Public Intellectuals

George Mason economics professor Alexander Tabarrok has vigorously advocated for intelligent covid-19 vaccination policies. His ideas are not profound, but they are startling to simple folk-- things like "Instead of giving 100 people two shots of vaccine, how about giving 200 people one shot each, since 95% effectiveness is not all that much better than 80%?"

Check here later for thoughts on Alex Tabarrok and Schumpeter and the Policy Entrepreneur.

the leader type. It is no part of his function to “find” or to “create” new possibilities. They are always present, abundantly accumulated by all sorts of people. Often they are also generally known and being discussed by scientific or literary writers. In other cases, there is nothing to discover about them, because they are quite obvious.

What is to be done in a casual emergency is as a rule quite simple. Most or all people may see it, yet they want someone to speak out, to lead, and to organise. ... It is, therefore, more by will than by intellect that the leaders fulfil their function, more by “authority,” “personal weight,” and so forth than by original ideas.

Economic leadership in particular must hence be distinguished from “invention.” As long as they are not carried into practice, inventions are economically irrelevant. And to carry any improvement into effect is a task entirely different from the inventing of it, and a task, moreover, requiring entirely different kinds of aptitudes.

It has none of that glamour which characterises other kinds of leadership. It consists in fulfilling a very special task which only in rare cases appeals to the imagination of the public. For its success, keenness and vigor are not more essential than a certain narrowness which seizes the immediate chance and nothing else.