Meddling in affairs that are much, MUCH too big for them.

Way back when the Covid panic began, smart people pointed out that shutting down an economy was going to have unforeseen consequences. A modern economy is an incomprehensibly complex organism. Even turning off some parts of it for a short time will change the organism, resulting in downstream changes. It is why people who work with complex things are very careful about the changes they make. They accept that there is much about the system that they cannot known in advance.

Of course, the people in charge are sure they have it all figured out, so they just blundered ahead with their lock downs and new rules. Shutting down most of the restaurant industry and closing the schools. for example, radically altered the demand side of the food market. Suddenly, goods for the restaurant business had no demand, while demand for home products shot through the roof. This should have given them pause, but they kept blundering ahead with their schemes.

Anyone who has been in a grocery store of late knows that food prices are jumping like it is the 1970’s again. There are also weird shortages. Something like mayonnaise will disappear from the shelves for a week and then come back, but then plastic bags become scarce. The same phenomenon is happening with other things like building supplies and petroleum products. The official statistics are complete nonsense, so we have no idea how much food has jumped. It is enough that people are talking about inflation in private conversations for the first time in decades.

The usual suspects, of course, are spilling into the streets to chant about fiat currency, hyperinflation, and the rest of their stuff. It is as if the Great Pumpkin has finally risen out of the pumpkin patch. They have been waiting their whole lives for the Weimar moment foretold in the prophesies. Because these people are always wrong it is good to remember they are wrong now. The problem now is actually much worse than too much money chasing too few goods. It is systemic.

For starters, governments around the world have been taking sledgehammers to the global supply chain. These supply chains evolved over a long period of time to solve the problems of getting goods to the market. In response to Covid, government willy-nilly started turning things on and off without much thought. The system can respond to short term emergencies like natural disasters, but it was never equipped to respond to random outages imposed by people who have never had a job.

Then you have the stimulus plans. Having idled large swaths of the economy for periods, the same people frantically turning things on and off started pumping money into the retail side. At first this new money was absorbed in the system. Personal debt fell in 2020 as people got conservative in the face of the crisis. They also began to change their lives in response to the lockdowns. Going to the movies and out to eat is a habit, not a necessity. Lots of habits changed in 2020.

The upshot to all of this is we are seeing real inflation for the first time in generations, but we have a variety of causes this time. In the 1970’s, it was too much money chasing too few goods. Pulling money out of the economy was painful, but it worked. This time, we have too much money in some areas, but we have broken supply chains and labor markets contributing to the problem. The Fed cannot do anything about shortages of aluminum cans or chicken farm with too few chickens.

Why…why…why, WHO COULD HAVE FORESEEN…?!?

When feckless, lackwit ProPols who are every bit as certain of their own brilliance and omni-competence as they are lacking in experience with the world outside the goobermint cloister stick their ten thumbs into matters they have absolutely no clue about, the resultant massive goat-fuck is commonly referred to as “unintended consequences.” In a system as complex and intertwined as a national economy, the catastrophe wrought by the hamfisted jiggery-pokery of such cretins will produce far-flung ramifications that can take years to wend their way through the national fabric, victimizing entire populations and ruining many millions of lives. The cascade of unwelcome effects brought on by in-way-over-their-heads politicians working the WuFlu powergrab are multifarious and unpredictable. For instance:

Lack of tanker truck drivers could lead to gas shortages this summer
With gas prices already surging this year, another fuel problem may soon be on the horizon.

Some in the industry are now predicting a fuel shortage come summer. And it’s not due to a supply issue, but rather not enough tank truck drivers to move the fuel to gas stations.

CNN reported that industry group National Tank Truck Carriers said nearly 20% to $25% of tank trucks aren’t being used right now as there are not enough qualified drivers available. The year before the pandemic struck, that number was only at 10%.

The problem reportedly became magnified last year when Americans weren’t driving due to the coronavirus pandemic shutdowns, and gas stations just didn’t need as much gas. This meant truck drivers weren’t getting enough work and many chose to leave the business.

Also adding to the challenges is that the job requires a special certification and a certain amount of training. During the pandemic, many of the truck training programs were also shut down.

Bold mine, no further elaboration necessary. Remember, this is but one of innumerable examples of the knock-off effects caused by opportunistic ProPols fiddling about under the Covid cloak. Back over to Z for the grim conclusion.

None of this means there is no answer. Often, the right answer is to do nothing and let things run their course. That was the right answer with Covid. As with Covid, the rulers cannot accept that answer, so they will thrash around some more. The people animating the corpse of Joe Biden are promising to smash things up some more for the greater good. After all, what matters to them is that we know the people in the mansions and castles really care about us, while they live like royalty.

The result of all this is we are heading into a cruel summer. The bill for the Covid response is coming due. How a society responds to crisis is the result of the social trust in that society. America is a low trust society now. Further, the people who will be counted on to dig out of the mess created by the rulers are now treated like second class citizens by those rulers. The fix to the 60’s and 70’s was to first repair the loss of faith in the system. It is hard to imagine that happening this time.

It is at that…but it damned well ought to be, when you think about it. After all, loss of faith isn’t what needs fixing here, being only a perfectly appropriate response to a system that has become demonstrably unworthy of it. The best—probably the only—effective way to deal with the kind of untrustworthy, dysunctional dumpster-fire of a system this one has devolved into is to dismantle it, then start over with a new and hopefully better one. Probably the best way to get THAT project off to a good start would be to see to it that this time said rulers will damned sure NOT be allowed to evade the consequences of their monstrous conceit, for once in their worthless lives.