I’m sure there are more provocative titles than this one: “Louisiana Votes to Keep Slavery.” The trouble is, I can’t think of any, even after cogitating on this matter for quite a while! What’s going on? Did Louisianans really vote to bring back slavery? Of course not. Don’t be silly. Rather, the issue was prison labor. Should inmates be forced to work while incarcerated? Well, the rest of us, pretty much all of us work. (Ok, ok, children and the very elderly don’t). Why shouldn’t convicted criminals join the remainder of the human race in this regard? What is the alternative if they do not engage in labor? Working out, pardon the expression, in the gym? Watching television? Hanging out with each other and plotting future crimes? If prisons were put on a market place basis, they most certainly would work, and the proceeds of their labor would go to at least partially compensate their victims. No, no, no. There are two good reasons why convicts should engage in labor, whether they want to do so or not. First, deontology. They violated rights, or wouldn’t be in jail in the first place (apart from those wrongfully found guilty). Ideally, they should work so that the amount they produce, over and above the costs of incarcerating them, should be sent to their victims. The latter can never be made “whole” again, but, at least, if there were monies forthcoming to them from their abusers, that would be a vast improvement vis a vis the present system. Right now, these victims suffer two-fold. Once, from having the crime perpetrated upon them. Second, from being forced, via taxes, to keep these criminals in jails with comfortable air-conditioning, gyms, basketball courts, televisions, etc. Second, pragmatism. One of the functions of imprisonment should be to reduce recidivism. If the inmates have a skill which will enable them to earn a living when on the outside, they will be less likely to commit crimes, and end up back in the hoosegow. Well, how to do obtain such skills? By sitting on your backside all the live long day? You do not. You learn via on the job training. And, how can you avail yourself of those benefits while still being locked up? If you said “prison labor,” go to the head of the class. At this level, except for a very few white-collar criminals, we are not talking about being a doctor, or a lawyer or an accountant or a computer expert or a professor of physics. We are discussing jobs which require far less training. What is needed at this lower level of the job pyramid is the ability to show up for work on time, and not leave until the shift is over; the ability to follow all reasonable orders from the foreman; and the ability to refrain from getting into hassles with customers- this doesn’t mean that that customer is always right, they can be abusive at times. But it does mean taking the problem to the foreman and not “getting into it” with the customer. All of these things can be learned while still in prison. Those opposed to prison labor are consigning inmates to lives of boredom. According to folk wisdom “idleness is the devil’s workshop.” If they do not lead working lives while incarcerated, well, habits are habitual. The only way to finance joblessness on the outside is with more criminal behavior. Neither they, nor the rest of us, need any more of that, thank you very much. Yet, opponents of prison labor “virtue signal” all over the place. They pose as the friends of inmates. They besmirch those of us who advocate allowing them to work as favoring “slavery” of all things. No, no, no, the very opposite is true. Not compelling prisoners to work actually enslaves them: to a continued life of crime. Traditionally, it was labor unions who most opposed prison labor. They claimed such arrangements were taking jobs away from honest men. But there is no limit to how much work needs to be done. There is no fixed pie. Allowing inmates to work deprives no honest man of a job. Walter E. Block is Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics at Loyola University New Orleans and is co-author of An Austro-Libertarian Critique of Public Choice (with Thomas DiLorenzo). (0 COMMENTS)

Last week, I pointed out that while price inflation has recently slowed, the real problem is wage inflation—and always has been. Fluctuations in nominal wage inflation are a primary cause of the business cycle. As long as the equilibrium level of nominal wages grows at a slow and steady pace, any residual price inflation (or deflation) will be transitory. Indeed any residual price inflation or deflation will be highly appropriate, helping to keep the economy at equilibrium.  (I encourage people who want a deeper understanding of why stable inflation is not ideal to take a look at George Selgin’s Less Than Zero.) This Bloomberg article makes the same point: The Bank of Japan in the coming week is widely expected to stick with the negative interest rates that set it apart from the world’s other major central banks. At the decision due on Tuesday, Governor Haruhiko Kuroda will reiterate his out-of-sync stance that monetary stimulus must stay in place to secure lasting inflation. . . . Inflation in Japan is at a four-decade high, but more subdued than in the US and Europe. Figures due Friday are expected to show core inflation inching up toward 4%, but Kuroda is waiting for signs of wage growth to reinforce a price trend he says is still driven by higher commodity prices and a weak yen. In Japan, the real problem is also wages.  But whereas the US has excessively high nominal wage inflation, in Japan the rate of wage inflation is too low.  Even though Japan currently has about 4% inflation (due to commodity price shocks and a weaker yen), that inflation will soon fall back below the BOJ’s 2% target unless nominal wages also begin rising.  Good to see that the BOJ now understands this problem; in both 2000 and 2006 they inappropriately tightened monetary policy before escaping from deflation, and plunged Japan ever deeper into a liquidity trap. [Most Western economists don’t seem to know about these earlier contractionary moves by the BOJ, as they frequently claim that Japan was trying and failing to achieve inflation, a claim that is almost laughably wrong.  The BOJ was not trying to create inflation during the early 2000s; they were trying to prevent inflation.]   (0 COMMENTS)

  U.S. spending on health care grew by 2.7 percent to reach a total of $4.3 trillion in 2021, or around $12,900 per person, according to new figures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Although this growth was slower than the increase of 10.3 percent in 2020, out-of-pocket health care spending accounted for 10 percent of the overall share last year and increased by 10.4 percent — a rate not seen since 1985. This is from Gianna Melillo, “Out-of-pocket health spending rises at highest rate since 1985,” The Hill, December 15, 2022. If we had had anything like “normal” years from 2020 to 2021, I would have said that this was potentially good news. Many health economists, including me, have advocated having patients have more skin in the game. We have argued that if they bear a higher percent of the cost, they are more likely to be careful in buying health care. In that case, high out-of-pocket spending could have been what led to a low increase in overall health care spending. But these have been such unusual years for health care and health care spending that it’s hard to say that that’s what’s going on. The link in the first quoted paragraph above takes you to the CMS page and on that page you can click and drill down into the data. I haven’t done so yet. (0 COMMENTS)

What sort of economic or political theory could justify the state (the apparatus of political and bureaucratic government) to forbid an adult to do something that can only harm himself (or hypothetically those who choose to associate with him)? A Wall Street Journal story alerts us to a current illustration (Jennifer Maloney, “New Zealand Bans Cigarette Sales for Everyone Born After 2008,” December 14, 2022): The law passed Tuesday bans the sale of tobacco products in New Zealand to anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 2009, so those who are age 13 or younger today will never be able to legally purchase tobacco in their lifetimes. It would have to be a theory claiming or assuming that: an adult (even in a country where he has the right to vote and is supposed to be capable of politically ruling others) is not capable of judging what has for himself more benefits than costs; and some individuals, whether majorities, minorities, philosopher-kings, or despots, are better capable of making this evaluation and decision for others, and in these others’ interests, and impose it on them by force, as well as on any other voluntary traders (such as smugglers) who interfere. The objection that public health insurance and subsidy systems harm those who adopt less risky lifestyles because it forces them to pay taxes to support individuals who make risky choices is not valid. This sort of compulsory systems have been sold to voters (assuming that this is indeed what voters, in some meaningful sense, voted for) under the official reason that this sharing of risk was a matter of “social solidarity” if not of compulsory love. At any rate, individuals who die younger cost less to the collective because the net drain on the public finances, through public pensions and probably health care too, increases with an individual’s age. The “externality” of smoking is typically either manufactured by the state or reducible to what moral busybodies don’t like other people to do. They hate the very idea that some people do something they don’t approve of. Moreover, the public discrimination against the smoking part of the citizenry (largely made of “deplorables”) will contribute to more polarization and eventually violence. I don’t think we can, over the past four centuries, find any classical liberal theory of politics or economics that supports this sort of systemic infantilization of so-called “citizens.” Liberal theories don’t view individuals as either children of the state or coercive majorities. (0 COMMENTS)

Yesterday, I published retired doctor Ted Levy’s critique of the Hippocratic Oath and the University of Minnesota Woke Oath. As promised, here is his suggested replacement, one that is much more consistent with freedom. A Libertarian Medical Oath We stand at the beginning of an important professional journey that for most of us will last a lifetime. We will, as physicians, daily face a sad professional truism: We typically see people at their worst. Few people want to be ill or suffer. Yet virtually every patient we see is ill or suffering. We accept our role, as physicians, to heal when we can, relieve pain as much as possible, and advise our patients on how to improve their situation as they see it. Medical study involves the function and structure of human organ systems, and all that can go wrong with them. But such knowledge does not allow us to tell others not trained in this art what they should do. Life intrinsically involves risk, and even when we share our knowledge, others may make choices that we would not. We can guide people to make the best health choices consistent with their life goals, but we do not and cannot choose those life goals for them. Ours is a life of service and we are proud, as are many people in other fields, to earn a living by charging for our services. We would prefer that the government not interfere in the financial relationship between doctor and patient, because we learned “he who pays the piper calls the tune” and prefer to listen to our patients’ maladies rather than our political leaders’ squalls when it comes to peoples’ health and choices. We have learned about the amazing power of pharmaceuticals in relieving pain and condemn efforts by politicians and regulators to distort the doctor-patient relationship by preventing us from helping relieve our patients of unrelenting, joy-destroying pain. We have learned about the potential benefits of mind-altering drugs in treating depression, anxiety, or the simple drudgeries of life and implore the government to stop arresting people who choose to find solace and bliss with them. The War on Drugs has harmed both patients and doctors since its inception. We ask that every effort be made to list as many medications as possible as “over-the-counter.” This will lower costs, improve competition, and increase availability. Recent decades have greatly expanded mankind’s knowledge of human health. But we recognize that improved knowledge does not justify mandates or prohibitions and it most certainly does not justify “noble lies.” Any physician who uses a public platform to engage in such lies is to be condemned. We demand that the FDA and the CDC be restricted to making recommendations, not legally enforced demands. The enormous costs and significant delays in introducing life-saving medicines to market caused by FDA regulations have caused more deaths than they have saved. As physicians, we are proud of the many skills and the large body of knowledge we have mastered. But we are also aware that much of what physicians are asked to do can be done well without having to master all of that. Onerous restrictions on the use of physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and other healthcare assistants should end. Artificial restrictions on their extent of practice should be minimized. Patients benefit from a greater supply of healthcare providers. Economists have long recognized that the main benefit of medical licensure is to restrict physician supply and increase doctors’ incomes. This harms patients and must end. If not for supply restrictions demanded by special interests, methods to increase the supply of healthcare providers could be easily achieved. These methods include automatic reciprocity of medical licensure as well as the increased use of telemedicine. Competent physicians in Maine should not be forced to spend months filling out paperwork to be allowed to practice medicine in Montana. The best surgeon in London should not be required to repeat a residency to practice in Los Angeles. A physician in Phoenix needs only an Arizona medical license to see a patient visiting from Fremont. He shouldn’t also need a California medical license if the patient instead sees him on a computer screen rather than face to face. Although medicine and medical results improve yearly, there are no cure-alls, no panaceas. But history shows and economic theory confirms that virtually all government interventions preventing patient and doctor from defining mutually agreeable terms of service are the cause of virtually all healthcare difficulties, and that eliminating such interventions is as close to a silver bullet as we can achieve in this world. Ted notes that the last sentence is an exaggeration but it is an oath, and so he thought he could take liberties, so to speak. (0 COMMENTS)

The Chinese government engages in all sorts of conspiracies. They conspire to deny the reality of the Uyghur concentration camps. They conspire to deny the crimes of Mao. They conspire to cast doubt on the fact that Covid likely originated in China (probably in an animal market, but perhaps a lab leak.)  But China’s government cannot hide the truth.  These conspiracies are almost laughably ineffective in affecting world opinion. Here’s another example of a Chinese cover-up: Evidence of a wave of Covid-19 deaths is beginning to emerge in Beijing despite official tallies showing no fatalities since an uncontrolled outbreak began sweeping through China’s capital this week. Staff at one crematorium in Beijing said they cremated the bodies of at least 30 Covid victims on Wednesday and Financial Times reporters saw two body bags at a special hospital designated for coronavirus patients. “We cremated 150 bodies [on Wednesday], many times more than a typical day last winter,” said an employee at the state-owned Beijing Dongjiao Funeral Home who asked not to be named. “Thirty or 40 had Covid.” I didn’t need to read the Financial Times to learn this fact, as my wife often chats on the phone with people in Beijing and it’s common knowledge that China’s capital is in the midst of a big Covid outbreak.  So should we accept all theories about Chinese cover-ups?  No, only those supported by the evidence. During late 2020 and 2021, China reported an extremely low number of Covid cases.  I do NOT believe that those reports were precisely accurate, but do I believe they were roughly accurate.  Oddly, while the FT story shows that the Chinese government is not to be trusted, it also shows that they cannot succeed in covering up major Covid outbreaks.  Of course the information will leak out. During late 2020 and 2021, the Chinese government reacted to small Covid outbreaks with the most draconian policies in the world.  The conservative media in America argued that this zero Covid policy could not possibly be succeeding as advertised.  I believe it did succeed for almost two years (although I strongly oppose the policy in any case.) The truth is that zero Covid policies can work fairly effectively in some cases.  Australia reported one death from Covid in the first half of 2021, a time during which the US reported 1/4 million Covid deaths.  I also believe the Australian claim to be roughly true.  There are other examples of successful zero Covid policies in various countries in the period before the virus mutated to become so infectious that it became almost impossible to control.  While I don’t believe those policies passed the cost-benefit test, especially after vaccines were available, they worked to a limited extent.  In October 2020, my wife visited Beijing and saw a city free of Covid, where life went on as normal.  Major Covid outbreaks cannot be hidden. There’s also a conspiracy theory that China’s GDP is far lower than what is shown by official figures.  I tend to doubt that claim.  China’s reported GDP/person ($12,970) is much lower than the US figure ($75,180).  Even in PPP terms, China has a relatively low GDP per capita, comparable to a Latin American country.  I’ve been to China many times (including western and rural regions), and it always seems at least as rich as the official figures suggest. Conspiracy theories should be accepted or rejected on the evidence, not based on whether one is predisposed to like or dislike the entity accused of a cover-up. Conspiracy theories are seductive for the same reason that we like Hollywood thrillers.  It’s fascinating to contemplate a vast government conspiracy to murder JFK or to fake a moon landing.  Reality is more boring.  Most of the conspiracy theories that are true are the ones out there in plain view—such as the Chinese government cover-up of concentration camps or their current cover-up of Beijing’s Covid outbreak.  Be skeptical of claims of conspiracies so vast that they are not even known to the media.  It’s not that they never happen, but they are far less likely to be true.   (0 COMMENTS)

As I mentioned in a recent Econlog post, I have been asking ChatGPT to write song lyrics, including lyrics about a variety of economics topics. One commenter asked me to share the songs ChatGPT wrote me about public choice. Here are a couple of those songs. I asked “Write a song about public choice theory in the style of Fishbone” and ChatGPT responded: Verse 1: Public choice theory, it’s a way of thinkin’ About how people act when they’re votin’ They seek their own self-interest Not always for the common good, that’s for sure Chorus: Public choice, public choice It’s a theory that’s not so nice It’s about how we’re all driven By our own selfish desires   Verse 2: Public choice theory, it’s a concept so bold It says that politicians, they’re just like us all They’re not always noble, they’re not always fair They’re just tryin’ to get what they want, like anyone else out there Chorus: Public choice, public choice It’s a theory that’s not so nice It’s about how we’re all driven By our own selfish desires   Bridge: But we can’t let our selfishness win We gotta work together, for the greater good We gotta use our votes wisely, not just for ourselves We gotta think about the future, and how our choices will affect it all   Chorus: Public choice, public choice It’s a theory that’s not so nice But if we work together, we can make it right We can use our power for the common good Public choice, public choice Let’s make the right choice.   I then said, “Write a song about public choice theory in the style of Tower of Power.” The AI responded: Verse 1: There’s a theory that’s been floating around Explaining why people act the way they do It’s called public choice, and it’s a big deal It’s changing how we think about democracy too Chorus: Public choice, public choice It’s a game changer for the people’s voice Public choice, public choice It’s a new way to understand what we do   Verse 2: We all have our own self-interest And that shapes our decisions every day But when we’re voting or making laws It’s not always easy to see the way Chorus: Public choice, public choice It’s a game changer for the people’s voice Public choice, public choice It’s a new way to understand what we do   Bridge: We can’t just assume that we’re doing what’s best For the common good, we need to be aware Public choice is a tool to help us see The consequences of our choices, loud and clear   Chorus: Public choice, public choice It’s a game changer for the people’s voice Public choice, public choice It’s a new way to understand what we do. I’ll note, by the way, that Tower of Power does have at least one real song that I think covers public choice quite well. That’s “Taxed to the Max” off of their 1995 album Souled Out.  The song covers vote seeking politicians (“Politicians promise all they can to get elected”), information asymmetries and opportunism (“In the smoke-filled rooms, they’re making all their plans. But when the smoke gets cleared, you know it’s just a scam.”), the military-industrial complex (“Weapons systems, national defense, vested interests. It doesn’t make no sense!”), and more. So far, I think humans have an edge over AI when it comes to writing catchy songs that illustrate public choice theory. At least, humans who specialize in songwriting do. But technology is changing rapidly. Who knows what the future holds?   Nathan P. Goodman is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Economics at New York University. His research interests include defense and peace economics, self-governance, public choice, institutional analysis, and Austrian economics. (0 COMMENTS)

My friend Ted Levy, a retired doctor, told me over the phone this week that it’s not just the latest Woke Oath for doctors that is problematic; the traditional Hippocratic Oath is no prize either. So I encouraged him to write up his point in two posts. The first takes on both the Hippocratic Oath and the Woke Oath. That’s below. The second is his preferred substitute, which he came up with. Here’s Part I, his criticisms. Introduction Medical oaths have been in the news lately. Some conservatives have expressed dismay about a woke oath that has made the rounds, lamenting that society is moving away from the traditional Hippocratic Oath. In fact, that move happened quite a while ago. And the Hippocratic Oath has its own problems. So I thought it might be fun to analyze both the traditional oath and the recent woke oath, and perhaps compare them to what we’d want to see in a medical oath that libertarians could embrace. The Hippocratic Oath Hippocrates of Kos was a Greek physician practicing around 400 BC, traditionally referred to as the “Father of Medicine.” The Hippocratic Oath is named after him. It is often thought to contain the famous phrase, “First, do no harm.” It does not. It is often thought to be an altruistic oath in which physicians pledge to do their best for the patient and for humanity. It is not. A simple economic analysis indicates that much of it was designed to maintain a medical guild capable of garnering supra-market profits by limiting competition. Let’s consider some aspects of the Oath. Early on, after swearing to Apollo, the God of, among other things, medicine, the young physician says he will “hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents; to make him partner in my livelihood; when he is in need of money to share mine with him.” That is, doctors in training guarantee to provide financial security to academic physicians and, as needed, provide them with a sinecure. Nice work if you can get it. But a physician-in-training must do even more for those masters who train him to enter the guild. The trainee must consider his master’s sons as his “own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they want to learn it, without fee or indenture.” Today, Ivy League schools are often condemned for offering “legacy admissions.” That’s the practice of a college giving preferential admissions treatment to the children of its alumni. As you can see, it’s not a new idea. The medical guild of Hippocrates’ time wrote it into its oath. Legacies don’t need to have any demonstrated competence. They are automatically accepted and they get training for free. Good deal if you can get it. But the nature of guilds is, unfortunately, that most people can’t get it. The Hippocratic Oath continues with a pledge “to impart precept, oral instruction, and all other instruction to my own sons, the sons of my teacher, and to indentured pupils who have taken the Healer’s oath, but to nobody else.” It’s hard to get clearer than that. The medical guild supporting the oath wants to restrict practitioners not to those who best perform medical skills to benefit patients, but as much as possible to their own families, friends, and loved ones. BUT TO NOBODY ELSE. The oath then delves into two issues that, thousands of years later, remain hot button topics. Ancient practitioners pledged not to engage in euthanasia or abortion. You may well oppose both parts of that pledge today. Many do. But notice that in both cases the oath opposes patient autonomy, a value and principle not in evidence in ancient times but that has become pre-eminent in modern medical ethics. Here’s yet one more example of how guilds function. The Hippocratic Oath has a passage sounding odd to modern ears: “I will not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein.” In modern times a surgeon is a type of doctor. In ancient times a surgeon was an alternative to a doctor. Doctors treated what ailed their patients with potions, powders, ointments, and advice. Surgeons (who were also barbers) cut the patient open. The Hippocratic Oath (where “stone” refers to kidney stones or gallstones, horribly painful conditions for which surgery is generally warranted) tells doctors to do nothing in such cases but instead to send them to a surgeon/barber. In other words, they must uphold professional jurisdictional rules. Neither the medical nor the surgical guild competes with the other, to the benefit of both. You may think, “That’s good. People with kidney stones should see a surgeon.” But, as any modern surgeon can tell you, sometimes they are sent patients on whom they couldoperate but who would do just as well with non-surgical treatment. In ancient times, such patients didn’t get the best treatment; they got the treatment based on the way the guilds divvied things up. Medical guilds, protecting their members more than the public, have historically been the rule rather than the exception. Historian Ronald Hamowy, in his article “The Early Development of Medical Licensing Laws in the United States 1875-1900,” appearing in the Journal of Libertarian Studies 3 (1):73-119 (1979), noted that from its origin in 1847 the American Medical Association spared no effort at restricting medical supply, largely via licensing. The AMA’s code of medical ethics, based on and expanding from Hippocrates’ Oath, contained a variety of principles not based on patient care but on physician avarice. For example, one edition of the AMA’s Code of Medical Ethics stressed the impropriety of “A wealthy physician [giving] advice gratis to the affluent.” Why? Because it decreases the “common funds” of the guild, thereby “defrauding” fellow doctors. But now, in the 21st century, only about 15 percent of American physicians are members of the AMA. The dramatic growth of third-party, largely governmental, payments to physicians in the second half of the 20th century achieved the AMA’s long sought goals of limiting supply and increasing physician revenue and thereby ironically diminished its membership among now satisfied private practice doctors. Instead, as government rules, regulations, and restrictions became a more substantial part of the physician’s practice, and had to be stressed in medical education, academic medical faculty and administrators became more important among AMA members. And academic medical faculty, of late, tend to be woke. A Woke Oath In December 2022, Robert Englander, MD, MPH, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Medical Education at the University of Minnesota school of medicine, led the first year medical students in their White Coat ceremony. That’s a traditional ceremony in the move from layperson to medical professional, where students first get to wear the symbolic “white coats,” garb they will continue to don throughout their medical school, internship, and residency. But Dr. Englander’s words, dutifully repeated by the first years, was anything but traditional. He had re-written the medical oath to, in his vision, fit the times. He began by noting that the medical school was “located on Dakota land,” referring to land owned by the Dakota Indian tribe. He added: “[T]his acknowledgment is not enough. We commit to uprooting the legacy and perpetuation of structural violence deeply embedded within the healthcare system. We recognize inequities built by past and present traumas rooted in white supremacy, colonialism, the gender binary, ableism, and all forms of oppression.” So it seems clear that when Englander (how appropriate a name for someone recognizing his role in white supremacy and colonialism!) said the medical school was “located on Dakota land” he didn’t mean “purchased from the Dakota Indians.” He meant illegitimately taken from them. Yet for all his expressed willingness to end the “perpetuation of structural violence” and recognize the inequities rooted in white supremacy, colonialism, the gender binary, ableism (in a medical school??, a place devoted to training people to aid the sick and infirm??), and “all forms of oppression” Englander never mentioned his willingness to give the stolen land back. I can’t speak for Native Americans, of course, but I’d be willing to bet that given the choice of getting their land back or dealing with the traumas associated with the gender binary, they’d take the land. Englander and his woke oath were nowhere near finished, though. It went on to pledge “healing our planet.” As Alex Epstein has noted in his book Fossil Future, environmental pleas to heal the planet involve demands to minimize if not eliminate human impact on the environment. Thus the need to reduce energy use as much as possible. Does Englander have any idea how much energy modern hospitals use? Maybe that’s why his pledge also commits to “honor all Indigenous ways of healing that have been historically marginalized by Western medicine.” Granted, acupuncture and medicinal herbs use much less energy than CT scanners and extracorporeal lithotripsy units. The Woke Oath also contains a vow “to embrace our role as community members and strive to embody cultural humility” yet also to “learn from the scientific innovations made before us and pledge to advance and share this knowledge with peers and neighbors.” The Woke never see the contradictions in their visions. Many communities in America, we’ve learned in the last few years, are concerned about vaccines. Should the white coats learning about Jenner’s past scientific innovation “share this knowledge” with community neighbors? Or should they “embody cultural humility” and not bring it up, instead recommending “indigenous ways of healing…historically marginalized” in the past? A  reading of this version of a medical oath on YouTube led to much consternation. FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, sent the medical school a letter of concern and received confirmation from the dean that no one was forced to attend the White Coat ceremony or take the oath. But if you get sick in the Minnesota area in the future, be sure to remember that you have indigenous and historically marginalized, as well as Western, medicine options to choose from. Well, maybe not all Western medical options, but at least the culturally humble ones. The picture above is of Hippocrates. Next up: Ted Levy’s suggested pro-medical liberty replacement. (0 COMMENTS)

Based on the clinical evidence from the 93 trials that ivermectin reducedmortality by an average of 51 percent, and on the estimated infection fatality rate of COVID-19,  about 400 infected Americans aged 60-69 would need to be treated with ivermectin to statistically prevent one death in that group. The total cost of the ivermectin to prevent that one death: $40,000. (Based on the GoodRx website, a generic prescription for ivermectin is priced at approximately $40. Roughly 2.5 prescriptions would be needed per person to receive the average dose of 150 mg per patient.) How much is your life worth? We’re betting it’s worth far more than $40,000. When the next pandemic strikes, by necessity we’ll rely on older drugs because newer ones require years of development. Ivermectin is a repurposed drug that helps, and could have helped so much more. It deserves recognition, not disparagement. What we really need, however, is a way to inoculate ourselves against the lies and misrepresentations of powerful public figures, organizations, and drug companies. Sadly, there are no such vaccines for that contagion. These are the closing paragraphs of Charles L. Hooper and David R. Henderson, “Setting the Record Straight on Ivermectin,” Brownstone Institute, December 14, 2022. Read the whole thing, which is not long. (0 COMMENTS)

In intellectual debate, I find a special charm when someone plays the proverbial “reverse card.” This is when an argument usually deployed in one direction gets applied to reach an opposite conclusion. For example, many political theorists argue for political authority and state intervention using ideal theory – but Jason Brennan played the reverse card to argue that ideal theory, if applied consistently, would actually support a stateless society operating according to free market capitalism. Chris Freiman applied his own reverse card arguing that consistent use of non-ideal theory would also support free market capitalism. Dan Moller’s reverse card argued that a worldview harboring a modest view of individual rights and a strong respect for our neighbors and community leads to libertarianism and the abolition of the welfare state. Of course, like all modes of argument, the reverse card can be done well or poorly. I’ve occasionally seen attempts to use arguments traditionally associated with conservatism or libertarianism in defense of the regulatory state. Here I describe just one, in the hopes that it will forever be banished from discourse and spare me the secondhand embarrassment I experience when I see it invoked in this way. The argument I’m talking about is Chesterton’s Fence. Chesterton’s Fence is an argument against hasty abolition of laws, institutions, or customs, courtesy of G. K. Chesterton. Chesterton imagines someone coming across a fence in a field for which he sees no point or purpose. A reckless reformer might say “Well, I don’t see any purpose being served by this fence, so we might as well tear it down.” This is folly, says Chesterton. If you don’t see the point of something, that doesn’t provide a justification to eliminate it – it only shows the limits of your understanding. After all, the fences don’t grow in fields like plants – someone put it there for a reason. If you don’t know why the fence was built in the first place, maybe it’s there for a good reason. Some argue that economic regulations, or the regulatory state itself, is a kind of Chesterton’s fence. To be clear, I think Chesterton’s Fence is a good heuristic. But I don’t think it cuts any ice in the argument about economic regulation, for a couple of different reasons. First, Chesterton’s Fence isn’t an argument that existing institutions should be presumed valid, full stop. What Chesterton actually says is: The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to [the fence] and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.” So the injunction is to first understand what led to the fence being built, at which point tearing it down might prove to be the correct move after all. This is why the Chesterton’s Fence reverse card in defense of economic regulation fails. Critics of economic regulation don’t merely say “this regulation seems pointless, lets get rid of it.” Public choice theory meets Chesterton’s injunction to understand what led to these regulatory fences being created. And according to public choice, most regulation isn’t crafted to serve the public interest, but is instead largely created at the behest of lobbyists to gain special protection for themselves at the public expense. So critics of economic regulation – at least those who draw on public choice theory in their critique – have, in fact, gone off to think about why these regulatory fences were built and what purpose they are meant to serve. And the arguments go beyond a general theory of regulation. It also consists of a body of scholarship which examines specific regulations to measure their effect. This is how Nobel Prize winning economist Ronald Coase described these findings: Coase: When I was editor of The Journal of Law and Economics, we published a whole series of studies of regulation and its effects. Almost all the studies–perhaps all the studies–suggested that the results of regulation had been bad, that the prices were higher, that the product was worse adapted to the needs of consumers, than it otherwise would have been. I was not willing to accept the view that all regulation was bound to produce these results. Therefore, what was my explanation for the results we had? I argued that the most probable explanation was that the government now operates on such a massive scale that it had reached the stage of what economists call negative marginal returns. Anything additional it does, it messes up. But that doesn’t mean that if we reduce the size of government considerably, we wouldn’t find then that there were some activities it did well. Until we reduce the size of government, we won’t know what they are. Reason: What’s an example of bad regulation? Coase: I can’t remember one that’s good. Regulation of transport, regulation of agriculture–agriculture is a, zoning is z. You know, you go from a to z, they are all bad. There were so many studies, and the result was quite universal: The effects were bad. Clifford Winston of the Brookings Institute gives a less dim assessment, but only slightly so, concluding that environmental protections have probably done more good than harm, but in every other area, economic regulations, as they are actually crafted and carried out, have done more harm than good. (Another common response that misses the point – “Sure, you can complain that government does things imperfectly, but simply showing that something is flawed isn’t good enough. You need to show why an alternative would be better.” If something does more harm than good, then doing nothing would be better, even without an alternative. And that’s the argument being made – not that regulation is imperfect, or that it can be captured, or that it has costs. The argument is that regulations are doing more harm than good. Maybe that argument is wrong, but simply saying “nothing is perfect so what’s your alternative” is a nonresponse.) Now, all of the above referenced arguments might be wrong. But a defender of economic regulation needs to actually make that case. They would need to say “Public choice theory is wrong about the actual point and purpose of economic regulations because [insert argument here]. Additionally, all the studies citied by Coase and all the research referenced by Winston reached the wrong results because [additional arguments].” That would be a respectable and productive response. But to simply say “sure, things are imperfect but you need to suggest a better alternative” simply fails to engage. And invoking Chesterton’s Fence is likewise toothless – the person doing so only shows they are a step behind in the discussion.   Kevin Corcoran is a Marine Corps veteran and a consultant in healthcare economics and analytics and holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from George Mason University.  (0 COMMENTS)