“AIER’s Research Director Phil Magness joins James R. Harrigan, AIER’s Senior Editor, and Antony Davies, Professor of economics at Duquesne University to discuss critical race theory.” ~ December 31, 2021 @ American Institute for Economic Research
Showing posts with label James R. Harrigan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James R. Harrigan. Show all posts
Sunday, January 16, 2022
Thursday, October 7, 2021
The Great Barrington Declaration One Year On
Phillip W. Magness
James R. Harrigan – October 5, 2021 @ American Institute for Economic Research
From October 2-4, 2020, the American Institute for Economic Research hosted a small conference for scientists to discuss the harms of the Covid-19 lockdowns, and maybe hint at a path back to normal life. Organized by Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta, and Jay Bhattacharya, the conference made a scientific case for shifting away from the heavy-handed lockdowns of the initial Spring 2020 outbreak. On their final day together in Great Barrington, the scientists wrote a short statement of principles, calling it the Great Barrington Declaration. This Declaration, their Declaration, touched a nerve well beyond the scientific community, and well beyond anything they or AIER could have expected. So here we are, a year later. Where do we stand?
The aim that our guests had in offering the Great Barrington Declaration was to spark scientific dialogue that had been missing from the lockdown discussions until that point. It was AIER’s goal to facilitate this dialogue. The Declaration was a success in bringing, for the first time since the pandemic started, an anti-lockdown voice to mainstream policy discussion. The signatories’ stance was generally in line with the pre-pandemic plans that many, if not most mainstream authorities, (the World Health Organization, the epidemiology center at Johns Hopkins University, and the Centers for Disease Control to name just three) held. People tend to forget what the pre-2020 conventional wisdom on pandemics even was.
As successful as we think the Great Barrington Declaration was, it failed in a number of respects as well. We did not, for example, anticipate the vilification the Declaration would receive from any number of people, ranging from the progressive left to self-described libertarians.
Immediately after the website launched, it was hit by a hoax signature campaign instigated on Twitter by pro-lockdown journalist Nafeez Ahmed. Most of the fake signatures were caught within hours and removed, but not before a hostile news media used them to manufacture a false story about their own self-created controversy over signatures from “Dr. Johnny Bananas” and similar easily-caught pseudonyms.
Not to be outdone by his first stunt, Ahmed also let loose what can only be called a flurry of increasingly unhinged conspiracy theories, falsely alleging that the GBD was somehow financially orchestrated by the Koch brothers, the British Ministry of Defence, and even a resort hotel property in Wales. Although Ahmed has a long history of conspiracy theorizing including the promotion of kooky claims about a controlled demolition bringing down the Twin Towers on 9/11, his ravings about the GBD were credulously adopted and shared by prominent scientists, journalists, and any number of other people who should have known better. (For the record, AIER received $68,000 in Koch funding over the last ten years. And that sum was used entirely to offset the costs of a single economics conference in 2017, with no links whatsoever to the GBD). It’s much easier to demonize an opponent by accusing them of being on the payroll of “dark money” than it is to engage their arguments on a substantive and scientific evidentiary basis.
The Declaration even came under attack from a targeted propaganda campaign at the highest levels of the British government. Jeremy Farrar, the director of the Wellcome Trust and a pro-lockdown advisor to the UK’s SAGE committee, revealed as much in a recent book about the pandemic. Per Farrar’s account, Dominic Cummings – then serving as chief advisor to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson – announced that he would orchestrate “an aggressive press campaign against those behind the Great Barrington Declaration and to others opposed to blanket Covid-19 restrictions,” seeking to discredit any scientist who questioned the wisdom of his government’s lockdown strategy.
In a broader and more basic sense, the Declaration was written during a period of deep uncertainty. No one really knew what the correct Covid answers were, but the signatories followed the evidence as it emerged. Most importantly, no one had any way of knowing that vaccines were so close to being available to the public. And while the specific strategies of last fall and winter might well have been different had the signatories known what we know now, everything they wrote was compatible with the anti-lockdown message at the heart of the Declaration.
So how well did the lockdowns perform in practice? Given the intense criticisms leveled at the GBD, one might be inclined to think they worked rather well.
But they didn’t. Not by a long shot.
First consider how the lockdowners have continuously shifted their accounts of the very same policies they advocated. In the weeks that followed the GBD, its critics crafted a well-honed and widely repeated message. Lockdowns, they insisted, were already a relic of the past – perhaps a suitable strategy for the uncertainties of spring 2020’s “first wave,” but no longer a serious consideration given what we came to know about the virus. When the GBD questioned the efficacy of lockdowns, they insisted, it was arguing against a “strawman.”
“The kind of lockdown that the Great Barrington Declaration seems to be railing against hasn’t been in place in the UK since mid-June,” read one retort in UK Wired Magazine only two days after the GBD website went live. “When the Great Barrington Declaration authors declare their opposition to lockdowns, they are quite literally arguing with the past.” Economist Tyler Cowen echoed the charge in a Bloomberg column devoted to attacking the GBD on October 15, 2020: “The critics who emphasize lockdowns are setting up a straw man,” he wrote. “What they’re trying to do is talk us into something more dangerous than what we ought to accept. The truth is that lockdowns are extremely unpopular, and while they may have to be reimposed in extreme circumstances, they are not the main alternative on the table in the U.S. right now.”
After a year and a half or so of lockdowns, we can safely dismiss this response. Less than a month later, the UK returned to full lockdown. Dozens of other countries around the world followed suit in mid-November. When cases spiked again in the United States over the winter, several states reimposed these very same “strawman” lockdown policies that the GBD’s critics dismissed with a wave of their hands in mid-October.
Not that any of them would ever admit as much now. Quite the
contrary, by early 2021 many of the same scientific commentators and
epidemiologists who deployed the “strawman” line against the GBD the
previous October had taken to revising the history of their own
arguments and claims. One new conspiracy theory even faulted the GBD’s authors
for allegedly delaying the reimposition of another UK lockdown by a few
weeks the previous fall. In October 2020, British epidemiologist Deepti
Gurdasani dismissed the GBD’s warnings about renewed lockdowns as “a
strawman that the science is not only not advocating for, but very keen
to avoid.” By January 2021 she not only claimed to have supported a
“circuit breaker” lockdown as early as the previous September – she also
blamed the GBD authors for impeding its adoption.
Yes, you read
that right. Lockdowns were just a “strawman” that nobody was seriously
pushing for at the time the GBD was signed, but the GBD was also somehow
responsible for delaying the reimposition of the very same lockdowns
that nobody – allegedly – wanted. Clearly, certain scientists were being
less-than-forthright about their intentions to lock down again in the
fall of 2020. But rather than admit these errors, they turned to
scapegoating the one document that correctly diagnosed their intentions.
More pro-lockdown epidemiologists seemed inclined to grasp the central theme of the badly misnamed John Snow Memorandum in the Lancet – drafted in direct response to the GBD. This petition, co-organized by Gurdasani and other pro-lockdown scientists, predictably claimed that drastic nonpharmaceutical measures such as business closures and shelter-in-place orders had a large effect on reducing Covid transmission in the spring and summer of 2020. Recent data indicate that this statement is overblown, and common sense should have researchers looking for the tradeoffs that have to be made in these sorts of large-scale public policies. Be that as it may, the Snow Memorandum was built upon unreliable pro-lockdown studies out of Imperial College-London that have since been discredited.
Another major claim of the Snow Memorandum – that naturally acquired immunity was not robust and Covid-19 reinfections among recovered patients could become widespread – turned out to be incorrect. The best evidence we now have suggests that naturally acquired immunity is very robust. To date, neither the Snow Memorandum authors nor the Lancet have issued an appropriate correction to their erroneous claim.
Most importantly, the main epidemiology model driving the world’s Covid-19 response performed disastrously at predicting the actual course of the disease. In March 2020, Neil Ferguson’s epidemiology team at Imperial College-London published mortality projections for 189 different countries, based on an array of model scenarios. They missed every single projection at the 1-year mark in 189 out of 189 countries, in both their “do nothing” and “mitigation” scenarios, as well as in 170 out of 189 countries in their most extreme “suppression” scenario – a policy response that no country on earth adopted.
Table I: Imperial College Covid-19 Mortality Projection Model – One-Year Performance Record (3/26/2020 – 3/26/2021)
| ICL Model | Model Assumptions | # Countries Over-est. | # Countries Under-est. | Max Mortality Over-est. % | Min Mortality Over-est. % | Median Over-est. % |
| Unmitigated spread | No policy interventions taken | 189 | 0 | 1,798,180% | 137% | 1,983% |
| Mitigation | Mandatory population-wide social distancing, assumed R0 = 2.4 | 189 | 0 | 937,020% | 21% | 1,041% |
| Suppression | 75% reduction in contacts until full vaccination, assumed R0 = 3 | 170 | 19 | 360,610% | -57% | 535% |
That Ferguson’s model could be so completely wrong, and yet remain so influential is itself astonishing. But when we learned that Neil Ferguson himself was found to be violating the lockdown order that he had a decisive hand in creating, everyone should have realized that something fishy was afoot.
The last vestige of the lockdown policy, Zero Covid, has been an unmitigated disaster. Indeed, New Zealand and Australia tried and failed to stop the virus with extremely aggressive lockdowns in August/September 2021, and are now set to abandon the ham-fisted policies altogether. And while these terrible policies might well be relegated to the ash heap of history, the memory of menacing, black-clad stormtroopers marching through the streets of Melbourne, asking people why they were out of doors, will remain.
So through it all, what have we learned and what should come next? First, vaccines have been a game changer, and will continue to be so. A forthcoming Covid-19 treatment pill from Merck might well be even bigger. And there are certainly other treatments coming that we don’t know about yet, that will only emerge through the innovative processes of scientific discovery.
Also unknown at present are the costs of the lockdowns. These will be felt for years, if not decades, and will go well beyond lost wages. What will all those foregone cancer screenings mean, in the end? What about all those people who suffered mental health crises as they were confined to their homes alone? What about substance abuse costs? And what of the various financial catastrophes that so many people suffered?
The benefits of the lockdowns are still ambiguous at best, this after a year and a half. We still have no clear empirical evidence that they delivered anything close to what they promised. But because science has been so completely politicized, it will take years longer to arrive at the truth than would have otherwise been the case. Here, we are left to offer advice with a nearly 2,500-year track record: First, do no harm.
PrintPhillip W. Magness
Phillip W. Magness is Senior Research Faculty and Interim Research and Education Director at the American Institute for Economic Research. He holds a PhD and MPP from George Mason University’s School of Public Policy, and a BA from the University of St. Thomas (Houston).
Prior to joining AIER, Dr. Magness spent over a decade teaching public policy, economics, and international trade at institutions including American University, George Mason University, and Berry College.
Magness’s work encompasses the economic history of the United States and Atlantic world, with specializations in the economic dimensions of slavery and racial discrimination, the history of taxation, and measurements of economic inequality over time. He also maintains active research interest in higher education policy and the history of economic thought. In addition to his scholarship, Magness’s popular writings have appeared in numerous venues including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Newsweek, Politico, Reason, National Review, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
James R. Harrigan
James R. Harrigan is Senior Editor at AIER. He is also co-host of the Words & Numbers podcast.
Dr. Harrigan was previously Dean of the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani, and later served as Director of Academic Programs at the Institute for Humane Studies and Strata, where he was also a Senior Research Fellow.
He has written extensively for the popular press, with articles appearing in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, U.S. News and World Report, and a host of other outlets. He is also co-author of Cooperation & Coercion. His current work focuses on the intersections between political economy, public policy, and political philosophy.
Tuesday, June 15, 2021
Bureaucracy as Constituency
James R. Harrigan
Antony Davies – June 11, 2021 @ American Institute for Economic Research
Anyone who has taken a civics class knows the Framers created a federal government with three co-equal branches. James Madison in Federalist 51 stressed that the ambitions of some could be made to counteract the ambitions of others. Why? Because the same people who had a hand in framing our government in the first place didn’t place a whole lot of trust in their creation. Madison was perfectly blunt: “It may be a reflection on human nature,” he wrote, “that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?”
“If men were angels,” he continued, “no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
It’s that last bit that has been so difficult over the years. Each branch of the federal government has clearly grown well beyond its constitutional limits. But things are so much worse than they first appear. The system of checks and balances, the very thing that was supposed to keep the three branches in their proper places, started failing wholesale in the early part of the 20th century. And when the separate branches of the government started colluding to their collective benefit, all bets were off when it came to implementing brave and imaginative extra-constitutional institutions like the federal government’s massive bureaucracy.
How massive is it? The federal government employs almost two million civilians. For perspective, that’s over 25 percent more employees than Walmart, which is otherwise the country’s largest employer. Those who occupy the federal bureaucracy benefit from bigger government because the larger the government, the more power and funding flow to those in this unelected and largely unchecked “branch” of government.
That the federal bureaucracy has become a constituency of sorts isn’t
surprising. What is surprising (and dangerous) is that it has become a
weaponized constituency. As the federal government has become larger and
more complex, it has become ever more difficult for Congress to do its
job. Long gone are the days when Congress could debate the particulars
of any bill. Formulating rules now often requires bureaucrats
specializing in finance, economics, statistics, and numerous fields of
science. Congress has not merely come to rely more heavily on the
bureaucracy, the Congress has actually delegated much of its legislative
power to it. Technically, federal regulatory bodies don’t make laws,
they write regulations. But any regulation that carries with it the
fines or jail time for noncompliance is, for all practical purposes,
indistinguishable from a law.
So here we have innumerable federal
agencies, commissions, administrations, and programs populated by
unelected bureaucrats, many of whom are empowered to create what are, in
effect, laws. And “innumerable” is not an exaggeration.
In 1993, the federal government enacted the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), which required that federal agencies set goals, measure results, and report progress. In 2010, the GPRA Modernization Act extended GPRA by requiring that all government programs produce quarterly performance assessments. At the least, these two acts should have provided taxpayers with a list of all government programs. To date, no such list exists. Even the government itself seems not to know how many government programs exist.
In many instances, the programs themselves become tools that politicians use to win elections. Faced with a problem, be it real or imagined, that stirs voters, politicians propose new programs to solve the problem. We thus have programs to address food insecurity, healthcare, children’s health, housing, financial assistance, education, unemployment…the list goes on and on. And when problems don’t present themselves, politicians invent them by exaggerating and grandstanding. We thus have proposals involving rifles, wealth, wages, immigration, and all manner of problems whose realities pale in comparison to politicians’ characterizations.
Meanwhile, each program is designed not so much to solve people’s problems as to micromanage them into behaviors that benefit favored constituencies. If, in the process, the problems never get solved, that’s actually to the politician’s benefit. Unsolved problems can be used again in the next election cycle by blaming the other party for thwarting the programs.
Consider the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as “food stamps.” SNAP benefits can be used to buy food, but not vitamins, cleaning supplies, or hygiene items. To be eligible for SNAP, a working-age person who is able to work must be working at least 30 hours per week or, if not working, caring for a child under age 6. Or, the person must be unable to work due to a physical or mental limitation, or participating in an alcohol or drug treatment program, or a full-time student (but not a college student). Otherwise, the person must register for work, participate in SNAP employment training, and take a suitable job if offered.
This is just an introduction to the micromanagement involved in qualifying for SNAP. There are additional rules for continuing to receive SNAP, different rules for adults without dependents, and still other rules for people older than 49 or younger than 18. Just figuring out who is and is not eligible is a fulltime job.
Who sets these byzantine rules? The US Department of Agriculture. Except the USDA was not created to serve the poor. The USDA was created to serve farmers. From the USDA’s website: “We have a vision to provide economic opportunity through innovation, helping rural America to thrive; to promote agriculture production that better nourishes Americans while also helping feed others throughout the world; and to preserve our nation’s natural resources through conservation, restored forests, improved watersheds, and healthy private working lands.” The USDA exists principally to promote the production of food, which explains why SNAP benefits can’t be used for vitamins, cleaning supplies, and hygiene items.
The focus here is clearly not on the needs of the poor, but on the needs of favored constituencies. All this micromanagement requires armies of bureaucrats to create rules, determine eligibility, monitor compliance, and dispense benefits. The bureaucracy itself becomes a constituency wherein bureaucrats’ livelihoods rely on the existence of SNAP recipients. And it’s the same story with literally every other bureaucratic arm of the state. There is no clarity, and there is no accountability. The job of the politician has become one of using social problems to generate election wins. Similarly, the job of the bureaucrat has become one of using citizens who depend on social programs to create and maintain bureaucrats’ jobs.
It is a well-choreographed dance that emerges, and the dancers take it as given that they will never be judged on what they achieve because failure can always be blamed on the other party, or on the fact that they weren’t allowed to spend more. Their intentions will be all that matter. Voters with much goodwill but little attention reward the politicians whose intentions sound most noble. Politicians, unable to solve complex problems, hand the problems over to bureaucrats. Bureaucrats, unaccountable to voters, craft solutions that call for more bureaucracy. And our problems are never solved because no one in the system is rewarded for solving them.
But as Madison asked, “What is government, after all, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” And as long as the federal bureaucracy remains largely unchecked, expect to see that bureaucracy grow unabated. Expect to see laws getting longer and more complex by the year. And expect to see no one in Washington taking responsibility for a federal government that has been out of control for the better part of a century.
James R. Harrigan
James R. Harrigan is Managing Director of the Center for Philosophy of Freedom at the University of Arizona, and the F.A. Hayek Distinguished Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education. He is also co-host of the Words & Numbers podcast.
Dr. Harrigan was previously Dean of the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani, and later served as Director of Academic Programs at the Institute for Humane Studies and Strata, where he was also Senior Research Fellow. He has written extensively for the popular press, with articles appearing in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, U.S. News and World Report, and a host of other outlets. He is also co-author of Cooperation & Coercion. His current work focuses on the intersections between political economy, public policy, and political philosophy.
Antony Davies
Antony Davies is the Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education, and associate professor of economics at Duquesne University.
He has authored Principles of Microeconomics (Cognella), Understanding Statistics (Cato Institute), and Cooperation and Coercion (ISI Books). He has written hundreds of op-eds appearing in, among others, the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, New York Post, Washington Post, New York Daily News, Newsday, US News, and the Houston Chronicle. He also co-hosts the weekly podcast Words & Numbers. Davies was Chief Financial Officer at Parabon Computation, and founded several technology companies.
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