Feeling helpless to provide for their own needs, individuals turn increasingly to the government for assistance (p. 5.4:74).
The pattern of interventionism is expanded to include gun control and confiscation (p. 5.4:78), prohibitions against individual self-defense (p. 5.4:78), and other suspensions of civil liberties (p. 5.4:79).

Because of countervailing forces, it should be remembered, some of these effects may not appear or may be delayed in some countries. For example, recent technological improvements in computer microchips have conferred affluence upon many despite the distortions introduced by intervention. (Compared with what would be possible in a free society, however, the U. S. economy has been quite stagnant.) Furthermore, Americans have witnessed twentieth-century experiments in the USSR and Germany, and the revulsion they have felt has doubtless retarded acceptance of some of the worst totalitarian excesses in this nation. Despite these special circumstances, it is clear that existing policies are gradually moving in the general direction indicated here. The causal relationships outlined in our analysis are highly redundant, as multiple causal influences reinforce one another and are intensified by positive-feedback loops. Consequently, while some of the worst pitfalls of a mixed economy may be avoided for decades, the resulting general pattern of increased interventionism is virtually ineluctable—unless, of course, the guiding principles of the whole system are radically modified by a concerted effort.

^Previous