Donald J. Boudreaux

This Claim of Market Failure Deserves No Credit

“If you who claim to identify a market failure could, but don’t, voluntarily put your own money where your mouth is in an attempt to address that alleged failure, why should anyone listen to your pleas for government to coercively put other people’s money where your mouth is?” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

If I Could Paint

“How I wish that I could make more visible – literally visible – to the eye the economy’s teeming, streaming, pulsing, gargantuan – yet almost completely invisible and silent – interconnectedness and complexity. The person who paints such a picture would provide a great service to humankind.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

Thank Goodness for Economic Ignorance!

“The world would in fact be a much better place if economic fallacies were less prevalent and less widespread. Not the least of these fallacies is the one that holds that economies fail to the extent that they don’t protect existing jobs.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

Some Problems with the ‘Repatriating Critical Supply Chains’ Argument

“Even if political pressures were miraculously to disappear, government officials would remain ignorant of most of the detailed bits of knowledge about how resources are, and potentially can be, used. And so any errors these officials make in distinguishing ‘critical’ from not-critical goods and services will result in resources being used more wastefully than otherwise.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

Will 2020 Prove to Be the Beginning of the End of Modernity?

“Abruptly starting 16 months ago, humanity was encouraged to hold in contempt – even to censor – the relative few persons who refused to abandon liberal sensibilities. Abruptly starting 16 months ago, there quite possibly began the end of liberal civilization.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

The Buchanan Thesis

“Those of us who decry large and intrusive government should demand that government annually balance its budget. The tighter the constraint on government’s access to resources, the freer and more prosperous the people will be.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

The Covid-19 Emergency Did Not Justify Lockdowns

“Whatever the novelty and dangers of Covid-19, the novelty and dangers of Covid-19 lockdowns are at least arguably of the same magnitude. The dismissal of the unknown possible horrors of lockdowns in order to focus attention exclusively on the unknown possible horrors of SARS-CoV-2 is as unjustified by science as it is unpardonable as policy.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

Government ‘Discrimination’ and the Age Profile of Covid-19 Fatalities

“It is, I believe, deeply misguided to insist that the principle of government even-handedness requires that government ignore the age profile of a disease’s victims. It is misguided to demand – either on grounds of equity or by noting, correctly, that all lives are sacred – that the policy response to a disease that overwhelmingly kills old people must be just as vigorous and intense as would be the policy response to a disease that kills indiscriminately, or that kills overwhelmingly the young.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

The Great Barrington Declaration and Ad Hominem Argumentation

“The greatest compliment paid to the Great Barrington Declaration, therefore, is one wholly unintended: Many of its staunchest opponents offer against it nothing beyond ad hominem attacks and accusations of guilt by association. This Declaration must indeed be powerful!” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux