Government central planning always = misallocation and misery.
CoronaCrisis has been the cover under which governments have taken over the private sector of the economy, nationalized the medical supply chain, and declared restrictions on the provision of medical care, thereby creating a framework for socialized medicine while circumventing the legislative process.
Right before the assorted state Dictators started to order businesses to close, I had just picked up two nifty, new pairs of prescription glasses – regular and sunglasses. Nearly, $1,000 bucks worth, only I paid < $500 after using vision insurance + 1/2 off the second pair.
A couple days later, boom, the store was closed when I went back for a frame ‘adjustment’ to have the fit fine-tuned. A couple of days later one part of the frame sides broke loose, so we fixed it, and it broke loose again. {That break-fix cycle has repeated for the last 6 weeks.} Then one of the lenses started falling out. The frame is defective. So I had to revert to an older pair that did not give me clear vision. I put up with that bullshit for 6 weeks. Vision, apparently, is not a medical need. Seeing what’s in front of you is, apparently, “non-essential.”
Last Friday, the store told me they were re-opening today, so I showed up at 9am and walked in. The owner said, “sorry, we aren’t open to the public.” I said I was told, on Friday, that he was opening today. He told me the county government told him he could open today, and then over the weekend they stopped him from opening today. I saw those crazed social distancing signs piled up all over the store, and a pile of floor stickers for “distancing.” We discussed what was going on at some length. I won’t repeat it all here except that he told me, “I see we think alike on this whole thing.” He said government was making his life hell, requiring all of these impracticable modifications in order for him to open. He and two employees spend all day, every day, trying to conform to these myriad mandates and arbitrary directives.
He told me he is in a holding pattern, attending these stupid, disoriented daily conference calls, trying to figure out what he has to do, and when he can open to serve his customers. He’s being jacked around by the county government on a daily basis. He gave me a new pair of frames so I could get on with things.
The abuse of position and power and takeover of markets by these busybody-scheming, Communist bureaucrats is an act of criminality. As Richard Ebeling wrote, “How else other than political paternalism, democratic despotism, societal central planning, Big Brother totalitarianism do you call such a proposed system of government and arrangement of social and economic affairs?”
4:40 pm on May 4, 2020
