We are living through one of history’s longest and most excruciating
versions of “We told you so”. When in March 2020, the world’s
governments decided to “shut down” the world’s economies and throttle
any and all social activity, and deny kids schooling plus cancel worship
services and holidays, there was no end to the warnings of the terrible
collateral damage, even if most of them were censored.
Every
bit of the warnings proved true. You see it in every story in the news.
It’s behind every headline. It’s in countless family tragedies. It’s in
the loss of trust. It’s in the upheaval in industry and demographics.
The fingerprints of lockdowns are deeply embedded in every aspect of our
lives, in ways obvious and not so much.
Actually, the results
have been even worse than critics predicted, simply because the chaos
lasted such a long time. There are seemingly endless iterations of this
theme. Learning losses, infrastructure breakages, rampant criminality,
vast debt, inflation, lost work ethic, a growing commercial real estate
bust, real income losses, political extremism, labour shortages,
substance addiction, and more much besides, all trace to the fateful
decision.
The headlines on seemingly unrelated matters go back
to the same, in circuitous ways. A good example is the news of the
electric vehicle bust. The confusion, disorientation, malinvestment,
overproduction and retrenchment – along with the crazed ambition to
force convert a country and world away from oil and gas towards wind and
solar – all trace to those fateful days....<<<Read More>>>...