In the preceding column, we saw that laws and regulations were written to ensure that people were mandated to keep various bubbles intact. By allowing medical problems to be seen and tended to immediately, using the internet and emails, tens of millions of people would save a lot of money. That bubble would burst
Most political activity is designed to keep bubbles from popping. Laws protect those in the medical bubble from internet competition. To maintain their bubble, lobbyists explain, cajole, and bribe legislators to protect all the bubbles. The bigger the bubble, the more lobbyists are needed to keep it from collapsing.
Each of us lives in some sort of bubble. Private sector bubbles are more fragile. Booms and busts, from the tulip mania to the dot.com boom to the housing bubble show how delicate they are.
Government bubbles are more stable. Governments have internal and external security forces to protect them. When government bubbles collapse, most of the bubbles within are broken, as well.
Those of us living in “bubble” countries with “bubble” economies are, for the most part, helpless. We live like people trapped in a bus with a hopelessly drunk driver heading for a cliff he does not want to see.
Conservatives can take the mindless lurching and occasional crashes in stride. Leftists aren’t so stable. Yesterday, one of the “Occupy Something” protesters fired a shot or so at the White House. He was quickly identified and arrested. Even if he had been able to hit the President, “Bubble America” would not have broken.
But, if he’d chosen to crash a plane, 9-11 style, into the capitol while Congress was in session, the funding that protects so many bubbles would be in danger of collapse.
The ideal country in which to live is one whose people can continue to function, even if their government has gone off the good roads and over a cliff.
