As the COVID-19 pandemic has evolved and we’ve learned more about the virus, the way we manage it should have evolved as well. From a policymaking perspective, step one is acknowledging that it’s one of many risks we face in life; we need to weigh up all of life’s risks as we decide how to tackle […]
Coronavirus contemplations II
Some further contemplations of mine regarding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. How has the US performed during the pandemic? When I first shared a series of contemplations in March 2020 at the onset of the pandemic, I noted David Harsanyi’s prediction that the United States would be the best place to ride it out. This was […]
Unleashing New Zealand’s Potential and Suppressing Washington State’s—Lessons for Texas
<This speech was delivered to the Dallas Chapter of the Bastiat Society on June 17, 2021> In 1847, French economist Frédéric Bastiat, this society’s namesake, published a facetious petition to the king now known as “The Right Hand and the Left”. In it he laid bare the fallacy of some of his contemporaries that if […]
US healthcare system comes to aid of another Kiwi
Headline in the New Zealand Herald: Rare health condition: Government to pay for Melody Klein Ovink’s life-saving US surgery This story strikes home for me because this woman is going through the same thing my Uncle Charles went through 70 years ago. Like this girl, my uncle had a condition New Zealand’s universal healthcare system […]
When CEOs don’t stand up for free markets
<This op-ed first appeared in the Washington Examiner on April 25, 2021> It’s one thing for business leaders to sit out policy debates, but it’s quite another for them to argue for policies that will harm long-term shareholder interests. Yet that’s what we’re witnessing today with the likes of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos supporting raising the […]