Nathan Mech on the forgetten victims of Covid-19

Human beings are not merely bodies subject to viral infection, but social and spiritual beings, dependent on established ways of life and vulnerable to fear and isolation. Culture and society evolved to fulfill the many physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of the population, and huge changes to this way of life cause unintended effects across the entire ecosystem. The past twenty months have demonstrated this more than ever. 

~ Nathan Mech, "The Forgotten Victims of COVID-19: 7 Groups Punished by Lockdowns," FEE.org, November 19, 2021

Henry Hazlitt on the differences between the good and bad economist

The bad economist sees only what immediately strikes the eye; the good economist looks beyond.  The bad economist sees only the direct consequences of a proposed course; the good economist looks also at the longer and indirect consequences.  The bad economist sees only what the effect of a given policy has been or will be on one particular group; the good economist inquires also what the effect of the policy will be on all groups.

~ Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson, Chapter 1: "The Lesson," p. 16

Rolf Dobelli on how the news media focuses on the highly visible

News reports do not represent the real world. 

Our brains are wired to pay attention to visible, large, scandalous, sensational, shocking, peoplerelated, story-formatted, fast changing, loud, graphic onslaughts of stimuli. Our brains have limited attention to spend on more subtle pieces of intelligence that are small, abstract, ambivalent, complex, slow to develop and quiet, much less silent. News organizations systematically exploit this bias. 

News media outlets, by and large, focus on the highly visible. They display whatever information they can convey with gripping stories and lurid pictures, and they systematically ignore the subtle and insidious, even if that material is more important. News grabs our attention; that’s how its business model works. Even if the advertising model didn’t exist, we would still soak up news pieces because they are easy to digest and superficially quite tasty. 

The highly visible misleads us.

~ Rolf Dobelli, "Avoid News," p. 2

Veronique de Rugy on the seen and unseen

Peering past the obvious in order to get a more complete picture is what adults do when running their lives and managing households or business affairs. It's what good economists do when analyzing public policies. And it's what Frederic Bastiat did with unmatched skill and style more than two centuries ago. Unfortunately, it's not what most politicians tend to do today.

~ Veronique de Rugy, "As Bastiat Would Say, Peer Past the Obvious With Pandemic Policies," Reason.com,  July 2, 2020

Veronique de Rugy on the unseen costs of the Covid-19 lockdowns

There are also seen and unseen effects from the lockdown put in place to control COVID-19's spread. The seen effects of the policy are millions of people limiting their interactions with others as a protection from a virus that has killed many. The unseen effects of this policy are, among other things, the rise of depression, drug overdoses, and suicides; a decrease in diagnostics for other lethal diseases (which will lead to more deaths); the educational impact on children cut out from school; and the long-term economic devastation.

~ Veronique de Rugy, "As Bastiat Would Say, Peer Past the Obvious With Pandemic Policies," Reason.com,  July 2, 2020

Frederic Bastiat on the difference between a good and bad economist

In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause—it is seen. The others unfold in succession—they are not seen: it is well for us if they are foreseen. Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference—the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen and also of those which it is necessary to foresee.

~ Frederic Bastiat, The Law

Kevin Duffy on the two predominant ideologies

There are essentially two views of the world: order and chaos.  Some see a natural order: the food chain, pecking orders, innate behaviors, complex adaptive systems, natural selection.  Others see chaos requiring direction by a group of experts.

At least when it comes to economic activity, the overwhelming majority adopt the chaos view.  They fail to grasp Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” of mutually beneficial trade, Friedrich Hayek’s “pretense of knowledge” with regard to central planners, or Frederic Bastiat’s “seen and unseen costs” concerning the unintended consequences of economic policies.

~ Kevin Duffy, "The Expert Model," LewRockwell.com, May 27, 2020

(Excerpt from the May 27 issue of The Coffee Can Portfolio, p. 2)