is over one trillion dollars. There is no real discussion of lowering it through spending cuts. In fact, a Biden victory would see attempts to expand the welfare state through making Medicare open to all age groups and/or adopting a Universal Basic Income. Both parties are discussing another round of Covid-inspired stimulus checks to all Americans. A three trillion dollar package passed in 2020. Another, perhaps somewhat smaller, package is being discussed now by both parties as if money printing and federal government debt beyond imagination and beyond the possibility of repayment in dollars of similar purchasing power as borrowed just simply do not matter. No one in government or at the Fed care one whit, so thoroughly engrained are they in the toxic waste of Keynesian economic theory, now called "Modern Monetary Theory". MMT posits the falsehood that we simply owe the debt to ourselves! It's one pocket owing the money to another pocket, don't you see? This may be the greatest hoax of all time.

 

Stay tuned.