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trong các chính sách đối phó với covid-19...

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David Henderson, writing in Reason, draws important economic lessons from the responses to Covid-19. A slice:

By the end of the Cold War, most economists—even some socialists—were acknowledging that Mises and Hayek had won the debate: The Soviet planners had failed because they had embarked on a task that could not succeed.

But in the COVID-19 era, a lot of policy makers have let this lesson slip their minds (tuột khỏi tâm trí). While few have advocated full-blown state socialism, many have forgotten the more general truth that officials don’t have enough information to make detailed plans about people’s lives.

Take Gavin Newsom, the first governor to impose a statewide lockdown (phong tỏa). The California Democrat listed 16 infrastructure sectors deemed so essential (thiết yếu) that they would not have to lock down. Restaurants, hairdressers, gymnasiums, and schools, not being among them, were compelled to close. So were large swaths of the retail economy (ngành  bán lẻ). But Newsom did not base these regulations on a sophisticated understanding of what is essential and what is not. He couldn’t. No one has that understanding, for the reasons Hayek laid out long ago. The list of essential industries came from an old script (kịch bản cũ); it was not highly correlated with the relative value of various industries and was not closely based on risks of spread.

What was missing from the discussion is something known only in the minds of the humans involved: the value of what was lost. Measuring the loss of gross domestic product (GDP) doesn’t quite do it, because the private sector component of GDP is valued at market prices but the value consumers put on goods and services typically exceeds the sticker price. (Economists refer to the value minus the price as consumer surplus.) Gatherings of more than a few people at funerals, for example, were prohibited; many mourners surely valued the gathering they had to miss at more than the ceremony’s price.

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