eurodale on Nostr: I'm not saying the West post-Covid is post-WWI Germany writ large, but if you catch ...

I'm not saying the West post-Covid is post-WWI Germany writ large, but if you catch the same fever, you get the same symptoms.

My highlights, full text attached:

"There were few in any class of society who were not infected by, or prey to, the pervasive, soul-destroying influence of the constant erosion of capital or earnings and uncertainty about the future."

"From tax-evasion, food-hoarding, currency speculation, or illegal exchange transactions - all crimes against the State, each of which to a greater or lesser degree became for individuals a matter of survival - it was a short step to breaching one or other of the Ten Commandments."

"No people could be expected to remain unconcerned while huge profits and riotous luxury were ostentatiously being enjoyed by the few. Corruption bred corruption, and the Civil Service caught the infection even in the war years. Counterfeiting was widespread."

"As the old virtues of thrift, honesty and hard work lost their appeal, everybody was out to get rich quickly, especially as speculation in currency or shares could palpably yield far greater rewards than labour."

"For the less astute, it was incentive enough, and arguably morally defensible, to play the markets and take every advantage of the unworkable fiscal system merely to maintain one’s financial and social position."

"Not to be able to hold on to what one had, or what one had saved, little as it worried those who had nothing, was a very real basis of the human despair from which jealousy, fear and outrage were not far removed."

"The air of corruption in business, politics, and the public service, then, was general."

From 'When Money Dies' by Adam Fergusson