Do you agree with United States of America President Donald Trump when he says the coronavirus crisis is ‘worse than Pearl Harbor’ or 9/11?

…as answered on Quora (May 6, 2020)….

The policies chosen as a response to the contagion in most of these United States (as well as, to a somewhat lesser extent, by the federal government) will, I hazard, prove more damaging than either World War II or the insane War on Terror.

These policies may define a new era, and appear to demonstrate the willingness of the public to do damn near anything governments with a barely plausible rationales tell them to. That is, the population, alarmed by scary stories told by scientists wielding faulty models, will just stop what they are doing and submit themselves to house imprisonment.

Now, the willingness of some people to protect themselves and others in public using gloves and masks and social distancing (I was an early adopter) was a noble and respectful adaptation. But shelter-in-place and orders to close business were not. Willingness to go along with them was very, very bad.

Because the prophecies were ridiculous and the policies were bad.

Why?

I am not going to get into the epidemiology. I will leave that for others to argue about — though I was skeptical from the beginning. And I ignore the pathetic, witless arguments for ‘flattening the curve,’ which are even now being modified, in a massive migration of the goalpost, by the policy’s proponents.

I am concerned about ‘the economy.’

Attitudes about this have shown people, including many economists, to not understand the most basic elements of commerce. To worry about shutting down business and trade is notto worry about ‘money.’ It is about producing the things we use to live. Stop producing, total, and there is nothing to buy. Stop most production, and there will be huge shortages. The government can send you all your beloved checks, but if there is nothing on store shelves, then the money becomes useless.

Shutting down commerce for a week or maybe a month requires us to exist on savings of actual goods as well as ready money. And goods in the supply lines. But without production, eventually there must come insurmountable shortages, starvation, death. Even now mass starvation in third world countries has begun, and the absence of meat in stores and at, say, Wendy’s, is here. In America. Now.

Livestock is being slaughtered for want of demand.

I suppose there are vegetarians who cheer this. They shouldn’t. Their foodstuffs will be soaked up by an increasingly desperate population, and choke to nothingness fast.

This could be the end of civilization. And the population has meekly complied, because they have been fooled by the money illusion. They think money is wealth. And they have been alarmed senseless by scary stories. And by their own pathetic fears of death.

Fearing death, they have embraced policies that lead to death.

Sure, governors have kept some ‘essential’ businesses somewhat free. But they do not understand how commerce works, either. No more than the central planners of the Soviets did. So keeping some businesses open will allow for some longer rope on the noose.

The lockdown must end, or it will be the biggest hit civilization has taken since Communism — which was, remember, the insane belief that a state-free utopia can grow out of state socialism, a tyrannical, centrally planned totalitarian system.

The lockdown policies may prove worse than Communism. For socialists were greatly aided by the existence of free countries to purchase grains and other goods with natural resources and gold, and by the existence of the pricing systems elsewhere, that central planners tried to ape. Well, we cannot all survive off the wealth allowed in the pockets of freer societies, such as Sweden and Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska and the Dakotas.

Even if we right now normalized commerce, and re-introduced productivity, we would still face tough times, for much damage has been done. The idea that governments can switch off commerce and then restart it again is absurd. Of course, when we start really hurting, after the lockdown orders cease, many will blame capitalism.

Do not listen to these people. Ever again.

And as for Trump, well . . .

It’s the productivity, stupid.