Doomsday is not the end of the world

Robert Higgs makes a point that I have also stressed repeatedly, doomsday is not the end of the world.

A few sample paragraphs . . .

Even in the worst of times, however, economic calamity doesn’t mark the end of economic life. Austria, Germany and the U.S. South did not disappear as a result of their currencies’ ruin. Although many people suffered, most people found a way to survive, life went on, and economic activity eventually resumed after the adoption of a “reformed” or foreign medium of exchange. Most people survived even the recent hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, notwithstanding the Mugabe government’s best efforts to starve them.

One aspect that virtually all tales of impending mega-woe have in common is that they end with the catastrophe itself: The day of reckoning finally arrives, the dreaded event occurs, and the story ends.

However, stories end that way only in the movies, when the screen goes black. In real life, people soldier on. Even during the time of the Black Death in the 14th century, when 30 percent to 60 percent of the entire population of Europe died and hundreds of towns disappeared after their inhabitants perished or abandoned them in a futile flight from the incomprehensible killer (inadvertently spreading the disease everywhere they went) Europeans did not die out.

Suppose we accept one of the horrifying doomsday forecasts at face value. Then what?

Do the doomsayers really believe that when the government can’t pay all of the pensions and medical bills it has promised to pay life will come to an end? Do they believe that when the government defaults on its debt, the economy will cease to function? Do they believe that when the U.S. dollar loses all of its purchasing power, people will not find a new medium of exchange for their transactions?

We need to have a modicum of faith in people’s common sense, creativity and will to survive and prosper even in the face of great difficulties and obstacles. If people could keep society running in the aftermath of the Black Death, they could keep it running after the U.S. government defaulted on its debt.