How Quickly Our Freedoms Were Taken Away
Free people of the world are duly warned: embark on this path at your own risk. What you take for granted today may well be gone for good
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The Covid Resistance Deserves the Nobel Peace Prize
It’s hard to see the Norwegian Nobel Committee defying the suffocating Covid narrative that took over the Western world, with a very few honourable exceptions. Of course if they were to do so, that would really stir things up and help to dismantle the narrative. One can but hope for the best while expecting otherwise.
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I Weep for My Profession: Letter to the American Economic Association
Your announcement ensures that I will not attend the meetings under such absurd restrictions. Furthermore, it makes me weep for my profession, for it is strong evidence that today’s leaders of the world’s most prestigious organization of professional economists are unaware of basic facts about covid and, worse, ignorant of basic tenets of economics.
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The Covid Response Museum
The target inauguration date for the museum is March 25, 2023, which is the third anniversary of mass incarceration of one-sixth of humanity, i.e. India’s first lockdown. To start, the museum will be online. We also encourage people to setup physical museums using the material from this website, under creative commons license: free to share with attribution.
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When Did Trump Change His Mind about Lockdowns?
Consider the incredible timeline here. Trump readily agreed to a two-week lockdown, even though he had no such direct power to order such a thing. He then agreed to a 30-day extension though all reports are that he was upset that he had done so. And even after 36 days, he was publicly critical of Republican governors who proposed a reopening.
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After Covid: Twelve Challenges for a Shattered World
No question that the administrative bureaucracies would lock down again under the same or new pretext. Yes, they will face more opposition the next time and trust in their wisdom has fallen off a cliff. But the pandemic response also granted them new powers of surveillance, enforcement, and hegemony. The scientism that drove the response informs everything they do. So the next time, it will be harder to restrain them.
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Flagellantism Is the New Political Ritual
It’s not just about eating bugs. It’s about a whole theory and practice of life and salvation itself, a new religion to replace all the old ones. Cough up your government-issued ID, send your package if you must, think twice before complaining about anything on social media, and figure out a way to channel your depression and despair into quiet humble gratitude and acquiescence., Don’t forget to recycle. The flagellants have taken over the world.
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The Predictable Wastes of Covid Relief
If you ever had the vague sense that Covid relief funding worked in a manner akin to US aid packages in failed Middle Eastern dictatorships, your instincts weren’t wrong.
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The Nudge: Ethically Dubious and Ineffective
By going with the grain of how we think and act, the state-employed ‘nudgers’ can covertly shape our behaviour in a direction deemed desirable by the regime of the day – an appealing prospect for any government. The ubiquitous deployment of these behavioural strategies – which frequently rely on inflating emotional distress to change behaviour – raises profound moral questions.
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End This Emergency
Along with fellow scholars at the Ethics and Public Policy Center I sent a letter today to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, urging him to immediately revoke his declaration that a Covid-19 public health emergency exists. The current emergency declaration, which was renewed for the 8th time on January 16, is set to expire next month.