Honesty sells when the idea is good
Every now and then I run into a COVID article written by a sane person, and I like to publicize it. It's so refreshing to read the thoughts of someone not addicted either to wishful thinking, to demonizing opponents, or to ignoring the impact of incentives on behavior. It's possible to believe that vaccines and masks are somewhat beneficial without concluding that they're either 100% bad or 100% good. It's even possible to believe that they're an OK idea for some people in some circumstances with also concluding that mandating them for all people in all circumstances is justified or even effectual for our ostensible purposes. It's possible to accept that a disease is sometimes quite dangerous, even deadly, without concluding that we can create a world in which that's no longer true, or that attempting to do so will be worth the considerable damage the corrective measures inevitably will cause. In fact, it's a lot like trying to discuss climate alarmism.
Above all, it's essential not to advocate policies we know to be sketchy because we secretly believe they'll nudge people into behavior we believe will help them despite themselves. That might work for a one-off emergency, but it's deadly if we ever want people to take our well-meaning advice on any other topic ever again. I speak now from a purely utilitarian standpoint, as if it weren't enough to realize that lying is simply wrong.
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A discussion I have not seen conducted in the question of public health, vaccination and other measures, is the constant divide about limited resources allocated by authority or by market/auction/individual decisions.
To kick it off, imagine the very extreme case in which the US federal government had declared that no federal money would be paid for COVID vaccines. Would we even have shots and boosters in the market for those who wanted such options? In the reverse situation, and given the idea of "economies of scale" isn't it likely that doses of anything, (HCQ, Ivermectin, Vaccine...) would be cheaper per dose if the federal government agreed to buy 400 million doses, up front, before production even started? (And was such an understanding reached, by "Art of the Deal" unspoken promises, during "Warp Speed"?)
I suppose the best outcome would fall, as usual, somewhere between absolute reliance on the market or the authorities, but I don't know how to identify that optimum without discussion.
We can have a debate about whether we're rationally allocating public resources without concluding either that anything someone in power wants to do makes sense, or concluding that no public resources should ever be brought to bear on an epidemic. I didn't have the least problem with using tax resources to spur vaccine development or legal relief to protect vaccine developers from liability: that seems like the exact situation when a moderate libertarian can conclude that a centralized government has a valuable role to play, just as in the case of a judicial system, the military, roads, etc.
What's important is to keep looking at the government program in light of what it's costing and accomplishing, and decide whether we still think it's a good idea. A good sign that something is a good idea is that people adopt it voluntarily, without being lied to, instead of bitterly resisting it. If they're wrong, they're wrong, but the whole point of collective effort is that it's based on a real consensus, not the consensus we wish we could have if everyone always agreed with us.
It should have been obvious that the hectoring/threatening tone of so much Covid communication from the government, including vax-related communication, would have turned a lot of people off. Either the people doing the communication didn't really care how effective it was, or their mental model of their fellow Americans....large numbers of them, anyway...was so defective that the didn't understand how to craft communications that would have the desired effect.
See my post Piano Keys, Chess Pieces, and Marketing/Communication:
https://ricochet.com/1113577/piano-keys-chess-pieces-and-marketing-persuasion/
Imagine what the outcome would have been if the government paid a bonus to the hospital or treatment group for a successful recovery, rather than a bonus for each one that left in a box?
Raven, I'm afraid that would only have spurred many hospital administrators to refuse to accept patients with too high a risk of death--just as some surgical practices cherry-pick their clients in order to keep their stats up. What we want is incentives to do the best they can with a wide variety of patients, from low risk to high risk.
I liked your Piano Key post, David, and especially your comment: "The failure of the Left to have any understanding of so many of their fellow Americans represents a *tremendous* vulnerability on their part, and it is one that the non-left forces should be taking advantage of.
"Also, we need to be sure that we don’t make the same mistake. I see a lot of posts/comments/memes to the effect that Leftists favor the policies they do because “they don’t like to work.” This is true in some cases, but not in general…I know plenty of ‘liberals’ and ‘progressives’, some of them fairly extreme, who indeed work hard…as mechanics, in healthcare, as startup entrepreneurs, etc etc. You can probably also think of many such. When we make flat assertions about a class of people that someone recognizes himself as a member of…and when that person knows that the assertion is false…they will tend to minimize or disregards anything else we say.
"As I noted in the post, this phenomenon isn’t as common among the non-Leftists…because we mostly live in a Leftist environment/culture, and can observe…but it does exist and is tactically harmful."
As you've probably noticed by now, this inability to see people for what they are, rather than our preconception of them, is something I take to be one of the largest sources of mischief in human relations and systems. The only good that can come from it is that there's low-hanging fruit for us if we'll just open our eyes, at a time when so many others have theirs screwed tight shut.
"Expropriation has never, to my knowledge, been a winning political message with its targets." https://americanmind.org/salvo/blue-americas-messaging-problem/
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