Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz must be prancing around like excited schoolgirls about Ebola, say Chris Campbell & Daniel Oliver in this Guest Post.
We’ve given Ebola a lot of thought this weekend. And how different this crisis would be without the government getting in the way.
Despite the insanely underwhelming (yet typical) response from the government, most people can’t imagine that we could deal with any type of crisis without government intervention.
Most are inundated with the idea that we need government in our lives for crises like these. We know this simply isn’t true. It’s when the government gets out of the way that the magic happens.
How effectively would the private sector act if the state got out of the way?
While pondering this, we came across the same question on the inquiry website Quora. (Quora, if you haven’t been, is a place where people can ask questions and let others vote on the answers. It’s a great research tool. Highly recommended.)
The question was, how would a non-interventionist state respond to the Ebola crisis?
The answer, of course, is they wouldn’t have to.
Here’s a screenshot of the original question…
And here’s the highest-voted answer from one user, Rob Weir:
I’m puzzled about what part of the state’s lacklustre response you would hold up as a shining example of what only an interventionist state could do?
In any case, a libertarian response would include things like: