In the drive to prevent (viral) death by means of mass (economic) suicide, our Overlords have begun to order the cessation of activities in all ‘non-essential’ businesses.

While one can sympathise with the sentiment, it is, sadly, yet another example of the ignorant doing harm by trying to do good, since it shows absolutely no understanding of the complexity of the modern economy or of the elevated degree of interdependency which exists within it.

An opportune example of this came during a conversation I recently held with a very astute and genuinely long-term investor. Seeking to inject a note of optimism into an otherwise downbeat exchange of views, he said he had spoken to the CEO of a well-known food manufacturing concern in which he holds a stake.

“Business for the firm’s range of consumer staples is absolutely booming, ” he said, “to the point that extra shifts are needed to keep up with demand.”

“The only cloud on the horizon, ” he went on, ” is that the company is worried that it will not be able to replenish its fast-dwindling stocks of packaging and shipping materials and that this may force it, finally, to curtail production.”

So, you see, dear Prime Minister, maybe that aluminium smelter or foil producer; perhaps that petrochemical plant or plastics manufacturer; possibly that logging outfit or paper-mill, that printing shop and that delivery-truck spares distributor are a little more ‘essential’ than you might imagine and that, if you are to keep people fed and watered during their enforced confinement, they, too, need to be operating.

For an earlier discussion of the widespread ramifications of unavoidable entrepreneurial – and, worse, policy-making ‘unknowability’ – couched in terms of the then-ongoing economic upswing but equally applicable in reverse, now, amid even a bust of the magnitude of today’s historically large, peacetime supply shock – please click here: 20-03-22 Entrepreneur’s Guide to download a pdf, published under the auspices of a former employer.