Morning Rant, January 23, 2023 linked on Editorials

You can’t just cut off the invisible hand of economic activity with a lockdown, shut down “nonessential businesses”, pay millions of people not to work, attack the fossil fuel industry which provides fertilizer and transportation, then say, “OK, let’s turn the economy back on,” and expect shelves to magically be full again.

The functioning economy that was destroyed by our best and brightest had developed over many years to provide services, supplies, labor, transportation, etc at the wages and prices that would keep it all functioning. Many years of economic evolution led to the bounty of pre-Covid lockdowns. No person could ever design or command the economy to function as it did, but destructive, ignorant politicians had the power to quickly destroy it. And they did.

Communists and Covidians think that shelves get filled when politicians give the command to allow it [and become] deeply puzzled why the shelves are empty despite giving the OK for economic activity to resume.

Shelves are often empty now because the golden goose of free market capitalism was killed by the Covid response. If government stays out of the way, stops paying people not to work, stops punishing farming and transportation, etc, etc, the shelves will eventually be full again. Eventually.

But golden geese take a long time to evolve.