Yesterday we explained that the government had to work less to share jobs, and now he realizes he must work harder to create wealth. Yesterday the government told us that older people should make way for younger workers, subsidizing early retirements, and now he wants to impose hiring quotas for seniors. Yesterday the government wanted to limit the installation of large surfaces, and now he wants to encourage the installation of large areas. Driven by environmental lobbies, the government increased the quota to increase the use of biofuels in the wake of the Kyoto agreements, quotas that are now enshrined in EU treaties (Climate-Energy Package). Today, the same are reluctant to produce energy from agricultural products while on the planet, entire populations suffer from hunger. And dare I mention the report Teulade handed to Mr Jospin, then Prime Minister, who foresaw the return of full employment in France within imminent, making it unnecessary - as officially nominated by the government of the day - any reform of the PAYG pension system ... could be multiplied indefinitely the wanderings of the interventionist state that claims to regulate the economy so that its representatives never an accurate picture of economic processes, thinking correct a mistake by making another error. Of course, the personalities that make governments change through the democratic process. But that is precisely the risk of politicizing the economy those in power have no memory and are forced to pander to public opinion "with no brains (or brains which is neutralized by modern propaganda) . Then they place the blame then. It would have been better not to intervene at all rather than believe that further intervention may correct the destructive effects triggered by the intervention increased.
The state intervention in the economy can be understood in the exceptional circumstances which call for extraordinary measures like the war economy that calls for a permanent steering the national economy by the government. But war should not be a normal situation. Neither the crisis elsewhere. Worse, the war may result in a permanent state intervention in the economy when the economy is left to citizens, it follows competition beneficial for everyone. But if the economy becomes a field of state intervention, it follows the rivalry between states (economic warfare) which are always the premise of most violent conflicts. It's like religion should be a private matter: when it becomes an affair of state, it follows religious wars. In some respects, as soon as the economic doctrines became political issues, they in turn become genuine religions [1].
Certainly, in response to the ongoing global crisis, stimulus measures implemented by the governments of most major industrialized countries have avoided the worst, but they are also likely to lead to new bubbles in the future, that will require corrections as feared, already a number of economists (scenario W) [2].
Imagine a law neutralizes market X. Recognizing the shortage of product X, the government imposed rationing of consumption while forcing companies to increase their production capacity. A few years later, the overproduction is exploding as consumers have found substitutes while investments produce their productive effects. Then the government takes action to boost consumption while it imposes quotas on companies to limit their production. This shift permanently disoriented economic actors.
is in fact what is happening in education, health, housing, agriculture, labor market, wherever the state has seen that he could do better than the market under the pretext that these products or services were not like other goods.
The Enlightenment philosophers believed it was necessary to protect democracy from itself, the quest for a majority that can lead to increasingly demagogic political agenda (hence the existence of the Constitutions). And these programs always lead to an infinite extension of the welfare state which is a caricature, if not a negation of the rule of law . It would enshrine in the Constitution the principle of precaution that would essentially " when you do not know all the effects of the intervention state in the economy, then the government should not interfere in these matters within the private sphere and civil society . The desire to regulate public deficits in order to stabilize the public debt by establishing a constitutional limit, for example, results from this intention. After all, if the government can rein in the banks to which it lends money public banks (and creditors) that finance the national debt (taxpayers and citizens) have no doubt their word say.
[1] This is the case of science or knowledge in general. Science or knowledge must be left to independent researchers and rigorous. Once it is politicized and misused to the interests of political power in place, it becomes propaganda. See Lysenko affair in the USSR Today, economics borders on scientism in developing sophisticated models that feature an all-powerful regulatory state (which holds the world model) capable of correcting market failures.
[2] These are analysis already developed by the ancient post-Keynesian economists said such Harrod and Domar. They have shown that policies to stimulate demand help resolve the crisis short-term but deferring the problem on future generations. Indeed, short-term multiplier effects play in the sense of a recovery in demand, but long-term effects accelerators will act on the offer, generating a new global shift between supply and demand, resulting specifically initial stimulus. Of course, the Keynesians of that time concluded that on capitalism were not viable, joining the Marxist prognosis while the Liberals (Von Mises, Hayek) concluded that on economic policies were not effective to run.
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