The rest seems a muddled puddle of blather jumping from vague observations to some opinion only loosely connected to the observation.

And, the observations? Here’s an example:

“when consumption options are significantly restricted, people may spend a smaller share of income than in other times”

Yep, can’t argue with that. When people can’t spend money, they don’t. How odd.

…

And, then I read the source: Vox. … Ah. Another pearl from the 24-year-old-intern press.

He talks about “materials availability” is a key issue….it’s not just raw materials that’s an issue today, it’s the whole supply chain for manufactured products. The US economy is far less self-contained today than it was during WWII.

There is an interesting historical parallel in the US dependency on German for certain key chemical products prior to WWI. I discussed it briefly here:

chicagoboyz.net/archives/62406.html

I’ve never seen any of these “authorities” who want more control actually demonstrate any real ability to run things effectively over the long haul. Every NASA that puts men on the moon eventually turns into the NASA which builds the Space Shuttle, and then “manages” it into two major crashes.

We can do better, and direly need to figure out how.

Big problem with the WWII analogy, in the form of federalism. The Army, Navy, etc are all part of the Federal executive branch. Not true of states and localities.

Over-population? Give control to the government/technocrats. Oil crisis? Give control to the government/technocrats. Resource limits? Give control to the government/technocrats…

It’s a never-ending litany of the same solution to different problems, and the track record boils down to failure every time we’ve done it. Then, the actual solutions always come from outside the system.

How long do we keep listening to these idiots?

I’ll grant this much: if it takes government to bring critical manufacturing back onshore, so be it. In the meantime, points two through four are moot. In the short run, we’re all dead in the water.

Everything people are supposed to care about is the moral equivalent of war, because hijacking the neural circuitry of mass violence is the surest way to mobilize the populace.

To date they’ve been hijacking the neural circuitry of fear to neutralize the populace. Fear has a half life. The populace is getting fed up.

“American industry produced more than 96,000 planes in 1940 alone — a 26-fold increase over the 3,611 airplanes produced in 1940“