1776 was quite a year for faith in markets. In March, Adam Smith made the case for a light touch on taxes and trade in The Wealth of Nations. His work would become the foundational text for supply side economics. In July, Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence stated the purpose for the revolution that had begun fifteen months earlier: an unrelenting belief among the colonists that a society organized by the individual wills of a free and independent people best protects the inalienable rights of all. As nations put these ideas into action over the next two centuries, billions escaped extreme poverty and generational increases in prosperity became the norm. But over the same time, progressives have countered that a strong central government must curb self-interested behavior to bring about equality. They sought to exclude entire areas of the economy from free market organization, and to put those areas in the charge of altruistic technical experts. It was no surprise, then, that progressives and other technocrats would apply a top-down approach to combatting the novel coronavirus. Too many health authorities and politicians ignored the signals coming from markets that conflicted with the advice of “the experts”. Had they respected and investigated those signals instead of dismissing them, they could have both effected better policy and lessened the division which would cripple the nation’s response.
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