Basically, it appears as though lockdowns are a mechanism for managing the inevitable mass unemployment required by automation. This includes the forced closure of small businesses that would likely be incapable of integrating AI-related technology into their operations. While AI’s advance will create jobs, they are not the kinds of jobs for which people whose jobs will be lost can qualify. Thus, a superfluous population is being created, who may potentially subsist on government welfare. This welfare, in turn, amounts to a transfer of money to the biggest companies in the market via the necessary consumer activity of its recipients, who will have nowhere else to patronize.