Despite many challenges and difficulties, most Americans are happy with their lives.
The year 2022 can be left behind with one comforting consensus.
It isn't so bad, after all!
Yes, it could have been better, especially for the year drawing to a close. Just emerging from the clutches of an unprecedented pandemic, the world could have done without a war, an energy crisis, and inflation.
This isn’t a story about weakness. It’s a story about what happens when every institution that once made hardship survivable is now removed at the same time, and the market for chemical sedation expands to fill the void.
Ludwig von Mises recognized the full significance of this distinction and built it into the architecture of praxeology, permanently separating the Austrian School from its neoclassical rivals and from the illusion that human behavior can be captured in a mathematical model.
The review first appeared in National Review and is reprinted in Kendall’s book The Conservative Affirmation (1963) from which I quote.
To the Mogambo Guru, the Federal Reserve were a gang of drunken arsonists locked inside the nation’s monetary basement, ecstatically spraying gasoline on the future while court economists in bespoke suits assured the public there was nothing to worry about.
This isn’t a story about weakness. It’s a story about what happens when every institution that once made hardship survivable is now removed at the same time, and the market for chemical sedation expands to fill the void.
