July 13, 2022 - 4:00pm
Many of those who opposed lockdowns for the pandemic, predicted that the policy — if normalised — could one day be taken advantage of by opportunistic political forces to deal with almost any crisis. It was, as Lord Sumption once suggested, a potential pathway to authoritarianism. “If we confer despotic powers on government to deal with perils, which are an ordinary feature of human existence, we will end up doing it most or all of the time,” he wrote in November 2021.
Well, we are now facing just such a crisis. And there is a not insignificant chance that lockdowns might be revived, not just as a knee-jerk reaction to cope with a prevailing health crisis, but also, troublingly, an economic one.
The monkeypox health scare may have failed to get traction, but as Covid cases begin to rise again, the slow beat of pro-lockdown messaging is beginning to circle again in the mainstream media.
For now, the public remains far from receptive. But this could change as soon as energy shortages and supply chain issues begin to bite this winter, which they surely will. The public has already been primed to believe that lockdowns were great for generating energy savings. We saw the evidence of that with our own eyes. Traffic jams disappeared. Oil prices went negative. Air pollution reversed.
In the face of late Soviet-style chaos on the streets, unconstrained inflation, not enough electricity to heat the homes of the vulnerable, the prospect of order emanating from the “temporary” suspension of a market economy might seem appealing.
It’s even easy to predict the messaging that might feel compelling: ‘Stay Home. Don’t queue. Save Energy.’ Or, ‘Bread and energy is cheap if you stay home!’
But here is why we must not fall for this line of logic. Planned economies are what got us into this mess to begin with. Covid, the war in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia may have all added accelerants to the fire, but the smoulders were burning ever since the 2008 global financial crisis nearly brought down the system. It’s just that the consequences of papering over the flaws in the system rather than properly addressing them only became visible in late 2021.
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SubscribeFurther lockdowns will be a self-inflicted wound and we won’t have the excuse that we didn’t know how much damage they’ll do.
Fool me once…
Selfishness is a virtue, lockdown is altruistic, altruism is the morality of death.
I think it gets a bit sticky if the government mandates WFH where possible.
Companies, will I think enforce it if for no other reason than they’d be leaving themselves open to being sued should they tell their employees to continue to come to work and then they subsequently got sick with COVID.
Lockdowns are a form of madness! Does anyone really think they a solution for anything? For sure they cause multiple problems…
They are brilliant for some people Adam.
If you want to control whole populations and impose your crazy ideals like some kind of Bond villain, then it is hard to think of anything as effective as locking everyone in their houses.
Who would have thought everyone in the world would go along with it?
I think Covid lockdowns were one of the reasons social justice and BLM took off during the pandemic. When you meet in person the private conversations before and after the meeting and the body language of people in the room convey as much information as the meeting itself. In particular it is where dissent is often expressed. Covid lockdowns are a great way to impose conformity because they remove the ability to build coalitions of dissent.
Thank you. That’s a thought-provoking observation.
Lockdown is supported by those who want the results of lockdown: totalitarianism and economic collapse.
Perhaps it would be time for some civil disobedience? If enough people refuse, it can’t be enforced. How many businesses will turn away most of their customers for lack of a mask? How many arrests or citations can be issued?
Civil disobedience – that worked well on Jan 6th didn’t it. Not the way to handle situations as in the end everyone actually loses at least in recent times.
Jan 6 only got out of hand a little when Ray Epps and his team got involved !
I dunno, Mike C, when I look at how successful BLM and Antifa carried out their madness.
The difference between Antifa/BLM and Jan 6 is that the former had the whole hearted support of the mainstream media. If there is another attempt at lockdowns, whose side do you think the media will take?
Jan 6th was a disorganized riot that got out of hand, and riots have never been a very effective form of civil disobedience. Think boycotts, strikes, jury nullification of unjust laws, refusal of states and localities to enforce unpopular laws, etc. Passive forms of resistance are far more difficult to eliminate than obvious aggression, and governments incur far more backlash for doing so. Consider the farmer protests in India that successfully cowed the Modi government into repealing the pro-corporate farm bills. One doesn’t have to storm the Bastille to make a point,
From what I hear in my neck of the woods there will be civil disobedience. Personally, I refuse to play these stupid games anymore.
I agree Kathy.
There’s been a hardcore of maybe 10% of people who have questioned everything. If they can start the ball rolling then others might slowly join in. It happened in Sri Lanka and it looks like Argentina and Albania might not be far behind. Who knows, the tractors on the continent may be the start of something much bigger.
How will they square further restrictions when ministers were fined for breaching them?
Good point, but easily solved. Just get rid of all the naughty boys and replace them with new boys and girls who promise to behave.
Except, it seems the media’s happy to forgive and forget Rishi’s fine, and give him a promotion.
It’s because he paid them all furlough. Biggest bribe ever paid from the publics purse and we’re the suckers paying it back. Not that I’m bitter or anything.
Just exempt the politicoes and elites.
It will be interesting to see what happens to the Dutch protesters. Trudeau got away temporarily with crushing the Canadian convoy protesters but he is now playing a heavy political price. It will probably be the reason he loses his job. Similarly polling shows the J6 show trial is not helping the Democrats either.
No way people will go along
Yes they will. Guaranteed.
If you can get over 80% of the population to take four injections of an experimental drug that uses brand new technology, that was rush through with very little testing, from companies with zero risk of being sued and even fought in court to hide the test results for 75 years, then you can get them to do absolutely anything you want them to do.
All it needs is another brainwashing campaign on the TV and social media and 95% of people will be begging the govt for it.
Psy-ops work wonderfully. A few slogans about it being for the common good and how it will save granny, and your otherwise intelligent neighbour will be hunkering down for the long run.
That nonexistent threat of being sued is what completely turned me off to “the shot.”
Stress and Anxiety have been THROUGH.THE.ROOF. for most people!
Why don’t they talk about substance abuse (drugs and alcohol) and suicides (increasing) when we had our lockdowns?
I understand not knowing what we are up against, and trying to come up with MACRO strategies for the entire nation, but it really felt out of control and disconnected (so many families and friends fighting as well).
We CAN NOT allow emotion and political crap to get in the way this time!
The facts need to be laid out properly and CLEARLY – i.e. If this is basically another flu – get your yearly covid shot (or not) and if not, and you get covid, then you can take “TAMAFLU” for Covid.
At some point our country decided to just live with the flu…
Ha ha ha. The fear porn won’t work again. If you were remotely in the vicinity of truth I would have been dead 100 times over these past 2 years. But wait, perhaps the dreaded monkeypox will do me in!
And lockdown cost lives, it saved none.
We are all facing certain death, not potential death.
With that certainty of death should we lock ourselves away, trash the global economy, and indulge in so much QE our distant ancestors will still be paying off the debts?
With that certainty of death should we prevent cancer screenings and kill people through lack of treatment, create a mental health pandemic that many people will never recover from, and kill off our old folk with loneliness and neglect?
Sounds like the ultimate act of selfishness.
Dude, we’re all facing death. Nothing potential about it.
I don’t see this happening again, but let’s just see how many mom and pop business we can shut down again permanently. It will get ugly if they try this crap again.
The final piece of the puzzle will be the full roll out of the surveillance state. Lockdowns when the population is not scared out of its wits will require brutal enforcement. Dissidents, protestors and casual rule breakers will have to be identified and swiftly punished and silenced. These methods are all being beta tested now in China’s lockdowns. Trudeau has said the quiet part out loud too in his response to the truckers. Once the infrastructure is in place, all it takes is for someone to throw the switch.
It’s telling that most of the world rejects lockdowns and their logic, but is not empowered to resist their imposition by elite oligarchies that increasingly resist any attempt to be governed by the people.
Most of the world? So far as I could tell, lockdowns were largely popular.
Isn’t it interesting how systematically wrong every single Covid management policy was?
Lockdowns and all the other general “slow-the-spread” policies were completely (and predictably) counterproductive, serving only to prolong the pandemic and enhance its virulence.
Universal vaccination served to the extent that the “vaccines” were at all effective) served only to promote rapid evolution of the virus to evade the “vaccines” thus rendering them useless for their only legitimate role – protecting the most vulnerable to the virus.
Why should we trust policies promulgated by people who were not even randomly wrong (i.e sometimes right), but systematically wrong, every time?
The title is very click-baity.
Anyway, what on earth does this mean?
“outsized rents from monopoly interests could compensate for short-term non-profitability.”
Thank goodness. I thought it was just me.
See the profit histories of Google, Facebook and Amazon, three near-monopolies today that didn’t turn a profit for years, yet were investor darlings all that time.
Thank you Izabella for some sane commentary on lockdowns, economics and the push to more authoritarian controls – as they say “what is the difference between a conspiracy theory and a fact? About 6 months”
As you point out “At the heart of the problem is the poorly thought-out subsidisation of negative-sum business models propelled by excessive cheap money in the system.”
Better to have regular, market driven smaller “corrections” than one god-almighty-enormous bubble to pop. It will not be pretty. Ironic how the West is determined to turn itself into a Soviet style mess currently complete with “black is white” statements on all topics, endless propaganda nudging, corruption and collapse of institutions.
Yes, quite so. And capitalism will be blamed for all of it.
At one point in this collapse of the West do the media stop broadcasting the views of politicians that led us here over the past 30 years?
And stop forcing their worthless opinions on the rest of us?
Suggesting we lockdown won’t work, will it? A bit like convincing us to arm Ukraine and cut our selves off from Russian energy and wheat? Who would fall for that? No one will paint their houses the colour of the Ukrainian flag. No British dad would send their sons to pointlessly die in a Russian artillery attack. No wife would allow their husband to house an attractive young Ukrainian woman who then steals the husband and family home.
Who would support the need for 30,000 U.S. troops in D.C. to protect against an army of white supremacists. Who would build global religious monuments to the martyr of fentanyl overdoses.
We are all fantasists now, a p***s is female genitalia and an apple is an orange. We live in circus world and we are clowns and performers. Wear the damned mask!
Whether COVID or climate change, the basic theme is control through fear. When human behavior runs contrary to the needs/wants of rulers/politicians/elites, they nudge people towards more ‘desirable’ behavior through various appeals. First a moral or nationalistic appeal to moral duty or patriotism. Second, a fear appeal based on the threat of some terrible implacable foe, real or imagined. Finally, and lastly, when they have fully co-opted the mechanisms of law and power for themselves, comes the authoritarian appeal, the threat of direct individual punishment for ‘undesirable’ behavior. COVID showed us examples of all three. They’re working towards doing the same for energy concerns because there’s no way other than controlling human behavior on a mass scale that they’ll be able to limit energy usage. We are already dangerously far down the path to authoritarianism. In America, what you will increasingly see is people taking energy concerns into their own hands directly through things like propane generators and storage tanks, rooftop solar panels (which even my Trump worshipping father believes in), micro-hydroelectric generators, etc. along with a lot of states and localities doing the same, because that’s how Americans are. If we don’t like the dictates from Washington, we just ignore them, do whatever we want, and dare anyone to stop us (witness the different approaches to COVID state by state). Can’t speak for Europe or the UK, except to say I suspect it will be harder there.
OF COURSE. And thankfully we can rely 100% on people like Dr Fauci, aka ‘Mr Science’. And the dreaded coronavirus DID NOT/DID/DID NOT/DID emanate from a lab. And the political class & commentariat believe 100% in all the restrictions they decree (they just have special immunity). And the “vaccines” work .. and were properly tested too, and clearly safe. (Remember, you CANNOT contract or transmit the apocalyptic virus when vaccinated.) And if (a once in 50 trillion chance this) you have a life changing negative experience after taking the jab, you DO have the legal right to sue the pharmaceutical company which manufactured it. And as Joe Biden prophesized, the unvaccinated had a winter of ‘severe illness and death’ in 2021 and many millions of them perished. And mass censorship is NECESSARY so we can all be protected from MISINFORMATION and therefore only get the correct facts delivered to us. And it’s important to demonize and ostracize members of the public who don’t allow themselves to be coerced into believing allowed facts (best done with virulent, divisive, public propaganda campaigns).
And it’s absolutely critical to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to fight the virus: for example spending vast sums of public money; like the 31 billion pounds for the now scrapped “track and trace system” in the UK. And the “flick of a switch” cessation of the global health emergency (from get boosted NOW or get mandated to zilch!) in February this year was due to complex new scientific discoveries about the virus. People remain unaware of this because the news cycle was suddenly dominated by the war flaring up in Ukraine. And restrictions on personal liberties akin to those in North Korea are essential for our own protection.
And the statistics you quote are 100% true and correct and anyone questioning them is a wild conspiracy theorist and extremist hatemonger who is also racist, sexist, transphobic, misogynist, Islamophobic and homophobic; and probably a far-right, white supremacist too.
And when spouting utter bunk it’s always best to put one’s entire post in BOLD text to try and get at least some attention (pornographers do the same).
Thank God for the science. Because you can’t fool all the people all the time.
I was unsure about the point you were making but in the end, the bold text convinced me.
W/o lockdowns, masks, and Gavin Newsom along with Whitmer, Pritzikis, etc. how else would the dems be able to pull off the scam of mail-in ballots again? Also, I am so damned tired of this “sky is falling” attitude of the losing dems. I say KMA, democrats.
Perhaps rolling lockdowns…
lockdowns and masks are and were pointless. it’s a virus, you cannot stop it…
And if the system is “as free as possible” surely the venture capitalists would exploit that to keep gambling on achieving monoplies?
Most businesses start and run without input from big VC groups – which is what I think Izabella was referring to. Those VC groups can be helpful, but in the way that loan sharks are. Their prize is equity in your business and soon they’ll be finding you a buyer so they can cash in.
By far the greatest damage done by lockdowns was to our sense of humour. We’re not all gullible fools though. And in mid-2022, the best response to people who peddle fear & hate & division under the guise of “safety” is HA HA HA HA !
Laughing all the way to the morgue.
Where exactly do governments get food and resources from?
Rubbish, lockdown is communist, it saved no lives whatsoever
who would deliver the food and resources?
This time it’s been driven by deep-pocketed Western venture capitalists who became convinced that outsized rents from monopoly interests could compensate for short-term non-profitability.
Very interesting – we need clear evidence and, then, to do something about it
Interesting (?) to note that the Scottish government have embedded most of the additional population controls that were introduced during Covid into permanent law – so no more hasty regulations regarding new lockdowns – it’s all already in place! (Not that anything democratic ever happens in the Scottish Parliament, of course!)
There’s a saying in finance that “the cure for high prices is high prices”. Fewer people will drive so demand for fuel will decline, leading to a lower oil price. It’ll be a painful process, particularly this coming winter but it will happen. No need to compound the problem by locking everyone up.
A clickbait article to wind up the Unherd readership.
Lockdowns will be one way for sure to cause the price of fuel to drop back to an acceptable level.
On the other hand I’m not sure more government handouts would be on the way this time.
What a sensationalist, clickbait “theory.” I recognize that the Author is London-based, but to be clear (since this is being promoted on Drudge, a largely American audience): No American government at any level would ever even consider a lockdown for this economic crisis, no matter how bad it gets. This is the kind of fear mongering that is intended to rile up extremists and dupe the gullible into anger about a non-existent problem, so they will share the story with their gullible friends to generate more clicks. It serves no common good for the public at-large. Izabella – do better. Be kind and respect the intelligence of your readers. The COVID lockdowns were authorized as a Health Emergency to avoid an imminent threat of death from a virus for which, at the time, we had no known mitigations. We’ve been through multiple cycles of economic turmoil over the last 100 years – far worse than now – without lockdown measures. That is because there is not (and never will be) any legal avenue to implement lockdown measures for an economic situation.
(Edit: Downvote away, folks)
You must be the reincarnation of a former Prime Minister. Neville, is this really you?