the statist cycle

We often talk of the business enterprise and the business cycle. Interestingly, the dominant political system in most developed economies may also be regarded as a cyclic enterprise. It can properly be called the statist cycle. The statist nature of these governments is the only constant, regardless of whether the particular one in question is progressive (i.e. left-wing) or conservative (i.e. right-wing), differing only in their particular emphases. It is the biased and prejudiced opinion of this author that left-wing governments are more statist than right-wing ones (although, this may be an insignificant difference in degree and not of kind, and, hence, caveat lector).

Without further ado,.....

The statist cycle : 

1. identify a socio-economic "problem" (real or imaginary)

2. spend money to create a new bureaucracy agency or program to fix said problem

3. (optionally, raise taxes to fund said program, or, preferably, go into debt)

4. consolidate more power (transfer agency and rights from individuals and the private sector to the said program) through new regulations

5. arm said newly minted bureaucrats (preferably, militarily, and, if possible, continue the program of disarming private citizens)

6. contract with cronies and pay-off or contract with entrenched interests in formulating a solution to the problem [a.k.a. cronyism, masquerading as capitalism]

7. concoct "solution" by incentivizing sympathetic academics appropriately with "research" grants and censuring dissent, either explicitly or effectively

8. invariably create new problems in attempting to, and mostly failing at, solving original problem

9. blame capitalism (and point to the failure of the crony corporatists identified in point 6, as an example)

10. teach/propagandize the virtues of all of the above actions in the K-12 public school and university system, in the guise of education

11. dumb down K-12 education in order to produce dumbed-down and zombified citizenry who are not practitioners of critical thinking (achieved via (a) shifting emphasis from language, literature, math, logic, philosophy, history, economics and the hard sciences to "soft" sciences and celebration of mediocrity and "creative" thinking and merit-free and groundless inflation of self-esteem, (b) psychotropic drugging to address "behavioral" problems while, simultaneously, neutering parents and discouraging parent-centric and family-centric discipline of children, (c) promoting the study of "education" and "pedagogy", instead of the mastery of individual subjects and disciplines, among teachers, through public funds and perverse tenure incentivization and (d) promoting the "study" of whimsies and fancies and insubstantial and inconsequential "subjects", masquerading as the liberal arts)

12. tout the virtues of all of the above through the complicit corporatist media complex

13. rinse, repeat