James Bovard reports form Maryland, where the COVID-19 lockdowns have decimated employment and the rules only apply to powerless ordinary people. Cops and politicians can do as they like.
Americans were once harangued by government "experts" about the need to slow down on highways in order to save lives. Few listened. Today, laws demanding everyone "stay at home" may suffer a similar fate.
Propaganda kills, but it also works. Many of the same tactics employed to destroy opposition to the Iraq War are being used today against opponents of lockdowns.
Neither voters nor politicians watch the bureaucracy very carefully, so they respond as one might expect—advancing their own and their favorites' interests, at the expense of the public they are supposedly working for.
Some claim "the rich" will be fine—or even better off—after the COVID panic destroys the economy for most of us. But there's a problem: the wealthy depend heavily on an economy fueled by the production and consumption of all workers and entrepreneurs.
Media outlets, both left and right, are mostly narrative driven. Also, journalists have a tendency to lazily reprint whatever "experts" say. This makes media reporting thoroughly unreliable.
Doing things for money does not justify moral condemnation, unless using money to support your family, live up to the agreements you have made, and to try not to burden others justifies moral condemnation.
What is the number of deaths due to disease which justifies the total abandonment of the rule of law and basic human freedoms? Sixty thousand? One hundred thousand? Three hundred thousand? Supporters of the current police state ought to pin down a number for us at which all rights are forfeit.
Experts such as Anthony Fauci are experts only in the narrow field of their expertise. They have almost no knowledge or expertise in other fields, including—apparently—the basics of how human societies function.
To spread the benefits of goods and services, we must first spread the mindset needed to take on the task of producing goods and services. That is, the mindset of entrepreneurship.
