Last week’s “Black Friday,” the busiest day of retail shopping in America, saw three percent greater sales revenue, compared to last year. The jump led most news outlets to sheepishly speculate that a consumption surge may stave off the impending recession awhile longer. Perhaps the worst is behind us.

The more likely explanation of Friday’s sales spike is that Black Friday’s bedlam is less painful than paying full retail. If that is indeed the case, quarterly retail sales will total less than last year’s. In the current economy, optimism may be the commodity most demanded and least supplied. Peddlers in optimism should do well. While it remains to be determined if 2008 will end with a bang or a thud, it would be all but impossible for holiday retail sales to make up for the historic losses the economy has suffered this year.

As credit markets remain largely impervious to government chicanery, the only net effect of their efforts is socialism and inflation. To date, the government has promised to transfer an unfathomable $8 trillion in bailout money from taxpayers to private corporations. This money comes not from a tax hike but from an increase in the money supply, the very definition of inflation.

To continue down the bailout road, despite loud public outcry, indicates an almost feudalistic disconnect between the governing and the governed. Congressmen universally reported high call volume from constituents opposed to the bailout, and yet bail out they do.
One “emergency” bailout has begat another and another with no end in sight. The financial industry’s downward trajectory is probably what we can expect for many others. What an awful precedent.

The government spent taxpayer money to help the biggest banks buy the top failing banks and investment firms. Consumers of credit are left with a barren landscape of choices, beyond a few financial behemoths. This example portends ominously for the average person. Fewer choices and bigger providers mean more of your time spent navigating vendor’s paperwork, bureaucracies, and outsourced call centers. Transparency, customer service, and competitive rates will cease to exist. We will be blitzed with increasingly obtuse ad campaigns, appealing only to the lowest common denominator.

There is no telling how many industries will follow suit. The auto industry is the insufferable failure du jour, but any company that extends credit to consumers is a candidate. That is to say, practically all of them are.

When our government becomes a stakeholder in private corporations, the distinction between public and private spheres becomes meaningless. The blurred line between corporate and government authority manifested itself most recently when socialist Democrats in congress called for a limits on executive pay at bailed out firms.

Conservatives were appalled that the government would dare to set an employee’s pay rate at a private firm. Many pundits rightly noted that when the government begins making management decisions, we can expect affected companies to be managed as ineffectively as government.

The tragedy here is that those socialist Democrats have a point. If taxpayer money is included on a company’s balance sheet, we have a right to influence its management. Since all taxpayers cannot be present at a company’s board meetings, we must entrust a federal bureaucrat to represent our interests. Personally, I have yet to meet a federal bureaucrat who I felt represented my interests rather than those of the monolithic federal government. Thus the self-perpetuation of socialism accelerates. The more companies fail, the more government “help” we need.

If we reject socialism, as any student of history must, we must reject it at the point of incursion. Economic appeasement is no less dangerous than military appeasement. In this case, we ought to have rejected the first bailout. Of course, the general population did reject it; congress and the White House are the problem.

Meanwhile, we voters are ill-equipped to hold government accountable because we are generally rootless and not sufficiently self-educated. We remain ignorant of the fact that the point of socialist incursion is buried deep in our economic system.

America has battled socialism for decades. In our hubris, we are hesitant to admit its gains. Unfortunately, burying one’s head in the sand only emboldens a predator. Likewise, a parasitic government.
With socialists in control of congress, the incoming executive administration, and the outgoing administration, the trend is not likely to reverse anytime soon.

The voting public must first come to realize how far we have marched towards government authoritarianism before we can demand a change of direction. For this reason, the situation will have to get much worse before it gets any better.

Where is a laissez faire capitalist to turn? Conservatism suffers not merely from a lack of leadership, as is widely recognized, but also from a lack of educated followers. Since the government-run education system refuses to teach history and economics with a shred of intellectual honesty, we must spend shrinking moments of “free time” educating ourselves. We are otherwise unable to hold our leaders’ feet to the fire.

The overseers of our economy cannot solve these fundamental problems. Instead they encourage consumers to “just go out and spend more.” Professional prognosticators and government officials assure us that a boost in consumer confidence could solve everything. Rather than hoping for Black Friday to bail out the economy, the government-lobbyist goon squad ought to just get out of the way of those who create the majority of jobs and produce real wealth: small business.