Episode 158: “After Covid: Recovering Our Liberty” with Don Boudreaux and John Tamny

It’s almost two years on from the onset of the Covid virus and we know a lot now that we didn’t then. Society should be healing. But we live in vitriolic and partisan times, and widespread disagreement abounds about what it was, what it is, what it isn’t and how to cope with it.  Yet to those who understand how economies work, this much seems clear: governments’ blunderbuss one-size-fits-all lockdowns and mandates have turned a manageable public health problem into a social, medical and economic catastrophe.  It did not have to be this way. Joining me on this episode to talk about the price we’ve paid and where we go from here are two of our most independent economic and social thinkers: Donald Boudreaux,  professor of economics at George Mason University, who runs the “go to” blog “Cafe Hayek” which has become a critical resource for facts about Covid and sensible response strategies. And John Tamny, editor of Real Clear Markets, a Forbes Magazine editor and the author of “The End of Work” and “When Politicians Panicked: The New Coronavirus, Expert Opinion, and a Tragic Lapse of Reason”.   John and Don cover a lot of ground: the damage done to our civil liberties, the labor market, the politicization of “science”, the madness of declaring businesses essential or non-essential, supply chains, social media censorship, how lockdowns were used to usher in the new era of mail-in ballots and how rule by experts - think Anthony Fauci - failed.  We needed leadership wise enough to let sensible Americans take the measures we used in every pandemic over the last century. Instead, we got draconian lockdowns and mandates. As Don clarifies, “No doubt, a lot of these people thought they were acting in the best interest of society, but it's completely antithetical to the principles of a free society.” Listen in here as we explore how to recover our Liberty.