The coronavirus outbreak offers another view of the limits of central planning.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) issued one of the more sweeping responses to the COVID-19 outbreak on Thursday evening: he ordered all “non-life-preserving” businesses in the state to close, indefinitely.
“To protect the health and safety of all Pennsylvanians, we need to take more aggressive mitigation actions,” Wolf said in a statement announcing the new anti-virus measures. “We need to act with the strength we use against any other severe threat. And, we need to act now before the illness spreads more widely.”
Acting “with strength” meant threatening fines, citations, and the loss of licenses to any business who defied Wolf’s order for more than a day—the order to close took effect at 8 p.m. on Thursday, but enforcement would be postponed until Saturday morning, the governor’s statement explained.
Eric Boehm – Reason – March 21, 2020.
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