The supply chain problem is solved.  How?  Because the problem is not getting worse.  Theoretically, that's a good thing.  However, the absence of goods and the overwhelming presence of government-printed money means that the American economy is in for a world of hurt.

Fewer ships are parked and waiting off the California coast than two months ago, and about the same number of ships are daily waiting during the last two weeks.  In other words, the system has achieved stability because things are either getting better or are not getting worse depending upon the time frame observed.

Of course, a transportation system that cannot further reduce the number of waiting ships causes higher prices because of the additional cost to shippers.  For now, though, the prices of goods will stop rising because the wait times are stable.  Better solutions to the supply chain problem will have to await a new administration that wants to address the cost of goods to the American people.

Meanwhile, Mr. Biden and company have gotten precisely what they want: they drained wealth from the American citizenry.  Each policy Mr. Biden's socialist regime implemented has cost individual consumers more, whether it is the price of housing, food, or transportation.  And the Biden administration has instituted or supported the great equalizer, inflation, which makes everyone poorer, even the rich.  The rich just feel it less!

The only process that has saved the country from acute disaster is the government's printing our fiat currency.  The consequences of having printed too much money will become evident only in a future rapid reduction of consumption.  At that point, if the cost of money rises, even marginally, it will be beyond our ability to service an ever-increasing debt.

Only now, when borrowing has essentially no cost, can our system maintain any stability.  Instead of utilizing the traditional "cost of money" controlled by interest rates, by printing money, the government has given itself total control over the economy.

Unfortunately, the government has jumped the shark.  It must now retain exquisitely sensitive control of every aspect of the economy or risk collapse.  The market forces of a capitalist system are moribund.  We suddenly have a managed economy.  Instead of pressures playing off one another, as in a market economy, our complex economic system's need for a constant supply of more energy (goods and actual wealth) will now be under governmental control.

Sadly, it's time to emphasize that the government's sense of real control is delusional.  Whether in or out of government, leftists cannot maintain such a complex system.  The only choice available to them is to increase the debt by printing still more money.

Image: Hundred-dollar bills.  Piqsels.

The Democrats' need for control got them into this bind, and they can lose it all in an utter collapse through a single misstep.  They will claim that it was market forces that ruined everything, but it was their ill-advised policies that sought too much control that will have brought them down and the country to ruin.

Not to leave this essay on such a negative note, we must first admit there will be pain.  But the nice thing about complex systems is their ability to morph spontaneously if sufficient energy is available to support the new organizational structure.  Perhaps artificial intelligence will help in cost reductions.  Perhaps common sense will reassert itself.

We can see some smattering of common sense as car and chip manufacturers are shifting plants to the United States, thus reducing supply chain costs.  Companies see the possibility of being more profitable by doing their work here in places like Texas and Florida.  These decisions reflect the continued working of market forces that have not fully rotted — and that's only because the federal government has been held at bay by our division into separately functioning states that can implement solutions that are different from those of the humongous centralized system.

Also, we may possibly survive if we can avoid "Afghanistan syndrome."  That exists when everyone who touches a business deal takes a cut before any goods come to market.  Anyone who profits without adding value to a product is a thief.  If simple theft can once again become a punishable crime, we may yet stage a comeback.

Perhaps the government can be retrained to best serve the people by rooting out forces that take profits without adding anything of worth, something that will surely include the government's own taxation policies.  Indeed, with the government always taking its cut, reducing the size of government may make the most sense for saving the whole system.

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