Looks Like a Conspiracy But is Not a Conspiracy. Big Pharma or Big Government?

Abstract

From the very beginning, the COVID-19 crisis management could have hardly been considered rational. This anti-scientific and seemingly illogical assault on freedom worldwide appears to be a highly coordinated and even pre-planned action. Many authors have suggested that Big Pharma took over governments through direct and indirect bribery, as they were the immediate beneficiaries of these policies. We claim that (1) there was probably no conspiracy and that (2) big government, not Big Pharma, was the main driving force behind the chosen way of the response. Bureaucrats of big caring governments over the world do not usually need explicit coordination to make perfectly coincident or perfectly complementary moves against their societies and against individual rights. Common interests, strong incentives, and classified knowledge make special coordination efforts unnecessary in the huge majority of cases perceived as a result of perfect coordination.

Keywords: COVID-19 management, conspiracy, Big Government, bureaucracy, collective actions coordination

JEL Classification: D72, D73, D78