SO, in the context of what is really happening Walter Williams appeal to common sense and Constitutional Authority falls flat. It's not that I disagree with it, but it's just that it's completely irrelevant.
There is no way to get from here (post New Deal America) to there (Constitutional limited government America of the founders) without the worlds biggest reset. That would be some sort of catastrophe by definition: maybe started by something else, like a war or large scale cyber-terrorist attack, or maybe brought on by the markets themselves.
Regardless of who starts it it will be horrific and result in massive loss of life.
It's odd that so many on the Patriot / Constitutional Right seem to *want* this catastrophe to occur, sort of a moral reckoning for a system they don't like.
It's also strangely debilitating to think this way: I see this on patriot board. "First SHTF happens, *then* ..." In other words a lot of smart people are waiting for the inevitable before a) feeling smugly self-satisfied that what can not endure has finally failed and b) now being able to prove that their idea of (pick one: gold based currency, pure barter systems, a new American Constitution, an independent Texas, a white ethnostate, etc.) will now be realized.
So, they wait for the crash, the fetishize over the crash, they prep for the crash. What if the crash never comes? (Say, not in your finite human live).
The fall of the Roman Republic and it's replacement by the Roman Empire happened in 45 BC when Julius Caeser took power. That system lasted till 475 AD in the West and 1453 in the East.
"There is a great deal of ruin in a nation." - Adam Smith
There is a constant stream of books just like this:
Just because it didn't happen, doesn't mean it *never* will, but it might mean it's not going to happen in a time frame that is meaningful to us. If one had invested everything in canned food in prep for the 1990 crash at age 30 you'd be 57 now -- and have a lot of spoiled canned food.
Those who aren't coming at it from "told you so" economics of the right (Batra) or left (Hartman) maybe coming at it from the religious point of view.
I grew up in a small town and someone there sent a copy of this book to every resident around the time of its publication, in 1970. I read it. It claimed that the fulfillment of end-time prophecy was destined to occur soon, probably by the 1980s.
To state the obvious: that didn't happen either. If you were 30 years old when this book was pubblished you'd by 77, you've waited your entire adult life by no Second Coming, no Left Behind moment.
In the 1840s there was the "Millerite" movement of evangelical Christians who came to believe that, based on the writings and calculations of William Miller that Jesus Christ would return to Earth between the spring of 1843 and the spring of 1844. This dates was eventually updated to Oct. 22, 1844. Wikipedia notes that: "When this did not happen (an event known as the "Great Disappointment"), most of his followers disbanded and returned to their original churches."
I think most of the people ranting about the debt, the lack of Constitutional Government, the folly of deficit spending, and so forth - will be experiencing their own "great disappointment* sooner or later because: "there is a great deal of ruin in a nation*.