Reading The Fifth Risk now isn’t simply an exercise in learning what went wrong and thinking, “How did we not see this coming?” (Anyway, some people did.) It’s also a book that speaks to the future—about examining our attitudes toward government as the country heads into a presidential election. Decades ago, Ronald Reagan inspired and exacerbated anti-government sentiment among huge chunks of the electorate. Remember his famous quip that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’”? Donald Trump is making us finally accept that, whether we like it or not, we need our government’s help.
The above is also from the review.
We all have biases about what we would like from government. Some want small government. Some want more. I think one of the tragedies of our time (and by that I mean the last few decades not just the last three years) is that we have overlooked something that we should all have been in agreement on, which that above all we want effective government. We can have effective small government or effective bigger government. That reasonable people can argue about. But effectiveness, expertise, knowledge, experience are things we should all value. They should not be denigrated.
When this crisis is over, the facts will speak loudly. There will be a scoreboard. We will see per capita death rates across countries. And we will be able to draw conclusions. I will make a prediction: we will be disappointed in our results compared to countries in our peer group. And one reason will be the denigration of expertise that has happened over a fairly long period.