Weighing Ego and Money Against Real Science
There's big money in environmental doomsday prophecies and big egos at stake, science be damned.
Aug 2, 2021
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There's big money in environmental doomsday prophecies and big egos at stake, science be damned.
I’m sitting at a bar in Texas, surrounded by maskless people, looking at folks on the streets walking around like life is normal, talking with nice and friendly faces, feeling like things in the world are more-or-less normal. Cases and deaths attributed to Covid are, like everywhere else, falling dramatically. If you pay attention only to the media fear campaigns, you would find this confusing. More than two weeks ago, the governor of Texas completely reversed his devastating lockdown policies and repealed all his emergency powers, along with the egregious attacks on rights and liberties.
Back around 2007, investor John Paulsen began to feel skeptical about the viability of mortgage securities. Though demand for them was much greater than supply, Paulsen sensed that lending standards had plummeted so far that loan delinquencies were set to surge. The “third rate” hedge fund manager (that’s what those who covered him at top investment banks felt) proceeded to very inexpensively purchase insurance on mortgages. He was able to because the consensus in the marketplace was that he was very wrong.
What a glorious thing the reopening is! After nearly a year of darkening times, the light has begun to dawn, at least in the US. Given how incredibly political this pandemic has been from the beginning, many people smell a rat. Is it really the case that the reopening of the American economy, particularly in blue states, is so perfectly timed? Do the science and politics really line up so well?
As a naturally optimistic person, it vexes me that the word catastrophe has echoed in my mind since early March 2020. It’s the word the great smallpox eradicator Donald Henderson used in his 2006 prediction of the consequences of lockdown, a word that wasn’t around then. His masterful article addressed the idea of travel restrictions, forced human separation, business and school closings, mask mandates, limits on public gatherings, quarantines, and the entire litany of brutality to which we’ve been subjected for nearly a year, all summed up in the word lockdown.
The lockdowns have disproportionately targeted fun. No house parties. No travel. Bowling, bars, Broadway, theater, amusement parks, all banned. Weddings, forget it. Restaurants, hotels, conventions, and even golf were all targeted by the lockdowners.
At first glance, a lot of the social problems and resource waste emerging from government intervention seem pretty easy to fix: the government should just stop doing whatever it is doing that is creating the problems and the waste. The stubborn persistence of institutions and organizations that keep societies poor is a vexing problem for social scientists. In Political Capitalism, the economist Randall Holcombe takes on this problem by analyzing “political capitalism” as a distinct economic system with its own logic and features rather than as some kind of midpoint between capitalism and socialism.
"We don’t realistically anticipate that we would be moving to either tier 2 or reopening K-12 schools at least until after the election, in early November.” Those are the words of a west coast health director. No in-person schooling until after the election? Hmmm.Please think about what was said. It reads as kind of a ransom note. Vote for science-reverent candidate Joe Biden, or else….
For so many months, it’s been nonstop bad news on business closures, arts trashed, museum shuttering, unemployment, missed surgeries and diagnostics, plus rising loneliness, drug overdoses, depression, and suicide. Every day has been as dark or darker than the previous one.
Parenting is a difficult enterprise, more so when current events throw curveballs in our efforts to foster a benevolent sense of life and the view that the universe is rational and predictable. Here are ten tips to help children cope with their emotional reactions when the world around them is in turmoil.
We are deeply sad to learn that Frank Bond died July 26, age 86, at his home. Frank was a long-time, generous supporter of The Atlas Society.
It seemed a logical question. They were both in their 60s, and they just met. But she had never been on a cruise.
From the beginning of this virus, political elites have used the language of war. The invisible enemy would be contained, suppressed, and...
As Americans are repeatedly warned about a spike in coronavirus cases just as state governments have begun to allow us leave our homes and
The lockdowners probably had no idea what they were about to unleash. On paper, their plans all seemed fine. Keep people apart. Make them
Many academics, business leaders, and governments are claiming that technology is a critical part of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic
I have been asked, as CEO of The Atlas Society: Why did The Atlas Society not take bailout money from the federal government?
By default, many parents are homeschooling now. School closures have also raised questions about whether the high cost of government education is providing decent returns, given the all too often dismal results.
The COVID-19 pandemic can be used to illustrate two problems that are both more destructive than the virus. The problems relate to how
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