 This is not a recession. This is a government-imposed shutdown of the private sector by Hunter Hastings, an Audio Mises wire narrated by Million Quinteros Economists and Wall Street analysts are using the word recession to describe the looming plunge and output in the US economy We'll just make the point early that exhibiting the typical emptiness of their failed science can't even agree on the definition of recession Undeterred by lacking a definition the geniuses at Goldman Sachs and elsewhere on Wall Street are unrestrained in predicting the imminent arrival of the condition they can't describe As is always the case people understand the condition that economists can't even describe in theory They understand the lost jobs and wages the reduction in activity at the businesses where they work They understand fewer shifts fewer hours a smaller paycheck or layoffs or furloughs Unemployment and the need to ask the government for handouts to get by and to feed their families when they'd rather be helping themselves They understand uncertainty and disruption. They feel the fear of not knowing their own economic future Recessions like all economics are subjectively experienced in the human mind in individuals in families in communities We have an understanding of why recessions occur cyclically although economists can agree, of course Business growth the opposite of recession is driven by savings and investment in new capacity new and more productive machines new software new roads bigger ships and all the capital that people put to work to produce more goods and services Investment is a calculated bet on time if a business spends this money now on new production that will occur in the future They calculate a positive return on that investment Recessions occur when governments get in the way and distort the calculation They issue too much credit at too low a price and the business calculus misfires The low cost of credit entered into the investment calculation gives a false positive When the investment is actually undertaken it fails to deliver the expected profit Projects are shut down jobs are lost We have seen this cycle many times the failed investment calculus may apply to dot-com companies 2000 home mortgages 2008 or one or more of many other sectors Typically the malinvestment is quickly shaken out and economic growth resumes But wait the coming recession in 2020 so coldly and unfeelingly computed in the cloud by Goldman Sachs is not like this We are about to enter a production slowdown a collapse really Not because some businesses miscalculated their investments But because government intervened drastically and without warning to shut down all businesses How did they do that? By taking away the freedoms of the people whose energy and application drive economic growth Government told them to stay home. Don't go to work. Don't go to bars and restaurants in cinemas Don't take your kids to school. Don't build cars or airplanes or computers or houses Don't provide hospitality at hotels Don't perform the tasks that constitute a growing economy where everyone who works serves everyone who consumes and everybody thrives Let's leave aside for the moment the monumental error we made in allowing government to do this To withdraw our economic freedoms with such damaging consequences Let us try to understand the thinking and the motivations behind this tsunami of government hubris First it is based on the worst error of government central planning Despite all repeated evidence to the contrary and despite their endless failures Governments believe they can predict and change the direction of the future based on mathematical modeling of the human condition The models are computed using the government experts own assumptions. They're by achieving a self-referential circularity They're right because they're right In the current case the government experts input a wide range of unproven assumptions about coronavirus incidents and infection rates And the exchange of infection between individuals They arrive at predictions of infection for the population There are wildly fluctuating model outcomes and predictions. So they pick the worst case The second step is the giant leap from the theoretical output of the models to the fantasy that government action can be taken against real people In order to change the inputs to the model Reinfection rates too high Order people to change their behavior to get no closer to each other than six feet Another assumption from some model somewhere Tell them to stay home and abandon all economic activity Lock down the state lock down the country Why are they doing this? Because they can They have not actually given a reason to save lives who's Why now and not in previous flu seasons, which are much more deadly To reduce pressure on the health care sector Find other ways to do it Which one of us has been asked whether he wants to sacrifice his livelihood in return for a theoretically reduced probability of a COVID-19 infection They have the models and they have the political power to order us around control and power over individuals is the only justification Worse this escalation in the power of government Which has reached the point where they can order us not to leave our homes and enforce the order at the point of a gun We'll prove irreversible We won't be able to unremember what they did to us It will be indelibly recorded in history Governments will point to this instance to justify future worst instances We must start to resist For more content like this visit mises.org