Often it is assumed that the Invisible Hand works benevolently towards some Benthamite fiction of the greater good. Too often, that hand is guided instead by the State. Wielding limitless power, the hand is a drunken fist, swung haphazardly about a crowded roomNo. None of this is how things would be, could be, or should be. This much should be apparent. Protesting the adage that economics does not deal with “oughts”, there are a million fucking reasons why things would be different, the scope and volume of which indicate with about as much certainty as is humanly possible, that without these perversions, things would be different.

They’d have to be.

A million fucking reasons, each one more ridiculous than the precedent, all combining to create a world that nobody would’ve volunteered to accept. In aggregate, the result of human action, but not of human design. Unintended consequences of the worst sort.

A national highway system designed for war encourages urban and suburban and ex-urban sprawl to unimaginable distances. Subsidized catastrophe relief provided to some, by others only with the assistance of a government gun. Rights-violating labor laws. Zoning laws that usurp property rights or, pretend that those rights never existed to begin with under the auspice of blight and eminent domain. Immigration laws bent to exploit the poorest and least fortunate subsets of mankind. Intellectual property laws which keep valuable goods and services artificially scarce, and hence keep people artificially poor and miserable. Free trade agreements that are anything but free; documenting a million-and-one stamped vehicle parts, factories of origin, destination, and tariff exemptions. Consumer protection laws financed by entrenched Big Business, to the detriment of smaller, local counterparties. The same legislation once sought, then leveraged by the same politicians in a perverted quid pro quo for continued financial support.

And 18-year olds who know nothing about business, who feel compelled to go to B-School so that one day they can slave away at a job they most likely will hate, in order to buy things they don’t need, which don’t make them happy, in attempt to support a lifestyle that they’ll never find satisfying.