"History cannot teach us any general rule, principle, or law. There is no means to abstract from a historical experience a posteriori any theories or theorems concerning human conduct and policies."
A big reason that socialist ideology has staying power is the tactic of blaming the many failures and disasters of socialist regimes on the alleged fact the regimes "aren't real socialism."
If time preference is genetically built into humans, are they double discounting future goods? Does this mean people should stop trying to weigh time in their calculations?
In theory, it is possible to adjust inflation measures to account for the many constant changes in prices resulting from changing demand, quality, and innovations. But it's essentially impossible to execute these adjustments accurately.
Buyers and sellers in the free market do indeed act from self-interest, but Adam Smith never argued that this excludes friendly feelings for those they do business with.
Presenting "saving lives" as a more or less equal alternative to commerce and community is a misguided view of what the lockdown debate is really all about.
