The fog of ignorance argument for minarchy

It appears that the decisions about lockdown were not well taken:

Scientists did not have accurate Covid case numbers, and were unsure of hospitalisation and death rates when they published models suggesting that more than 500,000 people could die if Britain took no action in the first wave of the pandemic, it has emerged.

That’s a bit of a blow to the accuracy of any predictions or models.

Yet as Britain’s epidemic begins to fade away, it is becoming increasingly clear that many influential scientists were ignored, ridiculed and shunned for expressing moderate views that the virus could be managed in a way which would cause far less collateral damage.

Instead, a narrow scientific “groupthink” emerged, which sought to cast those questioning draconian policies as unethical, immoral and fringe. That smokescreen is finally starting to dissipate.

We agree that public health policy in the face of a pandemic is not quite the place to be arguing for laissez faire. Something had to be decided after all - that Swedish model is looking ever better, as at least one of us recommended at the time.

However, our point here is something larger. It also involves letting everyone in on a little secret. Every decision about anything is taken in this same fog of ignorance. No one at all knows the entirety of the economy nor society. Everyone is making certain guesses about reality when they make a decision about anything at all.

Which is the argument for minarchy of course. Government is no better - at best, it’s entirely possible to outline ways in which it is worse starting with the quality of the people making the decisions - at this than the private sector. The big difference being that government makes the mistake for everyone. Any business decision makes it for that business alone. Or, to widen a little, any organisation makes it for the staff, suppliers and consumers of that organisation alone, profit is not the defining difference here.

If every decision suffers from the same problems of information lack, groupthink and just plain commonplace incompetence then we would rather each and every decision affect smaller, not all, areas of everything.

The useful argument in favour of minarchy is therefore that decentralisation of power allows mistakes to only cock up part of, not all of, life. Which, given recent governmental performance across the near entirety of the rich world seems like a useful argument in favour of that minarchy, doesn’t it?