I think it was Tom Sowell who said that most governments misdiagnose the problem and then apply the wrong solution, and that the problems of today are due to the solutions of yesterday.
A problem is perceived and the State tries to diagnose it.
It fails, and the misdiagnosis now forms the base from which all future efforts proceed.
Heading off in the wrong direction, the State is surprised to discover it appears to be getting no closer to its goal.
So it accelerates its efforts.
Rocketing off in the wrong direction now, the goal recedes ever further in the rear-view mirror.
Further acceleration of effort.
And so on.
Take the euro.
The very device they planned to use to force Europe into unity (a common currency) is increasingly driving its users apart.
Or the minimum wage.
Their attempt to ensure people’s jobs pay them more is resulting in the loss of their jobs.
But don’t worry.
They may be damaging our society and our lives with their fumblings, but they intend to redouble their efforts.
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There is a plus side to all of this, their continual failure means that their efforts to control us will never really succeed either, since the individual and the state are the ultimate expression of asymmetry.
While the state may have total legal power over the individual, the individual has freedom of thought, movement and action which cannot easily be curtailed. If the state does curtail general freedom of movement for the wider populace in an attempt to restrain those who strive against it, it simply creates the basis of its own destruction.
The East Germans authorities were aware of the dangers of this and used propaganda, indoctrination and coercion to enforce their worldview that measures such as the Berlin Wall or "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart" (German: Antifaschistischer Schutzwall) as the East German authorities described it were in fact protective measures against external threats rather than the reality of a cage to keep the mice from escaping.
The influence of East German Propaganda remains today with 12 percent of East Germans wishing the wall could be rebuilt, which is described as often described as "Die Mauer im Kopf" or The Wall in the Head by the more freedom loving Germans.
Governments may utilise problems to justify their own existence and in so doing cause future problems, but it is us and our descendents that are stuck with the cleaning up.
"We are merely the stars tennis-balls, struck and bandied which way please them." - The Duchess of Malfi
The single currency was always meant to cause crises. The EU then uses these crises to increase its power. Thus a single banking authority and calls for fiscal union or a common Eurobond. This is to mistake ignorance for malice. The EU bosses know that the single currency is killing people* - but they are little people who can be sacrificed for the "greater good".
* Failing healthcare and increased suicides in the Southern periphery are literally the fault of the EU.