Learning From Crises? – Some Philosophical and Politico-Economic Considerations in the Light of the Covid-19 Pandemic

As Boettke et al. (2007, p. 363) emphasize “Disasters, whether man-made or natural, represent a ‘natural experiment’ for social scientists”. They refer to a very famous quote from John Stuart Mill (1849, pp. 74–75) concerning the value of free economics for the recovery after crises: “This perpetual consumption and reproduction of capital affords the explanation of what has so often excited wonder, the great rapidity with which countries recover from a state of devastation; the disappearance, in a short time, of all traces of the mischiefs done by earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and the ravages of war. An enemy lays waste a country by fire and sword, and destroys or carries away nearly all the moveable wealth existing in it; all the inhabitants are ruined, and yet, in a few years after, everything is much as it was before.”