Wonder Land: More than 100 corporation leaders have done a Davos by laptop to vilify Republicans and validate their progressive credentials. Image: Getty Images/iStock PhotoThe suppression of debate over the origin of the novel coronavirus highlights a broader problem. Governments were once the chief impediments to free speech and free markets, but extremely large private companies may have become the greater danger.
China’s stalling and lying about Covid’s origins weren’t surprising. On the other hand, the behavior of U.S. officials and scientists was startling. They dissembled over their intimate knowledge of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and their early suspicions the virus was “engineered.” But who expects politicians and bureaucrats to be honest and competent? That’s what an open society is for.
What happens when the press and the internet aren’t so free? Over the past year, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook joined with a partisan press to block and throttle discussion across a range of Covid-19 topics. They discouraged and erased talk of the Wuhan lab-leak hypothesis, cheap and safe generic treatments such as ivermectin, Sweden’s heterodox decision to stay mostly open, and the inefficacy of school closures.
Social media even blocked access to three eminent epidemiologists—professors at Stanford, Harvard and Oxford Universities—who advocated “focused protection” of the vulnerable, which could have avoided the devastating economic and social costs of the overly broad lockdowns. A new National Bureau of Economic Researchsuggests lockdowns were a net negative for public health.
In his 1974 Nobel Prize lecture, Friedrich Hayek explained why this top-down “pretense of knowledge” is so dangerous. At the time Hayek was fighting socialists and Keynesians. The socialists thought governments should own and operate most industries and could allocate resources more efficiently and fairly than private firms. The Keynesians allowed more private control of business but thought they could fine-tune the economy with aggressive fiscal, monetary and regulatory policy.
opinion JBSay Because this guy can’t spread his insane conspiracies
opinion JBSay good luck
opinion JBSay People like Elizabeth Warren have been talking about antitrust issues for along time. Lack of regulation in capitalism has created monopolies that have ridiculous power in ag, healthcare, social media, etc, etc.