As the Great Suppression enters its second year and as people go to greater and greater lengths to get vaccinated, I remember one of the conclusions we reach when we analyze how price controls hurt the people we ostensibly want to help: you can suppress the market price, but you cannot suppress the cost. Instead of changing the cost people incur, you just change how they incur it.
Article by Art Carden from AIER.
A broad social consensus rejects “the free market answer: sell to the highest bidder.” I think this emerges from a well-intentioned but misguided idea that a vaccine against a world-shaking pandemic should be available to all at no cost. Again, though, government officials cannot suppress the cost even though they can suppress the market price.
As the vaccine rolls out to more people I know, I’m hearing more stories about the absurd lengths to which people will go to be vaccinated. We could avoid these costs if we freed up market prices and let people pay what they are willing for the vaccine. A few people I know are planning to drive two hours round-trip to get vaccinated. Limited supplies have given rise to “vaccine tourism:” people traveling from their home states where vaccines are not available to other states where vaccines are available.
They are not paying for the vaccine directly by paying a market price. They are, however, paying for the vaccine indirectly by incurring potentially substantial costs. The cruel irony? It’s pure waste: someone scouring the internet for vaccines and then making a long drive or taking a flight to get a shot incurs a cost without creating a benefit for someone else. Unpriced vaccine distribution locks people into the world’s worst and most wasteful staring contest.
Contrast this to a hypothetical world where market prices allocate vaccines that cost (say) $500 a shot. In that world, you can get a vaccine by creating $500 worth of value for someone else and then using the income you earn to pay for the shot. If you aren’t willing to pay $500, you turn to substitutes like staying home, masking up, and avoiding crowds until the price falls.
If you can’t pay with $500 in money or goods, you can still “pay” with $500 worth of time. The problem is that you don’t produce anything for anyone else during the time you spend searching for hard-to-come-by shots and planning long trips to get those shots. You incur a substantial cost, and no one benefits.
You are right to worry about the poor; however, it’s not clear that central planning will do better than market prices. We can address fairness and equity concerns by distributing transferable vouchers to people of modest means and allowing them to decide if they would prefer to be vaccinated now or to enjoy the income they’d earn by selling the voucher.
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There is also a broad social consensus that it is unseemly, even immoral, for firms to earn “exorbitant” or “excessive” profits producing a vaccine. While there might be a lot of legitimate, serious, and nuanced questions to be asked about intellectual property law and the economics of ideas, the fact that drug companies are earning high profits as such is not and should not be objectionable. Potential profitability is an important signal that draws resources into high-cost, high-risk fields like drug development. Without it, we would probably still be waiting for a vaccine instead of moralizing about drug companies’ bottom lines. The drug market works imperfectly, mainly because of how it is regulated. Handing it over to a national supply commander would make things worse.
The policy response to the Covid pandemic has been a master class in government failure: even under literal textbook conditions where intervention might be appropriate, governments around the world have messed up their responses time and time again. It isn’t because they are bad people, necessarily, nor is it because they are incompetent. It is because “The Problem” is a set of innumerable smaller problems for which, as Friedrich Hayek pointed out, the relevant knowledge of “the particular circumstances of time and place” cannot confront political decision-makers as data. It emerges from action, exchange, and the prices they produce.
Will America-First News Outlets Make it to 2023?
Things are looking grim for conservative and populist news sites.
There’s something happening behind the scenes at several popular conservative news outlets. 2021 was bad, but 2022 is proving to be disastrous for news sites that aren’t “playing ball” with the corporate media narrative. It’s being said that advertisers are cracking down, forcing some of the biggest ad networks like Google and Yahoo to pull their inventory from conservative outlets. This has had two major effects. First, it has cooled most conservative outlets from discussing “taboo” topics like Pandemic Panic Theater, voter fraud, or The Great Reset. Second, it has isolated those ad networks that aren’t playing ball.
Certain topics are anathema for most ad networks. Speaking out against vaccines or vaccine mandates is a certain path to being demonetized. Highlighting voter fraud in the 2020 and future elections is another instant advertising death penalty. Throw in truthful stories about climate change hysteria, Critical Race Theory, and the border crisis and it’s easy to understand how difficult it is for America-First news outlets to spread the facts, share conservative opinions, and still pay the bills.
Without naming names, I have been told of several news outlets who have been forced to either consolidate with larger organizations or who have backed down on covering certain topics out of fear of being “canceled” by the ad networks. I get it. This is a business for many of us and it’s not very profitable. Those of us who do this for a living are often barely squeaking by, so loss of additional revenue can often mean being forced to make cuts. That means not being able to cover the topics properly. Its a Catch-22: Tell the truth and lose the money necessary to keep telling the truth, or avoid the truth and make enough money to survive. Those who have chosen survival simply aren’t able to spread the truth properly.
We will never avoid the truth. The Lord will provide if it is His will. Our job is simply to share the facts, spread the Gospel, and educate as many Americans as possible while exposing the forces of evil.
To those who have the means, we ask that you please donate. We have options available now, but there is no telling when those options will cancel us. We have our GivingFuel page. There have been many who have been canceled by PayPal, but for now it’s still an option. Your generosity is what keeps these sites running and allows us to get the truth to the masses. We’ve had great success in growing but we know we can do more with your assistance.
Thank you, and God Bless!
JD Rucker