Friday, January 09, 2009

How to kill a country....

The Speccie Coffee House has an article about Ann Rand and Atlas Shrugged. I can't say I either enjoyed or liked the book - her style is too verbose and dull to make it an enjoyable read in itself.
The posit is that a depression forces the US Government to take over swathes of industry and as a result of bureaucracies running the companies they eventually die.
You might notice some similarities to what's happening today, and the total control exercised by Communist governments over their now defunct industries.
The problem is - as I have long argued - Economics answers everything.
That is why it's so wrong that there have been the bailouts in the way they have been promulgated. Even if every bank went bust, new ones would very rapidly spring up. Yes it would be horrific for a period, but it would be all right afterwards. What we have now will be a lingering death.
If you have no incentive to do anything other than cover your backside, tick boxes, and serve your time, you end up with cases like Baby P - every box, every avenue was legalistically covered, yet the baby died horrifically.
So lets hear it for Entrepreneurship and risk taking. Even on a small scale it will make the world go round.

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