Continued from "The problem with Ardern - Part 1 of 2"

Nett Effects

This article has taken a while to write (no thanks to my wife who keeps stealing my PC!), which has resulted in an interesting side-effect: things are changing. As per the title of a ZeroHedge article yesterday “Everywhere you look, decades are happening in weeks”. So it is interesting to note that literally while I was writing this article, things are already blowing up in Jacinda’s face.

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - JUNE 01: Protestors march down Queen Street on June 01, 2020 in Auckland, New Zealand. The rally was organised in solidarity with protests across the United States following the killing of an unarmed black man George Floyd at the hands of a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images)

Source: cnn.com

That’s not an American city, that’s Auckland, New Zealand. I probably don’t need to point out that this is in contravention of Jacinda’s authoritarian New Zealand Level 2 Covid-19 restrictions. These are the sort of socio-political repercussions we can expect to see, repercussions made necessary by the abuse of government authority.

These isolated socio-political repercussions still seem small, but can be expected to increase greatly as the economic repercussions take hold. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that one dead black man is causing these protests. The horrible reality of our planet is that black men get killed by police forces every day, and nothing happens - THIS is different! George Floyd is only the catalyst, the last straw that broke the camel’s back. The death of George Floyd was a government taking that one step too far...

And it doesn’t MATTER to New Zealanders that George Floyd died in the USA! They know full well that their government is in bed with the American authorities! They know that their government abuses them the exact same way that the American government abuses its people! They know that NZ is part of the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance! They know that what happened to George in the US could just as easily have happened to a New Zealander - such is the nature of governments using armed forces to enforce their undemocratic authoritarian will.

Socio-politically - New Zealand is in deep trouble. Were that it’s only issue, then maybe it could recover. But...

Economically, Jacinda’s socialist polices are going to do what every single socialist policy before them has done: FAIL

Like most governments, she has set her nation up for a period of protracted economic suffering, trading a few Covid-19 deaths saved by flattening the curve for many more deaths caused by economic consequences. Politicians don’t excel at long-term thinking!

In the case of New Zealand these economic effects are going to be particularly bad!

Oh Jacinda Jacinda! What have you Done?

The economy of New Zealand is a strong one: incidents of poverty are low, unemployment is low, the market is freer than most, corruption is low. One could say that New Zealand has been spoilt by relative economic prosperity. Of course the 1% grab the lion’s share of the gains - as with everywhere else - but the lower end of the NZ wealth spectrum is still relatively well off.

Tragically, the economy of NZ is highly dependent on tourism, far more so than other affluent Western nations. Unfortunately for New Zealand, since 2008 tourism has been its number one method of earning foreign currency. Tourism accounts for about 15% of New Zealand’s GDP.

And then a global pandemic hit...

So Jacinda shut the borders and Jacinda largely stopped the spread of the virus.

But what now? No tourism = no money. How can New Zealand make money again?

Well obviously it has to restart tourism, BUT - and let’s not even include that natural drop in tourist numbers which will occur due to Covid-19 economic issues elsewhere in the world - New Zealand tourism CAN’T effectively be restarted - for two major reasons:

Hardly any New Zealanders have had the virus. Opening borders will put the population at risk, nullifying the effects of all Jacinda’s measures thus far!

Effectively, Jacinda has backed herself in to a catch-22 situation: damned if she doesn’t, damned if she does. Don’t pity her, she created it. Politially there is no way that she can now go back on her decision and allow the virus to progress naturally - Sweden-style. It would be the right move, it was the right move all along, but she removed that option from the table herself.
With virus spread continuing SLOWLY, it will take YEARS before tourists may want to travel to a country which is still dealing with Covid-19 cases.

It’s actually been a few days since NZ last logged a new case of infection. With little to no immunity in the population (and considering that any tourist may reintroduce the virus), will tourists want to travel to a destination which could turn into a Covid-19 hot-spot at the drop of a hat? Would they not prefer a less risky destination in which herd immunity has already been achieved and in which the virus will not spread?

What Jacinda has done is to have isolated her nation to keep it “safe” - but she’s also effectively cut the little NZ island group off from the rest of the world. They can’t travel, they can’t trade properly, they can’t make money!

I know she has some plans to reopen tourism with Australia only, but that will only compound her problems as she sits in a hybrid scenario - one foot in isolation, the other in the wild. Numerous new points of possible failure. It’s a terrible idea.

Once again, this isn’t a malicious act, she just doesn’t understand what she is doing. Look at her banking sector: she has made great strides to overhaul it, yet she’s overhauled the worn things, the foundations of the system remain untouched. Those who control the purse strings still control the strings of the puppet politicians. She didn’t overhaul the important part. She didn’t fix the problem. She stayed a puppet.

Conclusion

When the Christchurch mosque shootings occurred in 2019, Jacinda said “All semi-automatic weapons used during the terrorist attack on Friday 15 March will be banned,” clearly COMPLETELY misunderstanding the cause of the social problem. She immediately went into typical liberal tyrant mode and executed a predictable knee-jerk reaction: the banning of semi-automatic weapons and high capacity magazines. Because - you know - inanimate objects kill people by themselves...

As with almost any gun restriction or ban, this was a gross violation of the rights of law-abiding residents to protect themselves from government tyranny. Perhaps now, a year later - we see why these rights are so important! Perhaps now people will be reminded of why America’s Second Amendment is one of the most, if not the most, important documents ever drafted. SO FEW government policies actually PROTECT the common man from tyrants! Of course, she also completely failed to address the societal root causes of the incident - ironic - because it’s those same sort of frustrations and anger at the status quo that have now led her people into the streets in protest.

Anyway, we now see that Jacinda failed to learn that knee-jerk overreactions are a bad thing, because she went straight from 2019 gun-based overreaction to 2020 Covid-19-based overreaction. Both are gross violations of human rights and are potentially deadly to the common man!

Jacinda has absolutely failed her nation in one of the worst possible ways. Her legacy will not be the one she imagined. The world changed out of “rose-tinted spectacles mode” on her watch and she monumentally failed to read the signs and adapt. Much suffering will come of her poor leadership and the progress of a wonderful nation will be severely setback. No doubt her government will try to blame the virus for what is to come, but no virus ever ordered a lockdown! YOU did this Jacinda. The suffering is on YOU!

Maybe Banksy was wrong about the most dangerous thing in the world. Maybe Martin Luther King Jr. was right when he said: “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

All we can hope for now is that someone teaches Jacinda about Bitcoin.

Bitcoin, your time is NOW! There is SO MUCH salvation that you can bring to this broken world!