I read "Deadly Pretence" - 1. After the prediction of the epidemic

I read Hayek's "Deadly Ego"

1. Predict the post-pandemic

At the end of 2019, a ghostly shadow spreads quietly in Jingchu. No one knew at the time that a human catastrophe was brewing. Just as the people of China were eagerly preparing for the Chinese New Year, the disaster began to break out. First Wuhan, then Hubei, soon spread across China, and the fear of death caused everyone to huddle in their dorm rooms and look out the windows in horror. Although we were 1,500 kilometers away from Wuhan at that time, we were also in panic.

Due to the slow government action, a large number of people who may have been infected with the disease have spread all over the country and even around the world. It is said that a research team from the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom found based on big data that from January 10 to January 23, before Wuhan was closed, 5 million people left Wuhan, most of them in various parts of China, and nearly 60,000 people arrived There are at least 834 confirmed patients in 382 cities outside mainland China. As a result, the world is under the shadow of the virus attack.

During the first ten days of Wuhan’s lockdown, the local government’s announcements kept reporting local confirmed cases, but the locations and routes of confirmed patients were always not disclosed. Fortunately, we prepared enough food for the Chinese New Year, and the refrigerator was big enough. We basically did not go downstairs during the whole Spring Festival. Except for not landing for a day to learn about the various news announced by the government, we were eager to read it through WeChat in various communities. All kinds of rumors spread silently. Due to the government's sluggish handling of the crisis in the early stages of the pandemic and the apparent intentional concealment and delay, people are full of internal complaints about the authoritarian system in China and the government's strict control over speech. Occasionally learned information from overseas media is also cynical, criticizing China for delaying the opportunity due to its rigid system.

At that time, people in Wuhan and people who had been to Wuhan were like rats crossing the street in the whole country. In rural areas, perhaps as in the previous war of resistance against Japan, villages and towns acted independently, digging roads, blocking roads, cutting off traffic, and any outsider was the enemy's spies. People in their own village are also on guard against each other. Those who play mahjong must be caught and punished, and those who disobey are knocked down and beaten. In short, the whole country is in a state of turmoil, and the grass and trees are all soldiers.

With the in-depth reports of responsible media such as Caixin and the dissemination of Wuhan writer Fang Fang's diary, people have added anger to the fear of what happened in Wuhan, which is the most strictly blocked city. People in such places are full of sympathy. As the epidemic was gradually brought under control, people's nervousness gradually eased, but complaints about the rigid system still exist, and calls for accountability have continued.

From the beginning of February, as the epidemic on the Diamond Princess cruise ship became more and more serious, the epidemic broke out in South Korea and Italy, and finally the epidemic spread rapidly in Europe and the United States. At this time, the epidemic situation in mainland China has receded. Under the guidance of public opinion, the Chinese people's mood gradually reversed. They gradually transitioned from happiness to pride for their fortune to survive the crisis. They began to laugh at major overseas countries, and even began to gloat at the West. Those who advocate freedom have suffered disasters, and they shouted that foreigners should quickly "copy homework" and that other countries should learn from China's governance model.

Since late March, the voices in various forums applauding China's system began to increase, and the voices became louder and louder. If you casually search for "epidemic", you can see that there are a lot of "institutional advantages" that appear at the same time, and "post-epidemic" is accompanied by "socialism" that appears frequently. Just look at the titles of these posts, "After this epidemic, I think there will be a few more socialist countries", "Major epidemic highlights the superiority of the socialist system", etc., you can see how much the authors and authors of those posts are. pride.

The People's Daily Online Forum published a large article "It is predicted that after the global epidemic is over, the United States will accelerate the learning of the experience of socialist countries! ”, claiming that China’s socialist system has played an important role in this epidemic, predicting that after the global epidemic is over, capitalist countries such as the United States may accelerate the learning of advanced experience in socialist country governance, and at the same time confirm that in this epidemic After that, capitalist countries such as the United States will turn from prosperity to decline, and the world will gradually form a new world order centered on China. Due to the tragic disaster caused by the epidemic, the people of the West will surely reflect deeply on this disaster, as well as the individualism and liberalism they used to respect, and more people will respect and accept the collectivism and self-restraint of the Easterners Spirit. I remember that in the past, many articles always said that the Chinese people were scattered, but now they have become collectivist. It's just that all these articles are silent about the concealment in the early stage of the epidemic and the failure of the early warning mechanism and other systemic reasons.

In the period after the end of March, in addition to the demand for tracing the source of the epidemic and accountability, there are also articles discussing socialism in overseas public opinion. The British "epidemic socialism" under the "Pandemic Socialism"", which believes that Johnson has quietly led the United Kingdom into a mode of "saving capitalism with socialism", which has made the future of British politics a lot of fog. Science America also has an article, Will COVID-19 Make Us More Socialist? ”, the title of the article in “Independent Australia” is “Politics and Pandemics: COVID-19 May Spark a Socialist Outbreak”, it seems that everyone is discussing the resurgence of socialist ideas in various countries around the world after the epidemic. .

Obviously, European and American countries have exposed the dilemma of the crisis response of the democratic system in the process of dealing with the epidemic. They have not been able to stop all industrial and commercial activities at all costs, implement completely closed management, and strictly limit the activities of the people like China. As a result, many articles argue that the coronavirus pandemic proves the failure of capitalism or the fragility of a free society.

The BBC has an April 1 article by Simon Mair, How will the coronavirus change the world? ” (How will coronavirus change the world?), which believes that the core logic of the epidemic and climate change is as simple as the epidemic has caused huge changes in lifestyles, and there are many possibilities in the future, all of which depend on how the government and society respond. The coronavirus and its economic consequences. Hopefully we'll use this crisis to rebuild and produce something better and more humane, but we may end up in a much worse situation. The article also pointed out that the epidemic has exposed the limitations of free market capitalism. In terms of how the economic outlook will unfold, the article argues that, as the response to the virus evolves, there are four possible futures from an economic perspective: degenerate barbarism, strong state capitalism, Radical state socialism and the transition to a big society built on mutual aid. This last model of mutual aid is also called "grass-roots socialism" by some articles.

Typical examples of state capitalism are the United Kingdom, Spain, and Denmark, where the state responds centrally, societies continue to pursue exchange value as a guiding ideology in economic terms, the state focuses on expanding welfare, and also implements large-scale Keynesian stimulus.

The brutalist approach is a fragmented response that pursues only the economy and refuses to provide support to those driven out of the market by illness or unemployment because there is no mechanism in place to protect them from the harsh realities of the market, and the result is business Fail, and workers starve.

National Socialism is a focused response, prioritizing the protection of lives, while extending the measures currently seen in the UK, Spain and Denmark, paying everyone directly, irrespective of the value they create, and all being paid the same. But if there is a severe recession and supply chains are disrupted, and those standard Keynesian policies (printing money, flooding loans, etc.) don't save demand, the state could take over production. What needs to be vigilant is that the risk of dictatorship will follow.

The Mutual Aid approach is the state's decentralized response, prioritizing the protection of life, where individuals and small groups begin to organize support and care within their communities. The risk going forward is, for example, that small groups are not able to quickly mobilize the resources needed to effectively increase healthcare capacity. In the future, new democratic structures may emerge, resulting in community groups capable of mobilizing substantial resources at relatively rapid rates.

The article continues to comment on the current situation: the epidemic has exposed serious flaws in the existing system, and an effective response to this may require radical social changes, and emerging social forms place greater emphasis on caring, life, and democratic ethics. , building a more humane system that makes us more resilient in the face of future pandemics and other looming crises such as climate change.

Judging from the BBC article, several other systems have merits except barbarism. Among them, the National Socialist approach is particularly worth considering, but it is quite difficult to avoid dictatorship. Which model is China's current model closest to? The article didn't say it, so I wouldn't be able to take a seat at random.

Perhaps it is precisely because the voices calling for socialism have become louder during the recent epidemic, and the Mises Institute, which is responsible for revival of Misesian liberalism, also published an article "Calling for Centralization in the COVID-19 Panic" The plan is like an appeal to the "war socialism" of the old days." The article believes that during the epidemic, some countries intervened in the operation of enterprises in a state of emergency, directly instructing the production activities of enterprises, temporarily closing borders, severely hindering the international division of labor, and restricting personal activities. In conclusion, similar to during the war, government intervention in epidemics can be seen as a form of war socialism.

According to Hayek's mentor Mises: "War socialism is by no means complete socialism, but if it adheres to the path that (Germany) has taken in the past, it is fully, truly socialized." The reason is that the "corona socialism" this time is considered temporary, and the property rights of enterprises have not changed. But without a quick end to the war against the coronavirus and corrective measures, socialism will continue. In any case, the epidemic has completely reversed the dominant trend of the past 40 years. In response to the epidemic, most governments have increased the concentration of power and implemented a certain degree of central planning of economic activities. The decisiveness in the epidemic also highlights the advantages. After the epidemic, will those governments that took the opportunity to centralize power still decentralize the power they took away? Will it abandon central planning and restore a full market economy? Was it as predicted: the global explosion of socialist systems and authoritarian politics? Hayek wrote a book "The Road to Serfdom" as early as the 1940s, revealing that the socialist centrally planned economy was the road to totalitarian rule, in time to prevent Western countries from going the road to socialism after the war the trend of. Hayek opposed socialist economic and political theory throughout his life, and the last book he wrote was still a critical work of socialism, titled "Deadly Pretence: The Fallacy of Socialism". Just like drinking two or two old wines to suppress fears in the face of a crisis, at this critical moment, should people who support capitalism and people who love freedom find this book and read it aloud a few times? It seems that I have to look for it too, to see how fallaciously conceited socialism is. Besides, is there no better way to go in today's world than this "road to slavery"?