Sunday
Take away the ability to trade freely and what appears in its place is corruption. The more regulations, the more pervasive the corruption.
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. P. J. O’Rourke
Today, the economies of the Western world are burdened with regulations sufficient to break the back of established businesses and to make it very difficult for new businesses to emerge. Corruption is rife and getting worse and we are experiencing the most extreme levels of wealth inequality since 1820 (OECD) – since before the benefits of the Industrial Revolution kicked in.
How could it be otherwise?
That situation has been grossly exacerbated by the imposition of fiat ‘monies’ that do not hold a stable value.
Free people trade peacefully and to mutual benefit. They use stable value money to do so – Gold (and the silver surrogate). In so doing, they create widespread prosperity.
Centralised control of an economy and money produces poverty for all except the ‘connected’ and the super smart.
The only way that such a system can be kept going, is to ensure that the populace is too dumb to understand their desperate need for free markets – Capitalism. This downing of the IQ level was achieved with the addition of a further monopoly – education.
When large numbers of muddle-headed and impoverished youth congregate to scream anti-Capitalist slogans, and when even otherwise sensible people believe that the answer to the bigotry of Google and Facebook is more regulation, then it is difficult (even for me) to remain optimistic.