Essential Liberty
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Essential Liberty Bob Zadek Essential Liberty Finding Freedom in a Post-COVID World Bob Zadek Copyright © 2020 BobZadek.com All rights reserved. ISBN: 9798666093856 Cover Image: Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky, by Benjamin West c. 1816 For Anne Featured Guests: Jeffrey Tucker Jacob Sullum Donald J. Boudreaux Alex Tabarrok Frank H. Buckley Randal O’Toole Brent Orrell John Tamny Jeffrey Singer CONTENTS Introduction Pg. 1 1 Big Government Can’t Save Us Pg. 5 Jeffrey Tucker, AIER 2 Balancing Uncertainty Pg. 13 Jacob Sullum, Reason 3 The Recipe for Scarcity Pg. 23 Don Boudreaux, Café Hayek 4 The Invisible Graveyard Pg. 33 Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution 5 Which Way, California? Pg. 47 Frank Buckley, GMU Law School 6 Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste Pg. 59 Randal O’Toole, The Cato Institute 7 Experts vs. Markets Pg. 65 John Tamny, FreedomWorks 8 The Future of Cities Pg. 75 Brent Orrell, American Enterprise Institute 9 Here Comes “The Spike” Pg. 89 Dr. Jeffrey Tucker, The Cato Institute Conclusion Pg. 103 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to all of the contributors to this volume who were willing to have their interviews published in transcribed format. You are my personal tutors and I feel privileged to be able to share your ideas with my readers and listeners. I am also grateful to my sound engineer Vine Tocce, my producer, Charlie Deist, for editing and formatting this volume, and to Kyle Bigman for his transcription and editorial assistance. INTRODUCTION “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” – Benjamin Franklin Robert Higgs trenchantly observed in his book Crisis and Leviathan that central planning is a ratchet. Governments use crises to introduce unimaginable restrictions on freedom in the name of public safety. We allow permanent erosions of liberty under the guise of temporary necessity. In responding to the Coronavirus outbreak, China ratcheted up its authoritarianism – forcibly taking people from their homes and committing them to “hospital cities,” built overnight using eminent domain on steroids. The mainstream media fawned and Marxist philosopher Slavoj Žižek saw in Wuhan’s state of emergency a silver lining. He wrote of “an unexpected emancipatory prospect hidden in this nightmarish vision.” Brace yourself. Not only does Žižek suggest that the crisis provide a pretext for “a new kind of communism,” he says that the “half-abandoned streets,” and “stores with open doors and no customers,” actually “provide the image of a non-consumerist world at ease with itself.” 1 ESSENTIAL LIBERTY But hardcore Marxists are not the only one cheering the loss of liberty. Some American governors are having a field day with the forced shutdown of economic activity. The people are scared, and once again seem more than willing to hand over their economic freedom in the name of safety. Ostensibly, the rationale of “lives not livelihoods” is beneath this stripping away of our liberties. It is only “temporary,” we are told, just as the income tax and PATRIOT Act were merely temporary measures to address the extraordinary circumstances of WWI and 9/11 respectively. We have seen how government and the media work together to hijack our emotions – keeping us glued to the headlines and selling us advertisements while persuading a majority to go along with the new program of control. Broadcast media has become simply another form of entertainment. The people who broadcast the news have to have a certain aura about them – a sense of authority and glamor and all that goes with it. We praise live theater or a motion picture if it elicits feelings; it was a “good” experience, because it created an emotional response. The same with news reports. If it makes us feel (usually anger) it was a good presentation and we will return for more. It’s not accuracy that draws us back. No one watches it just for information. When you get the nightly report on the virus, the first things you’re told are the number of new cases and number of deaths – always in red, because red evokes an emotion. In response, I limit my information intake to a select trusted group of scholars, represented by the sampling of guests featured in this volume. Being selective has made a profound difference in how I feel about the world and the confidence I have in my own decision making. I invite you to try it. So, who should you follow? For starters, try Reason Magazine, Volokh Conspiracy, The Libertarian with Richard Epstein, Marginal Revolution, Cafe Hayek, the American Institute for Economic Research, and The Cato Institute. These organizations and blogs will help you understand the news through the complex lens of trade-offs, opportunity costs, and “the seen versus the unseen.” This book is structured as a compilation of edited interviews with my personal tutors from each of these organizations, among others. 2 INTRODUCTION With their help, I try to sort out the facts from the “fake news,” and judge the government’s overall response to the pandemic. *** Before we got on to the interviews, there are a few key takeaways to keep in mind whenever you are reading the latest headlines about COVID-19: 1. Newly discovered cases ≠ new cases. 2. New cases ≠ fatalities. 3. Government always thinks about how to expand its power at the expense of the people during times of crisis. 4. “Temporary” restrictions on freedom are never temporary. Future economics and political science students will look back in horror at this period – not for the mortality rate, which appears to be marginally higher than an average flu season – but for the acquiescence to draconian restrictions, unprecedented spending, and enlargement of state, local and federal bureaucracy (not to mention the failure of basic functions by the existing apparatus, i.e., FDA). Jefferson observed “The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.” Media misses what Frédéric Bastiat called “that which is unseen.” Dead bodies being carted away by truck to the morgue is a striking image, and was seen by millions on 24-hour media loop. Business closures, economic hardship, and looming inflation are harder to visualize, and thus get downplayed in the calculus. While we should be concerned about the loss of civil and economic freedoms, Bastiat’s insight reminds us to put our fears about the virus itself in perspective. My curated COVID-19 reading list keeps me relaxed and confident in my belief that the media’s daily 3 ESSENTIAL LIBERTY projections. The question on all thinking people’s minds should be “Is it worth it?” Is it worth the loss of liberty? Is it worth trillions in damage to the economy? Is it worth the separation from friends, family, and the myriad economic relationships that have been severed or disrupted? These interviews place a special emphasis on the question of what counts as an “essential” freedom. As the government has sought to distinguish between essential and non-essential businesses, it is our duty as vigilant citizens and supporters of liberty to take a similar inventory with respect to our freedoms. We the People still hold the power. We can hold our politicians accountable at the ballot box, as well as with our choice of jurisdiction – both state and local. This book offers no centralized plan for taking back our essential liberties. Such an effort, as John Tamny notes in chapter 7, would be pointless. Instead, we can go about our lives as freely as possible and ignore the prophets of doom who would use fear as a weapon to deny us our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 4 1. BIG GOVERNMENT CAN’T SAVE US Jeffrey Tucker on the Abuse of Quarantine Powers (Original Interview on February 12, 2020) Jeffrey Tucker, editorial director of the American Institute for Economic Research, was one of the first commentators to write on the virus, asking a full month before the shelter-in-place orders, “Must Government Save Us from the Coronavirus?” While it’s easy to think of Chinese quarantines as something distinctly un-American, he points out that “the US government already has the power to create sick camps, kidnap and intern people upon suspicion that they are diseased, and keep people in camps for an undetermined amount of time.” In this interview, we discuss the tragic history of forced quarantines and surprisingly effective voluntary alternatives. Tucker points out that the abuse of these powers is far more common than their discerning application. We also relate the expectation that the government will save us from pandemic as a symptom of a much greater problem – America’s acceptance of bigger government when it suits our political fancies or addresses a perceived threat. Tucker explains how markets – i.e., individuals – can improvise a more orderly solution to disease outbreaks than the chaotic spasms of a failing authoritarian state. 5 ESSENTIAL LIBERTY TRANSCRIPT Bob Zadek: This is not a show on public health. We are a show which tries to preserve liberty against government encroachments. What in the world does the Coronavirus have to do with a liberty-oriented radio program? Whenever a threat pops up like Coronavirus, 9/11, or any other sudden, apparent existential threat to our wellbeing, the press encourages us to fear it. Government is quick to act, followed by an immediate exertion of new powers over us citizens. We now have quarantine and limitations on movement of both Americans and citizens from the rest of the world.