It feels like forever but it’s been less than nine months since this Covid-19 became a pandemic. And it also seems that it will go on forever. However, the news about the disease is good but the news about the policy response is bad. In an article, Dr Jayanta Bhattacharya writes:
“U.N. has estimated that 130 million additional people will starve this year as a result of the economic damage resulting from the lockdowns.
“In the last 20 years we’ve lifted one billion people worldwide out of poverty. This year we are reversing that progress to the extent—it bears repeating—that an estimated 130 million more people will starve.”
Death through starvation must be terrible. Note that the disease will eventually kill two orders of magnitude fewer people than the lockdown policy that governments imposed. As is always the case, governments are the biggest killers. No natural disaster can compete with the government in wholesale killing. The most astonishing sad fact is that people give their governments the power to kill them. It’s suicidal.
Go read Dr Bhattacharya’s article.
There are a couple of things I find remarkable about US elections. First, the date of practically all elections is fixed and therefore predictable. Every year, all elections at all levels of government — city, county, state and federal — are held on the Tuesday following the first Monday of November. If the first Monday of November falls on the 1st, then election is on Nov 2nd — the earliest possible date; and the lastest possible date will be Nov 8th. That happens every year, and every four years, it is a presidential election year. That too is totally predictable.
Today it’s Sharad Purnima, a Hindu tradition. It is a harvest festival that is celebrated on the full moon day of the lunar month of Ashvin. It’s also called Kojagiri Purnima. It’s the birthday of Devi Lakshmi, and she is worshipped on this day. Also worshipped are Indra, and Shiva and Parvati. Lots of worshipping going on among Hindus.
Economists are uniquely qualified in their understanding of one particular aspect of human activity, and that activity is unique to humans. No other animal trades, or exchanges, among its kind. Adam Smith wrote that “the propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.” And no other discipline focuses on trade as much as economics does. Indeed, the most parsimonious description of economics is that it is the systematic study of trade, and trade-offs.
In school I learned the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic reasonably well. That may be partly due to competent teachers, a stable family and school environment, and my being somewhat diligent. However, I am convinced that I would have learned a whole lot more if I had had access to the enormous number of excellent teachers and the virtually infinite amount of content on every conceivable subject we have available today: not in person but over the internet.
If you need any more evidence that people in government are generally incompetent and cause immense harm due to their ignorance and stupidity, not to mention for the moment their obvious cupidity and greed, there’s no greater example of that incompetence than their handling of the Chinese virus, aka Covid-19, pandemic.
The cliché “they don’t make ’em like that anymore” can’t be more true about political satire than about the Yes, Minister (1980-84) and Yes, Prime Minister (1986-88) BBC TV series. When I first watched them on PBS, I didn’t have a clue about economics, and more particuarly about public choice theory — which Buchanan described as “politics without romance.” Now that I know the basic principles of economics and political economy, my appreciation of the series has deepened.
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 