This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Jan. 18, 2009 - Gentle Reader: Be forewarned. This is a gloom and doom column, although it ends on notes of optimism and opportunity.
Does anyone believe the government’s plans to fix the economic crisis are going to work? I refer to the plan to spend zillions of dollars and take over various industries.
Let’s take just one example. Obama is apparently considering appointing a “car czar.” Have you recently walked into a government office? Do you think the types working there will successfully transplant themselves to Detroit and then resurrect the car industry? Will the car czar and his henchmen work the 20 hour days that will be required to come close to success?
These are ridiculous thoughts.
Obama’s instincts are toward more government control over the economy and the people. (W’s instincts have tended in the same direction for the past eight years, but that is a different column).
Obama wants to have the government in charge of your health care. He wants to increase taxes on those who have played by the rules and won. He wants to take more and more of our money to bail out fools who deserve nothing. He wants bureaucrats to allocate the resources instead of leaving the people to allocate the resources through the price mechanism and through individual action.
What if things may come to a head? My personal concern is that as Obama and the Congress promise more and more security to the people, and as those officials appropriate more and more money to placate larger and larger groups, eventually the currency will collapse. As a thought experiment, let’s consider what might happen if that were to occur and if the government were thus suddenly unable to take care of those it has been taking care of before.
Hmmm. Let me think. Government workers, welfare recipients, the disabled, the old, public school teachers all suddenly without the government support to which they have become accustomed. Hmmm… People will be cold and hungry, and perhaps without television. Hmmm. Likely they will riot. This is what Europeans have done whenever their governments have tried to cut their benefits. (I don’t believe our government has ever tried to cut a benefit).
I envision roving bands of angry people breaking into houses to get food. I envision home owners barricaded in their houses with guns pointed at the door. I envision no gasoline, no air conditioning, no pet food and no Starbucks. The Laduesies will likely block off the new Highway 40 to keep out the riff-raff.
We have seen pictures of Depression era calm: elderly men selling apples on street corners. This time nasty people will be throwing bricks through the windows of grocery stores and just stealing what they need. So much for the social order.
My concern is the government will have no way to back down and just give the rioters what they want, because the government’s mechanism for providing goodies, printing money, will have failed due to a worthless currency.
At that juncture I believe we will have a historic first. While there is nothing new about the collapse of a society due to inflation, never in history has such an event occurred in a country with wonderful traditions of free speech, peaceful protest, orderly transition of power, secret ballots, self-reliance and individualism.
What will happen? Will we save ourselves from ourselves, or will Obama do what governments have always done under such circumstances: blame others for the problems, institute price controls, stifle dissent, take away civil liberties and institute a police state?
Will someone start an advertising campaign in favor of stable currency? Will the youth rise up and shout libertarian slogans from the rooftops? Will anyone listen if they do?
Will a candidate win the presidency by calling for the federal government to do the things listed in the Constitution and no others? Will the government admit that it should not issue the money, but that instead the free market should create the money?
Being an eternal optimist, I am going to say that Obama will actually do the right thing. When it goes bad, I think he will be smart enough to know that the only solution will be for government to stop promising everyone security and to leave the people alone so they can solve their own problems. In fact, because he is the darling of the left and of the chattering classes, if and when he adopts a free-market, private-property agenda, and thus when the economy begins to function again, the people might accept a world without the womb of the safety net and so the country will be saved.
If he doesn’t take that course, our grandkids will be mad at us.
Bevis Schock is an attorney in private practice in Clayton.