Donald J. Boudreaux

“The full spirit and many of the practical steps that Manne recommended to business people nearly 50 years ago as rational responses to the unwarranted hysteria over fuel shortages apply today to the unwarranted hysteria over Covid-19. Today, I recommend such resistance, and not only by business people, but by all individuals.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

“Let’s stop comparing Covid deaths to 9/11 deaths, to death tolls from hypothetical jetliner crashes, to Vietnam or World War I casualties, or to other non-pathogen-related calamities. Keeping clear the facts about Covid is difficult enough amidst the ongoing hysteria and willful misinterpretation of life’s realities. We don’t need to further thicken the fog with invidious comparisons.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

“The chief condition for such competition to remain real and effective is that government not obstruct it. As long as government itself remains neutral and nondiscriminatory, the best protection for consumers and for the polity is the free-market process.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

“When combined with the empirically verified reality that increased trade between nations decreases the likelihood of those nations getting into shooting wars with each other, what is left of the national-security exception to the case for unilateral free trade is very narrow indeed.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

“No widespread event in my lifetime comes close to the Covid lockdowns as an instance in which we human beings have so ignorantly and arrogantly chosen to live not merely inharmoniously with nature but in direct and hostile opposition to it. The final price we pay for this folly will be astronomical.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

“The notion that people will be enriched if their government artificially impedes their access to goods and services is as detached from reality as is the belief that the future can be revealed through astrology.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

“There are other brave and intelligent people of integrity who have resisted Covid Derangement Syndrome and spoken out against the lunacy and oppression of lockdowns. To all of you I offer my apologies if you aren’t explicitly recognized here. But above all, I offer to you my heartfelt thanks, as well as my well-wishes for a more sane and much less tyranny-soaked 2021.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

“Using actual data – and even assuming that all excess deaths in the 25-44 cohort are caused by Covid, and even if we annualize the authors’ excess-death figure to get excess deaths in this cohort of 28,800 – the chance that Covid will kill any randomly chosen member of this cohort is a minuscule 0.0329 percent.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

“As with all tyranny, the truth will eventually emerge. In the future, people’s eyes will open to the exaggerations, half-truths, distortions, and outright lies used to excuse today’s tyrannical restrictions. Someday people will look back on 2020 and see it as a year in which tyranny darkened the globe.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

“Foreigners do not treat us ‘unfairly’ if they insist on sending to us more imports in exchange for a given amount of our exports (or, what is the same thing, if they accept fewer of our exports in exchange for a given amount of what we import from them). Accusing foreigners in such a case of treating us unfairly makes no more sense than accusing your employer who gives you a raise of treating you unfairly.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux