242 Economic Cycles

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">There are a lot of highly-educated people who claim special insight, and the ability to use the past to predict the future: “economic cycles” is one of those old canards. Business textbooks written by theorists point at some correlation between imports-exports, worker availability, public opinion, or some other subset of the infinite factors that make up an economy, then create a narrative that fits their cherry-picked data. According to them, America is long overdue for an economic crash. Well, if they actually knew what they were talking about, the crash would have already occurred. All we can say for certain is that there will be a crash, not based on past crashes, no, the next crash will occur for its own unique reasons. Why can we be so certain there will be a crash? Because the real economic cycle is driven by how long it takes for canny individuals to rig part of a very complex system to their advantage, which then cascades to other parts, unbalancing the whole shebang, and eventually some seemingly random event will cause everything to collapse because that's what complex things eventually do.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A collapse will happen; no one can predict when but we're all waiting for it. Luckily, our vibrant capitalistic businesses have a good chance of extending the cycle through ever increasing productivity by rapid adoption of new techniques, and Creative Destruction. But have no doubt, eventually we will become mired in the status quo, opportunity will be stifled, consumption will increase faster than productivity, or democracy will allow the envy & resentment of the unconsummated masses to prevail, then America will be no better off than any tin-pot socialist society in Europe. Either America collapses, regains its liberty, and raises again, or some other country will rise to the occasion, and Americans will watch from the bread lines.</p>