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2021 to 2024: From “Revenge” Splurging to Forced Frugality
by Charles Hugh Smith Of Two Minds
After all, “they can always print more money.” That’s always the solution until it becomes the problem.
What we call economics is best understood as:
1. A mechanism that distributes resources asymmetrically: some benefit more than others.
2. The running of the herd: humans are a social-herd species.
3. Everyone seeks a windfall: something for nothing, or grabbing more while doing less.
4. Everyone seeks to make windfalls permanent by rigging the mechanism to favor their interests.
5. The mechanism is a system of self-reinforcing feedback loops that generate diminishing returns, blowback and unintended consequences.