Over at Epoch Times Jeffrey A. Tucker has been on a tear about how the artificial low interest rates since 2008 have distorted the economy. And one distortion has been the unsustainable bubble in tech stocks and tech employment. Did you see my tweet back in December?
![Twitter avatar for @chrischantrill](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/chrischantrill.jpg)
I know. Godfrey Daniels! NASDAQ up 700 percent! Against GDP up 80 percent?
In his latest piece Tucker mentions the crazy labor market.
This weekend, a good man who owns a landscaping business came up to the microphone during a question and answer period following my speech at an event. He posed a simple but sincere question. He has endless demands for his services. He has all the capital he needs. He has a thriving business with a bright future. How come he cannot get workers to actually do the work?
One of the commenters noted that all landscaping labor is illegal immigrant. As are all domestic housing workers.
And Tucker also mentions the cultural crisis. A whole generation was taught to believe in laptop jobs, which are going down the toilet right now.
Then there are the homeless. What has happened to all the experts and scholars. Surely they must know what is going on!
For righties, the guys to blame for economic problems are the “globalists.” For lefties, it’s “neoliberalism.”
But I think that everyone is missing the point. The point is that the future is uncertain, and today’s top-of-the-market job and corporation may be going the way of the buggy-whip makers in 10 years. Or not. Nobody knows.
Everyone wants to live their current life. Nobody wants to have to up-sticks and find another job or move to another city. Or move to another country. But the fact is that the world changes. Every day.
And tomorrow, my world or your world may implode. Because war, because politics, because a new invention, because a hurricane. Yes, even because climate change.
The way that humans adapt to change peacefully these days is through the market system. It tells you slowly, and then suddenly, that you need to change. If you lost your job, if your company can’t hire people, if your competitor is eating your lunch, then it is time to suck it in and adapt. If you can.
Humans spend half their lives trying to adapt, and half their lives to make other people adapt, when it is time for a change.
50 percent of what government does is trying to make other people adapt.
97.2 percent of what government does is reacting to the “unanticipated consequences” of its policies. La Wik:
In the social sciences, unintended consequences… are outcomes of a purposeful action that are not intended or foreseen.
But most of the unintended consequences of government policy should have been foreseen.
Here are some “unintended consequences” that should have been foreseen:
Cheap money creates inflation and ultimately a credit crisis.
Minimum wage laws put unskilled workers out of work.
Regulators end up being captured by the industries they regulate.
Child labor laws are there to prevent children from competing with adults.
Environmental laws make housing and cars and everything more expensive for the young and the poor.
Protectionism protects domestic industry. For now.
All government spending distorts the market and makes us poorer.
And so on. And then when government is forced to change its policy because it has made such a mess that even a politician can understand that “something must be done” then thousands, maybe millions of people will have their lives brutally disrupted.
This is my pet explanation for the homeless crisis. I think that when government is clumsily bashing around in the culture and the economy, all kinds of people get blindsided, lose their jobs, and never get their lives back together. Obviously the most obvious candidate for this is the recession or depression that follows a decision to “fight inflation.” After the Great Depression there were the Skid Row bums. After the Reagan/Volcker attack on inflation liberals were outraged about the homeless. After the 2008 recession, more homeless. And after the COVID disruption, even more homeless.
Will government ever learn? No. But “we few, we happy few, we band of brothers,” we can change the world, bit by bit, to make it better.