‘War is the health of the state,” warned writer and anti-war activist Randolph Bourne more than a century ago. The same, he might have said, holds for those crises that are in many ways the equivalent of war, such as economic depressions or mass pandemics. Certainly, faced with both the COVID-19 contagion and the associated economic washout, there are things we want the government to do, from public-health measures to short-term economic interventions. The growth of the state at times like this is mostly inevitable.
On the other hand, sooner or later this crisis will end. We will get the coronavirus under control, and the economy will begin to recover. Many of the measures we are taking today will no longer be needed and may in fact become counterproductive.
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