Prevention is better than cure. When things become inevitable understanding the disease is the next best option. More than academics and think tanks, the fiction writers have been more accurate and assessing situations. The financial gurus and those who were in charge of policies didn't see the great depression coming. But the Austrian Economists were screaming about a coming collapse at the time. The same event repeated at each and every crash. After more than 70 years few people are slowly figuring out the importance of these wise words as they are getting backed to a corner.

Mises's ideas on business cycles were spelled out in his 1912 tome "Theorie des Geldes und der Umlaufsmittel" ("The Theory of Money and Credit"). Not surprisingly few people noticed, as it was published only in German and wasn't exactly a beach read at that.

Taking his cue from David Hume and David Ricardo, Mises explained how the banking system was endowed with the singular ability to expand credit and with it the money supply, and how this was magnified by government intervention. Left alone, interest rates would adjust such that only the amount of credit would be used as is voluntarily supplied and demanded. But when credit is force-fed beyond that (call it a credit gavage), grotesque things start to happen.

Fast forward 70-some years, during which we saw Keynesianism's repeated disappointments, the end of the gold standard, persistent inflation with intermittent inflationary recessions and banking crises, culminating in Alan Greenspan's "Great Moderation" and a subsequent catastrophic collapse in housing and banking. Where do we find ourselves? At a point of profound insight gained through economic logic, trial and error, and objective empiricism? Or right back where we started?

How curious it is that the guy who wrote the script depicting our never ending story of government-induced credit expansion, inflation and collapse has remained so persistently forgotten. Must we sit through yet another performance of this tragic tale?

Those words are not from https://mises.org The Free Thought Project or another of of those media outlets that are dedicated to spreading truth and sensibilities. All these quotes are actually from The Wall Street Journal (source) which is as mainstream as it get when it comes to financial journalism. I don't live in USSA and I don't spend much time reading on economic policies or what the FED is doing etc. So I don't have the best point of view when it comes to evaluating how bad things have become. But things must have reached a really harsh level for WSJ to downplay Keynesian ramblings and take a true genius like Ludwig von Mises.

But They Still Haven't Woken Up to War

The movie was released in 2008 and it barely broke even in the box office. Even the critical reception was lukewarm with 55% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 7.1 on IMDB. But it is on of the best and also one of the most prophetic movies ever made. They didn't have a crystal ball or a super intelligence agency. The creators weren't afraid to say as it is and they weren't afraid to poke holes at the things that are deemed the correct course of action. I always tend to draw parallels with the cryptocurrency community and I've been telling this for a while: "The War Has Become Decentralized"

Look at how STEEM solved the censorship problem. A little over 100 people who can spend few dollars per day keeps a copy of the STEEM blockchain and they get awarded a cryptocurrency for their efforts. A military or government could shut down a mainstream media network. they could even easily shut down Facebook, Netflix Google or Amazon in a matter of hours (or even minutes). But shutting down STEEM will require one of the biggest CIA operations ever in the history of their existence.

Clever thinking can undermine advanced technology or at least make sure one party spends too much on something useless. It's said that the Americans spent a lot of money researching for a pen that is capable of writing under zero gravity while Russians just used pencils. Here is another (fictional) example:

Tech is a Tool and Tools are Morally Agnostic

Your global superpower nation with an arsenal of nukes can a a threat to another country which may or may not have a bunch of nukes, H-bombs etc. But what does a nuke or an F-35 or B2 going to do about a few hackers? What is it going to do about a bunch of drones? Governments won't even be able to protect themselves properly. Even with a military budget that is more than the rest of the top 10 spenders combined, the only significant military achievement of USSA has been killing few leaders like Osama bin Laden. It's all because some problems cannot be fixed by throwing money at them.

You Have to Work to Protect Yourself

More than anything in the world, values build relationships. Those relationships can open doors to new knowledge and knowledge is power. You might already have your own mental blacklist and whitelist of people. There is no reason to trust a Marxist who believe in the right to your stuff because of his/her need of it. But despite individual shortcomings you can trust blockchain developers to do their best with their projects and you can trust Misses Institute to protect and spread the gospel of real (Austrian) Economics. In the same way, you can build a network of people to specialize and help each other so if that things go south, you have someone to count on.