[alberto467]

> that a collecive decision was made which increased general prices for everyone

I think you're referring to inflation with that? I wouldn't necessarily say that inflation is the result of a "decision", certainly not a direct decision of any single person nor any collective group. Economies can move around in weird and unpredictable ways, and they are also quite intertwined at the global level making policy decisions even more complicated and unpredictable.

The "money printing" decision wasn't made by asking the public: "would you like to help our economy and businesses and our essential public services in this tragic event? Oh btw you'll be paying for all of this with inflation, are you still sure?". Politicians tend to conveniently leave the second part out, and also, this questions wasn't asked to the public at all. I believe a sizeable amount of the public would've responded "no, let the people die, let the businesses die, i'm not paying for them".

Which is why for example, in many democracies with tools of direct democracy, such tools cannot affect fiscal policy, because people are dumb and they would just say "i want all of the welfare and zero of the taxes", bringing the country to ruin.

[bondarchuk]

Well, yes, but that is kind of the point. Even though there wasn't a referendum or anything, still in some sense a decision was made collectively.

[alberto467]

"in some sense" is doing a lot here.

It's not really a collective decision, it's the decision of governments, but also it was a temporary decision (basically every pandemic in history lasted a maximum of about 3 years), not a permanent one.

With a longer time-frame, there is time for people to elect new governments, and guess what would happen when a new politician comes along pitching: "hey i will stop all this green stuff which costs money and i'll give it to you curing poverty and making you richer, the other countries are still polluting who cares anyway". Meanwhile the other politicians pitch is: "No we have to make sacrifices to reduce our emissions, we can give up some comforts or pay more for them".

Guess who would win that election...