Erik Prince & Dave Ramaswamy
The COVID pandemic provided a natural experiment in experts’ competence. The results were unambiguous. Every major government recommendation was proven wrong: masks did not work, then they were essential, then two were better than one. The virus did not spread asymptotically; then, asymptomatic spread became the primary driver. Two weeks to flatten the curve became two years of flattening.
The curve remained unimpressed. Models predicted tens of millions of deaths in the immediate near-term, though the natural case fatality rate proved to be a fraction of those initial dire estimates. Much of the death toll ended up as an outcome of the public health establishment’s recommendations: their warnings to stay indoors to avoid getting sick, their war on doctors promoting early self-treatment at home, and their encouragement of the widespread use of ventilators, which caused tremendous harm.
The models were wrong about the baseline, the intervention, and the outcome, despite being ‘peer-reviewed’ (another word for ‘immune to reality’).
When the interventions failed, America’s 80,000 health bureaucrats did not resign in disgrace or apologize. The CDC requested larger budgets. The FDA approved more emergency authorizations. Several officials were promoted, while parents who questioned school closures at board meetings were investigated as potential domestic terrorists. How did Anthony Fauci—whose record on AIDS, swine flu, and COVID was at best uneven—end up the highest-paid federal employee and a media celebrity? Why does failure never disqualify these experts?
The answer lies on August 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon appeared on television. President Nixon announced a temporary suspension of the convertibility of the dollar into gold, which would then become permanent. This decision removed the last constraint on money creation. Between 1971 and 2024, the Fed’s balance sheet expanded from $80 billion to over $8 trillion—a hundredfold increase —causing not only inflation in goods and services but also in expertise.
Thus, a new species of bureaucrat was born: the fiat expert.