I'm not certain there is no master plan. In my opnion, this was prepared, all it needed was a spark, covid19. Numerous simulations ran, all the variables have been checked. That's why it is so smooth and in total absence of any moral compass.
Exactly this. Even if for example children were driving the contamination (which clearly they are not), if they don’t get sick, elderly should isolate. Science isn’t the answer, it can merely give a possible way of acting. Thank you, also for all your questions. Please never give up.
The reason we do not and never have governed society by "science" is that science is not up to the job and we live in an ever more complex world subject to massive uncertainty. We need to live within a legal order of rights and to dismantle excessive state powers. "Science" gets made up to cover the failings of bureaucracies which are inherently incapable of managing complexity. We would do better here on Substack.
Even if it seems to be creaking at the seams a bit these days, there was and is much wisdom in the design of the post-WW2 German federal constitution. I don't believe we have a better model, though we should be thinking about improving practical functioning.
I do not agree with this digital ID and CBDC theory. Introducing such a thing could have been done smoothly. Covid passes have just raised suspicion. At the end of the day, there are two problems with (maximalist) CBDCs, one is that if everyone can effectively bank with the central bank then this undermines the role of commercial banks in generating credit and will certainly be much more inefficient from an economic standpoint. I cannot see who this would benefit and for all I know it might crash the financial system completely. The second problem is getting people to accept such conditional and dystopian money as a store of value. It is already questionable whether existing forms of state money have not permanently lost this function. I am sure you are right that there are a lot of concerns about financial stability and the ballooning public debt has only made these worse. It is essentially broken. However, I think that the route of conditional money would be absolutely catastrophic in finishing it off.
I don't see a link to Covid passes. These are much more easily explained by the belief that the vaccines would actually confer neutralizing immunity and the need to undo border restrictions. Even many of the noted critics of today believed this for a time. You can make a case that in their absence, the pressure to close establishments would be too great, however irrational. They therefore serve to maintain some level of economic activity, underpin necessary viral transmission (importantly generating complementary broad spectrum immunity for vaccinated people) and keep society more open than it would be otherwise. There is no great plan here in my opinion. It's keep calm and muddle through.
The big picture here, I think, as also eugyppius implies, is that governments actually want to go back to normal, but have boxed themselves in. Too few people have any interest in an expensive and lazy version of China. The West has a durable competitive advantage only insofar as it is trustworthy and free. Otherwise within a generation the distribution of economic power in the world will look very different.
I'm not certain there is no master plan. In my opnion, this was prepared, all it needed was a spark, covid19. Numerous simulations ran, all the variables have been checked. That's why it is so smooth and in total absence of any moral compass.
Exactly this. Even if for example children were driving the contamination (which clearly they are not), if they don’t get sick, elderly should isolate. Science isn’t the answer, it can merely give a possible way of acting. Thank you, also for all your questions. Please never give up.
Welcome to Substack.
Thank you for this thoughtful piece.
The reason we do not and never have governed society by "science" is that science is not up to the job and we live in an ever more complex world subject to massive uncertainty. We need to live within a legal order of rights and to dismantle excessive state powers. "Science" gets made up to cover the failings of bureaucracies which are inherently incapable of managing complexity. We would do better here on Substack.
Even if it seems to be creaking at the seams a bit these days, there was and is much wisdom in the design of the post-WW2 German federal constitution. I don't believe we have a better model, though we should be thinking about improving practical functioning.
I do not agree with this digital ID and CBDC theory. Introducing such a thing could have been done smoothly. Covid passes have just raised suspicion. At the end of the day, there are two problems with (maximalist) CBDCs, one is that if everyone can effectively bank with the central bank then this undermines the role of commercial banks in generating credit and will certainly be much more inefficient from an economic standpoint. I cannot see who this would benefit and for all I know it might crash the financial system completely. The second problem is getting people to accept such conditional and dystopian money as a store of value. It is already questionable whether existing forms of state money have not permanently lost this function. I am sure you are right that there are a lot of concerns about financial stability and the ballooning public debt has only made these worse. It is essentially broken. However, I think that the route of conditional money would be absolutely catastrophic in finishing it off.
I don't see a link to Covid passes. These are much more easily explained by the belief that the vaccines would actually confer neutralizing immunity and the need to undo border restrictions. Even many of the noted critics of today believed this for a time. You can make a case that in their absence, the pressure to close establishments would be too great, however irrational. They therefore serve to maintain some level of economic activity, underpin necessary viral transmission (importantly generating complementary broad spectrum immunity for vaccinated people) and keep society more open than it would be otherwise. There is no great plan here in my opinion. It's keep calm and muddle through.
The big picture here, I think, as also eugyppius implies, is that governments actually want to go back to normal, but have boxed themselves in. Too few people have any interest in an expensive and lazy version of China. The West has a durable competitive advantage only insofar as it is trustworthy and free. Otherwise within a generation the distribution of economic power in the world will look very different.