Brownstone » Articles for John Tamny

John Tamny

John Tamny, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is an economist and author. He is the editor of RealClearMarkets and Vice President at FreedomWorks.

freedom is the answer

Regardless of Virus Origins, Freedom Is the Answer

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Lest the crowd that has long been properly anti-lockdown forgets, pathogens are as old as mankind is. Since they are, the accenting of where they come from is to completely miss the point. Instead, the always and everywhere expressed view should be that reality should not be used by the political, expert and medical classes as a pretext for taking our freedom. Freedom is precious, and authoritarians can’t have it regardless of a pathogen’s origin or its presumed lethality.


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Freedom from masks

The Freedom Not to Wear a Mask

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The simple truth is that the one-size-fits-all approach didn’t protect us from the virus as much as it blinded us to its reality; one that only could have been arrived at via freedom. We didn’t need medical studies, and the reality is that still we don’t need medical studies. What we needed and need is freedom. With the latter once again comes knowledge from different people doing different things, and all of us learning from their successes and failures.


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covid controls china

Covid Controls Removed in China but Persist in the US

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Emanuel and the lockdown crowd he caucuses with lament that the return of freedom to the Chinese people “could have been done responsibly.” Too much freedom too fast according to Emanuel et al. He writes that rather than gradually giving it back with experts like him fully in charge, “China ended zero Covid in the most dangerous way possible – precipitously.”


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China economy

The Virus Response is Wrecking China’s Economic Prospects

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A growing lack of freedom in Asia’s foremost country is the surest signal we need that China’s lust for greatness is more rhetorical and performative than real. In other words, the only way to be beaten by China is to mimic its authoritarian ways. Please keep this in mind with what indefensibly happened stateside in 2020.


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Lockdowns Discredit Those Who Try Them, Even the CCP

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History will say that drunk with power American politicians acted like Chinese politicians only to get a Chinese result. The Chinese leadership acted Chinese on the way to another horrifying result. And for the pundits who proclaimed the Chinese response in 2020 effective for it being freedom-crushing, just know that the internet is forever.


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Xi Jingping Is Reminded that Markets Don’t Like Central Planning

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The Hang Seng correction is a reminder to politicians and pundits the world over that markets are much more powerful than politicians, and they’ll speak their mind in ways that shame those so foolish and so arrogant as to believe that prosperity can be planned. It’s a warning to Xi Jingping, but also a warning to conservatives who should know better, but who presently think that the answer to state planning is more state planning.


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Ben Bernanke Was the Crisis

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Left alone, recessions are the cure. The problem was that the political class tried to medicate what was healthy.  Bernanke fell hard for the medication part. Fast forward to 2008, a falling dollar under the impressively inept President George W. Bush had instigated what Ludwig von Mises referred to in Human Action as a “flight to the real.” Yes, presidents get the dollar they want, Bush wanted a weak one, and a falling dollar drove massive consumption of housing over investment in new ideas.  


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How Lockdowns Broke Human Capital

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Politicians, policymakers, and experts who would never miss a paycheck or a meal suddenly decided that workers not like them were no longer essential. In making this choice for others, they robbed human beings of years of investment of self in certain industries while also bluntly telling these others that their livelihood could be taken from them near overnight.


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The Triumph and Glory of Air Conditioning

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The story about the mass production of air conditioners is that what were once status symbols are now common. Crucial here is that people got very rich making air conditioners common. It’s how the world works. Or at least how to grow rich in the world. The best way to become very well-to-do very quickly is to produce in abundance, and at low prices, what used to be scarce and nosebleed expensive.


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Stop Blaming Workers for the Labor Shortage

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It’s useful to think about in terms of what happened in March of 2020. It was then that politicians aggressively took away freedom. The very humans who drive all progress had become a lethal menace to one another, according to politicians and experts. Suddenly eating in a restaurant, trying on clothes in a clothing store, flying on a plane, or merely touching one’s face had life or death qualities.


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Was It the Pandemic or the Response?

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No doubt some remember “drop the bag at the doorstep,” “no knocking on the door,” “don’t ring the doorbell” lest the working-class germs of the delivery persons remain. It all raises a question about what people did to maintain their figures amid all the binge-watching, eating, and advertising of their doings on social media.


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Recovery Is Possible: The Case of Post-War Germany

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The main thing is Germany once again recovered. This rates thought and repeated thought as a reminder of the stupidity of bailouts and intervention in countries like the U.S. As readers will learn from Aftermath, nothing is forever.


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