How the Religious Mind – vs Political Arrogance – Copes with Death by Robert E. Wright for American Institute for Economic Research
I usually write to try to persuade, as I did way back at the beginning of the COVID Crisis when on 4 March I tried to convince policymakers that “human beings have a natural right to self-preservation. They exist for their own enjoyment, not to serve as the pawns of anyone or anything, even during putative crises.” Few listened, though some judges are finally beginning to wake up to the fact that the US and state constitutions are the most important victims of the crisis because they are the bulwarks protecting all of our lives from those who would harm us.
In this piece, though, I am just going to explain a conversation I overheard in a diner in Hill City, South Dakota over Memorial Day weekend between a Minnesota couple and a local man. Minnesotans invaded the Black Hills (that’s where Mount Rushmore is located, plus lots of lakes, hiking trails, etc.) over the holiday because their economy is still locked down while South Dakota’s has remained almost entirely open throughout.
So open, in fact, that policymakers and business leaders from across the country should visit it, and/or the other Free States of North Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, and Arkansas, to learn how to re-open. Sweden has been getting all sorts of attention but the Free States have done just as well, all while bearing the burden of feeding much of the rest of the country and accepting its refugees, if only as weekend tourists. Instead of lamenting that they do not know how to reopen safely, and ignoring my hint about running field experiments, leaders could discover what has actually worked in the Free States.
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Hair salons in Sioux Falls, for example, “temp” workers at the beginning of each shift, ask everyone to wear masks (under longstanding “no shirt, no shoes” precedent) and use hand sanitizer, clean stations after each customer, and have customers wait in their automobiles until called, when an employee opens the door for them. The story at the dentists is similar, except there they insist that patients do not wear masks. Ba dum dum.
