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The Great Demoralization
by Jeffrey Tucker Daily Reckoning
On March 6, 2020, the mayor of Austin, Texas, canceled the biggest tech and arts trade show in the world, South by Southwest, only a week before hundreds of thousands were to gather in the city.
In an instant, with the stroke of a pen, it was all gone: hotel reservations, flight plans, performances, exhibitors and all the hopes and dreams of thousands of merchants in the town. Economic impact: a loss of $335 million in revenue at least. And that was just to the city alone, to say nothing of the broader impact.
It was the beginning of U.S. lockdowns. It wasn’t entirely clear at the time — my own sense was that this was a calamity that would lead to decades of successful lawsuits against the Austin mayor — but it turned out that Austin was the test case and template for the entire nation and then the world.