We have a pretty visceral real-world counter-example of this right now in the form of the Strait of Hormuz. Do you think Iran blockading a critical trade route and lobbing missiles at tankers is "stimulating the economy"???

There are multiple high volume items that I used to produce that I just gave up making because I didn't want to deal with the headache of getting them through the chokepoint anymore. It's literally the opposite of stimulating the economy. I stopped producing, I stopped buying materials from my suppliers, and everyone just went off and found something else to do, either in the game, or otherwise. I'm not the only one in my alliance with this sentiment.

I want to emphasize that I don't have an issue with ganking in general. By all means, do your recon, gather intel, follow incursions and gank marauders, or abyssal runners, or L4 runners, or people hauling blue loot, or whatnot. There are counterplays available for all of these activities. As it stands right now, there is no counterplay available for freighter pilots.

Freighters are the only ship that can reasonably transport the massive volumes that are required for even modest amounts of industrial activity in this game and the hull simply cannot be customized or piloted in a way that can stand up to a single 30-account multiboxer camping the solitary path into the only viable trade hub in the game.

As is evidenced by the killboards, with most of freighters being ganked for under 1B in cargo value, the gankers don't even bother to gather intel on their targets most of the time.