Looks like there is plenty of concern of telling people what they can't have, while not addressing what is out there that one can't have. We are at the end of having our cake and eating it too.

When I was a kid, we popped a lot of firecrackers. Do Not Hold in Hand was for bottle rockets, the big kind, though as we got older, a lot of us had bottle rocket wars as well. In any case, it might be 1000 firecrackers before one blew up in my hand or nearly did. Most cases, the fuse appeared not to light, then suddenly it went shssssss-boom all at once. This illustration of Karl's is just like that firecracker. Looks like nothing is happening, then boom.

This from the final chapter of Rise and Fall of Society by Frank Chodorov.

Quote:

Collapse of a State means a weakening of the instruments
of coercion by means of which property in the fruits of one's
labors was transferred to nonproducing rulership or its supporting
accomplices. Thereafter, maybe for centuries, free
dom prevails, men learn to dream and hope again, and the
realization of each dream through effort encourages further
fantasy and generates more effort; thus wealth multiplies,
knowledge accumulates, manners take shape, and the nonmaterial
values attain importance in man's hierarchy. A new
civilization is born. Although something of the lost civilization
is recaptured by accident, what is dug up has to be relearned;
the new civilization does not grow out of its predecessor,
but emerges from the efforts of the living. At any
rate, history tells us, a civilization no more than gets started
when a political institution attaches itself to it, feeds on it,
and in the end devours it. And the roundelay starts all over
again.

Is there no escape from the cycle? None has as yet been
discovered. Nevertheless, the search for a formula for the
"good society" has never been abandoned, hope being what
it is, and out of the laboratory of the human mind has come a
congeries of Utopias. The connotation of unreality that the
word has acquired follows from the fact that every Utopia
ignores the central operating lever of man: he seeks to satisfy
his desires with the least expenditure of effort. Every "good
society" conjured up by philosophers and reformers presupposes
an imaginary man managing his behavior by the dictates
of pure reason and keeping in mind the long-range
effects of his every act. Since there is no such man, or none
we know of, every Utopian scheme is indulgently put into the
category of a fairy tale, interesting but unreal.

To be sure, man is a reasoning animal, and if he were to
refer the matter to his reason he would conclude that something-
for-nothing is an impossibility; what one acquires "for
free" must be provided by another. He would admit that a
Society consisting entirely of consumers, say pirates, could
not exist. He would concede without argument that production
must precede consumption, that the purpose of production
is consumption, that nothing would be produced if
there were no prospect of enjoyment. He need not be an
economist to arrive at such conclusions. All that, he would
say, is common sense.

Yet, how easily does common sense take flight before the
prospect of a gratuity or an unearned profit!.....

Pages 152-154

http://mises.org/document/3091/The-Rise-....

Frank cut through the nonsense. He tells it like it is. We might all deny it, but we are all looking for an easier softer way. If you think not, who in the US plows with a mule any more? Some do, but they aren't very productive. The mother of invention is also the mother of destruction. Karl's example is merely one case. The people are begging for what is going to kill them and tune out the naysayers.

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The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.---John Kenneth Galbraith