The brain can economize on its resources by adopting heuristics and rules of thumb. We know that the frequent application of some of these rules will lead to errors, but those rules can still make economic sense.
The climate change alarmists are given a free pass to throw out the most absurd rhetoric, such as a recent author’s warning that potentially billions of people could die because of human-caused climate change. Yet despite their claimed fidelity to the “consensus science,” such claims are not supported by the UN’s own climate change reports.
The nature of the entrepreneurial system is that both consumers and producers experience reward when one responds to the other in a way that aligns what the consumer wants with what the entrepreneur can provide. It’s a collaborative win-win, and society (i.e. all the producers and consumers rolled up) progresses and improves.
The national conservatism we are developing is going to have some hard edges and provoke some clever counterattacks and dismissals. The rancor proves the seriousness of the challenge we face.
The main thing is that what stimulates economic growth isn’t central bankers, but instead great ideas brought to the market by great people, only for what’s great to be matched with intrepid capital. It’s a beautiful thing, but decidedly something that cannot be centrally planned.
Politicians perform ostentatious displays of publicity and political activists take to social media with grand condemnations of “social injustice” because there is social currency to be gained from doing so. The rules of the game call for it. Don’t expect any real action to follow.
In effect, debt financing allows government to spend money today while foisting the tab on future taxpayers – many of whom, literally, aren’t yet born. Politicians eager to win votes are thus prone to borrow and spend excessively because borrowing allows the current generation to free-ride on the incomes of future generations.
It’s always about control and the left thinks they should control all the levers. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ chief of staff admitted it this week, telling a crowd: “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all. We really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”
A periodic “spring cleaning for the regulatory state” is essential if we hope to address regulatory accumulation. For starters, we need to get rid of the problem of over-licensing and over-permitting. “Permissionless innovation” should be the default.
The literature on democracy and growth implies that there is no reason to reject an alternative history in which the world’s leading industrial economy was a nondemocracy. Nor why we could not see some very rich nondemocracies in the future.
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