The Cycles of Thought

Milton Friedman wrote in his foreword to the 1994 edition of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom that, as we have come full circle back to the same issues that Hayek addressed in 1944 when he wrote the book, someone ought to address the questions of why we keep returning to the emotional thinking that leads us to believe that economic planning can work, and why intellectuals tend to be some of the most emotional of thinkers. The question of intellectuals is very interesting, and I’ve heard a few ideas that make some sense, but I won’t address that question here. I want to theorize on why we keep cycling our thought processes, why the political motions go in waves.

I know that liberals consider themselves intelligent and logical, but since history shows the massive failure of social engineering, it is impossible to be both logical and not see the correlation. Most liberals can acknowledge the fact that they think with their hearts, that they think the way they do because they care. The intellectuals of the left actually believe themselves capable of successful social engineering, which is either megalomania (they think where all others have failed they will succeed… it can’t be the theory, it makes too much sense) or ignorance (could they really not know/believe the massive failures of past Marxism?), but either way it’s wishful thinking. But since Marxist socioeconomic policy has failed everywhere it is tried, it must be concluded that proponents of such policy do so solely on emotional grounds.

Since the founding of our nation, there were many emotional thinkers who tried to change the system to “help” other people (mostly themselves). But the vast majority of the nation was on board with the principles of freedom on which it was founded. It lasted for decades, but things started to change as the issue of slavery became more debated, and that became one of the first waves of emotional politics (not that the freeing of slaves was bad, but you’ll need to study the real history to get the full picture, not the liberal interpretation of history taught in schools). After Lincoln, with exception of a couple of spurts of emotional ideas here and there, things went back to normal, up to the turn of the 20th century. German philosophy of social engineering grew more and more popular, and we had a huge wave of progressive thought that gave us Social Security, Welfare, and the progressive income tax. This thought lasted the duration of the Great Depression, until, with the war against the Germans (and their Marxist ideology), and the final ending of the Depression, most of the thought returned to the logical principles of freedom that produced a historically unprecedented economic growth. While the emotion based theories and philosophies never really went away, they lost most of their momentum, and the nation returned to a mostly logical track. There were waves back and forth, every decade or so, from there on out. Notable was Jimmy Carter’s presidency, which found difficulty handling the recession of the time, then Reagan’s policies restored economic stability and growth to the nation. Logical thought reigned supreme for the next several years with small swings back toward the emotional side in the next decades. Then we were attacked in 2001 and we became united in emotion again, culminating ultimately in the election of our current president, the most emotional and illogical president since FDR.

So why the ups and downs, the political shifts from right to left and left to right? Why is one generation more conservative and the next more liberal?

There must be a factor of independence and individualism in it. “I’m smarter/better than my parents and their generation, and I don’t follow their outdated philosophy.” But it’s more than that. There’s an actual socioeconomic cycle, which, I believe, John Adams put forth unknowingly:

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."

The importance of certain fields of study fluctuate with its demand. As the fields of business, science and engineering grow, the economy booms with innovation and technology. With the economic growth, and the increased wealth of society, demand grows for the subtler pleasures of culture, the arts and entertainment. The transfer of study to these more dramatic and creative fields in order to meet the demand causes a glut of emotional thought, a shift of thought to more illogical reasoning. As this shift occurs, economic growth stagnates. This is both because the growth of economically productive fields slows as the growth of service industries accelerates, and because political thought during the emotional periods tends to be extremely economically damaging.

With the economic stagnation, discord and anger result in a reconsideration of philosophies, and the independent voter who last voted for the liberal leader realizes the logical fallacy, and turns back to reason. The politics are restructured, the demand for the productive fields again grows, and the cycle continues.

John Adams just failed to complete the cycle: “And once their children’s focus on painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain leads to economic crisis, their children must again study politics and war.”

Is there an escape? Can we break the cycle? No, the cycle is natural and necessary. You can’t break it without economic planning, which we’ve already noted does not work. But we can reduce the depth of the economic crises that occur at the end of the cycle. The Founding Fathers were successful for a time in minimizing these busts. How? The Constitution.

The only way to prevent devastating crises such as the one we’re now experiencing from becoming regular occurrences at the end of each cycle is to minimize the political impact. The rebalance must occur, and, while it does, the economy will slow. But the “slowing” becomes “falling” when combined with emotional political policy, unfounded in logic and reason, which burdens the economy with unnecessary weights. This is what happened in the Great Depression. We must strip the power of politicians from impacting the economic cycle, for they are ultimately destined, at the end of the cycle, to govern with emotion rather than reason, and this at exactly the most inconvenient time when the economy is poised for difficult rebalance. This is what the Constitution was designed to do. It’s time we cut government back to the size it was intended to have.