Covid was an outlier event, and the outcomes that occurred as a result of it will revert to the mean over time.
Is that what we are calling business now? As if industry players don't buy media outlets precisely to push their narratives (look at tech outlets, crypto outlets, pharma etc). How is this a "cabal"? It's cheaper to just talk to your friend who owns business insider and also invests in the same RE funds to ask "journalists" to research on the topic.
Also, plenty midmanagement in many industries love RTO: it's harder to justify their roles (and what they got promoted for) unless they have bags of flesh to oversee. It's not a cabal of midmanagement. It's just midmanagement slow pushing for RTO internally.
The reality is much more depressing -- nobody is in the control. Not the Illuminati, not the Jewish bankers, and not the C-level executives conspiring to force RTO to maximize their investments in the (unrelated) commercial real estate. These all are just conspiracy theories.
which implicitly means "their own" control!
What you’re describing is a cognitive bias.
https://centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/tabletop-exerci...
You can believe COVID happened however you want — but it’s documented reality that the elites practiced exactly the authoritarian response they used mere months before the virus outbreak.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Reset
Similarly, those same elites wrote a book about how they want to use the authoritarian measures they implemented during COVID as a gateway to imposing their vision on society. Again, documented reality.
Isn’t that point of training and exercises? To be ready and have a plan when the situation you trained for actually occurs?
If you read the John Hopkins’ Center for Health Security link you provided, they did similar exercises in 2018 ("Clade X"), 2005 ("Atlantic Storm"), and 2001 ("Dark Winter").
To me this doesn’t prove that there is a conspiracy of any kind.
It simply and reassuringly shows that some of those who’s responsibility it is to be prepared for and help us collectively get through these kind of situations are actually taking their jobs somewhat seriously.
I guess you could call that a conspiracy. A conspiracy to do their jobs well.
No conspiracy needed for a bunch of people to act in their own perceived best interest and work backwards to a justification.
People need not work together to conspire, only vaguely in the same direction. Incentives do that like radio waves
Better yet, those leaders maybe also love exerting control over their employees and find this more enjoyable in an office environment.
Companies ARE NOT a democracy. In my mind, there's a huge overlap between being high company leadership and also being a self-serving narcissist. Are we then surprised that narcissists prefer to do things in their own self interests, and prefer to boss people around while looking at them? To me, that's not surprising at all. I think people don't understand these decisions aren't made by hundreds of people, but rather less than a handful per company.