The proposals for bailouts, regulations and government spending sprees all share one tragic flaw: they assume no physical or biological limits to human growth. Most economists cling to an 18th century mechanical universe that conjured an “invisible hand” of God, that would allegedly convert private greed into public utopia.
Indeed, a few got rich, but the meek inherit an earth featuring child slavery, sweatshops, a billion starving people, toxic garbage heaps, dead rivers, exhausted aquifers, disappearing forests, depleted energy stores, lopped-off mountain tops, acid seas, melting glaciers and an atmosphere heating up like a flambé.
Meanwhile…