by Charles Hugh Smith
Of Two Minds
We are in effect so busy arranging the beach umbrellas per our instructions that we don’t notice the approaching tsunami.
Economists focus on what can be easily measured: sales, profits, prices, tax revenues, etc. Since the decay and failure of institutions isn’t easily quantified, this decay doesn’t register in the realm of economics. Since it isn’t measured, it doesn’t exist.
But institutional decay and failure is all too real, and it begs the question: how can a society and economy thrive if its core institutions fail? The short answer is they cannot thrive, as institutions are the foundations of the social and economic orders.
As I explain in my new book, Global Crisis, National Renewal, the conventional view has a naive faith that “great leaders” can reverse institutional rot. This faith overlooks the systemic sources of institutional decay and failure which are outlined in the graphic below, The Lifecycle of Bureaucracy, a.k.a. institutions.