The 'economy' is not a Machine, but an Anthill (sort of)

A common failing is to think of the economy as a machine, which is subject to controls - levers and dials - which can be twiddled or pulled with well-understood results.

It simply isn't. What we characterize as an 'economy' is the aggregate result of millions of transactions between individuals, firms, 'little platoons' (the plethora of voluntary and uncommanded associations that folks generate), Governments, localities, resources, and other countries.

While some of this is counted, regulated and observable, much isn't. Ideas, innovation, tinkering, and thinking have generated most prosperity that we now enjoy, and much of That went completely unrecognised until it erupted (disrupted?) into the counted 'economy'.

That also makes a nonsense of the notion that 'economies can be re-constructed' as though they are a building, a dam, or an object with a BOM. To the extent that analogies work, economies are closer to an anthill (cubed) than to a machine. And there's no recipe for 'constructing an anthill' because there's no central intelligence, let alone central planning, involved. There's a bunch of ants....This is neatly laid out in Steven Johnson's 'Emergence'.

So Treasury and the other entrail-readers have no way of seeing or modelling aspects such as:

1. The possibility that older, skilled workers and business owners simply take a very long or permanent sabbatical. They've gotten used to a world where suddenly they are not beholden to customers, IRD, MBIE, Worksafe, TLA's and all the other overheads, and they may have discovered that they quite like it. That puts quite a dent in aspects like apprenticeships (who will mentor 'em?), productivity, niche products or raw materials, and other activities that are deep down in the BOM.
2. The possibility that actually-but-not-immediately-essential services or businesses have been so damaged that they won't re-start, or are sold on at fire-sale prices to new owners who take years to achieve the same levels of output or productivity. Either way, there's a big dip in the offing.

• Part of any reconfiguration (itself a bottom-up process) will lie in choice of trading partners. China has shat in its own nest via deceit, delays and imperial moves; so there will be a tense time as NZ still exports food to them, while at the same time gently disengages imports to some extent, and that as the aggregate choices of thousands of individuals and businesses rather than Gubmint fiat.

A lot of water to go under This bridge. Final word from Richard Fernandez: the most likely result of all of this will be systems run for the benefit of their componentry, rather than for the maximal optimisation overall. And globalism-compatible, not globalism-dependent. The title: Planning the Great Escape from House Arrest, and from Communist China.