Quote of the Day: Central Planning and Coronavirus

 

“The great myth of central planning is that capital can be rationally allocated through the elimination of profit and incentive. And that will just magically produce the right outcomes for society.” – Tom Luongo

The Chicom Coronovirus lockdown is a great illustration of this quote. The government is deciding what businesses are “essential” and “nonessential.” The reality is under normal circumstances (under circumstances when the government is not picking winners and losers that is) no private-sector job is nonessential. A profit-making company cannot afford nonessential employees. Too many of them and the business goes broke.

The government (and I include education), on the other hand, is loaded with non-essential employees. In the public sector, there are several hundreds of thousands of employees (probably more) whose absence society would not miss. They produce nothing and often spend their energies stopping the makers from doing their job. Yet few, if any, of these people – who had the power to shut down the economy – are at risk of unemployment or the work consequences of the shutdown order.

Most of the “benefits” of the shutdown really fall into the category of magic – that if you believe something hard enough it becomes true. Take Harris County’s mask order. A bandana is an acceptable mask. Does anyone seriously believe wearing a bandana will protect one from a virus? Sillier still, the order bans people from wearing N95 masks (which may be marginally effective) in order to keep them available for health professionals. It is all magical thinking.

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  1. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    I think each state has it own unique personality. What’s right for Connecticut isn’t right for Texas. 

    I think the current goal should be to return as much authority to the states as possible, and then for the states to return as much authority to the cities and towns as possible. And while we are at it, pull out all the stops in fostering civic engagement locally. 

    Eventually, the CDC should serve in a completely advisory capacity. I envision a daily virus report much like the National Weather Service daily weather report. And it would be good for states and cities and towns to have a central “library” available over the Internet of measures and research going on in other states and even other countries. That would be an important resource that only the federal government could provide easily–to serve as an information clearinghouse. 

    Most of the authority the federal government wields over state and local governments is in grants with strings attached. States may need to declare their financial independence.

    I can’t find the source these days, but I came across an interesting story when I was working with our education reform efforts in Massachusetts in the late nineties. Two of our most education-centric towns, Lincoln and Sudbury, which make up a regional school district, decided one day to refuse or return all federal and state monies for education. Granted, these towns are heavily dominated by very wealthy tech-corridor residents so it was not a huge problem for them to support their own local schools. But the interesting result was that their public school kids outperformed every other kid in our state and around the country in their SATs and other standardized tests. It was quite remarkable. :-) 

    • #1
  2. DrewInWisconsin is done with t… Member
    DrewInWisconsin is done with t…
    @DrewInWisconsin

    It is true that we are now getting a really good look at “central planning” and we are getting it good and hard.

    And I suspect that in the years to come, advocates of central planning are going to have a hard time convincing the proles of their views.

    (Unless they manage to kill us all off. But then they’ll be dead soon afterwards.)

    • #2
  3. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    MarciN (View Comment):

    I think each state has it own unique personality. What’s right for Connecticut isn’t right for Texas.

    I think the current goal should be to return as much authority to the states as possible, and then for the states to return as much authority to the cities and towns as possible. And while we are at it, pull out all the stops in fostering civic engagement locally.

    Eventually, the CDC should serve in a completely advisory capacity. I envision a daily virus report much like the National Weather Service daily weather report. And it would be good for states and cities and towns to have a central “library” available over the Internet of measures and research going on in other states and even other countries. That would be an important resource that only the federal government could provide easily–to serve as an information clearinghouse.

    Most of the authority the federal government wields over state and local governments is in grants with strings attached. States may need to declare their financial independence.

    I can’t find the source these days, but I came across an interesting story when I was working with our education reform efforts in Massachusetts in the late nineties. Two of our most education-centric towns, Lincoln and Sudbury, which make up a regional school district, decided one day to refuse or return all federal and state monies for education. Granted, these towns are heavily dominated by very wealthy tech-corridor residents so it was not a huge problem for them to support their own local schools. But the interesting result was that their public school kids outperformed every other kid in our state and around the country in their SATs and other standardized tests. It was quite remarkable. :-)

    Lincoln and Sudbury rejected federal and state money and their educational outcomes improved?

    Addition by subtraction

     

    • #3
  4. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    MarciN (View Comment):

    I think each state has it own unique personality. What’s right for Connecticut isn’t right for Texas.

    I think the current goal should be to return as much authority to the states as possible, and then for the states to return as much authority to the cities and towns as possible. And while we are at it, pull out all the stops in fostering civic engagement locally.

    Eventually, the CDC should serve in a completely advisory capacity. I envision a daily virus report much like the National Weather Service daily weather report. And it would be good for states and cities and towns to have a central “library” available over the Internet of measures and research going on in other states and even other countries. That would be an important resource that only the federal government could provide easily–to serve as an information clearinghouse.

    Most of the authority the federal government wields over state and local governments is in grants with strings attached. States may need to declare their financial independence.

    I can’t find the source these days, but I came across an interesting story when I was working with our education reform efforts in Massachusetts in the late nineties. Two of our most education-centric towns, Lincoln and Sudbury, which make up a regional school district, decided one day to refuse or return all federal and state monies for education. Granted, these towns are heavily dominated by very wealthy tech-corridor residents so it was not a huge problem for them to support their own local schools. But the interesting result was that their public school kids outperformed every other kid in our state and around the country in their SATs and other standardized tests. It was quite remarkable. :-)

    Each county or town has its own personality.

     

    • #4
  5. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    “Does anyone seriously believe wearing a bandanna will protect one from a virus?”

    This made me laugh out loud.

    How can there be a mask shortage in a wealthy country like USA?  It has to be bureaucratic incompetence?

     

    https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-front-line-visualizing-the-occupations-with-the-highest-covid-19-risk/

     

    • #5
  6. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

    How can there be a mask shortage in a wealthy country like USA? It has to be bureaucratic incompetence?

    Because we send manufacturing of critical items offshore. That is not bureaucratic incompetence. It’s a combination of short term thinking,  plus corrupt decisionmakers in every field touched by China. 

    • #6
  7. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

    How can there be a mask shortage in a wealthy country like USA? It has to be bureaucratic incompetence?

    Because we send manufacturing of critical items offshore. That is not bureaucratic incompetence. It’s a combination of short term thinking, plus corrupt decisionmakers in every field touched by China.

        Did you see the thread about the manufacturer who got burned last time?  He added a factory and hired workers to make masks; then when the emergency was over the hospitals and everyone went back to buying cheaper masks from overseas, leaving him with an expensive, empty factory and a bunch of workers to lay off.  I saved a link to the NPR interview.

    • #7
  8. Unsk Member
    Unsk
    @Unsk

    We have become a government that is ruled by experts; long before anyone heard of the ChiCom plague.

    There are a number of things wrong with that idea.

    Generally speaking,  our experts like our anointed Mega-expert  Dr Fauci, are experts at only one thing. They are specialists, not generalists.  They don’t think beyond their narrow wheelhouse, and don’t ask questions about what happens beyond their specific area of expertise.  The problem is that reality is not structured that way. The elements of that one narrow expertise influence and connect in the real world to literally thousands of different entities in very complex ways.

    Dr Fauci and his merry band of Socialist Do-gooders can only think of what is best for their Government Health Care specialists, in their world of government mandated and controlled medicine. They simply do not think of the repercussions beyond their expertise . They really don’t even want to think about the impact their decisions will have on the population as a whole medically, even though one would have thought that was their job.  One needn’t even consider what impacts their “expert” edicts have on complex things like the economy. Such thoughts are literally verboten in Fauci’s world.  And we are paying a horrible price for that audacity.

    The other big problem is that granting of regulatory power to the “experts” effectively and with horrific effects circumvents the Constitution’s systems of checks and balances that limit government abuse. There are very few  checks on Dr  Foci’s power and he knows it. That is why he behaves the way he does. That is why we are enduring the abuse we are and why he and others are being allowed to run roughshod over our rights. He like almost every other bureaucrat believes their job is to protect and enhance if possible their lavishly enshrined bureaucratic turf. That is job one to them.  The public be damned, if it gets in the way.

    Furthermore, there is the problem of which expert do you believe? Even in  our highly politicized world, there are legitimate differences of opinions on almost everything scientific endeavor.  But add to those differences the deference that is given by our bureaucracy to the politically correct opinion and you have a real problem where only a limited number of points of view are considered by our bureaucracy, no matter what protocols are developed to adjudicate studies fairly. Most of the these protocols are now as politicized as the rest of our economy with only politically correct results being approved as a result.

    • #8
  9. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

    How can there be a mask shortage in a wealthy country like USA? It has to be bureaucratic incompetence?

    Because we send manufacturing of critical items offshore. That is not bureaucratic incompetence. It’s a combination of short term thinking, plus corrupt decisionmakers in every field touched by China.

    Did you see the thread about the manufacturer who got burned last time? He added a factory and hired workers to make masks; then when the emergency was over the hospitals and everyone went back to buying cheaper masks from overseas, leaving him with an expensive, empty factory and a bunch of workers to lay off. I saved a link to the NPR interview.

    Yes. No hospital supply vendor has signed a long term contract the last I heard.

    • #9
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