This recent headline from New Zealand should itself send chills down your spine…
“Government reveals details of fuel crisis rationing plan – and who will be prioritized.”
Anytime the pointy shoes get to decide who will and who will not get something, you must realise that you’re about to get royally screwed.
The uncomfortable parallels between the Convid response and the proposed fuel rationing plan cannot be ignored.
On the surface, the Fuel Response Plan looks more restrained than Covid. It’s incremental, it defers to markets in early phases, and it explicitly frames escalation as a last resort. Officials are at pains to say Phases 3 and 4 are unlikely. Then again, we saw the same BS with the Covid scam. This is deliberate positioning.
The architecture of this plan is strikingly familiar…
The Structural Parallels
Escalating powers are dressed as prudent planning.
Covid began with “two weeks to flatten the curve.” The fuel plan begins with “monitor and inform.” In both cases, the framework is designed to normalise the existence of extraordinary powers before they’re used.
Phases 3 and 4 — rationing, purchasing limits, directed distribution — are legally and politically pre-legitimised by their inclusion in a published plan. The plan doesn’t just prepare for a crisis; it prepares the public to accept an intervention they haven’t yet been asked about. Most notably there is no consultation mechanism.
This is pure top-down central planning. The illusion of democracy should be well and truly shattered. Sadly, I suspect the sheep will fall for it… again.
Ministerial discretion is the operative mechanism. The Fuel Security Ministerial Oversight Group decides when to move between phases, guided by six criteria — none of which are automatic triggers. Ministers “will consider a broad range of information” and “assess the full picture.”
This is identical to the Covid Alert Level system, where Ashley Bloomfield and Jacinda Ardern effectively held unchecked discretion over the country’s movement. The criteria provide political cover, not genuine constraint. It was a smokescreen, and so is this.
Consultation theatre. Phases 3 and 4 are labelled “under consultation” — but consultation with whom, on what timeline, with what veto power?
Covid’s “consultation” with business groups and regional authorities was largely performative. There is no reason to expect this to be different.
Where It’s Actually Worse
The priority bands are socially explosive.
Band A through E create a formal hierarchy of citizens. Very undemocratic, of course — but hey, who’s asking questions? It’s a crisis, dammit.
Emergency services and defence get uncapped supply. General retail consumers are last. This is defensible in an emergency — but it also means that in a sustained disruption, ordinary people rationing school runs and commutes are subsidising the uninterrupted operation of government and defence.
During Covid, economic pain was at least notionally shared. Here, it is explicitly stratified by decree.
“Economically important services” is wide open. Band B includes “critical transport services” and “food supply and primary production during time-critical periods.” Who defines time-critical? Who decides which freight is critical? If I’m a small guy distributing food from wholesalers to local delis, do I get priority? I highly doubt it. Nope — it’s going to be like Convid. A chosen few.
This is the same stupid bureaucratic discretion grant that, under Covid, would have been used to favour large incumbents — supermarket chains, major logistics operators — while small operators fought for scraps. Nothing in this document prevents that.
No exit criteria. The plan says measures “will be lifted as soon as conditions allow.” Covid said the same.
New Zealand maintained some of the most restrictive border policies in the developed world for nearly two years. “As soon as conditions allow” means as soon as Ministers decide conditions allow — which is no constraint at all.
Where It’s Genuinely Better
Honestly, the only thing I could find in this plan that is mildly positive is there isn’t (yet) any attempt to manufacture social solidarity through emotional appeals. I suspect that’ll change, along with the inevitable propaganda.
The Core Problem
The fundamental lesson not learned from Covid is this: emergency frameworks, once built, are hard to dismantle and easy to expand.
New Zealand’s Covid apparatus — the legislation, the enforcement culture, the public health bureaucracy’s authority — outlasted any reasonable emergency by 12–18 months, and left lasting damage to civil liberties norms, small business viability, and trust in institutions.
This fuel plan creates an analogous apparatus. The ministerial group, the priority bands, the directed distribution powers — these don’t disappear when the crisis ends. They become baseline infrastructure for the next emergency, whatever it is.
Now I want to touch on something related: the steady creep of fascism we’ve seen globally. Convid was a major push in that direction, and I see the potential ideas currently floated by the pointy shoes as yet another step into that cesspool.
The Framing Question
Most commentary will describe this plan as pragmatic emergency management. That framing should be rejected immediately.
Emergency frameworks are not politically neutral. They encode assumptions about who owns resources, who allocates them, who gets protected, and who bears the cost.
When you map the fuel plan’s architecture against economic models honestly, the result is uncomfortable.
Economic Fascism Is the Model
Economic fascism, stripped of its wartime aesthetic, is a specific and coherent system: private ownership is preserved in form, but the state directs resource allocation, sets priorities, and determines winners and losers.
The large private firm and the state apparatus become functionally indistinguishable. Property rights exist on paper while operational autonomy does not.
Let’s map that against the proposed fuel plan…
- Fuel companies retain ownership of their infrastructure and stocks — but government directs who they supply, in what priority, under what conditions.
- Industry “coordination” is the mechanism, meaning large incumbents with government relationships are at the table; small operators are not.
- Crony capitalism is taken to a new level.
- The priority bands — Band A through E — are not market outcomes. They are state-directed allocation dressed up in administrative language.
This is not a market. It is directed private enterprise — which is the operational definition of economic fascism.
The Middle Class Obliteration Mechanism
Remember Covid measures? The middle class got raped — most still don’t even know it … they just realise they’re poorer than before.
The “priority bands” tell you everything. Let’s work through them:
- Band A: Government, defence, courts, corrections, hospitals. The state itself, fully protected. Surprise, surprise.
- Band B: Large logistics operators, supermarket supply chains, international aviation. These are not small businesses. These are large corporates with existing government relationships. Keep in mind Air New Zealand was partly nationalised during Convid. That it has lost money every year since is no surprise and entirely ignored. I expect in this ensuing crisis we’ll see more state ownership take place. Public-private partnerships is how it’ll be sold to the peasants.
- Band C: Public transport, essential infrastructure. Again, largely state-owned or state-contracted entities.
- Band D: “All other commercial and business fuel uses.” This is where the small business owner, the tradesman, the independent courier, the rural contractor sits. They are fourth in line, behind the state and its preferred corporate partners.
- Band E: General retail. The ordinary citizen. Last.
The middle class — small business owners, independent operators, tradespeople, rural producers outside “time-critical” periods — get what’s left after the state and its large corporate partners have filled their stomachs and wallets. This is not an accident of design. It is the design.
The Ideological Laundering
What makes this particularly effective as a system is that it operates entirely within the language of liberal democracy. There is no ostensibly visible expropriation. There is no nationalisation. Property rights are seen to be formally respected. The language is technocratic — “assessment criteria,” “ministerial oversight,” “phase transitions.”
But the functional outcome — state-directed resource allocation favouring large corporates and government entities, with the small business owner and individual citizen at the back of the queue — is indistinguishable from what you would design if you were deliberately trying to hollow out the economic middle.
The Conclusion Nobody Will Print
The fuel plan is not a fascist document. It is not even a particularly radical one by contemporary standards. That is precisely what makes it worth scrutinising carefully.
It is the latest iteration of a governance model that has been quietly consolidating for decades: the state and large capital as co-administrators of the economy, with small business and the individual citizen positioned as residual claimants on whatever resources remain after the primary beneficiaries have been served.
Call it economic fascism, corporate statism, or crony capitalism — the label matters less than the mechanism. And the mechanism is, once again, hiding in plain sight inside a document described as emergency planning.
Editor’s Note: If Chris is right, the fuel plan is not just about energy. It is another warning sign that governments are preparing to manage future crises by controlling access, rationing resources, and deciding who gets protected first. That has serious implications for your money, your freedom, and how you prepare. To better understand the economic, political, and cultural forces now colliding — and what you could do to stay one step ahead — read our special report, Clash of the Systems: Thoughts on Investing at a Unique Point in Time.