I noticed in passing two articles over at instabundant. I’ll give you just a snippet of each.
Challenged by Clayton over Twitter no longer flagging up so- called Covid “misinformation” (aka, things posted by lockdown sceptics like me which usually turned out to be true), Elon inquired mischievously [1]:
“Does the BBC hold itself at all responsible for misinformation
regarding masking and side-effects of vaccinations and not reporting on
that at all?”You could cut the silence with a knife.
“And what about the fact that the BBC was put under pressure by the
British government to change the editorial policy, are you aware of
that?” Musk taunted.“This is not an interview about the BBC,” spluttered Clayton.
We’ve discussed the misinformation coming out of the government with regards to covid-19 before, and it’s rather obvious [2] that the number of things the government got wrong and still refused to admit that they’ve gotten wrong, isn’t helping the state of health care in this country or in the world for that matter.
And as an aside, Musk got this one absolutely correctly.
But now, let’s turn the page to a different subject… The Biden administration’s insistence on electric vehicles.
“The Biden administration should let the market decide. Clearly, there is a demand for electric vehicles. But by insisting on the rate at which the industry needs to make the transition, the administration’s incentives could be undermining progress. Axios noted this week that ‘battery technology is still evolving…meaning the U.S. may be at risk of building mines and factories to produce batteries that wind up being obsolete in a decade.’ As Reason‘s Ronald Bailey wrote in the March 2023 issue, electrochemists are already devising new methods of powering electric cars that don’t use scarce materials. By imposing such a breakneck timeline, the EPA is forcing automakers to choose production over innovation.”
Already, you’re going to tell me that this little commentary is slightly disjointed and I suppose that you’d be quite correct… it is.
However that may be, let’s look at the commonality between the two subjects: the government mandates.
In both cases and frankly in almost all cases, government forcing themselves into situations where they don’t not belong such as the two above is not helpful. In fact, more often than not it’s hurtful. As Ronald Reagan used to say, government isn’t the solution, government is the problem.