Here is a predictive strategy that will, guaranteed, improve your prognostication batting average. Whenever you make a prediction about a government, predict the worst outcome you can think of. The only surprise will be that you’re probably not pessimistic enough.
Back in 1913, if you had predicted the brand new Federal Reserve would steadily debase the currency and exacerbate rather than dampen the business cycle, you were dead right. You would have gotten more points if you predicted its creation was the first step towards abandoning the gold standard and that it would eventually finance government deficits.
Similarly, back in that unlucky year if you predicted the new Constitutional amendment allowing the government to levy an income tax would lead to massive confiscation of incomes and fund gargantuan welfare and warfare states—the blob—you hit it on the screws.
Later, if you predicted that the New Deal wouldn’t reverse the economic contraction that the government had already transformed from a garden variety financial crash and recession into a Great Depression, you were right again. More points for those who foresaw both the abandonment of any effective Constitutional constraints on the federal government, and the fiscal consequence of welfare state collectivism—a spiraling and uncontrollable national debt.
Most of the time politicians’ predictions are wrong, but Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial-complex, now expandable to the military-industrial-intelligence-academic-media-complex, was spot on. Those who said that Vietnam would set the precedent for endless wars that only enriched and empowered the complex while plunging the US further into debt—they were right, too. If, when Nixon terminated dollar-gold convertibility in 1971, you predicted inflation the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the Civil War and put your money where your mouth was by purchasing gold or its derivatives, you did just fine.
Fast forward to the aftermath of September 11, 2001: if you said that when the US went into the Middle East it would never get out, that “emergency” measures like TSA screening and the Patriot Act would never be rescinded and clearly advanced a police state agenda, and that the George W. Bush administration’s new standard of fiscal and monetary recklessness would soon be surpassed, you were right again.
Fast forward to now. If you predict that governments’ response to the coronavirus outbreak will reveal not so hidden agendas of globalist power and domination (Why do you think they keep saying, “The world will never go back to the way it was”?), terminate the last vestiges of freedom, destroy the economy and financial markets, kill far more people than the virus itself, and set precedents for everything from enforced confinement to martial law to mandatory vaccinations to electronic money to compelled microchipped identification and surveillance whenever a group of experts makes scary projections about lethal microbes—which from now on will be almost always—you’re well on your way to being proved right on all counts.
If you’re going to get in the prediction game and your predictions reflect an expectation of the worst from governments, it’s best to realize what you’re up against. Every time you make a prediction you will be disparaged, mocked, or ignored, particularly by legions of government worshipers, regardless of how many of your previous predictions have been borne out. If you’re proven right, not one person who disparaged or mocked you will acknowledge you were right and apologize, nor will anyone ask you for an opinion or prediction in the future. In fact, you’ll be shunned.
An affliction that strikes 3.3 million in one week and 6.6 million the next puts coronavirus growth rates, even in the hardest hit countries, to shame. Those are the last two weeks’ US jobless claims, just shy of 10 million, clocking in with a week-to-week increase of 200 percent. According to the April 2 US coronavirus and jobless claims statistics, there were 40 people newly unemployed in just two weeks for each confirmed coronavirus case and 1645 newly unemployed for each coronavirus death (dividing 10 million, rounded up, by the April 2 figures for confirmed cases and deaths from worldometers.info), and on current relative growth rates both numbers will increase.
Humanity must produce to survive. Stop people from producing and eventually they die. Virtually all jobs are essential to the people who hold them. Although it’s seldom acknowledged, particularly by politicians and bureaucrats playing with other people’s money and lives, life involves choices, some of which have benefits and all of which have costs. How many government workers have lost their jobs? Does anybody in their right mind believe all government jobs are essential?
If among each group of 1645 newly unemployed workers there is on average more than one death—from the psychological and physical stress of imposed idleness, depletion of savings, inability to pay bills or afford groceries and other essentials, including medical care, media idiocy, general insanity, and mounting debt—then the coronavirus outbreak “cure” is worse than the disease. Keep in mind that for at least the next month or two unemployment will climb at a faster rate than coronavirus cases or deaths, and the longer lockdowns persist, the more widespread financial distress will become.
An estimated additional 10,000 people killed themselves during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Those are the easiest deaths to count. How many heart attacks, cancers, hypertension, and other stress-related illnesses were exacerbated by that crisis, shortening lifespans? We’ll never know.
The coronavirus death count includes many victims with one or more co-morbidities—a combination of diseases kills them but in many cases, they weren’t long for this world. The most you can say is that the coronavirus may have shortened their lifespans. At the very least, the same medical community compiling statistics on the coronavirus and clamoring for lockdowns should be looking at changes in trend rates in suicides and deaths from stress-related illness to try to estimate the effects of skyrocketing unemployment, crashing economies, plunging stock markets, crushing debt loads, and mounting bankruptcies.
There are other killers lurking out there: crime and mass unrest. The statistics for the former and the probability of the latter will only increase with the duration of lockdowns. Police are already reporting an uptick in crime. The death toll from a week of widespread urban rioting could easily surpass that of the entire coronavirus outbreak. There’s no mystery why President Trump has called up a million military reservists, and no assurance they will be able to prevent sporadic riots from deteriorating into total chaos and pandemonium. No mystery, either, why sales of firearms and ammo have jumped. By the way, rioters and looters don’t always social distance, so they may spread the coronavirus.
Finally, there’s the most significant cost of all: the police state is here; whatever was left of our precious liberty is gone. As carte blanche for the open-ended suppression of what remains of our rights, the Global War on Germs (GWOG) far surpasses the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Like the GWOT, the GWOG will be forever, since you can never vanquish either terror or germs. However, the GWOG opens up new avenues of repression that go far beyond GWOTists’ wildest fantasies. The GWOG takes away not just people’s liberty, but their livelihoods, their means of survival. There’s a reason why jobs are called livelihoods: they allow people to live. Consider the alternative. The GWOGists embrace it.
There will always be germs out there of better than average virulence that will pose a threat of widespread sickness and death. They seem to crop up once every two years or so. If a natural germ can’t be found, there are thousands of unsung Dr. Frankencrobes toiling in bioweapons labs around the world who can manufacture one (the current coronavirus may have been manufactured). Find some group of medical experts, add a Bill Gates or a George Soros, and presto! you have well-publicized pandemic projections of global disaster and death. Lock everybody up! Better yet, per the precautionary principle, lock everybody up before any such deadly germ has manifested itself, so when it does, everyone will be safe.
Anyone who thinks that “emergency” measures will be rescinded or will not serve as future precedents is referred to Draconian Emergency Measures Enacted By Governments Throughout History That Have Been Rescinded and Not Served as Precedents. It’s available for free on Amazon and takes only four seconds to read; the title is longer than the book.
Perhaps the most distressing aspect of this whole ordeal is that Americans have surrendered to panic and propaganda without a shot. Molon labe and They’ll take my gun when they pry it from my cold, lifeless fingers patriots—bumper-sticker freedom fighters—are cowering in place, living off their 3, 6, 12, 24, or 60 months of provisions, lest they encounter a germ. Neighbors are reporting on neighbors who leave their houses, take a walk, clear their throats, or other heretofore legal activities (they would still be legal if the Constitution had any remaining relevance). Apps have been developed to monitor and report people’s locations, coughs, sneezes, sniffles, and runny noses. Can one that monitors and reports social distances be far behind? If only one life is saved…
Surrendered without a shot—they’ve got us by what’s left of our balls. The men and women who risked probabilities of death far higher than some small fraction of one percent and paid the ultimate price to defend our freedom and our lives are spinning in their hallowed graves.
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