The New Deal occurred before WW2 as a way to simulate things out of the Great Depression. Turns out war is even a bigger economic stimulus package than social programs.
I think you're possibly confused about what we're talking about here - those weren't restrictions on personal freedoms. A better analogy is blackout laws, which people railed against in the exactly the same way as lockdown laws. But obviously those powers went as soon as possible - literally the day Hitler died in fact.
a blackout law keeps an enemy bomber from dropping a bomb on my house. IMO, if you say to a rational person "keep your blinds down or else the nazi's will drop a bomb on your house" they'll say "gee that sounds like a good idea."
While in modern times, if you say "shut down the economy, increase alcoholism, suicides, mental health issues, homelessness, poverty, and inflation to defeat a virus with over a 99% recovery rate that really only effects old and unhealthy people" a rational person would raise their eye brow and say "that sounds suspicious and a great way to cover the fact that the last 12 years of money printing is about to implode"
> IMO, if you say to a rational person "keep your blinds down or else the nazi's will drop a bomb on your house" they'll say "gee that sounds like a good idea."
Your opinion is not factually supported. A million people were prosecuted for breaking lockdown laws in the UK.
> Your opinion is not factually supported. A million people were prosecuted for breaking lockdown laws in the UK.
That's his point. He's drawing a contrast to blackout laws,by claiming that an individual sees direct benefit from compliance (not getting bombed) while breaking lockdown doesn't create a lot of risk for the vast majority of offenders.
Ie, if a hypothetical person was 100% optimizing for self-interest, they would not break blackout laws but would break lockdown laws. This is a dramatic difference in dynamics when seeking to understand differences in compliance.
In the first six months of lockdown in the UK 6500 prosecutions were undertaken by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). These included non-lockdown flouting crimes which were simply flagged as 'Corona Virus related', such as threatening to cough on somebody whilst 'infected' and stealing items deemed essential for dealing with the pandemic.[1]
Your assertion that a million people were prosecuted seems far fetched.
This is a tangential interesting point, not a disagreement with your comment. But despite the mental health costs of the pandemic and associated policy, there's a growing body of evidence indicating that suicides do not appear to have risen, across many countries. Eg https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n834
The West had massively draconian laws during the last similar protracted existential problem, WW2, and gave them up just fine when it finished.