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Day: March 2, 2021

BEENDET DIE POLITIK DER LOCKDOWNS

Monatelang war die überwältigende Mehrheit der Weltbevölkerung furchtbaren und zermürbenden Lockdowns ausgesetzt: Geschäfte wurden geschlossen, Reisen eingeschränkt und gesellschaftliche Zusammenkünfte auf ein Minimum reduziert.

Die Auswirkungen der COVID-19-Pandemie haben unsere Volkswirtschaften abstürzen lassen, geliebte Menschen voneinander getrennt, Trauerfeiern beeinträchtigt und die persönliche und wirtschaftliche Freiheit ebenso zum Opfer werden lassen wie unsere Gesundheit. In einem Bericht heißt es, dass uns dies in den nächsten fünf Jahren weltweit 82 Billionen US-Dollar kosten könnte – etwa so viel wie unser jährliches globales BIP.

Viele dieser anfänglichen Lockdowns wurden durch politische Empfehlungen der Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO) gerechtfertigt.

Im April rief der Generaldirektor der WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in einem Strategie-Update die Nationen dazu auf, die Lockdowns fortzusetzen, bis die Krankheit unter Kontrolle sei.

Doch nun, mehr als sechs Monate nachdem die Lockdowns zu einem bevorzugten politischen Instrument der Regierungen weltweit geworden sind, fordert die WHO ihre rasche Beendigung.

Dr. David Nabarro, der WHO-Sonderbeauftragte für COVID-19, sagte letzte Woche zu Andrew Neil von britischen Spectator, dass die Politiker mit dem Einsatz von Lockdowns als „hauptsächliche Kontrollmethode“ zur Bekämpfung von COVID-19 falsch lagen.

„Lockdowns haben nur eine Konsequenz, die man niemals verharmlosen darf, und diese ist, arme Menschen sehr viel ärmer zu machen“, sagte Nabarro.

Dr. Michael Ryan, Direktor das Health Emergencies Programm der WHO, äußerte sich ähnlich.

„Was wir versuchen wollen zu vermeiden – und manchmal ist es unvermeidlich, und wir akzeptieren das – aber was wir versuchen wollen zu vermeiden, sind diese massiven Lockdowns, die für die Gemeinschaften, die Gesellschaft und alles sonst so bestrafend sind“, sagte Dr. Ryan bei einem Briefing in Genf.

Dies sind verblüffende Aussagen für eine Organisation, die eine wichtige Autorität und moralische Stimme ist und für die globale Reaktion auf die Pandemie verantwortlich ist.

Die Hinweise der WHO haben jeden einzelnen nationalen und lokalen Lockdown untermauert und sie drohen, bis Ende des Jahres 150 Millionen Menschen in die Armut zu treiben.

Wie Nabarro erklärte, ging es überwiegenden Mehrheit der durch diese Lockdowns geschädigten Menschen am schlechtesten.

Wir alle kennen Menschen, die ihr Geschäft und ihre Arbeit verloren haben und deren Lebensersparnisse sich in Luft aufgelöst haben. Das gilt insbesondere für diejenigen, die im Dienstleistungs- und Gaststättengewerbe arbeiten – Branchen, in denen die Anzahl der Geschäfte durch die Abriegelungspolitik dezimiert wurde.

Und auch wenn die WHO die Nationen auffordert, von Lockdowns Abstand zu nehmen, wenden viele Regierungen weiterhin diese Strategie an. In vielen US-Bundesstaaten bleiben Schulen geschlossen, Bars und Restaurants sind tabu, und große Versammlungen werden – abgesehen von Protesten für soziale Gerechtigkeit – kritisiert und verboten.

Inzwischen werden die Auswirkungen der verlängerten Lockdowns auf junge Menschen deutlicher. Eine kürzlich von der Universität Edinburgh durchgeführte Studie besagt, dass die Schließung von Schulen die Zahl der Todesfälle aufgrund von COVID-19 erhöhen wird. Darüber hinaus heißt es in der Studie, dass die Schließungen „die Epidemie verlängern und in einigen Fällen langfristig zu mehr Todesfällen führen werden“.

Wenn wir weiteren Schaden vermeiden wollen, sollten wir diese katastrophale Politik sofort beenden. Alle neuen Aufrufe zur Verhängung von Lockdowns sollten von nun an mit äußerster Skepsis betrachtet werden.

Es ist Zeit, dass der Irrsinn ein Ende hat. Nicht nur, weil die Weltgesundheitsorganisation dies sagt, sondern weil unser Leben davon abhängt.

Wie die Ärzte und Wissenschaftler in der diesen Monat in Massachusetts unterzeichneten Erklärung von Grand Barrington feststellten, hatten die „physischen und psychischen Auswirkungen der vorherrschenden COVID-19-Politik“ selbst verheerende gesundheitliche Auswirkungen, kurz- und langfristig.

Wir können unsere Gesundheit und unser Wohlbefinden nicht weiterhin langfristig aufs Spiel setzen, indem wir kurzfristig unsere Wirtschaft herunterfahren und unsere Bevölkerung einsperren. Es gibt nur einen einzigen Weg nach vorn, und zwar indem wir versuchen, uns von den ruinösen Auswirkungen der Regierungspolitiken im Zusammenhang mit COVID-19 zu erholen.

Originally published here.

Australia’s Attempted Blackmail of Facebook Shows the Pendulum Swings Back on Consumers

Imagine this scenario: At the behest of several large legacy news outlets, a government institutes a law requiring that every time a news story is linked to on social media, the social network must pay a fee to news outlets.

In other words, to allow a newspaper column or celebrity gossip blog link to appear elsewhere, that website will have to shell out money to the news outlet where it originated.

While such a case seems laughable here in the United States, home to Silicon Valley, that is precisely what Australia recently attempted in its escalating war against tech companies like Facebook and Google.

And countries like Canada, the United Kingdom, India, and France are lining up to be next.

Late last year, the News Media Bargaining Code was introduced in the Australian Parliament to “address bargaining power imbalances between Australian news media businesses and digital platforms.” The bill was the multi-year effort of the country’s competition and consumer commission, requested by the conservative-leaning Liberal Party.

In pitching the law, Prime Minister Scott Morrison made all the necessary overtures signaling opposition to “Big Tech.”

By imposing a link tax on tech firms, the idea was to bolster Australian media companies that have been losing advertising revenue to these platforms. But that comes at a significant cost to both consumer choice and to the openness of the Internet itself.

The founder of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, said such a proposal would make the Internet “unworkable,” imposing costs and taxes on what is supposed to be a free space on the open network. In other words, these regulations would likely halt the most basic principles the internet was founded on in the first place.

It is up to media firms to discover innovative and effective methods of capturing digital audiences, not lobby governments to siphon money for them.

Google conceded early in the fight, creating a “news showcase” in countries like Australia, the UK, and Argentina that would offer some premiums to publishers. But Facebook stood its ground.

And though Morrison and his fellow parliamentarians unleashed the pendulum, it eventually swung back hard against Australian consumers.

Recently, millions of Australians logged onto Facebook to find out they could no longer share links or articles from Australian news sites. Rather than upend their business model to comply with proposed legislation, the company decided to block domestic news from being shared on the platform altogether.

It was a bold move intended to demonstrate to the government that media outlets need Facebook more than they need them.

As of Tuesday, however, Facebook has announced it has struck individual agreements with smaller publishers in the commonwealth country.

“After further discussions with the Australian government, we have come to an agreement that will allow us to support the publishers we choose to, including small and local publishers,” said Facebook global news VP Campbell Brown.

This precedent is important for two reasons.

First, Australia’s bill is one of the most brazen attempts to use domestic media law to score revenue from an American tech company.

Second, it shows that this has everything to do with bailing out traditional media companies and almost nothing to do with consumers.

Much like in the European Union and some Latin American countries, the fixation on taxing and restricting tech companies based in the United States hinges on getting a piece of the pie. Concern for the consumer, and their continued access to information online, is secondary.

We have seen it with Uber and Apple in Brussels and London, and it will no doubt continue as tax-starved countries attempt to reign in what they perceive as the golden goose.

That is why these policies are so destructive to consumers and the fundamental principles to an open Internet.

The key to media outlets thriving and evolving in the digital age will be innovation and creativity, all of which benefit consumers, not bans, tax hikes, or zealous media laws.

Originally published here.

Free trade: a recovery plan with a guarantee of success

If the economy is to recover while learning the lessons of the crisis, all countries are interested in participating in world trade, not turning their backs on it.

On 31 July 2020, the free trade agreement between the European Union and Vietnam officially came into force. Since that date, 71% of customs duties on Vietnamese exports have been lifted, and 65% of taxes on EU exports to Vietnam. This agreement will eventually lead to the elimination of 99% of customs duties between the two parties. The rest of the duties will be lifted gradually over the next ten years for EU exports and Vietnamese exports over the next seven years.

While the European economy is trying to recover from the devastating effects of lockdowns, the news has not been greeted with much enthusiasm.

In France, public opinion has perhaps never been as unfavourable to free trade as in this crisis. According to an Odoxa-Comfluence poll published in April, 9 out of 10 French people want the government to guarantee “France’s agricultural autonomy” and favour “the relocation of industrial companies”. The country’s executive which, not so long ago, defended an “open France”, today hammered home the idea that “consumption must be local”. As if free trade was beneficial in regular times but ceased to be so in times of crisis. 

On the contrary, as economist Thomas Sowell points out in his economics textbook (which is not consulted enough by politicians), “the last thing a country needs when real national income is falling is a policy that makes it fall even faster, depriving consumers of the benefits of being able to buy what they want at the lowest price”. 

As people look to their industries to boost the economy, turning their backs on the essential principle of comparative advantage, it is too often forgotten that free trade has always been a powerful lever for prosperity. This is not a matter of debate among economists. As Gregory Mankiw explained in 2018 in an op-ed piece in the New York Times, the exchange between nations is not fundamentally different from the exchange between individuals: “We are engaged in the task we do best, and we depend on other people for most of the goods and services we consume”. Furthermore, as David Ricardo later noted, you don’t even have to be the best in a field to get a job because specialisation in itself leads to productivity gains that the whole community can then benefit from. The larger the market, the greater these gains. So you can never have enough globalisation! 

For example, over the last forty years, globalised value chains have allowed developing countries to increase and begin to catch up with rich countries, while rich countries have benefited from cheaper and often better quality consumer goods.

Contrary to popular belief, this development has therefore not been to the detriment of the Western working classes but to their advantage. A study conducted on 40 countries and relayed in 2016 by the newspaper The Economist shows that if international trade were to come to an abrupt halt, all social classes would lose out: the richest consumers would lose 28% of their purchasing power, and consumers in the first decile would see their purchasing power cut by 63% compared to its current level. The words of economist Thomas Sowell take on their full meaning. 

However, these globalised value chains, which are the source of so many gains for consumers, are now the target of much criticism. The virus is said to have revealed the shortcomings of the “ultra-globalised” system. 

Nevertheless, a closer look at the problem reveals that it is not so much hyper-globalisation as hyper-concentration that is at its origin. Therefore, relocating production to Europe does not solve the problem of dependence on a single geographical area or a single producer. Conversely, globalisation allows the diversification of supply sources and is by nature much more resilient than any autarkic system. 

If the economy is to recover while learning the lessons of the crisis, all countries are interested in participating in world trade, not turning their backs on it. Free trade has already lifted entire nations out of poverty, so why should it not now be one of the solutions to the crisis?

Originally published here.

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