Surely it can’t have been the golden age we recall without there being some things which we look at today and go “yep, glad we don’t live in the fifties and sixties any more”. Maybe it’s because we are old that we can remember the days without the internet; without credit; without petabytes of regulations impossible to know but likely to be prosecuted for.
“for a root of all evil is the fondness of silver” as Paul wrote, and indeed in those days money still had silver in it. It is almost an honest sort of evil, a fondness of silver, because at least you have the silver! But now people crave debt. Instead of swopping silver for a new car, holiday, kitchen etc. they just wave a piece of plastic and they swop their earnings in 2038 for instant gratification. Debt is a very dishonest form of evil, as people hardly realise what they are doing – most people can see how we idolise assets, whether it’s silver, Ferraris, houses, works of art and so on, but few would think that debt is something that is idolised, even though that is the root of the asset idolatry.
Queensland has a particular style of housing architecture called “a Queenslander”. These range from a one bedroomed cottage to six bedroomed mansions, built purely of timber, raised off the ground on stumps with a tin roof. They are mobile too, it was a not uncommon sight 35 years ago to see them being moved from one site to another, usually at night. Nobody builds them anymore because they are hot in summer, freezing in winter, loved by termites and should really have sprinkler systems installed because fires take hold immediately. And so, our house will be illegal in January, when statewide regulations come into force requiring us to install fire alarms throughout the house. Except, of course, we don’t have a Queenslander. We have a low maintenance, concrete slab, double brick house which nobody has ever smoked in. We don’t have massive lithium batteries in cars or solar banks. We don’t have gas cooking. We’ve never had a termite inspection. I’ve been through the roof and rectified the dangerous wiring( also illegal for me to do) that was installed by a licensed electrician. I’ve done everything bar replace the roof timbers with steel to minimise the fire risk but now we have to pay to install fire alarms! Which for many households means more debt. This is symptomatic of the cost of bureaucracy and the grip that it has on our everyday lives. And it wasn’t there in the good old days. Nor can I yet think of anything bad about back then.
Abolish debt.