By Jonah Goldberg
Friday, March 20, 2020
I am not where the editorial board of the Wall
Street Journal is on the pandemic, but I’m more sympathetic than some
of my friends and colleagues. The economic toll all of all of this really can’t
be exaggerated (though some will try!) or dismissed (though others will try!),
and that will have profound consequences too.
A friend of mine said to me he’d rather have a 5 percent
greater risk that his mom might die than a 25 percent risk that his kids may
have to suffer through a Great Depression. I don’t see it that way, but I don’t
think that’s an insane position, either. There are tradeoffs in all government
decisions, because there are tradeoffs in all decisions. It’s not immoral to
consider the scope of the sacrifices being asked of people.
But whatever the right course of action is—and I
basically support what the government is doing, if not in how it helped get us
here—it’s worth taking a moment to appreciate how this course of action defies
so much of the glib rhetoric about America one hears bandied about.
While there’s some contrary data, for the most part we
know that this virus is predominantly a threat to very old people and a few
younger people with secondary ailments. If America was the land of unfettered
capitalism where ruthless efficiency and productivity were the only things that
mattered, this is not what we would be doing.
If we were some Capitalist Sparta, we’d be putting old
people on figurative ice floes to fend for themselves or pushing them off
cliffs, like Paul Ryan in that heinous ad.
People older than 80 are not, as a rule, vital cogs in the capitalist machine.
If one were to apply the butcher knife of Peter Singer’s ethical pragmatism, we
might even be setting up death panels.
But forget Singer—I know I try to. It’s interesting how
the progressive health care reformers aren’t talking about QALYs. This is
technocrat-ese for Quality-Adjusted Life Years. A technique used to justify
life-saving interventions based upon how many good or “productive” years you
have left. Here a good explanation of the approach
and here’s another from the Wall
Street Journal. This idea, if not this precise technique, was discussed
a lot during the fight over Obamacare. In countries with single-payer systems,
it’s just a fancy way of talking about rationing health care, based on the
perceived need of the rationers, not the patients. And you can be sure that if
we had Medicare for All, this would be precisely how we’d handle health care.
Many progressive health care economists routinely talk about the benefits of a
QALY approach—when there isn’t a pandemic.
Well, here’s some back-of-the-envelope math. Say the U.S.
economy is $20
trillion. Let’s also estimate that we’re looking at a 5 percent hit, which
equals $1 trillion. Now suppose that we save 1 million lives, instead of the,
say, 2 million we might lose if we did nothing or less than what we’re doing
now. That would be $1 million per life saved. If the hit to the economy is
greater than 5 percent, the cost per life saved—overwhelmingly the lives of old
and sick people—the higher the cost would be.
Now, I don’t think we should let this kind of thinking be
our guide, and apparently neither do all the progressive health care wonks,
because none of them have dared to say anything like this. And neither have all
the supposed fetishists of the free market. Even the Wall Street Journal
is merely saying that the current approach is not sustainable indefinitely—and
they may be right.
And, yeah, I understand there are other reasons to
respond the way we have. An overwhelmed medical system is bad for everyone. But
if we just ordered all the old folks into quarantine, fewer Americans would be
inconvenienced and we’d see less economic damage. We’re not doing that.
The simple fact is that this country is doing something
morally heroic. I hate metaphorical war rhetoric, but we’re taking the
“millions for defense, not one penny for tribute” approach to this.
It may not work. It may not last. It may not make the
most sense economically. But we’re doing it anyway. And that is something that
should be appreciated not just for the “We’re all in it together” platitudes
but as a rebuttal to the slanderous way many Americans describe this country.
Movements shmovements.
There’s another interesting takeaway from all of this.
Readers may be aware that I am increasingly convinced that American nationalism
and, to a lesser extent, socialism are paper tigers. These supposedly resurgent
movements increasingly strike me as intellectual dress-up games. In the great
war for nationalism and socialism there are
a lot of generals but not that many soldiers.
It’s sort of like Star Trek. In the show(s) the
captain and the top officers go on all the dangerous away missions while the
vast crew stays behind to be props and walk through the hallways like the cast
of West Wing. I’ve long joked that if Gene Roddenberry wrote the story
of World War II, FDR and Ike would parachute behind enemy lines to take out
Hitler and Himmler all by themselves.
Eggheads and activists on the left and right have been
telling us for years that the masses, particularly the youth, crave some
grand new transcendent cause that allows them to leap out of the pits of
despair, alienation, and anomie that late capitalism has exiled them to. On the
left, they’ve tried again and again to make climate change into the moral
equivalent of war to mobilize the masses to their preferred policies. On the
right, more and more people are using the culture war the same way.
Well, President Trump is right that this is as close to a
war as you can get. And yet, we see videos of young people refusing to forgo
the opportunity to pound Jäger shots at a Fort Lauderdale Chili’s or get
Chinese character tattoos on their lower backs (that probably say “I have
syphilis” or “Kung Pao Chicken—extra spicy.”).
In fairness, there’s little evidence that young people as
a group are especially likely to be slackers in the Great Patriotic War against
COVID-19. The truth is people of all ages have responded in different ways to
the threat.
I think the folks who are blowing it off are wrong. But
what does their attitude say about efforts like socialism and nationalism that
don’t have anything like this kind of threat to galvanize them? A pandemic
literally gives government officials the constitutional and legal authority to
order people to radically disrupt their lives—and people are still defying it.
I think Evangeline Lilly is insanely hot, but that’s not important right now. I
also think she’s making
an ass of herself. But how many more Evangeline Lillys will there be in
America where the government bosses people around based on some abstraction
like nationalism or socialism?
Sure, you can say that the socialists and nationalists
don’t want to boss people around. But if that’s the case, what is the point? If
it’s just a slogan to throw around, you’re making my point. If it’s something
real, it necessarily involves imposing one vision on the whole country. At least the post-liberal Catholic
integralists (there’s a banner for the masses!) are honest about wanting to
impose their definition of the Highest Good on everyone. One of their generals
is actually
furious that the Catholic Church is canceling masses out of a desire to
save lives. One has to wonder how mad he’ll be if the wrong “one-size-fits-all”
ideologue gets in power.
The people who want some new, post-liberal reorienting of
society need to offer an answer for what they will do when the cats refuse to
be herded.
Still, I am very worried about the damage being done to
capitalism during this crisis—even if I think it is necessary. Progressive
economic planners used the statism of Wilson’s “war socialism” to massively
transform the American order once they had a chance. “We planned in war!” they
cried during the 1920s until they seized the reins and planned in peace. I am
positive I’ll spend the rest of my life arguing with people who will offer some
version of “We planned during the pandemic!” You can be sure that once we’re
through with all of this, both the AOC and Rusty Reno types will use the steps
being taken now as proof that the government can simply will into existence
whatever economic system they want. And it will fall to members of the
(classically) liberal remnant to point out that income inequality isn’t like a
pandemic—and neither is Drag Queen Story Hour.
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