Dear Friends,
It seems to me, actions have consequences, both individual and collective, some immediate and some delayed, but they all have consequences. Government actions, (collective actions) however produce a special kind of consequence. Of all the entities that have ever existed, only government benefits from mistakes, to a point, then the cumulative weight of those bad actions come crashing in and destroy that government which has profited so much, by a series of mistakes. Elitist theory says that every fall of every government is the product of a series of mistakes that led to it. When observed by a person however those downfalls might appear random, this country lost a war and so was destroyed, that country experienced a drought that triggered a famine, and so on. But when looked at in the long term, it becomes obvious that each failure was predicated on a series of poor decisions by the rulers, that led to their own downfall. The same paradigm work today with our modern governments and institutions leading inevitably to our downfall.
If you make a bad decision, the likely hood is that you will experience the effects pretty soon, sometimes you have to make a series of bad decisions before the consequences appear, but given enough bad actions consequences become inevitable. This is how we learn right from wrong, smart from stupid and profit from loss. The immediacy of the negative consequences is a great teaching tool for individuals. Governments however work under a far different paradigm.
If a government makes a wrong decision, the people suffer, but the government prospers. Each bad action leading to more power and more money for those in power. The consequences for those in leadership are profit for bad decisions and loss for good ones. If a government passes a law that is supposed to lower the cost of health care for example, and instead that law raises the cost making health care more unaffordable, the people will turn to government again to fix the problem government created. Government, and those in government profit comes at a cost to the people. If a government regulation drives down economic output, more regulation is demanded to improve the economy. Again government profits while the people loose. This can work for generations, each wrong action resulting in more government power and more money for those in power.
It works only to a point however. Each bad decision creates tension in the economy, society and defensively. One bad action might lower economic output driving a call for more equal distribution of economic output, which further lowers economic output. Eventually the economy of such a nation will be destroyed. Then the collapse of the economy will be blamed on some extrinsic shock, that is said to have “caused” the economic meltdown. Had the economy been left alone and those cumulative bad actions had not been taken, the economy would have survived the external shock and probably would have profited by it. As government regulates it’s citizens, and so corrodes the people’s stake in the nation, those who have lost a stake in the nation will care less for it’s future and will turn to drugs, crime and the dole. As more do such things, more regulation is needed to control those who have lost their stake in the nation, further corroding others stake in the national outcome until no one cares about the nation. If a war were to break out, no one would fight for a country they have no stake in, and so the war will be lost. As we have shown, it wasn’t the war that destroyed the nation but the cumulative decisions of the leaders. The war was merely the catalyst that triggered the consequences of the cumulative bad decisions of the leaders.
Our modern countries have profited tremendously from their bad decisions. Our leaders become rich while in government, then become filthy rich after, by selling their access. Each bad action taken by our governments enriches those in power and enhances their power. Those bad decisions have apparently positive consequences for those in power and so they become drunk with their seeming omnipotence. The worst their actions they make the more power and riches they get. This continues until today when our leaders act, to any rational outside observer, absolutely absurd. Sadly, there will come a day when the true consequences of all the bad decisions our leaders have made, come crashing in on them and us. Since they have profited so much by those bad actions, to expect them to change is like expecting a heroin addict to willingly kick the habit, while heroin is freely available and they live in a mansion. In the next incarnation, this same paradigm will work out, because the actions of government appear to have opposite consequences for the elite than the people. The eventual consequences are inescapable, the timing cannot be known, and people will point to some shock, war or outside exigency that led to it… but actions always have consequences.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
