The longer lockdown continues, the more imperiled we become
A broke society is a violent society
spectator.us/longer-lockdow…
A broke society is a violent society
spectator.us/longer-lockdow…
Comically, CCP officials have speculated that Covid-19 was planted by the US army. Yet a respectable conspiracy theorist would deduce that a virus sending the rest of the world into an hysterical, wholesale economic shutdown has ‘Made in China’ written all over it.
After all, China didn’t flatline its entire economy to contain the contagion, but primarily one province. At the end of this debacle, then, China could rule the world — although it won’t have many solvent customers left to buy its products.
The only other countries calling the shots in future could be South Korea, Japan and Sweden, having thus far resisted the stampede to lockdown.
Prey to simplistic sentimentality, politicians loath to land on the wrong side of the bogus money-vs-people debate could keep economies in the dead zone for months on end — through the summer, or even until the mass dissemination of that mythical vaccine in, say, 2022.
Unremitting ‘better safe than sorry’ policies could transform life as we know it for years to come — and not in an improving direction.
We’re anything but safe right now, and the longer these lockdowns continue, the more imperiled we and our descendants become.
We’re flirting not merely with recession — we should be so lucky — but with a potentially self-sustaining depression, with all the social services decay, cultural malaise, personal desperation and generational aimlessness that would entail.
Public borrowing is set to skyrocket. Central banks will be tempted by the ugly shortcut of moderating sovereign debt through money-printing. Hello inflation, as well as confiscatory tax rates, because a prolonged shutdown could eviscerate the tax base.
While Western firms self-isolate, many of their customers will turn to China; the deserters won’t likely come back. And a broke society is a violent society. Look at the unrest already arising in Italy.
You think not being able to go to the gym now is the bad part? No, how about ‘what gym’? How about, ‘Why would I pay for a gym when I can’t afford a pint of milk?’ or ‘Screw the gym; I’ll not go anywhere only to get knifed in the street’?
Never in the history of the world have most major economies simultaneously closed shop for months on end. I’ve rarely been this shaken. And not because I’m afraid of getting sick.
