Time Preference v. Covid-19
Nevada governor Steve Sisolak issued the order that everyone wear a mask in public as of midnight this morning. A friend called first thing claiming the governor’s edict is what the Nazis did in Germany.
At least one tourist in town was more thoughtful, “You’d still have fun (with a mask). It’s not like they’re asking you to wear a hazmat suit,” said Tracy Lawson, of Ontario, Canada.
Lawson was in town on June 6th and plans to return July 26th. “It kind of just made me angry. … Obviously the virus is a real thing, and they’re not bothering (to stop it from spreading),” Lawson told the Las Vegas Review Journal over the phone. “They want everything open, (but they don’t want to wear a mask). You can’t have it both ways.”
Forced mask wearing is the latest hill to die on as Covid-19 ravages the south and southwest U.S.A. as well as countries in the southern hemisphere. In a piece for Lewrockwell.com, Becky Akres rants about “Masked Morons” and feels the need to provide “ammo in our war to remain (somewhat) free.”
The ammo she provides is the work of Lisa M Brosseau, ScD, and Margaret Sietsema, PhD who together wrote “COMMENTARY: Masks-for-all for COVID-19 not based on sound data” which was posted on the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research on April 1st.
As you can tell from the title, the authors contend masks won’t do any good in stopping the spread of the virus. Drs. Brosseau and Sietsema argue:
We do not recommend requiring the general public who do not have symptoms of COVID-19-like illness to routinely wear cloth or surgical masks because:
There is no scientific evidence they are effective in reducing the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission
Their use may result in those wearing the masks to relax other distancing efforts because they have a sense of protection
We need to preserve the supply of surgical masks for at-risk healthcare workers.
Sietsema and Brosseau conclude, “Leaving aside the fact that they are ineffective, telling the public to wear cloth or surgical masks could be interpreted by some to mean that people are safe to stop isolating at home. It's too late now for anything but stopping as much person-to-person interaction as possible.” (emphasis added)
In other words, forget the mask, stay home. Isolation is the only solution. But, after a couple of months of being cooped up at home, many Americans can’t handle it. One wonders why? The answer lies in Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s groundbreaking “Democracy The God That Failed.”
Staying at home requires frugality, savings, and patience. One must be a responsible adult to stay home and stay safe. But, as Hoppe points out, democracy, with its continuous property-rights violations leads to “decivilization: formerly provident providers will be turned into drunks or daydreamers, adults into children, civilized men into barbarians, and producers into criminals."
Hoppe points out that the young and the old tend to have high time preferences. In other words, they live for today, seeking immediate gratification. Savings and safety are the last things on their minds. Spring breaker Brian Sluder famously said, “If I get corona, I get corona. At the end of the day, I'm not gonna let it stop me from partying.”
On the eve of the re-opening of Las Vegas casinos, Dominick Tarabokija told the Las Vegas Sun, “I’m a little worried about my wife but not for myself, I’m 72. What do I have to lose?”
Social media is full of whining about missed vacations, not being able to go to the gym or the bar. That should be the worst thing that happens to the high time preference crowd.
Hoppe doesn’t write about pandemics, but he does make the point, “actual and potential victims are permitted to defend, protect, and insure themselves against both social disasters such as crime as well as natural ones, the effect of these on time preference is temporary and unsystematic.” In a footnote, Hoppe explains that a natural disaster doesn’t “change a person’s character structure, i.e., a shift from a lower to a higher time-preference curve. Such a shift occurs in the presence of government disasters, however.”
There have been many pandemics through the ages. But never has a population and its various layers of government been as over indebted and bereft of savings to ride out a plague.
Because of this devolution, the government has resorted to ham-handed banana-republic measures such as money printing, denying property rights (foreclosure and eviction moratoriums), and spreading government largesse far and wide ($1.4 billion to people who have died).
Democracy’s decivilization has forced citizens to put their lives at risk to stay on the job while the Federal Reserve continues to dissolve the value of their savings--if they have any. Massive government budgets demand commerce, safe or unsafe, to generate precious tax revenue to keep bureaucrats employed.
Forced mask wearing may be annoying, but it’s the least of numerous government transgressions against liberty.
Remember, “Democracy is a sort of laughing gas,” H.L. Mencken wrote. “It will not cure anything, perhaps, but it unquestionably stops the pain.”
Grow up, stay home, and enjoy the show.
