Over at The Patton Doctrine: YouTube Video: Doom and Gloom, economic outlook, who's right? I posted a reply thus...
Such cataclysm will only happen if we keep saying it will. Humans are much for the self-fulfilling prophecy. Tell them there is economic disaster and they will do those things that will enable it, such as not spending, not lending, not hiring, firing, hiring for lower wages, cutting of existing wages, delaying expansion of business, etc.
Tell the people there is disaster at hand, and they will make it happen. When at last they've become totally accustomed to the idea of that disaster, then they will be disposed to listening to anyone who claims a solution to that which they fear.
Of course, once the damage of encouraging destructive behaviors has been done, actually repairing it becomes very much more difficult as it is not enough to say one will fix it, but provide enough of a dog and pony show to convince them that it has or will be fixed yet not enough to undo the reason for them giving power over to you. The problem must become a path and not a destination.
In short, this is the tactic of selling the eternal struggle to the masses and that only by your leadership can the situation be maintained in eternal conflict and this at best. Serene accomplishment and rest is impossible, total failure highly possible, and a constant tense struggle without end the only thing one might aspire to.
However, human nihilistic nature makes the prolonging of this problematic as what does not kill humans fast enough, makes them reckless before it. Soon enough, the fear of the failure is no longer a motivation and the run from it seems more and more a pointless exercise and the fate avoided to be embraced.
Therefore, one must sell a constant series of disasters to fear, and a never ending series of temporary non-solutions to cover over the reality that the danger never existed and the purveyor of the solution was useless.
The danger then becomes that the damage done by those negative behaviors during the times the people were convinced things were so will not actually be corrected by any of the actions to follow, and will be like chipping away at a foundation until it can no longer support the weight above and collapses.
All that is necessary for this is human credulity. What is told to them pointedly their dubious paranoid nature eschews and what is said casually is gospel truth.
It will only go bad as long as people believe it will. Then they will make it happen.
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