Quote from: SaltySpitoon on Today at 09:18:52 PM

You're approaching this from the wrong angle, people don't just decide policy based on nothing, its not logical. The economy is as you said a finely tuned and complicated machine, but it is analyzed and forecast on a daily basis. Its not some mysterious entity that the people who've been analyzing it for 30 years are unable to draw conclusions on. The Trump administration employs these wizards that have a full time job of saying, hey we should impose tariffs to incentive this sector because we predict that this earthquake in Uzbekistan will have this effect on the sector. But you're right, its far more reasonable and likely to assume they're just throwing darts at a dartboard to decide economic policy.

Not that it matters, but the lockdown idea was first applied in the 1300s where the term "quattuor" (later quarantine) comes from, to curb the spread of the bubonic plague. Its been applied for hundreds of years because it does work. Canada did lockdown measures in 2003 to stop the spread of SARS. South Korea did the same thing in 2015 with MERS. The US did social distancing and closure of businesses where patrons couldn't distance themselves in 1918. Epidemics aren't all that rare, its just that the ones that we've had in the US in the past 100 years were more or less treatable with vaccines which isn't the case this time around.

Even if I was to entertain the idea of US Government incompetence and decided that you knew better how to manage the economy than the consensus of all of the people they employ, what about Canada? What about every other country in the world doing the same measures (albeit substantially more successfully than us). They all have different governments with different interests, yet their medical and economic advisors are more or less telling them the same things.

Oh am I? Good of you to tell me what my argument should be as you completely avoid addressing any of the points I made or substantiating any of your own arguments. Small portions and sub-sectors of the economy are forecast and modeled, not the entire macroeconomic system, and not regarding drastic unprecedented changes. You keep saying over and over again that people examined the effects of the lock down on the economy before it was implemented, yet you remain unable to substantiate this claim with any kind of documentation whatsoever. I guess your proclamation of righteousness is sufficient is it?

I am not talking about the concept of a lock down as an idea, I am talking specifically about utilizing it as a modern policy for emergency response, which I documented and you conveniently misdirected from with your whole historical analysis of the concept. All those other modern examples you gave were of minor regional areas, not a nation wide shut down barring businesses from operating. This is no comparison at all. You are trying to compare cooking a burger on your back yard grill with a global McDonald's corporate empire and pretending they are comparable.

This is not just incompetence, it is sold as incompetence. It is INTENTIONAL SABOTAGE FOR PROFIT AND CONTROL. The more emergencies created, the more people like you rush to the government screaming "Please! Please strip my rights to keep me safe!" Meanwhile massive corporate entities get to destroy their competition via shutdowns while they remain operational. Then when the waves of bankruptcies hit, they can buy up all of their real assets at fire sale prices. This also all has the added benefit of being able to blame decades of economic mismanagement on this outbreak instead of the real perpetrators responsible. No it wasn't us doing our fraud or the massive inflation we created destroying the economy, it was because that darned virus! A global economic reset was in the works for a long time. This was just the perfect pretext they needed to roll it out and start burning it all down while not resulting in street lynchings for those responsible for robbing us all blind. A disaster for one is an opportunity for another, but you feel free to keep believing there is no motivation for this planned economic implosion.