On 26/3/20 11:44 pm, Kevin Ho wrote:
Your life in a first world society has caused you to forget a simple fact:
Life is unnatural. It is death that rules nature.
The enormously complex machinery of modernity, most of which is coordinated through economic means, produces this unnatural outcome where most humans live not only to reproductive age, but to their children’s reproductive age.
When this machinery breaks down, people start dying. Most obviously, when the sewage infrastructure starts to decay, people die. When road signs fall down and don’t get replaced, people die. When the cold chain for refrigerated food starts to hiccup, people die.
Less obviously, when the web of innovation that creates ventilators and road signs and crumple zones starts to slow down, people die.
As Bastiat says, people naturally react to that which is seen, but they forget the unseen effects of their actions (or more perniciously, the unseen non-effects of their non-actions)
The performance of the stock market isn’t the goal, it’s merely a measure of economic activity, and economic activity is strongly correlated with lifespan and health span. All your emotions about what you want and feel don’t change these facts.
If you have the economy of Japan, you’ll end up with the lifespan of Japan, and that’s good.
If you have the economy of Bulgaria, you’ll end with the lifespan of Bulgaria, which is already ten years less.
If you have the economy of Somalia, you’ll end up with the lifespan of Somalia.
"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” - Hayek