Mandates, Lockdowns and the Law with Richard Epstein. Part 1 | EP89

Richard Epstein is our returning guest. Richard is an American legal scholar known for his writings on torts, contracts, property rights, law and economics, classical liberalism, and libertarianism. He is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at New York University, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution

In this episode we talked about:

• Richard’s View on Lockdown
• Moratoriums on Evictions
• Policy Responses to Covid Pandemic

Check here the previous show with Richard: https://workingcapitalpodcast.com/the-impact-of-rent-control-and-eviction-moratoriums-with-richard-epsteinep52/

Transcriptions:

Speaker 1 (0s): Low everybody. Okay. So this week, and next we're going to do something a little bit different and we're having on returning guests, Richard a Epstein. If you saw his old episode, we talked quite a bit of boat, eviction, moratoriums, and a bit of a history of rent control. And I thought this week, and next we would talk a little bit more about the actual pandemic and COVID-19 in general, talk a little bit about its impact vaccine mandates and kind of the political landscape in Canada and the U S so I thought Richard would be a perfect guest for that.

He's practiced law for over 40 years. He's a legal scholar, and I believe still working with the Hoover Institute and New York university. So without further ado, check this episode out. And I should just note, if you liked this episode, feel free to go to working capital podcast.com. You can also download our financial model at that address. Okay. Check it out. All right, ladies and gentlemen, my name's Jess for galleon, you're listening to working capital. We have a returning guest on the show.

Richard Epstein. Richard is an American legal scholar known for his works on contracts, property rights, law, and economics towards classical liberalism and more. He is the Lawrence eight-ish professor of law and director of the classical liberal Institute at NYU and Peter and Kirsten Bedford senior fellow at the Hoover Institute. Richard. Good to have you back. How are you doing,

Speaker 2 (1m 27s): Thank you. I'm in given the set of the circumstances in the larger world.

Speaker 1 (1m 31s): Yeah, it is a, a lot has happened since we last spoke. We currently in, in the city of Toronto are back in a modified lockdown, which fingers crossed is going to be something that opens up on the 26th. I think today we had teachers going back to school, but then it was a snow day. So can't get more Canadian than that.

Speaker 2 (1m 50s): Well, snow is no surprise. Look, the, the good news is, and this is a result largely and natural forces is one of the rules about viruses is what goes up, must come down. And it turns out the Alma chronic virus now seems to be on its downward slope a little bit earlier than some people expected. My view about this, is that the way in which we have handled the entire COVID situation? It means we're not talking about pandemics that in cleanly, we're talking about cyclical arrangements or endemics, and it's just going to be very difficult to predict aid the length of the cycle, be this intensity of the cycle and three, the severity of the disease that comes with the intensity of the cycle.

And so, I mean, if we are going to continue to have a kind of a lockdown mode mentality as the first alternative, it's likely we will be continuing to face this with COVID for the indefinite future. I mean, the notion that people had when they postponed their admissions to college or to law school in 2020, we'll be out of this by 2021, nobody postpones today because they think they're going to