Are these shutdowns their own form of virus to the economy, in a world where we are the economy?

Hi Everyone – Welcome to Finance and Fury, the Furious Friday edition. The whole point of this episode is to remind people of the original purpose of the Furious Friday episodes of this podcast – that is to think for yourselves –

For those of you newer to the podcast – there are three episodes a week – Monday is personal finance – Wednesday is answering questions – Friday is more of a commentary on what is going on – a deeper dive observing the political, socioeconomic, and many other topics – as this all related to economics  

Recently received many comments or reviews saying to stick to my lane and to not cover corona as millions would die – instead do economics or investment topics – I was – and still am –

1. Government measures globally to combat this invisible enemy (as politicians refer to it as) are affecting the economy – so in an effort to understand if these actions are justified, I was looking into what is going on –
   1. If something is crashing the economy – then that is exactly what I am going to cover – whether it be a natural disaster, climate change rhetoric, or a virus – as there are political policies proposed in response to each which has an economic effect
2. That is what this new Furious Friday series is about –the government responses to a virus – and to look at the justifications for their policies which are economy crashing – so we will be looking at this further and the incentives that are in play – as the very foundations of economics are incentives – based around the economic problem –
   1. So this series is dedicated to those telling me to stick to economics – as this is exactly what I am doing – if you can’t understand that then this may not be the podcast for you and there are plenty of other podcasts you can go and listen to – or the Project needs listeners
3. We’re all on the same team – and I want the best for every one of you – as I actually do care about people – hence why I have my purpose – do my job and also do this podcast– I want the best for people – why I warn about the authoritarian issues we are blindly walking towards
   1. In the next few Furious Friday episodes – will be looking into this topic – doing a deep dive – but don’t just trust what I say – that is no better than trusting the media – go and look for yourself – think for yourself – don’t just follow the mass consensus – helps to avoid the situation of a herd all running off a cliff – I will leave links on the show notes on the website for each episode – but research the numbers yourself – not on the news – ask yourself – are these numbers outside of the normal? Answer might surprise – but we will go through this further later in the episodes –
4. In the past few weeks been called Alan Jones to Alex Jones – that is fine – actually made me laugh – but the truth is more important than any personal attacks I may face – I don’t really care about social shame and these people are responding in a manner of panic and emotion – and actually haven’t made a single good point – they just parrot the media and do personal attacks – and evidently emotion can be manipulated – just like fear – a powerful emotion
   1. Examples – Stop it – millions will die – don’t you care about people dying? Yes – I care about people dying unnecessarily as much as anybody else – but my motives are to be able to have an honest conversation about the measures being put into place
   2. And my reactions to the situation aren’t being driven by emotional manipulation from Governments or media – they are driven by thinking things through – in an effort to find the truth or logos of a situation
   3. So I want to get the poisonous accusation that has been already made out of the way – that anyone who criticises the shutdown of society doesn’t care about the old people dying, or even, wanting people to die, out of the way
   4. It is the same as if you oppose war – like I do – for example the Iraq war – anyone back then that opposed the war was targeted by saying that they must then support Saddam Hussein’s fascist regime and that they think he should be allowed to torture people – see how ridiculous this sounds? – is a binary way of thinking
   5. All it does is shut down serious conversations about the validity of an action – similar in the attempts to crush dissent on other politically hot topics like climate change – those that do this are acting like a dictator – shutting down any dissent if it breaks their narrative of the world – in a democracy – discussing issues is the only way to retain a democracy – otherwise you live in a fascist or dictatorship if you aren’t allowed to question your leaders actions
5. When it comes to the current government actions – a lot of the publics thinking is binary – which is a completely false dichotomy – either it is a question of saving lives or a question of saving the economy –
   1. People who talk about the economy as if it’s just some kind of abstract machine of numbers and profits don’t understand the economy –
   2. the economy is all of us – our lives make up the economy as without us – there is no economy – but in addition – it is our livelihoods – so not just lives but individual’s ability to prosper that make up the economy as an aggregate
   3. We are how products are created, we are who buy those products – and unfortunately – with the way modern society has been structured is that we cannot function without the economy – for me, caring about the economy is caring about every life that exists within it – as without people – there is no economy
      1. Financial Markets are a subset of the economy – these days that is the speculative side
   4. But the overall economy is a function of our lives – nobody is buying, then nobody is selling, which means nobody is working, and if nobody is working, then there is no way for people to live in a society that is based on monetary exchanges, so how do we pay for our houses and our food then?
      1. Going deeper – How do we pay for the social services that Governments provide – like education systems or pay public doctors or build hospitals? – As yes, as tax payers we are funding these services
   5. If we have no economy to make our own way – then we become reliant on a Government – which is socialism – as everything then is nationalised and owned by the government – but without an economy to tax – socialism cannot exist as the taxation income required to fund government spending projects dries up – results on Governments relying of deficient spending (which is where we are at now with the emergency measures) – look around – read about any country that turns to massive deficit spending long term – hasn’t worked out for any country in history in the long term – starts to create a zombie economy or a modern day Venezuela – where people are eating their own domestic pets to survive
   6. This is why a conversation about these measures is important – otherwise we can blindly end up in a much worse position –
6. Over the past few weeks – society as we know it and our personal freedoms have been shut down – and in return the economy has been put on hold – so for anyone out there still doubtful about the fact that we are the economy – the causal effect of our freedoms being removed to go to work or operate a business = and the economy shutting down should start to become evident – we are the economy – hence why governments of socialist nations that try to make themselves the economy fail so fantastically –
   1. As when civil liberties have been curtailed in the name of fighting against anything – even inequality – the economy and us always suffers
   2. But there has been hardly any scrutiny or opposition against these ever-stricter measures being unjustly forced upon us – people getting fines $10k for driving around – not even leaving their car
7. We live in a country with ‘representative democracy’ where parliament determines what is good for us – just like a parent and their children – now – our most basic freedoms have been eroded – If we had any kind of leadership that was honest about looking after our best interest – there would have at least been a debate before implementing these measures –
   1. To me – this has demonstrated that we don’t really have a free or democratic society any longer – we have had no say in any of this – hence the representative nature of democracy – we get to choose who leads us but have no say in what they actually do
8. Now – we are all virtually under house arrest and Government determined rituals all have to observed – even though you wouldn’t know about them unless you watch the media – does this not raise some alarm bells at the speed and the ease with which this is being enforced on us – when we aren’t sure what a reasonable excuse to leave the house looks like – I have done a lot of research on history – especially the authoritarian side to history – one key of control is to have laws that evolve and are subjective – creating mass confusion – where anything you do may be illegal – hence – the population freezes out of fear
9. So this whole Furious Friday series will be to just talk for a moment about the extraordinary situation we find ourselves in – we have closed down virtually the whole of society and most of the economy, and in the process we have stored up immeasurable problems for the future – ignoring the factor of now losing the most fundamental rights of even leaving your home unless the Government deems it essential
10. I am just seeking an answer – we are presented with a problem – and the way of solving it by those whose only job is to constantly seek more power is to shut down the country and strangle civil liberties
    1. Think for a second – Australia’s Government is starting to model their policies off one of the most despotic country in the world, the People’s Republic of China – even the WHO praised them for being the role model to follow – which raises alarm bells – an organisation like the UN wanting people to lose their individual sovereignty – this isn’t suspicious at all
11. Are these measures justified – well what happens to a society which trashes its economy? I will tell you what happens. It is unable to afford proper health provision or to provide a social safety net – such as the Age Pension
    1. all of its standards decline, its food gets worse, its air quality gets worse, its housing gets worse, its water quality gets worse, and everybody gets sicker – Looking at the concept of Human Rights – These only exist when a country is in first world conditions – If we have no money left to provide for health care – health care can no longer be provided – what about welfare like the Age Pension? How much pension is provided in third world nations?

This series is in an effort to lay these facts out and to explain fully why I think the way I do about the events now playing out–

1. be 3 episodes at minimum over the next few Fridays – as what I think comes from many many hours of research – probably say over the last month around 80 – 100 hours spending reading published studies and – not just reading and then parroting social media or other news pages –

12. In all of this – I want to find the truth to the question – is the cure worse than the disease?
    1. The real question is, is this serious enough to warrant putting most of our population into house imprisonment, wrecking our economy for an indefinite period, destroying businesses that honest and hardworking people have taken years to build up, saddling future generations with debt, depression, stress, heart attacks, suicides and unbelievable distress inflicted on millions of people who are not especially vulnerable, and will suffer only mild symptoms or none at all?
13. The complete failure to debate it is astonishing to me – Science by consensus versus science by the scientific method
    1. The fact that people can’t even drive in their car – not even getting out – shows the hand – to me a lot of these measures seem illogical
14. So we will be looking at the disease itself but also the measure being put into place – and their consequences

In the next few episodes, we will look deeper into the numbers – but a few factors – which should at least raise some questions – quick summary – we will go through each of these in a lot of detail in the next episode – leave sources in next episode to these

1. The testing – what is the methodology of this? Is it qualitative or quantitative? Is there a gold standard to test against? how it is being done and the accuracy to false positives – estimates around 60-80% of false positives – similar to the number of those who show now symptoms – should raise some alarm bells – so if someone doesn’t show symptoms – are they sick given the degree of error rates
2. The distinction between dying of corona virus – or dying with coronavirus –
   1. CDC advice on death certificates – ‘COVID should be reported on the death certificate where it is assumed to have caused or contributed to death’ “if the deceased had another chronic condition such as COPD that may have also contributed, these conditions can be reported in part 2 – but technically not the actual cause of death
   2. Even numbers in Italy – which is being used to ratchet up the fear – If you have no pre-morbidity – has a 0.9% chance of death – of those average age has been 78 – then – over 50% of deaths have been in those with 3+ pre-morbidity condition – i.e. have cancer, heart disease, etc.

This episode is just as a little introduction – but don’t worry – I will do a deeper dive into some anomalies which aren’t apparent unless you actually look and think about them in the next Furious Friday episode – Next Episode – looking at the numbers and methodology to see the validity of these responses –

Thank you for listening to today’s episode. If you want to get in contact you can do so here: http://financeandfury.com.au/contact/