Unless they have independent sources of funds, intellectuals are always at the mercy of those who pay them. From Jeffrey Tucker at dailyreckoning.com:
Four years after the pandemic, it’s still hard to predict where any particular public intellectual stands on lockdowns, mandates and the entire calamity of the response to COVID. Very few have apologized. Most have moved on as if nothing has happened. Some have dug into their own apostasy even more deeply.
One reason seems to be that much of the professional intellectual class is currently dependent on some institution. It is not lost on anyone that the people today who are most likely to say what is true about our times — and there are some major and brave exceptions to this — are mostly retired professors and scientists who have less to lose by speaking truth to power.
That cannot be said for many who have undergone a strange metamorphosis over the last several years. For example, I’m personally sad to see Stephen Davies of the Institute for Economic Affairs, formerly one of the most compelling libertarian intellectuals on the planet, come out for travel restrictions, universal disease monitoring and turnkey crisis management by government, not only for disease but also for climate change and any number of other threats.
Why? Because of “unusual vulnerability” to global catastrophic events caused by human activity plus artificial intelligence… or something that is hard to follow.
Intellectuals = “experts”?
It’s all a distraction while they attempt to ce⁶ment their control. These people functioning as regime “experts” will be tossed aside as no longer needed by the regime as soon as possible. This is already happening in media, for example. Those who remain reliably.become ever more dedicated to the regime’s positions, in order to keep their overpaid jobs.