The reliance of think tank neoliberals on a core set of ideas to interpret the Covid-19 crisis provided a cohesive narrative of the pandemic as a crisis poorly managed and worsened by an incompetent state. This cohesive narrative naturally allowed for the production of a common narrative about the policies that should be implemented to resolve the crisis and the effects of the temporary shutdown of the world economy.
Here as well, an inherent strategic strength to neoliberal ideas becomes apparent, because forming crisis interpretations around a fundamental scepticism of the state allows neoliberal think tanks to present themselves as outside of the halls of power and outside of mainstream of policy discourse. They can remain, in the words of Tim Worstall at the ASI, ‘radicals’ (Worstall Interview 2023).
Ahem…..
And:
Worstall, Tim (02.03.2021a). ‘We’re in for decades of austerity’ [online]. Adam Smith Institute. Available at: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/were-in-for-decades-of-austerity. [Accessed on 22.04.2024].
Worstall, Tim (02.09.2020d). ‘People do indeed question what doesn’t seem to work Polly’ [online]. Adam Smith Institute. Available at: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/people-do-indeed-question-what-doesnt-seem-to-work-polly. [Accessed on 22.04.2024].
Worstall, Tim (06.05.2020c). ‘As we’ve been seeing all these years’ [online]. Adam Smith Institute. Available at: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/as-weve-been-saying-all-these-years. [Accessed on 22.04.2024].
Worstall, Tim (10.09.2020e). ‘The government’s sugar strategy is having problems’ [online]. Adam Smith Institute. Available at: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/the-governments-sugar-strategy-is-having-problems. [Accessed on 22.04.2024].
Worstall, Tim (12.12.2020h). ‘How fashionable opinion doth gyre and gimbal the wind’ [online]. Adam Smith Institute. Available at: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/how-fashionable-opinion-doth-gyre-and-gimbal-in-the-wind. [Accessed on 22.04.2024].
Worstall, Tim (14.05.2021c). ‘We are unconvinced that the WHO is the solution’ [online]. Adam Smith Institute. Available at: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/we-are-unconvinced-that-the-who-is-the-solution. [Accessed on 22.04.2024].
Worstall, Tim (21.11.2021d). ‘Stasis isn’t a good loook for an economy – nor a civilisation’ [online]. Adam Smith Institute. Available at: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/stasis-isnt-a-good-look-for-an-economy-nor-a-civilisation. [Accessed on 22.04.2024].
Worstall, Tim (23.03.2021b). ‘We would regard this as a stunning victory ourselves’ [online]. Adam Smith Institute. Available at: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/we-would-regard-this-as-a-stunning-victory-ourselves. [Accessed on 22.04.2024].
Worstall, Tim (27.04.2020a). ‘Of course it will be different after than before’ [online]. Adam Smith Institute. Available at: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/of-course-it-will-be-different-after-than-before. [Accessed on 22.04.2024].
Worstall, Tim (28.04.2020b). ‘We can hope at least, we can hope’ [online]. Adam Smith Institute. Available at: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/we-can-hope-at-least-we-can-hope. [Accessed on 22.04.2024].
Worstall, Tim (28.10.2020g). ‘Which role of the state in the economy?’ [online]. Adam Smith Institute. Available at: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/which-role-of-the-state-in-the-economy. [Accessed on 22.04.2024].
Worstall, Tim (30.09.2020f). ‘We disagree, significantly, with the IFS here’ [online]. Adam Smith Institute. Available at: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/we-disagree-significantly-with-the-ifs-here. [Accessed on 22.04.2024].
Worstall, Tim (2023). ‘ASI Interview 1’
Fun that blog posts are now a source for academic papers, no?
I wish these cunts would fuck off with their “narratives”. The world is not a narrative. It does what it does, empiricists observe it, and if they observe it well, they can point to chains of cause and effect. POSIWID.
“Ideologies are fairy stories for grown-ups.” – Thomas Sowell
Spot on, o-one ‘forms crisis interpretations around a fundamental scepticism of the state ‘, they simply observe that a crisis managed by the state always devolves into chaos…
Pro. Jec. Tion….
Of course, *their* organised Narrative is the Hallowed Truth, and don’t you doubt it, you Neoliberal Nazi PoopiePants!!!
The world is not a narrative.
Yes. Narratives are interpretations. And some interpretations are plausible and evidence-based, while others are implausible or fictional. But empiricism, at least as POSIWID, doesn’t help us distinguish which is which, because there are no brute facts. All facts involve some interpretation because all perception is ultimately theory-dependent. Human perception is shaped not only by evolution but also by experience, culture and beliefs.
“there was a common narrative that the costs of shutting down the economy were not being weighed properly, particularly the effects on individuals and their wellbeing (Bagus 2020b, Bagus 2020a, Härting 2020, Butler and Lesh 2020, Jessop 2020a). This feeds into neoliberals’ core construction of the state as tending towards subsuming the individuals’ capacity for making decisions and taking risks, usually applied to the theory of the interventionist state intruding upon the entrepreneurial endeavours necessary to the functioning of a free market economy, but here broadened to include health decisions (Pirie 2020, Mueller Interview 2023, Interview 6, 7 2023).”
I don’t know how anyone can say it was weighed properly. Within 3 months, we knew who was dying with a Covid-19 diagnosis and it was people over 80 or with other health problems. It’s not a bad idea to be precautionary with a new pandemic, but we should have opened everything up after that and just managed the needs of the elderly.
That would have shut down all the opportunities for grift and power-grabbing. Look at what actually happened.
We should never have shut down, full stop.
Leaving aside that to do so they ripped up all previous pandemic preparedness plans and required them to redefine relevant words – most oddly, in concert with all other western nations bar Sweden – even a three-month closure would have cause catastrophic damage to the economy and to the lives of the people they (as supposed to) serve.
I guess. I’m just saying that this wasn’t even a matter of unknows after 3 months. We knew the impact and that it wasn’t going to be some massive thing.
The only person present at the COBR A meeting where lockdown was proposed who thought to ask if a cost / benefit analysis had been done was Jesse Norman MP.
The answer was “no”.
What also seems to be forgotten is that life expectancy correlates strongly with wealthy societies. Lockdowns have made us all vastly, measurably worse off. Therefore, we ought to be seeing a measurable decrease in life expectancy over the next few decades.
There are people who welcome that.
Well it was never about a pandemic. Of course the virus was created in a Chinese lab and then leaked – I don’t think anyone seriously questions that who wasn’t at least indirectly involved in the program.
The key aspect of the program was the lockdowns. With ‘Disease X’ waiting in the wings, and the ‘Climate Change’ hobgoblin also being flogged increasingly aggressively, this was a dry run for permanent lockdown under either auspices. Whether it’s ‘Agenda 2030’ or ‘The Great Reset’ the program is similar – universal servitude and oligarchic rule.To save the planet, dontcha know!!
Of course there are still people who believe that a government like the one under Starmer, unquestionably the worst seen in British, and several would say, world history, is being run with the people’s best interests at heart. Sadly there is literally no way of awakening some people to reality.
“Of course the virus was created in a Chinese lab and then leaked – I don’t think anyone seriously questions that”
Oh yes they do. Some think it was created in the US and then passed to the Wuhan lab for testing on species of bats unavailable in US labs. Then some idiot let it out into the market in Wuhan.
Within 3 months, we knew who was dying with a Covid-19 diagnosis and it was people over 80 or with other health problems. It’s not a bad idea to be precautionary with a new pandemic…
Precisely, WB: the rational and unideological approach, though 3 months is probably a little too long.
“We” knew by the end of February 2020, or at least everyone who read about the Diamond Princess did. The whole debacle was unpardonable: we had had a policy set out after calm deliberation and debate in 2012 and it was rejected in favour of panic and hysteria.
Well, rejected by the UK government. The Swedish government adopted it.
Turned out it was us, not the Vikings, who were the berserkers in 2020.
Agreed, the talk about flattening the curve to protect the health care system was a reasonable approach, right up until the point that infections started falling before the first lockdown. At that point it was obvious that the measures that most people were voluntarily taking were enough to protect the system and policy makers should have concentrated on the most vulnerable.
My reaction to the totalitarian COVID fiasco was “String ’em all up, the lying bastards! Build a pile of skulls!”
What does that make me? Neo-Hunnish? Neo-Mongol? A classical liberal?
A scotsman with a justified grievance?
And thereby a ray of sunshine. Or not.
A human being who hasn’t been brainwashed?
My only quibble is that hanging might be too quick a death – or that drawing and quartering is required. Especially for Whitty and Vallance
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”Goerge Orwell, 1984
Hanging in Chains (The Gibbet) but not post-mortem.
Surely a tzompantli would be more decorative?