With the “asymmetric information” argument, the left got a seemingly bulletproof theory with which to whack markets and subject them to government regulation: capitalists prey on the uninformed consumer and extract unfair rents from them in the informational version of haves that take advantage of have-nots. If not remedied, beneficial exchange disappears.
Innovation happens when ideas can meet and mate, when experiment is encouraged, when people and goods can move freely and when money can flow rapidly towards fresh concepts, when those who invest can be sure their rewards will not be stolen.
What’s going on in Sweden is remarkable, which now even the WHO’s epidemiologists admit.
In recent years, authors left and right have tried to draw our attention towards the ills of the white working class, the “losers” of globalization. Here is a look at the latest work of Princeton professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton: Deaths of Despair.
For many countries abruptly closing commerce and civic life altogether, it’s still too early based on mortality statistics to say “overreaction.” But that’s what it looks like.
In 2017 alone, counts Case and Deaton, 158,000 Americans died from deaths of despair, most of them white; almost all of them with, at best, a high school diploma.
After all, it’s not the sellers of oranges, toilet paper or water bottles that put the “exploited” buyers in their current predicaments. In contrast, they’re the saviors that offer them a way out.
Riding out storms and sharing risks across billions of people is a feature, not a bug, and the affluent capitalist nature of our institutions puts us in a better position to deal with them.
It is farcical that people who until a few weeks ago couldn’t even spell the word “exponential” – let alone explain what it meant – ran straight across this intellectually hysterical spectrum and made the opposite mistake: drawing exponential curves until they ran out of paper or whiteboards.
The response of Swedish society has been pretty remarkable: do your part. Help your loved ones and your local business owners. Trust those who know what they’re doing. Be mindful of others – and don’t sacrifice economic well-being at the altar of extreme disease control. Work The Problem, people.