I think this article gives the government good advice

Government should tell the truth

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Many of the Y2K Council's closed-door meetings have concerned how to convince the media not to trigger a Y2K panic, or whether federal agencies should warn their employees to prepare, as the CIA has.

[clip] Are we in danger of allow the tail of avoiding Y2K panic to wag the dog of prudent planning? A better policy would be for government to share information with the public more frankly -- as soon as possible. This will spread the impact of public reaction out over time. And it will prevent the public from becoming surprised and angry at government's failure to share these data.

-- WebRNot (webrnot@ncap13k.com), April 04, 1999

Answers

That would make sense wouldn't it? Being the die hard Dead Kennedys fan that I am, I have major concerns. I think that the powers that be either think this will be a small problem that can be used for political campaigns, or they have sinister plans.

I didn't like Reagan. I didn't like Bush. Clinton is a whole new ball game. He's a power hungry egomaniac. This country is ripe and ready to be plucked by a hand willing to destroy this democatic experiment. Arkansa Uber Alles...

-- d (d@dgi.old), April 04, 1999.

The ideal strategy would be to scare the people enought to keep the supply chain working at 99 per cent capacity but not enough so that they were attempting to buy twice the capacity. Warn them. Supplies get tight, it will not be so bad, people relax and buy less, inventory builds up, scare them some more etc. This may be occurring. The happy faced report assures most people. The get its read the audit report saying that the agency is not 91 % ready but is only 31 % ready. The get its buy supplies so at least some will be ready. The problem is how to fine tune this to maximize production of the scarce goods without causing a panic. It would be a shame to have shortages of long term storage items such as toilet paper that could be produced and distributed now and would be better to encourage people to buy and store these items. The government tolerates and perhaps encourages these divergent ideas to keep production near capacity etc. The interesting thing will be if the embedded systems problems cause the shutdown of automated food canning operations or breakdowns in the food distribution or retailing systems resulting in shortages of canned foods in early 2000. If that happens every can in the closet now for storage is one less that will be in a shortage category in 2000. Store what you can.

-- Steve (curious@aaa.wow), April 04, 1999.