It has now been one and a half years since the Covid terror started in the western world. From the start, I have written extensively about what I think about this crisis. I have little to add to that. A debate about the subject seems difficult anyway, as people now have too much investment in their opinions.

My opinion, in essence, is that I cannot see any data that suggests that we ever were in a public health emergency. We are dealing with a virus that is as dangerous as many other viruses in the past decades. But even if we were in an exceptional emergency, the idea that governments could protect us from it is beyond silly. The draconian policies we have seen since the start of this fake pandemic were not just not saving anyone, but they have created additional deaths that are already in the millions with no end in sight. These policies have brought our civilisation to the brink of collapse and will be judged by future historians as one of the most irrational and unnecessarily destructive policies in history.

There is, however, one big question that I so far have no satisfying answer to. Was this disaster a result of many tragic mistakes or is there more to it? Was the pandemic maybe even fully planned by some bad actors? This has been a question on my mind from the beginning. I am a libertarian. As such I have a strong scepticism of what can be achieve through deliberate planning on a large scale.

Governments are fundamentally incompetent. Even if one was of the opinion that governments should play a large role in organising society, they simply cannot. There are very good reasons for that. Bureaucracies have very limited capabilities to correct mistakes. No one in the system has much to loose from them. There are no effective mechanisms to hold people accountable for failures. Making mistakes within the state more often than not even results in getting rewarded with more funding.

But that is not the only problem with bureaucracies. Many decisions have to do with economics. As Ludwig from Mises demonstrated a century ago, it is impossible to allocate resources productively on a large scale through central planning. That is not to say that states have no effect on the world. To the contrary, state policies can have huge effects on people’s lives. But these effects are mostly not what these policies intended to achieve. Often they turn out to be the exact opposite. They create what Mises called a planned chaos.

But in this chaos, resources do change hands. This creates winners and losers. Observers, therefore, often conclude that the visible winners planned everything from the beginning. They can look like saboteurs who deliberately prevented the original good intentions of the policies.

This is the standard libertarian model of politics. It seems sound, and I, for one, certainly more or less subscribe to it. In the last one and half years, however, I came to the realisation that, while this model is good, it cannot be completely correct. I can slowly see how it might be possible to organise certain things effectively on a large scale, and that states are not completely incompetent.

For instance, if it were true that states are incompetent then why are they so good in staying in power? It should be easy to outsmart them and minimise their impact. And yet, libertarians, among which there are many very smart people, have been trying to do that for a very long time, without pretty much any success whatsoever.

It is true, states are incompetent most of the time. They cannot make us richer, safer, healthier or better people. Indeed, let us have a look at the ultimate centrally planned society, North Korea. As expected, nothing really works in North Korea. The populations is bitterly poor and on the brink of starvation. There is no reason to believe that that is deliberate. If the regime could feed its people and make them better off, I am sure it would. It would have nothing to loose from it. But it cannot. The only way the regime could do that is to get out of the way and allow the North Koreans to help themselves. That, however, would mean to give up power. And as incompetent as the Kim Yong Un regime is at almost everything, it is scarily good at doing one things, which is to stay in power.

The dear leader does not seem to care much about the consequences for the country. He is probably the only one who lives a somewhat good life there. The price for him staying in power and living that lifestyle is that the whole rest of the country is suffering. For normal people that would present a moral dilemma. For a psychopath like Un, however, this clearly seems acceptable.

A big flaw in the argument that planning does not work is to assume that the only thing one might want to plan is to improve things. It is, however, far more difficult to order than to destroy. If one wants to improve things, one needs to do trade offs. And for a central planner, it is impossible to know what the right trade offs are. But things are a bit different if trade offs don’t matter and all energy is directed towards achieving one goal.

The Soviet Union, for example, could not effectively feeds its population. But it was the first country to send a human into space. It also was quite good at building very destructive weapons. It simply focused all its energy onto these things and did not care about costs and trade offs.

Some people don’t want to improve the world, they just want to stay in power and keep their privileges. At best, they think they will improve the world once they have that power. But that is already a generous interpretation. Often, power itself is the main motivator, no matter what destruction it might cause to gain it. This is difficult for normal people to understand, which is why this idea is so often dismissed. The ignorance of that insight has lead to many tyrannies in history.

We all have made the experience that the state is not equally incompetent at everything. The state in the UK for example is terrible at solving serious crimes like burglaries. Way over 90% of burglaries go unpunished. On the other hand, try not to pay your taxes or park your car in the wrong spot. You will find that the state is not bad at all in enforcing these laws. It is quite good at defending its interests and power base.

Where does that leave us when it comes to the fake Covid pandemic? Is it possible that this was planned? I now think it is possible. That is not to say that I am 100% convinced that it was, but I can see that it is possible. Dismissing that possibility would be a huge mistake.

Who could have planned it? A good candidate is the deep state in China and the US. Both of these have a problem. Their financial systems are on the verge of collapsing under a mountain of debt. In China, such a collapse could mean the end of the regime in Beijing.

There is a tacit contract between the regime and its people that as long as the government delivers a certain amount of economic growth, the people won’t rebel. But Beijing has reached the limit of what they can deliver. A downturn is inevitable. The only chance for the regime to survive is increased control and suppression.

For that reason, the CCP has introduced a social credit system which is supposed to allow the communist government to monitor every move of its subjects. In addition to that, it has been aggressively closing down the last remaining freedoms, most importantly the free enclave of Hong Kong. Lockdowns, the ability to completely imprison regions in China, are just what the regime needs in its toolbox to survive the upcoming economic downturn.

And the US, or western governments in general? These are in a similar situation. The US once was the land of the free and the unrivalled champion of economic prosperity. Not any more. Now, a significant part of the wealth in the US is based on the fact that the US Dollar is the world reserve currency. By printing money, the US essentially can tax the rest of the world and artificially prop up the standard of living of its citizens. It has created an artificial class of super rich parasites, whose businesses enjoy political protection and first access to that printed money.

In addition, just like in all the other western countries, the state has build up gigantic benefits programs which have made a significant part of the population dependent on state subsidies. Western governments have vastly over promised future payments and cannot possibly deliver. Many people will end up with far less then they expected, which is politically explosive.

The western financial system, which is financing all of this, is collapsing under a mountain of dead. It cannot continue and needs to be reset. It basically collapsed already in 2008. The state, however, threw everything but the kitchen sink at the crumbling system and managed to keep the show going for another decade. Now, finally, it seems that it has used up all its existing ammunition. Interest rates are at zero and the FED’s balance sheet is at a record level. Central banks effectively have no ammunition left to combat the next downturn. And if they cannot prevent that downturn, a lot of power will be lost. A lot of people within the system will lose their wealth and privileges.

They will, therefore, need new ammunition. This can only be done by either starting to distribute printed money in a controlled way directly into the economy, and/or by putting interest rates into deeply negative territory. Neither of these things can happen in a free society. If people are free to act, they are not going to accept negative interest rates. They are also going to spend their money as they please. This would trigger the feared collapse. People would simply take their money out of the system and go into cash. That is why central banks first need to eliminate cash in any major quantity.

For that reason, they are planning to introduce Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC). With these, instead of opening a bank account with a normal high street bank, everyone would get a direct account with the central bank. This would allow the central bank to control every single transaction in that digital currency. It could restrict payments that it does not like and encourage spending that it does. Most importantly it can impose negative interest rates, as there is no way out of the system. In other words, the central banks would have complete control over how and when we can spend our money.

Needless to say that this system is also doomed to fail. The hard economic reality of scarce resources cannot simply be tricked away. But the elites in charge, for whatever reason, cannot, or don’t want to understand that. They truly seem to believe that authoritarianism, like the one we see in China, is a superior model. How often have we been told that this will be the Chinese century?

The pandemic allows central banks to overcome the resistance to introduce such a currency. It also allows governments to introduce control systems useful to prevent rebellions. The key to these are the vaccine passports. Once everyone is forced to constantly carry a government surveillance app on their phone with them, this can be easily expended to include these CBDCs. In addition, once introduced, such digital IDs can be used to control the opposition. They would have a similar functionality as the Chinese social credit system.

Cui Bono? While the pandemic is a catastrophe for most people, there are very large, powerful interests profiting from it. Another big concern about conspiracy theories, however, is that it is impossible to keep such a plan secret. Someone would talk. But that is not a valid objections in this case. That is because non of what I have written here is secret. I did not just make it up. The people who want this to happen are quite open about it. That is not to say that they are trying to advertise it to everyone, but they are also not concerned to keep it secret.

First of all, they can be sure that these things are too complicated for most people to understand. So most people won’t pay attention. For the remaining people there is a strategy to keep these plans from not being discussed too widely, even though they are essentially public. Anyone trying to attack these plans publicly will immediately be discredited as a conspiracy theorist.

Similar to other labels, like racist or anti-semite, this accusation is a very effective social pressure tool to shut down debate. Only nutters believe in conspiracies, and anyone suggesting one is therefore automatically discredited. The result is that people are not only afraid to speak out, but they even self censor their own thinking. Many stop considering these theories, as they do not like to think of themselves as crazy. One can often hear someone starting an argument with “I am not a conspiracy theorist, but…”. This shows the self censorship. Many do realise that it would actually be wise to think in a conspiratorial direction, but they cannot admit that to themselves, let alone an audience.

Psychology is on the side of people planning such campaigns. A normal person simply cannot conceive of such large monstrous plans and therefore cannot imagine that other people could. For these reasons, these kind of plans can be planned and discussed openly, without too much concern to worry the public.

And they have been discussed. Already in 2010, the Rockefeller Foundation published a report in which it outlined four scenarios for where the world is going. It ranked them according to attractiveness. The report is openly available here. The second most attractive scenario was called Lock Step. This scenario envisioned an influenza pandemic in which the free western countries are not doing very well, as the virus can freely spread. China on the other hand handles the pandemic much better by imposing lockdowns. Eventually, the western countries give in and impose lockdowns too. There would be wide spread enforced wearing of masks, as well as temperature checks at entrances. As a consequence of the pandemic, the western countries then discover the superiority of the authoritarian approach and maintain the emergency powers in order to combat other problem like terrorism, poverty and the environment. The scenario explicitly also talks about the introduction of digital IDs.

Sounds familiar? The Rockefeller foundation is not a little blogger. These people have a lot of influence. The writers of this scenario clearly believe in the superiority of authoritarianism. The reason why it was only second in attractiveness is, because they did correctly envisions that people might not accept these limitations on their freedoms forever.

This is not the only scenario in which actors with strong influence on power were discussing pandemics like the one we just saw. On 18th October 2019, a few month before the pandemic, the John Hopkins Centre for Health Security partnered with the World Economic Forum and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to host a Global Pandemic exercise called event 201. This time it was not an Influenza virus but a Corona virus that was spreading around the world. The virus originated in wild animals and then jumped onto humans. The group of highly ranked political and business leaders discussed how a pandemic like this would require worldwide political coordination in order to shut down travel, combat misinformation on the internet and subsidise essential businesses.

And of course we have World Economic Forum founder Claus Schwab’s book “The Great Reset” in which he outlines his authoritarian future vision. According to Schwab’s fantasy, ordinary people will own nothing and will be happy. This book, however, was published in the summer of 2020, after the outbreak of the pandemic, which might suggest that he was opportunistically reacting to the event. Nevertheless, he was almost certainly already thinking about these things before.

There are many other examples like this. I have often heard the objection that this is not a conspiracy. These people just all think alike. That strikes me as a distinction without a difference. Unless one wants to make the argument that it is pure coincidence that these people think alike. But it does not seem to be a coincidence. These people test and choose each other according to their attitudes. They also all have the same financial and power interests. It is not a coincidence, it is deliberate planning.

This to me all sounds plausible. But just because something is plausible does not mean it is true. How practical is such a plan really? After all, no one can control every government and every public influencer. When was the meeting where the Johnsons, Merkels and Macrons of this world all agreed to this plan?

It is of course true that no one can control every detail or even most details of the world. We are talking about human beings and not gods here. But just because it is impossible to plan every detail does not mean it is impossible to successfully plan at all. A plan can also be to push society towards a goal without controlling the exact path of how it is going to get there.

There is no need to get every political leader on board. In fact, if one wants to have any success in planing a campaign like this, it is vital to keep the incompetent elected politicians out of it. They are a weak link. Politicians are popularity artists and not serious long term actors. It is vital to understand that if there is a conspiracy, it is not coming from these incompetent clowns. These things are planned by people who have proven to be capable of success in their lives. The World Economic Forum crowd has a lot of non elected people in it with a history of success and ruthlessness.

Direct control of all political actors is of course not the way to go. What is needed instead is to start a campaign that can stand on its own. The way that can be achieved is fear. Fear has been used since the invention of politics to control people. Once people are scared, they have a tendency of stop thinking critically and rally behind their leaders. This seem to be an ancient instinct deeply ingrained in our brains. And it is surprisingly easy to control a public narrative.

A terrified public will automatically put a lot of social pressure on the opposition, similar to a war situation. And that includes governments. All that is really needed is to influence some major media outlets. There aren’t that many and they are relatively easy to buy. A few million can make a big difference to how a newspaper reports. To buy up all the major newspapers in the biggest western countries will cost less than 1 billion Dollars. That takes care of a large part of the narrative.

What is left is the distribution of information on the internet. Many people don’t realise that the internet has long stopped being the anarchic decentralised network of the early years. It is now surprisingly centralised with central points where all that data is coming together. There are also only a few big players controlling the flow of most information. And these players like google, twitter, and Facebook all have a self interest in the system continuing as it is and can be easily put under political pressure.

Their power goes way beyond what a newspaper can do. A Newspaper or TV station is broadcasting the same content for all its viewers. The big tech companies, however, have the ability to manipulate that goes far beyond that. Most people use the internet carelessly. They do not use VPNs that disguise their IP address; they use the same browser for all their activities and more often then not, they even browse the internet while being logged into google or Facebook. Some are even using devises like Alexa or Siri.

This allows big tech to monitor our whole lives. Everything, from where we go, who we meet, our internet history and even conversations we have in our private spaces are being monitored and analysed. The result is that these companies know many of us better than we do ourselves. Unfortunately, they increasingly use that power to manipulate public opinion into their favoured political direction. And they are slowly getting really good at that.

You might think you are doing your own research. But if you were not careful to misinform these tech giants, they can push you into believing a lot of things. By knowing who you are, they know which arguments might convince you. And they then only give you your personalised search results and social media feed in which nothing that could get you to the wrong conclusions will appear. No one is smart enough to escape that manipulation, as we can only form our opinions on the limited knowledge we have. Your only chance is to take precautions so that big tech does not know you well and therefore gives you diverse results. And of course, use alternatives whenever you can. But how many people are doing that?

Contrary to a common perception, controlling the narrative is easier today than ever before. Unlike the state media in previous totalitarian regimes, internet users are often not aware that they are using a highly monopolised and manipulated medium. The internet still appears to be very open. Yes, sure, alternative viewpoints exist. That is what this blog is about. But one really needs to make an effort to find them. Even most of my direct social media followers will probably not see me posting this article. Two of my twitter accounts have already been suspended.

Once a narrative is started, and major organisations have made an investment in it, it feeds on itself. Opposition becomes very difficult. There is no real need to control the details. All that is needed is to prevent the most critical voices from speaking out too loudly. And big tech is doing that very aggressively.

How much of this conspiracy narrative is true? I don’t know. But I am more and more inclined to think that it is more true than false. There are things in this pandemic that are unlikely random. From the very beginning there was an immediate focus on vaccines. That in itself might not be totally surprising, as vaccines are one of the very few known treatments which can prevent viral infections. The weird thing however was that there was already talk about vaccines being the only way out when there were no such vaccines available. From our experiences with vaccine developments, these take between 5 to 15 years. Betting on vaccines, therefore, seemed like a risky strategy to commit to from the beginning?

But it gets more suspicious. Even though no one could realistically have hoped for an effective vaccine to be developed and produced on a mass scale in short order, any discussion of alternative treatments was immediately and aggressively censored. Why did we not have an open debate about this, when the goal was public health?

And now we do see vaccine passports being introduced. Firstly, given that governments are essentially incompetent it seems remarkable that they could pull such a complex thing as a vaccine passport off in such a short time. Either they are incompetent, in which case they must have planned these for a longer period of time before the pandemic even started, or they are not incompetent, in which case the main argument against a conspiracy breaks down. The truth is probably in the middle.

The weirdest thing about these passports however is that they simple make no sense in their own right. If a vaccine works, it is protecting the person who is vaccinated. It is therefore a personal choice. What use does it have for me to know whether someone else is vaccinated? And yet despite the fact that we might have other treatments available, and despite the fact they simply make no sense, these passports are being very aggressively pushed onto society.

Again, I don’t know what is true. I can only speculate. But at this point it seems unlikely that everything we are seeing is just random mistakes. There is a clear agenda being aggressively pushed and it is being pushed worldwide. I don’t know whether this pandemic was planned from the beginning or whether bad political actors simply sized the opportunity of this crisis to push their agenda. But whatever it is, it seems clear that if it ever was about public health, it started being about something else very quickly. It is now about keeping and gaining power.

That being said, the people who are sceptical of conspiracies do have a point. While I am now convinced that there are bad actors at work, I do not think that they will ultimately succeed with their power fantasies. In most places, the people are simply not going to go along with it. Ultimately, conspiracy or not, whatever is happening fundamentally depends on the cooperation of society to go along with it. And this has gone too far too quickly.

Still, even if they won’t fully succeed, they will have destroyed large amounts of wealth, lives and freedom in our societies, damages that will be difficult to repair. So we need to analyse with an open mind what has happened, so that we can defend ourselves against similar attacks in the future. The self censoring attitude towards conspiracies is not helping. Let’s not dismiss conspiracies out of hand. It is better to discuss which ones are true and which are not.