Economics

Economics articles featuring analysis of the global censorship industrial complex, impacts on public health, free trade, liberty, and policy.

All Brownstone Institute economics articles are translated into multiple languages.

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doctor trust smoking vaccines

The AMA Said Trust Your Doctor on Smoking

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Doctors who opposed smoking faced ridicule from their colleagues.  Dr. Alton Ochsner, a renowned surgeon and sentinel voice warning of the dangers of tobacco, began publishing on the connection between smoking and lung cancer in the early 1940s.  His 1954 book Smoking and Cancer: A Doctor’s Report was negatively reviewed in prominent medical journals, characterized as a medieval model of logic that belongs in the nonscience section of a library.  Prior to his appearance on Meet the Press, Dr. Ochsner was told he could not discuss the relationship between smoking and lung cancer on air.

The AMA Said Trust Your Doctor on Smoking Read Journal Article

WHO IHR human rights

Amendments to WHO’s International Health Regulations: An Annotated Guide

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The amendments to the IHR are intended to fundamentally change the relationship between individuals, their country’s governments, and the WHO. They place the WHO as having rights overriding that of individuals, erasing the basic principles developed after World War Two regarding human rights and the sovereignty of States. In doing so, they signal a return to a colonialist and feudalist approach fundamentally different to that to which people in relatively democratic countries have become accustomed. The lack of major pushback by politicians and the lack of concern in the media and consequent ignorance of the general public is therefore both strange and alarming.

Amendments to WHO’s International Health Regulations: An Annotated Guide Read Journal Article

Totalitarianism

The West Must Never Again Go Totalitarian

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We might still have food on the shelves — though of worse quality and at much higher prices. We might still have the ability to move and work and travel, but heavily circumscribed, always at risk of canceling and always with papers showing the number of needles in your arm, or your scarred heart tissue. Nobody is torturing us (yet anyway) and for the most part we have some semblance of rights and freedoms remaining. ut we’re closer to that horrific totalitarian world today than we were, say five years ago.

The West Must Never Again Go Totalitarian Read Journal Article

Where Did All the Workers Go?

Where Did All the Workers Go?

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How can you generate far more deaths in 2021 – ascribing them to unvaccination – with a dramatically smaller number of unvaccinated people? In 2021, perhaps 20-40% of these group life insureds were unvaccinated. In 2020, 100% of them were unvaccinated, yet mortality barely rose. The math doesn’t come close to working. 

Where Did All the Workers Go? Read Journal Article

dystopia

Technocratic Dystopia Is Impossible 

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Grand utopias cannot be realized because, while imagination is unconstrained reality has limits. What is a dystopia other than the role of an NPC in someone else’s utopia? In this case, the utopia is the dream of psychotic elites who imagine that they can have the end products of mass cooperation without the open society that enables it. Much damage can be done in the attempt, but it is only a question of how far it can get before it cancels itself. 

Technocratic Dystopia Is Impossible  Read Journal Article

local alternatives

What a Local Alternative Is Really Like

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Demand for local processors has swelled in the last three years because shutdowns and lockdowns scared people about food sources being jeopardized and supply chains disrupted, so they sought local alternatives. With economic uncertainties looming, families and friends processing their own, or neighbors’, farm animals may become more common.

What a Local Alternative Is Really Like Read Journal Article

freedom slipped

Forty Years of Freedom Slipped Away So Quickly 

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We dare not relent lest the despotism we experienced only very recently be repeated and entrenched. We know now that it can happen, and that there is nothing inevitable about genuine progress. Our job now is to regroup and recommit to living free lives, never again believing that there are magical forces at work in the world that make our role as thinkers and doers unnecessary. 

Forty Years of Freedom Slipped Away So Quickly  Read Journal Article

political economy pandemic response

The Political Economy of the US Pandemic Response

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In this essay, written from a broad economics perspective that incorporates an understanding of incentives, institutions, information, and power, we address the following three broad questions: (1) What were the roles and responsibilities of our institutions when faced with a threat like Covid? (2) What were the costs and benefits of the response that transpired? (3) What is the need and potential for institutional and social reform?

The Political Economy of the US Pandemic Response Read Journal Article

progress

Are We at the End of Progress?

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All those dreaming of control like to believe that they should rule the world in order to save it from some great danger. At the end of the day, this is simply a selfish fascist fantasy. The West is now encumbered by huge layers of parasites whose living is made out of exaggerating fears and stealing from people under the guise of saving them. The EU Commission is a particularly glaring example of such a group, but they are everywhere today: people just trying to make a buck, but costing their society dearly.

Are We at the End of Progress? Read Journal Article

The SBF Scandal: The Players and the Money

The SBF Scandal: The Players and the Money

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Building off the success of Bill Gates, Sam Bankman-Fried, and his many associates, clearly saw philanthropy as the path to influence, power, and protection. At the same time, many nonprofit organizations saw an opportunity too; to build their own empires through promised millions and billions from a crypto genius in the Bahamas who had an unusual passion for pandemic planning. 

The SBF Scandal: The Players and the Money Read Journal Article