Why is it that whenever there is a purported emergency, governments invariably carve out exceptions to their own constitutional restrictions and precedents, but no new allowances are made for the citizenry? Politicians don't know what is best for anyone else even in the best of times. The greater the uncertainty, the more disastrous the effects of their ignorant actions.
If there is a disaster, we need freedom to react according to developments at the grassroots level, not more bureaucratic intervention and delays. If there is a risk of looting, rioting, and civil unrest, we need the freedom to arm ourselves in self-defense, not additional restrictions that serve only to punish law-abiding people. We need prices to adjust when the supply and demand equilibrium suffers a shock; both as an organic rationing measure, and an incentive for production and outside suppliers; not price controls and quotas.
In the current COVID-19 pandemic, the justification offered for new edicts is flattening the curve as a protection for the medical industry. However, it should be noted that the medical industry has been under the thumb of politics for the better part of a century at least, and its shortcomings are evidence of the moral hazard in public choice economics, not free market failure. Regulatory capture is now strangling the entrepreneurs who could otherwise readily shift production to masks, hand sanitizer, ventilators, and other necessary goods. Certificate of Need laws have artificially restricted the number of available facilities, as have license mandates and innumerable other restrictions. Even this cursory overview should show how intervention and centralization have made the system inelastic and stagnant. The problems are political in nature, and the solution cannot be more of the initial problem.
As always, the real solution should be exceptions to prior control measures, but politics isn't about enhancing liberty, productivity, or innovation. It is about CONTROL, no more, no less. And that is where the real disaster lies. We will be left to pick up the pieces from their ratcheting of authoritarianism while the political class pat themselves on the back for a job well done regardless of the outcome.
Steemit/Hive drama and COVID-19, subjects on which we are awash in posts aplenty, and I weary of seeing myself, yet I feel compelled to comment on both of late. Sorry about the apparent bandwagon nature of this diatribe, too! I hope I at least offer a different take on the subject as I strive to tear down some of the façade of legitimacy hiding the true nature of the State.