by Morley Evans
A Protest From France
Jörg Guido Hülsmann
April 23, 2020
The greatest danger right now is in the perpetuation of the ill-conceived lockdowns, most notably under the pretext of “managing the transition” or other spurious justifications. Is it really necessary to walk through the endless list of management failures of government agents? Is it necessary to remind ourselves that people who have no skin in the game are irresponsible in the true sense of the word? These would-be managers should have stayed out of the picture from the very beginning. Instead, so far, they have managed to get everybody else out of the picture. If they are allowed to go on, they might very well turn the present calamity – big as it is – into a true disaster.
After WWI, the distinguished British economist, Edwin Cannan was asked, somewhat reproachfully, what he did during the terrible war years. He replied: “I protested.” The present article is a similar protest against the current lockdown policies put into place, in most countries of the western world, to confront the current coronavirus pandemic.
Here in France, where I live and work, President Macron had announced on Thursday, March 12th that all schools and universities would be shut down on the following Monday. On that Monday, then, he appeared on TV again and announced that the entire population would be confined, starting the very next day. The only exceptions would be “necessary” activities, especially medical services, energy production, security, and food production and food distribution. This policy response was apparently coordinated with other European governments. Italy, Germany, Spain, and have applied essentially the same measures.
I think that these policies are understandable and well-intentioned. Like many other commentators, I also think that they are wrongheaded, harmful, and potentially disastrous. An old French proverb says that the way to hell is plastered with good intentions. Unfortunately, it seems as though the present policies are no exception.
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My protest concerns the basic ideas that have motivated these policies. They were clearly enunciated by President Macron in his TV address of March 12th. Here he made three claims that I found most intriguing.
The first one was that his government was going to apply drastic measures to “save lives” because the country was “at war” with the Covid19 virus. He repeatedly used the phrase “we are at war” (nous sommes en guerre) throughout his talk.
Secondly, he insisted right at the very beginning that it was imperative to heed the advice of “the experts.” Monsieur Macron literally said that we all should have to listen and follow the advice of the people “who know” – meaning who know the problem and who know how best to deal with it.
His third major point was this emergency situation had revealed how important it was to enjoy a state-run system of public healthcare. How lucky are we to have such a system and to be able to rely on it, now, in the heat of the war against the virus! Unsurprisingly, the president insinuated that this system would be reinforced in the future.
Now, these are not the private ideas of Monsieur Macron. They are shared by all major governments in the EU and by many governments in other parts of the world. They are also shared by all major political parties here in France, as well as by President Macron’s predecessors. Therefore, the purpose of the following remarks is not to criticise the president of this beautiful country, or his government, or any person in particular. The purpose is to criticise the ideas on which the current policy is based.
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