If Afghanistan should have taught us anything, it is this: When confronting an enemy, we need a clear set of goals, a reasonable plan to achieve those goals as efficiently as possible and an ironclad exit strategy.
He argues that the virus response failed to do this.
Go back to the quoted passage and for “When confronting an enemy” substitute “When our organization undertakes an initiative…” That might make for a pretty good definition of institutional rationality. It leaves out the possibility of rationally setting out to undertake an activity permanently. But in fact it is hardly ever viable to do the exact same thing in the exact same way long term.
How much of virus policy is due to luxury beliefs from the upper classes?
Working from home + virtue signaling that you care more about the virus than everyone else. Seems pretty rational to me at the individual level.
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Thorstein Veblen’s famous “leisure class” has evolved into the “luxury belief class.”
Affluent people promote open borders or the decriminalization of drugs because it advances their social standing, not least because they know that the adoption of those policies will cost them less than others.
Unfortunately, the luxury beliefs of the upper class often trickle down and are adopted by people lower down the food chain, which means many of these beliefs end up causing social harm.
https://quillette.com/2019/11/16/thorstein-veblens-theory-of-the-leisure-class-a-status-update/
In the caring contest the winning message wasn’t “it’s not like smallpox.”
In the caring contest the cliche was “it’s not like flu.”
But imagine if the incentives had been different, and there had been some alignment between rulers and ruled, instead of this Stockholm syndrome democracy, inmates in thrall to Big Nurse.
Our rulers might have faced up to the reality that the animal reservoir exists, the virus will not be eradicated, “zero covid” is an illusion, and misinformation is actually not something to encourage every hour on CNN.
There are people who rushed off to hospital without any symptoms. So they show up in the hospitalization statistics and also in the asymptomatic statistics.
Thorstein Veblen’s famous “leisure class” has evolved into the “luxury belief class.”
Thanks, Kurt, that is a strong statement that I will use. I will add the word “conspicuous”.
+1
Thanks, but literally of all the credit goes to Rob Henderson (see the link to his stellar article in my original comment).
When will Rob attain FIT status in ASK’s eyes? Maybe he is already there?
https://twitter.com/robkhenderson?s=21
The policy goals regarding the pandemic were placed on a high-speed train hurtling toward the land of authoritarian utopia.