“The people with everything to gain from the lockdowns had nothing to lose; the people who had nothing to gain lost everything.’’
Really? Why?
“We were all made part of an experimental game, encouraged to see ourselves as bit players on bell-shaped curves we needed to help flatten and viral spreads we needed to slow.’’
This is an experiment!
“We suffered to reduce suffering. We sacrificed to minimize sacrifice. We were banned from gyms for our health, prevented from entering houses of worship for our own edification, stopped from working so that our overlords could do their work on a virus they couldn’t see, and prevented from traveling to stop population movements so that medical professionals could better test, track, and trace us.’’
All in the name of science.
“This pandemic crisis was not only ever about health and economics; at the very onset of this pandemic, we experienced an epistemic meltdown. The core question concerned: knowledge. Information. Accurate information. How deadly was this? What were the risks? How did one become infected? The demographics of fatalities? The geography of the spread? How contagious, how deadly, how could we know, and how could we find out? Who could we trust with such wildly divergent opinions out there?’’
None of these questions could be answered in advance. What to do? Take over the world! Without knowledge.
What’s needed?
“The trouble is that a well-functioning society can create an illusion that it all happens not because of the process but rather because we are so damn smart or maybe we have wise leaders with a good plan. It seems like it must be so, else how could we have become so good at what we do?’’
Right! Someone must have been in charge!
“Hayek’s main point is that it is a mistake to credit individual intelligence or knowledge, much less good governments with brainy leaders, with civilizational achievements; rather, the real credit belongs to institutions and processes that no one in particular controls.
“To understand our civilization,” Hayek writes, “one must appreciate that the extended order resulted not from human design or intention but spontaneously: it arose from unintentionally conforming to certain traditional and largely moral practices, many of which men tend to dislike, whose significance they usually fail to understand, whose validity they cannot prove, and which have nonetheless fairly rapidly spread by means of an evolutionary selection — the comparative increase of population and wealth — of those groups that happened to follow them.”
Hayek lived during WW1. He learned society can and does collapse. Progress is not certain. Destruction simple.
What can we see?
“The seeming intelligence that we had in February suddenly seemed to turn to mush. A better way to understand this is all our smartest institutions and practices were crushed, leaving only raw stupidity in its place. Truth is that we as individuals are probably not much smarter than our ancestors; the reason we’ve made so much progress is due to the increasing sophistication of Hayek’s extended orders of association, signaling, capital accumulation, and technological know-how, none of which are due to wise leaders in government and industry but are rather attributable to the wisdom of the institutions we’ve gradually built over decades, centuries, and a millennia.’’
This takes some thought. Institutional knowledge is not held in any one brain. It’s the lessons borrowed from the past and delivered to the future. Note Tucker recognizes debt owed to people living thousands of years ago! Who was that?
Requires humility, sober judgement, careful analysis. Who does that?
I include table of contents to indicate the wide variety of arguments and interesting subjects.
THE CHOICE AN EPISTEMIC CRISIS
SMART SOCIETY, STUPID PEOPLE
IS IMMUNITY A CASE OF ROTHBARD’S LOST KNOWLEDGE?
THE VIRUS DOESN’T CARE ABOUT YOUR POLICIES
THE BLOODLESS POLITICAL CLASS AND ITS LACK OF EMPATHY
THE RETURN OF BRUTALISM
WHEN WILL THE MADNESS END?
THE CARNAGE WHY DID THEY CLOSE THE SCHOOLS?
THE LOCKDOWNS KILLED THE ARTS
PORCFEST STAYED OPEN
WHAT GOOD COMES FROM THIS TRAGEDY?
THE DAY FIRST-WORLD PROBLEMS BECAME REAL
DELAYED MEDICAL PROCEDURES: STORIES FROM THE FRONT LINES
LOCKDOWN SUICIDE DATA REVEAL PREDICTABLE TRAGEDY
“I’VE LOST FAITH IN HUMANITY”: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL TOLL OF THE LOCKDOWN
AUTHORITARIANISM IN AUCKLAND
MADNESS IN MELBOURNE
THE HISTORY THE NEW YORK TIMES REVIVES ITS GRIM PAST
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION OCCURRED IN THE MIDDLE OF A PANDEMIC
HOW GLOBAL CAPITALISM BOOSTED IMMUNITIES
THE 2006 ORIGINS OF THE LOCKDOWN IDEA
THE 2007 ORIGINS OF FORCED SCHOOL CLOSINGS AND MANDATORY HUMAN SEPARATION
THE TERRIFYING POLIO PANDEMIC OF 1949-52 ELVIS WAS KING, AND 116,000 AMERICANS DIED IN A PANDEMIC
WOODSTOCK OCCURRED IN THE MIDDLE OF A PANDEMIC
THAT TIME JESUS WAS QUARANTINED
OUR TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD
THE HOPE AMERICA REDISCOVERS EMPATHY
PANDEMICS AND THE LIBERAL PATH
THERE WILL BE BLOWBACK, IN MOSTLY GOOD WAYS
MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO
WE NEED A PRINCIPLED ANTI-LOCKDOWN MOVEMENT
The idea of ‘lost knowledge’ was fascinating . . .
“Rothbard’s entire book is an exercise in discovering lost knowledge. He was fascinated with how A.R.J. Turgot could have written with such clarity about value theory but the later writings of Adam Smith were murky on the topic. He was intrigued that the classical economists were lucid on the status of economic theory but later economists in the 20th century became so confused about it. You could observe the same about free trade doctrine: once it was understood almost universally such that everyone seemed to agree it had to be a priority to build peace and prosperity, and then — poof! — that knowledge seems to have vanished in recent years.’’
I’ve been considering this for some time. I respectful of past thinkers; Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Dante, Pascal, Wycliffe, Tyndale, Newton, Milton, Priestly, Maxwell, Einstein, Servetus, Castillo, Faraday, Duhem, etc., etc.. And all the more as I become familiar with their thought. In fact, modernity revealed as superficial, banal and even dangerous.
One speaker . . .
“Phil Magness delivered a masterful presentation of his research on the failed history of Covid-19 modeling. His focus was on the main proponent of lockdown: the now famous but daily discredited Neil Ferguson and his wild predictions of many millions dead. He more than anyone was responsible for setting off a bandwagon effect of lockdowns that came to the UK and the US, policies which had no significant effects on cases or deaths, wrecked the businesses and lives of millions, hallowed out hospitals with the banning of elective surgeries, and ended up distracting medical professionals from the one thing they could have done to have reduced the death toll: focus on the nursing homes that accounted for 43% of American deaths.’’
Yep, wrong ideas create bad decisions.
And this was a revelation . . .
“Gupta’s claim is that when we live in isolated tribes that are sheltered from exposure, those people gradually become weaker and more vulnerable. The wrong pathogen arrives at the wrong time and the people have not been biologically prepared for it. It wipes them out in shocking ways. But with modern capitalism came the end of such sterile isolation. It gave us new methods of traveling, mixing, associating, moving, and consequently led to more exposure to disease and the resulting antibodies. Hence, it is not just better therapeutics and vaccines that helped us conquer some plagues but immunities themselves. Our biological toolkit for fighting disease became improved simply through travel, trade, and global commerce.’’
Man, you sure don’t hear this very often! What a counter-cultural narrative!
Final page . . .
“This takes us to the final point. Whether this movement is working in the realms of academia, culture, journalism, or politics, there is an absolute urgency that it exercise unrelenting moral courage and integrity. Ferociously. It should be uncompromising on crucial points. It must be willing to speak even when it is unfashionable to do so, even when the media is screaming the opposite, even when the Twitter mob floods your notifications, even when you are shamed for thinking for yourself.’’
Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Boyle, Maxwell, Faraday, started modern science risking rejection, persecution and suffering. These men were devout Christians. Newton, Maxwell and Faraday serious bible students who studied creation as worship of the Creator. Integrity non-negotiable.
“This time around, as you have surely noticed, even the voices of good people with good ideas fell silent in fear. This fear must be banished. The blowback against this despotism will come but it is not enough. We need character, integrity, courage, and truth, and this perhaps matters more than ideology and knowledge.’’
Integrity essential.
“Knowledge without the willingness and courage to speak is useless, because for integrity there is no substitute.’’
This book developed from short articles Tucker wrote during past several months. Each chapter composed in a short, easily absorbed journalistic style. If reader hasn’t been exposed to this alternate narrative, may take some time. In fact, might become sad, disillusioned, and yes, even furious.
Convincing, analytical, persuasive, careful. Not a rant, but, confident, clear and direct. Avoids arrogance without apologizing.
Great!
Nevertheless, extensive references listed in the 223 footnotes (linked)
Tremendous scholarship!
Several charts
No bibliography
No photographs
Recommended
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Canada Steve
An insightful analysis of the current debacle which has captured much of the free world.
Reviewed in Canada on October 17, 2021