An economist suggests an appropriate, not inappropriate, response.

A Curveball Isn’t an Existential Threat

Donald J. Boudreaux

– October 5, 2020

1. AIER
2. Daily Economy
3. Government
4. Economic Education
5. Crisis

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Nothing is easier than imagining hypothetical threats to humanity that differ so categorically from any that we’ve experienced before that it would be folly to stick to the familiar rules of the game. Earth is in the path of a hurtling asteroid that will within weeks certainly blow our entire planet to smithereens unless the state confiscates on command whatever it needs to quickly build a giant missile to intercept the doomsday rock.

But it’s infantile to mistake a problem unusually challenging for one so unprecedented that many of the foundational rules of society are to be abandoned indefinitely. Just because reality occasionally throws us curveballs with uncommonly large arcs does not mean that we…