Mad Dog

Poverty requires no explanation. It is the default position everyone would find themselves in but for a functioning economy and society. Poverty is like economic gravity. Almost all roads lead back to poverty fast. What needs explaining is prosperity. For most of human history and in most places it is remarkably rare. There is a narrow path to prosperity and even slight deviations from that path take us back to poverty. How does prosperity happen? It happens through free and fair exchange. At scale we call it capitalism. Capitalism rests on seven core freedoms: The freedom to own property. The freedom to create and own businesses. The freedom to choose who you work for and who you hire. The freedom to buy and sell voluntarily. The freedom to compete in the market. The freedom to keep and invest the rewards of success. The rule of law to ensure the first six are protected. When we erode these core freedoms we erode the only system we know of that creates prosperity. We return to the fundamental reality that the default position for humans is poverty.

11 logical steps that take you from fair-minded socialism to totalitarianism and economic collapse … 1.The desire to reduce inequality requires redistribution. You can’t equalise outcomes without taking from some and giving to others. This is definitional, not sinister. 2.Redistribution requires measurement and control of production. To redistribute wealth, the state must know who has what, who earns what, and increasingly, who produces what. Surveillance of economic life becomes a prerequisite. 3.People respond to redistribution by changing behaviour. Capital flees, high earners reduce effort or emigrate, assets get hidden. The policy underperforms its projections. 4.Underperformance is blamed on sabotage, not incentives. Politically, admitting the model failed is impossible. So the shortfall must be someone’s fault - speculators, hoarders, the rich - an enemy class is named and blamed. 5.Closing the loopholes requires expanding coercion. Exit taxes, capital controls, mandatory disclosures, criminalising avoidance. Each patch requires more state power than the last, because each patch creates new evasion. 6.Economic control becomes control of livelihoods. Once the state directs capital, sets prices, or dominates employment, your income depends on political compliance. Dissent now has a career cost. 7.Central planning cannot adequately process information without real price data. Prices are compressed knowledge; abolish or distort them and the government planners are blind to reality. 8. Shortages appear. Shortages require rationing. Rationing requires deciding who gets what - pure discretionary power. 9.Discretionary power selects for ruthless administrators. The worst authoritarians get on top: a system requiring people to override individual choices for the collective good attracts and promotes those most comfortable doing so. The scrupulous exit; the zealous ascend. 10.The project can’t survive open opposition, so speech narrows. If the plan is morally mandatory, opposing it is immoral. Criticism becomes sabotage; media, education, and civil society get conscripted to defend the project. The single goal crowds out pluralism, because pluralism is disagreement about goals. 11.Reversal is now impossible through normal politics. The state controls jobs, capital, information, and enforcement. Institutions that could check it depend on it. What began as compassion has become a machine that no one can switch off - and everyone must pretend is working … until it collapses and adherence to reality is restored.