Who benefits from 'lockdowns'? The economy slows down, workers stop working and lining up powerful people's pockets. Tourism plummets, supply chains gets disrupted. It's not profitable. Even a war brings profits. Lockdowns don't.
Mind you, most countries didn't experience any lockdowns at all.
Not every organization is conspiring against you. If anything, the media was regularly pushing to reopen business even as hospitals struggle.
It's very hard to rule over well-off, free people who have the ability to get together in groups and converse.
It is very easy to rule over isolated, poor, desperate people who can't communicate with each other without using the controlled platforms on which unapproved speech is impermissible.
We don't need to physically congregate anymore to 'converse'. Exhibit A: what we are doing here. We are long past the time when this sort of measure would be effective to contain ideas.
> It is very easy to rule over isolated, poor, desperate people who can't communicate with each other without using the controlled platforms on which unapproved speech is impermissible.
That's not a slippery slope anymore, it's a inertialess elevator. Having the power to stop local transmission quickly before it gets out of control != turning people into isolated and poor communities.
edit since I'm not allowed to reply to you anymore, apparently:
Agreement with the narrative produces upvotes, increased karma. Disagreement is punished. On this channel, it tends to take longer to get silenced than on the more popular ones (post on facebook or twitter anything that goes against the obligatory viewpoint and your account will be shadowbanned or actually banned more or less instantly. Here, so long as you agree with the narrative more often than you oppose the narrative, you still can occasionally post -- though as you get downvotes (which only pro-narrative users can hand out) your messages disappear, leaving ... only the pro-narrative message visible. This makes organizing to oppose the narrative nearly impossible.
Look at the large counter-narrative groups. Their numbers were decimated by the lockdowns. They pretty much only exist in the few states that decided to end the lockdowns. Now that covid doesn't scare people into obedience anymore, there is the possible for organization again, which is why a new threat is required.
Anyway, I'm out. Dang's crew has effectively silenced me on the subject, because I am no longer willing to pay to be allowed to disagree with his mandatory narrative. It's really easy to chill speech, it turns out.
IIRC you can still post with negative karma. It's unusual, but I think it's possible.
Dang may still decide to ban you, even if you have positive karma. It's usually due to personal aggressions or lot of silly oneliners. I don't see anything like that in your comment history, but I didn't check too much.
Who benefits from 'lockdowns'?
> 'Biggest fraud in a generation': The looting of the Covid relief plan known as PPP ... the theft of as much as $80 billion — or about 10 percent — of the $800 billion handed out in a Covid relief plan known as the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP. That’s on top of the $90 billion to $400 billion believed to have been stolen from the $900 billion Covid unemployment relief program — at least half taken by international fraudsters ... And another $80 billion potentially pilfered from a separate Covid disaster relief program.
Here's the thing though - it's not sustainable. The entire world is either in a recession or trying their best to not be in one. Inflation is rampant globally. Supply chains have been disrupted. We can't have nonstop pandemics.
Inflation is partially due to trillions printed during the pandemic. Lockdowns created deflation, temporarily hiding the consequences of money printing.
> We can't have nonstop pandemics.
There's a difference between "foo" and "threat of foo". The latter can last for a long time, e.g. airport security procedures implemented in response to one-time events, still in effect twenty years later, with little evidence of effectiveness.
You and I can't afford to do the things we could afford to do pre-pandemic, but the Davos set have more wealth and more uncontested power.