“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”

A reader, A.B. Sterner, writes:

Toilet paper, for reasons I still can’t grasp, is experiencing a severe (in store) shortage in a lot of areas of the country. Yet in some areas price ceilings—in the form of “anti-gouging” laws—have been put in place to keep those prices artificially low, despite the unprecedented increase in demand.

A leading trope of the contemporary environmental movement is that indigenous peoples residing in a precapitalist order are particularly skillful at managing the earth’s resources. These groups are often portrayed in the media as being in harmony with the natural environment. Without a doubt many indigenous groups are animistic and therefore may hold nature in high regard. But venerating nature does not preclude one from engaging in activities that have a deleterious impact on the natural environment.

On Friday, Pope Francis delivered a special sermon to pray for an end to the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, the depressing scenery of the deserted St. Peter’s Square on the rainy night matched the words of the Holy Father:

The COVID-19 pandemic has really highlighted how differently economists and noneconomists think. All over the world, variations of the same discussion have taken place over the last week or so. It goes as follows.

There are two very distinct approaches to crisis resolution. One is the socialist approach, adopted by most governments of the world in the latest coronavirus crisis. The other is the individualistic approach, used by few if any of the world’s major nations.

The Socialist Approach

Here are some of the main elements of the socialist approach: