Donald J. Boudreaux
Tyranny During Its Reign Is Unrecognized by Its Victims
“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
Twelve Principles of International Trade: Part 2
“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…
Twelve Principles of International Trade: Part 1
“Although it’s possible to imagine bizarre scenarios in which a country’s rising trade deficits might be evidence of economic decline, none of these scenarios is realistic in the case of the United States. American trade deficits are evidence of American economic health, at least relative to many other countries, rather than of economic hardship.” ~…
Tyler vs. Tyler?
“Given that one of Tyler’s most intriguing arguments in Stubborn Attachments is that we discount the value of the future far too greatly – implying that we value the present far too much relative to the future – I believe that the 2018 Tyler Cowen would be a most intriguing, perhaps even confrontational, guest of…
Wishing that Hans Rosling Were Still Alive
“People around the world, engulfed by the fear instinct, have allowed themselves to be stirred by the media – and by their political ‘leaders’ – into an hysterical terror over Covid-19. It’s too bad that Hans Rosling is not alive in 2020 to help the forces of sanity fight Covid Derangement Syndrome.” ~ Donald J.…
Keeping Covid Perspective
“What I believe is deranged is the failure to put Covid-19 in proper perspective. It is deranged to behave as if the risks that Covid poses to kindergartners, to college students, and to healthy young people are indistinguishable from the risks that Covid posed to your elderly father, or poses even to me, a 62-year-old.”…
Agreeing and Disagreeing with Tyler Cowen on Covid-19
“By failing to take account of Covid’s differential impact on people according to their age, governments have compromised their credibility. By falsely treating everyone from kindergartners through college students and even middle-aged folks in normal health as if they all are as imperiled by Covid as are residents of nursing homes, governments signal a disregard…
Covid Collectivism
“This deeply illiberal collectivist ideology thrives on irrational fear brought on by unusually poor information. And it refuses to acknowledge that Covid-19’s dangers, while indeed real, are not as great as suggested by daily screaming headlines, and are heavily confined to infirm groups on whom preventive attention should be, but isn’t, focused. It’s time for…
Open Letter to Matt Yglesias
“The economy is people – people producing, trading, cooperating, and consuming. Reasonable people disagree over what are the best policies to deal with Covid-19. But contrary to the impression conveyed by your tweet, no serious person argues for sacrificing lives to ‘the economy’ as a lifeless abstraction.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux
Why So Gullible About Government in the Face of Covid-19?
“Tamping down the Covid hysteria by making available accurate information about this disease is what well-informed and public-spirited governments would do. Yet such governments are largely mythical. Real-world governments behave quite differently.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux
