the coming economic implosion?

There’s a widely held belief in alt-right circles that it doesn’t matter much how bad things are because within the next couple of decades there’s going to be a complete economic implosion and the whole social and political structure will collapse anyway.

The economic implosion will come about largely as a result of out-of-control national debt. Because governments can’t just keep printing money and expanding credit forever, can they?

I’m a bit sceptical about all this. I suspect that the government can pretty much do whatever it wants to, including printing money and expanding credit forever. They’re the government. They have the power. They can back up that power with force. Military force if necessary.

Of course I might be wrong. I’m no economist. I don’t understand how the economy works. But then economists don’t seem to understand how the economy works either. When an economic crisis hits the people who are most surprised are usually economists.

I’m also not entirely convinced that an economic crisis on its own would bring down the entire social and political system. The economic crisis of the 1970s was extremely severe but it failed to bring about social or political collapse. The 2008 crisis didn’t even shake the foundations of the system.

Of course an economic crisis combined with some kind of political crisis might be a different story. Had the Oil Crisis happened in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War the foundations in the U.S. might well have been shaken quite a bit. If an economic crisis were to hit Britain right now, right slap bang in the middle of the political/constitutional crisis over Brexit, things could get quite hairy.

Whether a complete economic implosion would actually change things for the better is another story. Total social and political collapse is fascinating to read about, not so much fun to live through.