Throughout history, prosperity has been built upon individual freedom and limited government. And now, the global economy has suffered the fastest setback – ever – the first caused by monstrous bureaucratic intrusions. The record includes many economic busts, but the only comparable collapse occurred in London in 1665. Shockingly, the important trade center suffered the Bubonic Plague with some 25 percent of the population dying. Naturally, finance and business collapsed, but not by destructive government restrictions. Diarist Samuel Pepys, recorded on October 16, 1665:
“But Lord, how empty the streets are, and melancholy, so many poor sick people in the streets, full of sores and so many sad stories overheard as I walk…And they tell me in Westminster there is never a physician, and but one apothecary left, all being dead – But that there are great hopes of a great decrease this week. God send it.”
Today’s economic world is upside down
The ultimate in ironies is that the path to freedom began in towns in the 1200s and became one of the keys to ending the serfdom of feudalism. But through the last century, cities have been corrupted into destroying not just prosperity but the abilities to create it. Resulting in the modern welfare state, with both reluctant funders and recipients becoming serfs.
Today’s economic world is upside down.
Cities have changed from creating prosperity through competence to confiscating the other guy’s prosperity through political power. And recently mobs have physically destroyed businesses and buildings; the means of making a living.
The world is now facing the equivalent of a real Plague lockdown for a death rate similar to the Hong Kong Flu in 1968. Such disproportion is due to control freaks using any crisis to impose authority.
A long-running government promotion has been the notion that the Fed can prevent recessions. There have been 18 since it started in 1914. Another pitch has been that without taxes going to the United Nations, for the very first time in our planet’s history, warming is harmful to life. The latest control gambit has been to use an influenza to shut down the world’s economy, region by region.
If that shock was not bad enough, American activists turned protests into riots, which could be part of an insurrection.
Obviously, with the economy so plagued, the cure has been worse than the disease. And in New York and other cities, the panic was that there would not be enough hospitable beds, so COVID cases were sent to nursing homes. A mindless tragedy. But lockdowns have curtailed regular traffic to general hospitals such that doctors and nurses have been laid off.
Small towns or remote communities did not suffer the worst of the disease but suffered the almost full infliction of authoritarian remedies
Military medical ships and field hospitals were provided but not needed. In a hysterical rush, politicians made one impractical decision after another. Soon to be widely condemned. In the early 1600s, bureaucratic errors were condemned as Tyrannical Duncery.
Small towns or remote communities did not suffer the worst of the disease but suffered the almost full infliction of authoritarian remedies.
And this illustrates the danger of upside-down politics. No longer governable, too many cities are troubled. Elsewhere—as in “Fly-Over Country”—folk are still competently self-governing, but seriously unemployed by intrusion coming from the cities.
Beginning in the 1200s, cities offered the escape from Medieval Marxism, otherwise known as feudalism. Thus, the renaissance of prosperity, which was enhanced by the Medieval Warm Period. Leaving the manor and going to town was the path to freedom. Getting there was one thing, but a serf had to be competent enough to earn a living. For a year.
And over centuries such meritocracy worked, resulting in magnificent cities and individual prosperity, each according to his ability.
Perhaps Rome anticipated today’s corruption. Free trade in the forum was symbolically offset by political atrocities committed for mobs in the Colosseum. Eventually the ungovernable governing classes trashed the economy. Not being in a natural trading location, when tribute stopped flowing the city’s population collapsed. Rather impressively from a million in 300 AD to 30,000 in 550.
Florence arose at a natural trading point and determined to be free became wealthy. And ordinary citizens did well. While Florence enjoyed magnificent buildings, there was no colosseum for authoritarian ritual.
By the 1500s, Antwerp had become the financial center. Again, voluntary and what was it like to live there in 1570? Letters by merchants tell us. No mention of stadiums.
Young men in advancing in business, would take up golf and get involved in charities. A French merchant wrote that individuals could safely walk the streets at night. The moment he arrived his serfs became free. You could criticize the government. And what’s more--you could take all your money with you when you left!
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Sovereignty of the individual and limited government has been corrupted by today’s “liberals”
Today’s dictates of the politically correct have forced tiresome restrictions upon free speech.
As with today, freedom was deplored by authoritarians who controlled the Spanish Netherlands. Infamously called the “Spanish Fury”, troops massacred some 7,000 Antwerp citizens in 1576.
Eventually and voluntarily, London became the next financial and commercial center of the world. Science and engineering flourished. Stadiums were built for football.
And prosperity grew. Becoming practically and philosophically its finest into the late 1800s and described as Nineteenth-Century Liberalism.
Regrettably, sovereignty of the individual and limited government has been corrupted by today’s “liberals” to the opposite. The state and its ambitious custodians have abused the profound concept of an independent press into a colosseum run by the MSM. As unrelenting promoters of intrusive government.
Some consider that having the seat of government close to the center of finance is practical. Business sense would guide political ambition. In America it was “government by the people”, but it was Alexander Hamilton who arbitrarily placed the seat of government in the then demographic center of the country. Sadly, those bucolic fields have become a corrupt swamp. Which is confirmed. While hosting very little business or investment acumen, D.C. is America’s wealthiest region.
Obviously with political leaders in cities using hysterical threats to dominate ordinary folk as well as productive businesses, it really is a political economy that is upside down. In the past, change was forced by popular uprisings, responding to too much in-your-face and in-your-wallet bureaucrats.
The last successful one was in 1989 when tearing down the Berlin Wall anticipated the collapse of murderous Communist governments.
History is ripe for another flipping reform.
Bob Hoye (BobHoye.com) has been researching investments for decades, which eventually included the history of financial and political markets. He considers now to be the most fascinating time for both since the Great Reformation of the 1600s. Bob casts a caustic eye on all promotions and, having a degree in geophysics, is severely critical of the audacity that a committee can “manage” not just the economy, but also the temperature of the nearest planet. He has had articles published in major financial journals and, as a speaker, has amused assemblies in a number of cities, from London to Zurich to Tokyo.
Throughout history, prosperity has been built upon individual freedom and limited government. And now, the global economy has suffered the fastest setback – ever – the first caused by monstrous bureaucratic intrusions. The record includes many economic busts, but the only comparable collapse occurred in London in 1665. Shockingly, the important trade center suffered the Bubonic Plague with some 25 percent of the population dying. Naturally, finance and business collapsed, but not by destructive government restrictions. Diarist Samuel Pepys, recorded on October 16, 1665:
