Normally we discuss books on The Human Action Podcast, but this new academic paper by Professor Philipp Bagus is too important to ignore. “COVID-19 and the Political Economy of Mass Hysteria” is the one journal article you need to read this year. In only about ten pages it makes the devastating case that perverse political incentives—along with a nexus of state-connected media and scientists—combine to create and amplify “public health” hysteria. Echoing Hoppe and public choice theory, Bagus explains how politicians enjoy asymmetric rewards for exaggerating risks and creating fear. The result is gross policy errors we will all pay for over many decades. Don’t miss this show!
Read Dr. Bagus’s paper at Mises.org/BagusPaper
And read Jeff Deist’s summary of the paper at Mises.org/DeistBagus
Find Deep Freeze: Iceland’s Economic Collapse online at Mises.org/DeepFreeze
Find The Tragedy of the Euro online at Mises.org/TragedyEuro
The Mises Institute exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian school of economics, and individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. These great thinkers developed praxeology, a deductive science of human action based on premises known with certainty to be true, and this is what we teach and advocate. Our scholarly work is founded in Misesian praxeology, and in self-conscious opposition to the mathematical modeling and hypothesis-testing that has created so much confusion in neoclassical economics. Visit https://mises.org