The Permanent Depression

 

The government is forever at war with the economy. The government is forever destroying wealth and causing poverty, pain, misery, and death. This includes the South Sea Bubble (1720), Panic of 1797, Panic of 1837, Panic of 1857, Long Depression (1873-96), Panic of 1907, Great Depression (1929-39), Global Recession (1981-82), Great Recession (2007-09), and Wu Flu Lockdown Depression (2020-21).

All were caused by government coercion and the welfare state. But all were blamed upon economic freedom and capitalism. Mankind has never learned the lesson of these bubbles, panics, recessions, and depressions.

When government attacks the economy it does damage to it. So too when it attacks society and the individual. But such assaults and coercion – such regulation, redistribution, tyranny, and “help” – is universally seen as good for the economy. It’s seen as good for society and the individual too. For 300 years now mankind has been unable to figure out that freedom is good and slavery is bad.

The Scientific Revolution of the 1600s led to the Industrial Revolution of the 1700s and the widespread capitalism of the 1800s. Humans became impossibly wealthy. Simultaneously, culture was radically enriched, society turned remarkably harmonious, and individual happiness soared.

Such was the product of moderate political, economic, social, and personal liberty. Full liberty would have produced utopia.

But philosophical geniuses -- and thus political leaders too -- didn’t understand this. So government was forever on the attack. Intellectuals and rulers viewed political, economic, social, and personal freedom as mostly evil. Such welfare statists always wanted to “improve” society and “fix” the problems caused by “too much” freedom and “the excesses” of capitalism.

Hence, our welfare state -- and not a free state. It “reined in” individual rights and human liberty in order to avoid Marxist “exploitation” and “oppression”. Also the natural “chaos” and “social destruction” of overall freedom. Additionally, the welfare state controlled the “robber barons” and “private slavery” endemic to unregulated capitalism. The evils of freedom never end!

For three centuries now government has embraced various cockamamie economic and social theories such as mercantilism, socialism, Keynesianism, and monetarism. These justify its attacks upon men and business. The coercive welfare state offers benevolent “guidance” which lessens or prevents the “business cycle” and the “booms and busts” inherent to economic freedom. The coercive welfare state benevolently “redistributes” wealth to lessen or prevent poverty and the unjust inequalities of wealth natural to economic freedom. The coercive welfare state benevolently “regulates” the economy to lessen or prevent the “natural monopolies” and “private tyrannies” which are a permanent part of economic freedom. This is what everyone thinks.

But in real life, the coercive welfare state is forever "benevolently" creating real depressions, recessions, panics, exploitation, oppression, tyranny, poverty, pain, misery, inequality, monopolies, etc. thru regulation and redistribution. These last two are tyrannical and have no right to exist. The welfare state does damage via myriad labor laws and Big Business permits, licenses, franchises, charters, monopolies, subsidies, protectionism, tax loopholes, and more.

Government creates plutocrats, oligarchs, and robber barons as it establishes and enforces enslavement, tyranny, fascism, corporatism, crony “capitalism”, and phony “capitalism”. Government inflicts these horrors upon the world because real capitalism and economic freedom are universally seen as evil, just as welfare statism and political coercion are universally seen as cures for this evil.

You couldn’t create a more fatuous and depraved belief-system if you tried. But this nonsense and nightmare has been believed by virtually everyone for 300 years now.

And humanity will never learn. When it comes to politics, economics, sociology, and personal behavior, it isn’t in the power of mankind to understand that freedom is good and slavery is bad.