moneyFYI
Financial Freedom Is Merely Organized Common Sense
Am I Paranoid Enough?
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” Alexis de Tocqueville
It appears that this discovery has been made. The only question left is “How will the American Republic cease to endure?”
- Income in total and per capita will fall or rise or stay the same?
- Accumulated wealth grows or shrinks?
- Opportunities increase or decrease?
These are the resources for the bribe. If resources fall, or even fail to grow enough, the bribe system will stop and people will be disappointed. Like in Greece. Another version is in our wilderness parks. “Don’t Feed The Bears” Once you start, you have a problem. Don’t feed the bears because there is no way to explain to them that you have run out of cookies.
This reasonably leads to questions like
- Civility increases or declines?
- Government intrusion in day to day life increases or decreases?
- High inflation? Maybe hyper-inflation. Printing money works for a while.
- Confiscation of hard assets like gold, silver and diamonds.
- Capital controls on removing assets from the country?
- Nationalization of businesses, banks and other wealthy institutions?
- Inability to defend borders and allies?
In the end game, what is there?
- Martial law imposed to control strife?
- Country fractures into smaller pieces?
- Rise of “city-states”?
- Foreign Intrusion?
I suppose there are many more metrics and questions.
I cannot see how this ends well, but then I have a fairly defined viewing point (according to some, a little to the right of Genghis Khan) so I cannot see the good that could arise from the bribes. Feel free to help me.
In my simple mind, it boils down to one observation. If someone gets something for nothing, someone else must get nothing for something. I don’t see the nothing for something crowd putting up with that if it escalates. Certainly not forever. If they do, in the long run they will have nothing too.
I wonder when, and I wonder how, it will affect those of us who live in Canada.
moneyFYI 