"A quarter of French adults smoke. Many people were surprised, therefore, when researchers reported late in April that only 5% of 482 Covid-19 patients who came to the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris between February 28th and April 9th were daily smokers. The ratios of smokers to non-smokers in earlier tallies at hospitals in America, China and elsewhere in France varied. But all revealed habitual smokers to be significantly underrepresented among those requiring hospital treatment for the illness." The Economist, 2nd May 2020.
Is this a reportable fact, or is this Agnotology at its best?
Even if it is the former, the news does make you wonder what compelled the Economist to run a story which essentially encourages people to smoke. My gentlemen friends and the tobacco industry must love this, and the best part was that the online story, at least as far as I could make out, is published without any warning from the Surgeon General that smoking kills!
To say that the Virus Wars have turned the world upside down, fortunately for some perhaps, may even be an understatement - except in Pakistan, unfortunately; even now as I sit down to write this piece, our political leadership continues to practise trivial politics with an issue as critical as, "To Lockdown, or not to Lockdown"; with due apologies to the bard.
In my book even one death is not a statistic, so let's hope that the governments at all levels in the country continue to get their act together - Allah SWT rid our beloved country of this virus immediately, Aameen.
The Virus Wars have impacted humanity like nothing before in my generation's life time, socially, politically and economically - and the norms continue to change as the war lingers. It is all about the Government doing more - in fact, doing everything.
Hobbes Leviathan rises.
The Virus Wars have allowed the Leviathan to grow, in fact society welcomed it. It is not that the Leviathan has not done a good job fighting Corona in Pakistan; precisely the opposite. In fact, it did so well that even Supply Side fans, and the "It is not the governments business to be in business" type cheerleaders, are trolling on behalf of the government on the social media. Kudos!
But with the good comes the bad. There is a strong likelihood that the Leviathan, once things normalise on the health services front, will attempt to spread its oppressive and tyrannical tentacles into domains from where it was kicked out decades ago, including a planned and controlled economy.
Just now the breaking news on the idiot box is that the government is taking steps to bring down and control prices. Further, the government has gone Keynesian - free cash from helicopter is just the first step, with all sort of relief packages possibly soon to be followed by roads to nowhere - to protect the downtrodden. Except a cursory look at most related regulations brings to mind the playbook of Draco. And this may well not be the end. To meet the cost of this expansion, more government, taxes will have to increase; supply side economics may well have been dished out a death blow in the family jewels by the Virus Wars.
Privateers, the barons, the tycoons, the entrepreneurs, the greed is good lot, wake up and roll out the tanks before it is too late!
The funny thing is that it is the last mercantilist who is warning the Free Marketers. Hilarious, considering that last week only the argument was that we might have used our nine lives and it was high time we embraced protectionism.
The light needs the darkness to shine!
Great quote aside; there is a more practical reason behind the warning. Opposing free markets does not in any way suggest supporting no market- the Mercantilist would always work towards a golden mean, and very well understands the magic and power of the market. Planned industrialisation is very different from a controlled economy.
An unbridled Leviathan, on the other hand, is the other extreme, and perhaps may even be worse than neoliberalism and the supply side team. An enemy of an enemy is a friend!
So wake up from the slumber, and get the greed banners and flags out and the tanks rumbling.
"The new, hyper-partisan think tanks had impact far beyond Washington. They introduced doubt into areas of settled academic and scientific scholarship, undermined genuinely unbiased experts, and gave politicians a menu of conflicting statistics and arguments from which to choose. The benefit was a far more pluralistic intellectual climate, beyond liberal orthodoxy" Dark Money- by Jane Mayer.
To answer the conspiracy theorist, it is not that all think tanks are bad. However, why should you need a think tank to propagate that social welfare, looking after the deserving of the society, was as critical a responsibility of the Government as was protecting property rights and enforcement of contracts. Except, if there are all types of think tanks lobbying and broadcasting that greed is good, survival of the fittest, supply side is king, then perhaps the socialists ought to also invest in a think tank! Induced ignorance, doubt and misleading scientific research and/or data are the ammunition of the information age; think about it while you light one!
Interestingly, the country really is lacking on the think tank front!
So Dear Koch Industries of Pakistan, prepare for the battle; get ready the free market tanks!
(The writer is a chartered accountant based in Islamabad. Email: [email protected]. The views expressed in this article are personal. The views are not necessarily those of the newspaper)
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