Let It Be...

The inestimable Thomas Sowell, truly a national treasure and a man who is as great at clearly conveying concepts as anyone you can think of, offered this bit in response to how best address the economic downturn that followed the 2008 housing bubble burst.

One of the things that pains me in the current crisis, is that people are saying that Congress needs to do something to make the economy recover.

No, they need to let the economy recover.

"Let," not "make."

A seed planted in fertile soil with reasonable exposure to water and sunshine will grow without any special assistance. A seed planted in sand in a frozen tundra or in an arid wasteland, not so much. Seeds in the wild that aren't suited for where they landed will fail, but seeds that work well in that particular set of soil, sun, and moisture will flourish. A seed planted in a pot in a house may be potted in fertile soil, but it will require repeated watering and positioning so that it gets the right amount of sunlight. With constant and correct attention, a seed that wouldn't flourish outside that house might succeed, but at far greater cost and effort than one in its natural habitat.

A capitalist system, where individual and property rights are protected by a basic set of laws that enshrine liberty, is fertile soil. Market forces, aka "creative destruction," reward the seeds that are best suited for their environs and cull out those that are less so. A command economy, such as is found in socialism, fascism, and communism, has no mechanism for rewarding what works best and therefore creates the most wealth. Instead, it sustains what is favored by an elite few, just as exotic species survive inside a house by being carefully managed and fed and nurtured at inordinate expense.

This is why command economies produce poorer outcomes than free ones.

As Dr. Sowell noted immediately after the quoted quip:

The economy did not get to be the biggest in the world by politicians doing things.

Left alone other than the basics of rights protection, humans achieve great things, and produce more wealth than by any other mechanism that has ever been tried.

Left alone, economies grow, living standards grow, and the rising tide lifts all boats. That the last phrase is routinely mocked and derided shows us how poorly educated our "Best-and-Brightest*" classes are. They harp on blatantly false zero-sum narratives and presumptions that have metastasized out of the economic realm into the cultural, with the "oppressor-oppressed" duality informing every waking moment.

Leaving things alone runs contrary to our human nature, unfortunately. We fear uncertainty, and we take comfort in control, whether it be ours or our proxies'. Yet, leaving things alone is often the better course of action. Want to make a nicely seared hamburger or steak? Leave it alone, don't constantly turn it or flip it or move it. Same for crispy hash browns, or grilling a fish on open fire. Want to make a lot of money in the stock market? Heed Warren Buffett's wisdom:

The stock market is a device to transfer money from the impatient to the patient.

Want greater peace and happiness in your life? Embrace apathy - let things be, leave that which does not require obvious and immediate attention alone.

Resist the reflexive "Do something!" and recognize that doing nothing is often the best answer. In matters economic, the best thing the government can do is get out of the way.

The Code of Federal Regulations, which includes all the rules the Feds currently apply, ran to nearly 200,000 pages in 2019 (the latest cite I could find). Congress and the bureaucratic morass would do the economy a huge* favor, and benefit all but the rent-seekers whose livelihoods derive from sapping resources and productive capital out of the rest of us, by spamming the Delete key across that document.

One of my favorite executive orders that came out of the Trump White House was the "eliminate two regulations for each new one" directive.

Biden rescinded it his first day in office. Why?

Forget about the whinging about it being "unconstitutional, illegal and stupid" from people who are stupid and don't care about either unconstitutionality or illegality except when it suits their agendas. The real reason is that, more than anything else, Biden's agenda is "undo whatever Trump did." It's an idiotic way to run the country, but idiocy and politics have a huge amount of overlap.

Even beyond the "let it be" philosophy, the rank fecklessness of our elected officials is reason enough to tell them "leave us alone, get out of our way, and stop trying to manage our lives." And, if something your neighbor does annoys you but doesn't infringe on your rights, tune it out. You'll both be better off.